4 ms·

The US is spending a great deal of money, those are chips, and not having to spend money is a concession. Your framing of the situation makes little sense to m

The US is spending a great deal of money, those are chips, and not having to spend money is a concession. Your framing of the situation makes little sense to me and appears to be angling towards the conclusion of unlimited support for Ukraine until their 'inevitable' victory. I'm less optimistic about Russia collapsing and also not optimistic about America's continued support for Ukraine, they wouldn't be the first country to be abandoned by the US. The aim is to give Russia a bloody nose and deny them an easy victory not for Ukraine win the war. "To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” - Henry Kissinger

bee_rider 4y ago
There definitely is a limit to US support for Ukraine, but currently Ukraine’s only hope is that Russia’s willingness to fight will run out before either US support or Ukrainian willingness to fight does. So, hopefully we’ve had serious discussions behind closed doors with Ukraine about how far we’re willing to go. But signaling that publicly would weaken Ukraine’s position (by giving Russia a light at the end of the tunnel). My understanding of the situation is that realistically the US has a lot of latitude to influence Ukraine, but should not go behind their back and negotiate with Russia. Any diplomacy that routes around Ukraine means their priorities will be given less emphasis. Since they are the ones actually paying in blood and human suffering, we owe them deference when it comes to when and how to negotiate. We’re spending money but it is the sort of spending we can handle for a while.
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  As my quote points out, the US has a long history of abandoning ‘friends’ after they’ve outlived their usefulness. I’d be surprised if Ukraine is any different.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Sure. That US support isn’t actually infinite is something Ukraine will have to account for. But it is something that we should handle with them behind closed doors.
ROTMetro 4y ago
Of the USAs 700 Billion yearly defense budget, we spend around 150 billion to contain Russia, and we've spent that or more since the 1950s (so over 10 trillion dollars). We aren't spending new funds to support Ukraine. Most of the 'spend' so far has been moving numbers from under 'In XYZ DoD warehouse' to 'Transfered to Ukraine' in an accounting spreadsheet. When we are sending Ukraine more than 150 billion a year and exceeding what we typically spent on containing Russia then America might START to think about the costs of this war. Maybe we should be scared the we no longer have a surplus of Javelins in case we need them to blow up Russian tanks, because they have been used to...blow up Russian tanks...but that's a hard fear to sell.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I agree that fundamentally this is an expense that we can keep up for quite a while, but I’m not sure about the idea “these weapons are to contain Russia, therefor we don’t have to worry about using them to contain Russia” for a couple reasons. First, hypothetically is the US were to fight Russia, we’d use a different mix of weapons. So it is putting unexpected pressure on our supply of Javelins, because they are doing the work that would normally be done by, whatever, JDAMs or something. Also there must be some of what we programmers would think of as oversubscription or deduplication of weapons — I mean if we have like 2 war’s worth of weapons to handle all our competitors and we expend one war’s worth of weapons to handle one competitor, then we suddenly only have one war worth of weapons to handle all the rest. We haven’t expended one war’s worth of resources on Russia but it is worth keeping in mind that this isn’t like, literally zero cost or something like that. Edit: also another thing that rubs me the wrong way with this description is, it seems to play into the narrative that Russia and the US never could have gotten along. The real hope is that the overwhelming US lead has a deterrent effect on countries that might want to start a war. The best weapons are ones that don’t get used.
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  With diplomacy we could have turned those tanks around and sent them into China. Like what was done in WWII but for Germany. From the very onset of WWII Churchill smartly appeased Russia in an effort to get Russia to flip and it worked. China is the burgeoning hegemon and the real risk the US dominance. From memory the impetus for the conflict was China sharing US intel about plans to militarize Ukraine with Russia in order to goad Russia into the conflict. Now China and Russia are inseparable. This will make the future conflict over Taiwan infinitely more difficult. Right now the EU is bearing the brunt of the economic costs and they're not wealthy so they'll run out of money sooner. But ignoring the money spent costs; what is being discovered in this war is the efficacy of mass low cost long range drones. It's unlikely to ever be cost effective to defend against this and conflicts settled this way will be immensely destructive. I remember when it was unthinkable to militarize drones to remotely kill people from a long way away, then we did it, and soon it'll be done to us.

bee_rider 4y ago

There definitely is a limit to US support for Ukraine, but currently Ukraine’s only hope is that Russia’s willingness to fight will run out before either US support or Ukrainian willingness to fight does. So, hopefully we’ve had serious discussions behind closed doors with Ukraine about how far we’re willing to go. But signaling that publicly would weaken Ukraine’s position (by giving Russia a light at the end of the tunnel). My understanding of the situation is that realistically the US has a lot of latitude to influence Ukraine, but should not go behind their back and negotiate with Russia. Any diplomacy that routes around Ukraine means their priorities will be given less emphasis. Since they are the ones actually paying in blood and human suffering, we owe them deference when it comes to when and how to negotiate. We’re spending money but it is the sort of spending we can handle for a while.

cjbgkagh 4y ago
As my quote points out, the US has a long history of abandoning ‘friends’ after they’ve outlived their usefulness. I’d be surprised if Ukraine is any different.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Sure. That US support isn’t actually infinite is something Ukraine will have to account for. But it is something that we should handle with them behind closed doors.

ROTMetro 4y ago

Of the USAs 700 Billion yearly defense budget, we spend around 150 billion to contain Russia, and we've spent that or more since the 1950s (so over 10 trillion dollars). We aren't spending new funds to support Ukraine. Most of the 'spend' so far has been moving numbers from under 'In XYZ DoD warehouse' to 'Transfered to Ukraine' in an accounting spreadsheet. When we are sending Ukraine more than 150 billion a year and exceeding what we typically spent on containing Russia then America might START to think about the costs of this war. Maybe we should be scared the we no longer have a surplus of Javelins in case we need them to blow up Russian tanks, because they have been used to...blow up Russian tanks...but that's a hard fear to sell.

bee_rider 4y ago
I agree that fundamentally this is an expense that we can keep up for quite a while, but I’m not sure about the idea “these weapons are to contain Russia, therefor we don’t have to worry about using them to contain Russia” for a couple reasons. First, hypothetically is the US were to fight Russia, we’d use a different mix of weapons. So it is putting unexpected pressure on our supply of Javelins, because they are doing the work that would normally be done by, whatever, JDAMs or something. Also there must be some of what we programmers would think of as oversubscription or deduplication of weapons — I mean if we have like 2 war’s worth of weapons to handle all our competitors and we expend one war’s worth of weapons to handle one competitor, then we suddenly only have one war worth of weapons to handle all the rest. We haven’t expended one war’s worth of resources on Russia but it is worth keeping in mind that this isn’t like, literally zero cost or something like that. Edit: also another thing that rubs me the wrong way with this description is, it seems to play into the narrative that Russia and the US never could have gotten along. The real hope is that the overwhelming US lead has a deterrent effect on countries that might want to start a war. The best weapons are ones that don’t get used.
cjbgkagh 4y ago
With diplomacy we could have turned those tanks around and sent them into China. Like what was done in WWII but for Germany. From the very onset of WWII Churchill smartly appeased Russia in an effort to get Russia to flip and it worked. China is the burgeoning hegemon and the real risk the US dominance. From memory the impetus for the conflict was China sharing US intel about plans to militarize Ukraine with Russia in order to goad Russia into the conflict. Now China and Russia are inseparable. This will make the future conflict over Taiwan infinitely more difficult. Right now the EU is bearing the brunt of the economic costs and they're not wealthy so they'll run out of money sooner. But ignoring the money spent costs; what is being discovered in this war is the efficacy of mass low cost long range drones. It's unlikely to ever be cost effective to defend against this and conflicts settled this way will be immensely destructive. I remember when it was unthinkable to militarize drones to remotely kill people from a long way away, then we did it, and soon it'll be done to us.