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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

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

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.