Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I can't believe that people still feel that the only way to make US foreign policy is to give out as much money as possible to our "allies."
UGH.
No wonder the US is in debt to our eyeballs.
I get it - I agree that you gotta help your friends. I disagree we need to do anything more to help Israel. First off, they got the money. And if they don't, there's plenty of rich Jews that can privately fund the whole country. Second, I'm not really seeing how they are our "ally" beyond that influential and rich Jews live in the US so politically, we deem them as such. Lastly, for what they are doing to Palestine, not sure why we are funding them for genocide.
On Ukraine - I don't know. When will it be enough? Are we supporting Ukraine? Hell, no. We are just anti Putin/Russia. However, if Putin gets his way with Ukraine, I'm actually unsure how this hurts the US in ways that are unimaginable. I think that Putin truly wants Ukraine because of stupid reasons connected to nationalism v he wants to use it as his first step to achieve world domination. Seriously. I think he has bigger problems and took an unwise gamble to take Ukraine thinking it was going to be easier. But the US is funding this thing like it's our war and it really isn't. We want to beat Putin but it's not really our war.
Lastly, Taiwan. Dear God, the US has to let it go. China, unlike Russia, are not fools and do not gamble like that. China won't do a thing to Taiwan because they have big probs on the mainland. Taiwan is absolutely fine. They are prob the strongest little country in the world! They got the trade doing great, the tech/IT/econ doing well, they got their shit together culturally, politically and domestically. I really think that we need to not take care of them!
There are those who I think think by being able to shell out funds to countries makes us powerful and leverages the perspective that we are good to our friends. The actual truth is domestically, we have more and more probs that we should be throwing more and more money to resolving but we don't because it's too messy. It's easy to shell out money on the foreign policy front - it's really just money and might we are exporting. I think there was a time when that was really important but not much in these cases and the world is changing to a certain extent. There's more than 1-2 heavyweights in the world now and our "power" is not defined the same way as it used to be. The world is changing but the US is not.
We are supporting Ukraine's soverignty. It is far less expensive to do what we are doing, than to let Russia take Ukraine (because then they would take the Baltics, Poland etc etc etc)
We are supporting israel's soverignty, though I would prefer more aid and a restriction on offensive weapons. Defensive, sure.
Taiwan...don't you think China is watching our politcs saying, well if they aren't going to defend Ukraine, then they won't defend taiwan either?
Ukraine is not a member of NATO. The Baltics are members of NATO.
In any conventional conflict, NATO would crush Russia in less than two weeks.
Taiwan is a different issue.
We will support Ukraine but not indefinitely. If they can't defeat Russia, they can't defeat Russia.
Two years ago NATO might have been able to swat Russia around, but that's not the case any more. NATO committed far more to the Ukrainian conflict than people want to admit, and what is left is a little concerning. The conflict also exposed just how badly decayed the "arsenal of democracy" has become. NATO can not match Russian manufacturing of arms. In fact NATO may not be able to match NK's production.
The Russian army is now far more formidable than it was two years ago, while ours continues to shrink. We seem to lose a copter or plane every day, and the British can't get either of their carriers sea-worthy. A hot war with Russia would be an absolute slog at this point. We would probably need a draft and a war-time economy to win it. It would not be a fun time.
This is absolutely delusional.
NATO and the US does not do trench warfare. Or artillery duels that last for years.
The West does air power.
There is nothing in the Russian arsenal that can stop F-22s, F-35s, B-1s and B-2s. Not to mention cruise missiles. And once air defense is taken care of, it's carnage time. Everything from old timey B-52s, which can level a city in a minute, to Apaches, which can provide close air support.
It literally would take NATO and the US two weeks to obliterate what remains of Russian forces.
The problem is that Ukraine does not have those weapons. It's a horrible war. It's WWI with drones. The vast majority of casualties are due to artillery, which would never happen in any NATO engagement.
Ukraine needs ammo, which Republicans are denying them. All NATO countries were unprepared for a war where 20,000 shells are fired each and every day. It's not how NATO fights. So it's definitely a strain.
But Ukraine is in trouble now because of the the ammo shortage. Europe has finally ramped up production to 24/7. But in the meantime, only the US has the resources to sustain Ukraine. And if Russia does take Ukraine, it will be the Baltics next. NATO countries. Russia is an imperial country. They will go there.
NATO would deal with that pretty quickly, but it's best to avoid direct confrontation with a nuclear adversary.
Supporting Ukraine - giving them the ammo - is the only way to keep the US and NATO out of a much, much more serious engagement.
Profoundly disappointed with the idiocy of Mike Johnson and Republicans.