> and without a formal declaration of war congress could step in at any time and declare the whole thing illegal, enabling the military to refuse orders relevan

> and without a formal declaration of war congress could step in at any time and declare the whole thing illegal, enabling the military to refuse orders relevant to the invasion. I’m pretty sure that war requires congressional approval BEFORE an invasion full stop. Congress in recent history has been fairly cavalier about letting the executive launch military action and looking the other way, but it’s not actually supposed to work this way. > The Cold War is over, the Russian tank hordes that once threatened to roll across Western Europe haven't managed to roll halfway across Ukraine with even reluctant, intermittent, indirect western support This is a gross mischaracterization of the situation that significantly underplays what actually happened I think. Without what Biden did right before the war saying “it’s going to happen” and mustering broad domestic and international support as well as using sanctions to freeze Russian assets and use them to pay Ukraine for reparations, Ukraine wouldn’t exist today. We’re talking about $70B of military HW and $23B in terms of economic and humanitarian aid and another ~87B for the Ukrainian government to keep the lights on. That’s from the US alone. The international community has also contributed another $100B. > We aren't going to see a WWI or WWII rematch unless the AI "revolution" actually turns out to be more than smoke and mirrors for dumb money and enables perfect missile defense or something. It’s a slower burn. Putin isn’t going to try to take everything at once. It’s the Hitler annexation strategy over a longer time period. A little Georgia here, a little Crimea there, now it’s the entirety of Ukraine. Partly because his country is weaker but also because war is more expensive to prosecute than 100 years ago due to technology and the resistance is much better prepared for such an attempt. Where do you think Eastern and Western European civilians will flee if any of those countries is drawn into conflict with Russia? Conflict forces desperate immigration which then creates anti-immigration counter responses in domestic populations here in the US. China is important but what are we going to do there? Do you think we’re going to successfully defend an invasion of Taiwan when it happens? Cause that’s going to be their first military action. And if people are complaining about supporting Ukraine, how do you think they’ll fair regarding Chinese nationalists? Finally, I’m pretty sure the troops and equipment we need there are also fairly different. If China is delivering huge numbers of land troops to Taiwan in the first place I’d say the battle is very lost. It’s going to be a sea/land siege so if the US gets directly involved it’ll be a meeting of the navies.