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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   28593 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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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).

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.

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.

Easy to ignore the counterfactuals of not doing that.

Afghanistan, of course, being one of those, that instantly folded as soon as we removed our presence.

Afghanistan was an ongoing occupation. We had, as you point out, a presence. It has almost nothing in common with our support to Ukraine.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

"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 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.

I don't think this follows, but it's clearly a self-correcting problem.

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