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Unfortunately you are right and here in Central Europe, Putin's invasion of Ukraine caused a lot of anguish. At least initially, plenty of people were afraid t

Unfortunately you are right and here in Central Europe, Putin's invasion of Ukraine caused a lot of anguish. At least initially, plenty of people were afraid that he is going to steamroll Ukraine, and then continue towards the Baltic/Poland, in order to restore the entire imperial zone of influence of the former USSR, or at least as much of it as practical (so, without the former GDR, probably; with AfD in his pocket, he could gain a lot of soft power there anyway). In that case, if the US decided that they don't really care about a potential nuclear war for the sake of some distant Eastern European countries, we would be caught with our pants down. Only Poland was somewhat prepared. Many European countries grew fatter and lazier under the American defense umbrella. It was easier to stuff money into popular projects than into guns and soldiers. Only, it turns out, sometimes you really need those guns and soldiers even in the 21st century. "Si vis pacem, para bellum."

ttyprintk 3y ago
Another HN post puts this in terms of civilian casualties: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38579988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38579988 The average people in powerful democracies have a responsibility to avoid the circumstances which historically have led to mass civilian casualties. For USA, the toll of nuclear strikes is an approachable example. Other great powers have a worse record in avoiding malicious mass suffering. The part relevant to your comment is that the US military now needs to prevent war rather than excel at it. And it has chosen to look as formidable as possible to rational enemies. I think Europe agrees with this, but I don’t know if there are other ways.