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Let's not exaggerate here. The US has in almost no actual way "stretched itself thin" in supporting Ukraine. We have not even significantly altered our force posture. (Which we did for Iran recently.)
The USAF and USN would absolutely demolish their Russian counterparts given their abysmal performance against Ukraine. Tactical drones are nice and all in trench warfare, but good old-fashioned air dominance is even better when you can get it.
That's not to say drones aren't important, they are and will be, but the US military is aware of that, as is Palmer Lucky and his competitors.
If wars of conquest (not motivated by ideological commitments that aren't "rational" in the usual sense) are shown to be more costly than they are worth, even in victory, then that's a huge deterrent.
I'd also guess you're very wrong in that age is negatively correlated with aggression and violence, and so older populations would seemingly be less warlike by default.
Well, can you? The closest we have seen to an attempt to get it over a country with a modern multi-layered air defense system was in fact Russia over Ukraine, and it failed. Of course, the question is to what extent the conclusion should be "Russia sucks" and to what extent it should be "this is a hard problem", but it's not like Ukraine can fly manned planes close to Russian-held territory either. I imagine the US is actually not convinced that it could pull it off either, and is more interested in maintaining the strategic ambiguity (that maybe it could) than risking rolling the dice and establishing that the answer is no for all to see. (Of course, the possibility that the answer being yes leads to nukes is also a factor.)
I can only say I am looking forward to the day China goes for Taiwan, as it will finally re-peg some of the nationalist hypothesizing about who could win if they really tried to reality.
Does Iran not count as having a modern multi-layered air defense system? They had S-300s, so second-tier Russian tech, which is mostly Ukraine had when the war started.
Russia does suck quite a lot. But it's not proven how well say the F-35 et al can do against the S-400 by either the US or Israel with top-tier SEAD. But since, somehow, the fucking Turks have a couple of batteries I'm guessing we have a pretty good idea of how to take 'em out at low risk.
Does Ukraine have even a smidgen of the air combat power e.g. the US Marines have?
Per this page, Iran had 4 batteries, and their radar system got disabled by hackers before Israel attacked (surely a unique mistake enabled only by Israel's complete intelligence penetration of it) - Ukraine, it says, had 100. And still, from what I gather, Israel did not do manned overflights but just launched ATGMs over Iraq. The Americans did one overflight, but that was using rare bombers that don't scale and might well have been preceded by a backchannel "let us bomb you unopposed once for the symbolism, or shoot back and we will go all in" threat.
Good thing the Russians were not competent at their intelligence preparation of the battlefield.
Think about what you just said. They "just" "launched" "ATGMs." How did that turn out for the IAF? For Iran?
Israel did manned overflights once they had obliterated Iran's air defenses in a matter of hours.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-air-superiority-iran-cannot-compared-russia-ukraine
Iran also had a lot more than merely four S-300 batteries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Air_Defense_Force
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I keep reading stories like this:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-stockpiles-missiles/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/05/21/united-states-defense-pentagon-military-industrial-base-ammunition/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/08/us-pentagon-military-plans-patriot-missile-interceptor
Now, granted, there is only one possible opponent on the world stage we could maybe be concerned about challenging the U.S. directly.
But I think it's pretty obvious that the U.S. is less able to intervene in various conflicts than it would be in the world where the Ukraine war didn't pop off.
Some places are going to notice that.
Right.
And seeing that both you and your potential opponent are in a demographic spiral, the 'costs' of doing so shift. This is the problem as I see it, we have not seen this particular phenomenon in the modern era: governments hitting economic crises that they will only expect to worsen as their populations collapse, and getting desperate enough to try and seize territory and resources to stave off disaster.
The point is more that countries will run out of young, male citizens to man their military force. If your country is composed mostly of the old and infirm... you'll look pretty vulnerable to your neighbors whose population pyramid is slightly more favorable.
This is likely the primary impetus for Russia invading Ukraine at all.
Oh, and having a country made up of the old and infirm means you aren't as productive, so you can't produce as many weapons nor can you afford to purchase as many weapons. Non-nuclear states are going to have a hard time keeping neighbors at bay, potentially.
So I worry that we will simultaneously see economic crises that provide the impetus for wars to seize territory, and demographics crises that make certain countries more vulnerable to such attacks.
ALL OF THIS whilst the U.S. is increasingly less able to intervene in places that flare up.
Yes, there are certain munitions that are hard to replace fast enough, and both Ukraine and Israel have needed them.
Guess what though? In a shooting war with North Korea or China we're gonna need a lot more e.g. interceptors than what has been used so far, and so if anything we should be grateful for the stress testing of our stockpiles and supply chains.
Well, yes. However, given that Russia, our #2 main rival, is having its military trashed pretty hard it's not like we aren't getting a pretty great ROI.
One would think that a rational person responding to the risk of population collapse would not start and maintain a bloody war killing off and maiming working-age males.
I'm sorry but I really can't take Peter Zeihan seriously at all. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 because it views the risk of Ukraine becoming aligned with the West economically, politically, and militarily to be too serious a threat to its interests of regional dominance.
Makes you wonder why we were willing to commit so much materiel to Afghanistan for so long if we care about maintaining military strength for larger enemies.
Keeping the U.S. locked in Afghanistan gave our enemies pretty solid ROI too, and we have virtually nought to show for it now.
I dunno, seems like the actual winning move would be to encourage Europe to build up enough force to deter Russia directly. Certainly less taxing on our reserves.
Why were we concerned about Russia's military at all for such purposes? What threat did they pose to the U.S.'s interests outside of our need to reassure allies we're still top dog?
Now we've got an ongoing commitment to sustain a conflict that isn't going to pay off much for us unless the Ukrainians pull off an increasingly unlikely win.
And to the extent people expect Ukraine to functionally bounce back if peace is established, surely the same could be expected of Russia.
I guess that, unless the actual strategic objective is to bring Russia to heel and then absorb it into the larger Western Coalition that is culturally liberal and directionally opposed to China becoming a global superpower (which I'm not inherently worried about either), what exactly do we think we're doing here that's worth so many deaths.
That doesn't really address the point that any invasion by Russia relies on sufficient manpower, and by absolute definition, with declining birth rates, their manpower will only decrease if they wait.
The timing is the issue, not the motivation itself.
I've yet to see anyone explain why the point that "declining demographics = economic stagnation = less globalized world = greater conflicts everywhere" doesn't follow, logically, other than us being in very uncertain times in general.
Come on. Please, just think for five seconds.
What did we actually have in Afghanistan? How much of it was remotely relevant to confronting "larger enemies"? Spoiler:Very little.
Actually the Iranians in particular hated it. But also it was a very cheap military engagement as these things go.
You can argue that the US should give up caring much about Europe and leave NATO and let Russia do whatever it wants, but that's not the world we actually live in.
Technically, we've had a commitment for decades. But also even if Ukraine loses you're failing to consider the counterfactual where Putin just took over in weeks. That would be worse.
Stopping Putin from conquering his neighbors at will? Preserving norms of liberalism and Western mutual support against aggression?
You're leaving out the side of equation where Ukraine is also facing demographic challenges. It's a symmetrical problem.
I would just flag that it arguably cost us essentially a generation of modernization as multiple procurement programs were canceled while funds were spent to fighting the GWOT rather than preparing for conventional conflict.
It seems plausible, just to use one prominent example that would be very relevant to a Pacific conflict, that absent the GWOT the B-21 would already be in service (originally the Next Generation Bomber was scheduled for 2018, but procurement was kicked down the road due to cost concerns.)
I don't think that's arguable. Go look at the budget and procurement decisions and I doubt you can find that being the causation. And, even if it were, the USN did not do much in Afghanistan.
Please don't blame GWOT expenditures on the inability of the USAF to manage the budget projections of its aircraft development and production. That's been a shitshow for a long time. Ironically, one reason Gates canceled the program at the time was because he was interested in unmanned aircraft development.
https://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE53E4KG20090415/
The GWOT is not responsible for DoD development and procurement retardation, because that's been an issue for decades and continues now. Thank god the F-35 does seem to work.
Not just aircraft - ships, fighting vehicles, helicopters, tanks and artillery projects were killed or trimmed down during the relevant time-frame. I agree that DoD development retardation is a thing, but I don't believe you can spend $8 trillion and fight a 20-year unconventional war and not have it impact your ability to fight a conventional war, both in terms of procurement and in terms of troop training.
If nothing else, the DoD shifted and pursued procurement programs that were very useful in the GWOT but of dubious utility in a hot war (drones being a big example).
Again, please do not blame the USN's incompetence at program management on the GWOT. That problem predates and outlasts the GWOT.
These will almost certainly be irrelevant in a war with China.
This is a made up number. It includes veteran care. In the future. Separate budget entirely.
Look man. I was in the Army. I spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Do you know who wasn't really doing much fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? The USAF and USN. Their core assets were not affected very much by counterinsurgency operations.
Guess who is the least useful branch in a probable conflict with China? That's right, the US Army. The major exception would be air defense artillery, but they've been deployed across the world before, during, and after the GWOT due to their particular mission set. And boy are they getting a lot of attention of late that might just do them a lot of good such that if China does get frisky in the coming years they'll be better off.
This is a hilarious take since drone bros like Elon take exactly the opposite line you do on drones vs. manned platforms like the B-21. Funnily, the B-21 Wiki has it "maybe" going to replace the B-52 after it replaces the B-1 and B-2. We just don't make 'em like we used to.
Israel just used drones to assist quite a lot in a hot war. For ISR they're incredibly valuable, and that includes against China.
The GWOT was stupid for many reasons. Believe me, I know.
But the DoD's longstanding incompetence wrt major weapon programs, cost overruns, and maintaining an advantage over China can't really be blamed on us occupying Iraq for less than a decade and Afghanistan for about two decades, mostly with a light footprint of Army soldiers in light infantry and mechanized infantry formations. The USN and USAF have a lot of rot and incompetence built up.
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That's a matter of perspective, for sure. Fewer deaths overall, and I don't see how it makes Russia so much stronger that U.S. hegemony is threatened (more than it already is).
I do NOT like bringing back 'War of Territorial Conquest' as a feature of global diplomacy again, but Russia made that call unilaterally.
If the 'norm' for 'support against aggression' is to just pump money and weapons into any force fighting against someone we don't like, I'd be able to offhand point out like half a dozen examples of where we did that and it directly backfired or blew over into unforeseen, possibly worse consequences.
Afghanistan, of course, being one of those, that instantly folded as soon as we removed our presence. Call it 'cheap' if you want, it was never sustainable, I'd straight up say almost every dollar we pumped in there (to say nothing of U.S. lives) has gone to waste.
I worry about the same here, with one of the foreseeable consequences being Ukraine's utter collapse on the population level.
Its a very ill defined way to run things, outside of explicit treaty agreements like NATO. "If the U.S. State Department thinks you're aggressing against your neighbor they will pump said neighbor's combat capabilities up to even out the odds, but otherwise won't intervene" is like "if we see someone being stabbed by a mugger, we'll toss the victim a knife (and maybe a stab-proof jacket) and cheer them on from the side."
We're STILL not officially at war with Russia, so on the political level, it is genuinely unclear what our true objective for participating in this conflict is.
Yes, and its sharpening the impact of the conflict. The people being lost each day aren't being replaced, they can't be retrieved, every loss is irreversible.
I guess it depends on which one you view as the 'worse' issue. As stated, I see demographic collapse as likely to trigger more and more conflicts going forward.
Ukraine can do what it wants with the population it has. I don't begrudge them the urge to fight off an aggressor in the least. But if its really such a great moral and strategic goal, its strange that the U.S., with the least to lose in this situation, is the one that is continuing to make the largest investments.
Focus less on "U.S. hegemony" and more on "Russian domination of its neighbors." Most of the time, successful conquerors like to run up the score, not just find satisfaction.
Easy to ignore the counterfactuals of not doing that.
Afghanistan was an ongoing occupation. We had, as you point out, a presence. It has almost nothing in common with our support to Ukraine.
Come on. You think the State Department is what matters here??? Also, there are plenty of conflicts where we do not intervene in material ways.
Do you know anything about the Cold War? Were we ever at officially with war with Russia?
The true objective is helping the Ukrainians defend themselves to impose costs on Russia and support the security of the region. Simple.
"Largest" "investments"? Of what kind? Have you adjusted for per capita at all?
What's strange is that we and the Europeans didn't give Ukraine way more support way faster. Embarrassing how much it took to convince some countries that actually Russia is a threat.
I don't think this follows, but it's clearly a self-correcting problem.
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