5 ms·
How does it matter to the “needs” of the american people what happens to Ukraine one way or the other?
by rayiner 2y ago
How does it matter to the “needs” of the american people what happens to Ukraine one way or the other?
- JohnBooty 2y agoIf you don't understand why stability in Europe matters to America, you might want to read about World War II. It had a rather pronounced affect on America. Some other countries too, I think.
- alephnerd 2y agoI support Atlanticism, but this overestimates the US's need and relations with Europe (EU and non-EU) in the 21st century. Our trade with APAC dwarfs total European trade, and America has ~150k armed personnel deployed in the Pacific versus ~65k in Europe. Europe can and should be able to manage Russia and Africa for us - this is what they did well until the 2000s. Both Dem and Republican admins since the Bush admin have been pushing for Europe to regain it's strategic autonomy. Trump is absolutely mismanaging this relationship, but a broken clock is right twice a day.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> this overestimates the US's need and relations with Europe (EU and non-EU) in the 21st century If Europe goes to war America is in a higher state of defcon even if we try to pretend we’re uninvolved. Global trade would crash which means a lot of middle class jobs vanishing.
- alephnerd 2y agoAbsolutely not denying that at all! But the perception (even before Trump) was that our European allies can and should be able to hold down the fort in Europe, because it's increasingly looking like we cannot fight a two-continent war, and we at least have strategic depth in Europe, and not at all in the Pacific.
- refulgentis 2y agoOne way to avoid a two-continent war is to lend money to our European ally to buy weapons from us. Another way is to sacrifice one continent. I, and many others, can't stomach the second. Particularly when we built their security order, they certainly weren't managing Russia for us until the 2000s.
- alephnerd 2y ago> One way to avoid a two-continent war is to lend money to our European ally to buy weapons from us. I agree and prefer this method, but certain European states (looking at you Germany) will also have to drastically increase military spending as well. The pot of military financial aid also needs to go to Asian allies like Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Philippines along with aligned states like Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and India. > Another way is to sacrifice one continent Which I dislike but is something the Trump admin has appeared to have chosen.
- refulgentis 2y agoThe idea Europe just needs to invest more is dated. Yes, there's stuff in the news right now about Germany military spending - secretary of defense said they anticipated yet another increase package of 6.7B euros, and only got 1.2B. Military spending is up dramatically from even 2 years ago, much less when you'd hear this argument from more dedicated hands, let's say, 2019, 2021. It's a particularly poor timing to make the argument, because even if we elide every increase until Sunday, we're still left with Germany reacting to this by adding $100B over the next 4 years. If if it wasn't out of date, I think it's important to state plainly the idea is: Europe needs to spend more in defense because the US decided to pull all support, even from things as simple as continuing to sell Europe defensive supplies as it fights Russia, and also hand chunks of Europe to Russia. It's somewhat gut-wrenching to hear an out of date argument, in so many separate ways, as justification for rugging them completely. It causes nausea when its coupled to a shrug about broken clocks.
- 2y ago
- refulgentis 2y agoI think you're a strong interlocutor for a position I need to understand more. - "Our trade with APAC dwarfs total European trade" I assume we have a shared understanding that more than just Europe was affected by WWII. - "Europe can and should be able to manage Russia and Africa for us" What does manage mean? - "this is what they did well until the 2000s." Was America involved in any of the management of Russia that went well prior to the 2000s? - "Both Dem and Republican admins since the Bush admin have been pushing for Europe to regain it's strategic autonomy." Europe certainly has strategic autonomy, no? Overall, my impression is the argument completely elides NATO, the US role in it, and the US leadership role in it.
- alephnerd 2y ago> I assume we have a shared understanding that more than just Europe was affected by WWII Absolutely, but they were 2 different wars with entirely different personas and leadership. For example, China and Japan treat WW2 as having started in 1936-37 and don't really view or care about WW1 or the European theaters of WW2 And European dependencies in Asia were already autonomous at that point (eg. British India had it's own autonomous military and political leadership after the 1920s era reforms independent of London, Dutch Indonesia and it 1930s era reforms, and French Indochina as well as they largely retained the pre-colonization era leadership). > What does manage mean Problems on the European and African continent should be dealt with by our European allies. Ideally, the US provides some amount of support and armament, but strategy within Europe and France should fall onto individual European allies. You saw this in Ukraine pre-2022 with the UK and Turkiye helping Ukraine rebuild it's armed forces, and in much of the Sahel with French armed forces tamping down on Islamism and Russian/Chinese backed factions. > Europe certainly has strategic autonomy, no The issue is, what is "Europe". There needs to be a much stronger unification of posture and strategy amongst our European allies, but you would often see France and Germany clash because France wants to ensure a unified European force has expeditionary capabilities (because of French dependencies in the Pacific and Africa), but Germany constantly pushes back because they want to remain Central Europe first. On top of that, individual European MICs directly compete with each other and extremely furiously. For example, Dassault, Eurofighter GmBH, and Saab trying to undercut each other in global fighter jet sales. And finally, individual European states do not see eye to eye. For example, France+Italy tends to have a very strong co-sell relationship with Israel (a direct competitor to Turkiye) and targets the India (a competitor to Pakistan) and UAE (a competitor to Saudi) market. But Germany+Spain tends to have a very strong co-sell relationship with Turkiye (a direct competitor to Israel), who tends to sell to Pakistan (a direct competitor to India) and Saudi Arabia (a direct competitor to UAE) While we would all want the EU to be a truly unified union, in it's present form, individual nation states will continue to zealously guard their soverignity. And even on the economic front - to continue using the India example due to the plan to finalize the EU-India FTA this year [0] - countries like Germany+Spain directly compete with France+Italy, especially in the Automotive and Pharma sectors (two of Europe's largest and most globally competitive sectors). For example, German+Spanish+Czech automotive manufacturers like Volkswagen AG (includes Spain's Seat and Czechia's Skoda) largely invested in China during the 2000s but French+Italian+Romanian manufacturers like Renault-Nissan, Citroen/Fiat/Stellantis, and Piaggo (scooters yes but THE scooter in India) invested heavily in India. An EU-India FTA doesn't impact French+Italian+Romanian manufacturers but directly undermines and harms German+Spanish+Czech manufacturers. And Indian biopharma companies (the only manufacturing industry that India is competitive at globally) are largely partnerships with French (Sanofi), British (GSK, AstraZeneca), Swiss (Novartis), Israeli (Teva), and Japanese (Takeda) players that directly compete with German firms like Bayer and Boehringer Ingelheim that invested in China. While at a macro-level a EU-India FTA is good for European autonomy from the US or China, it will undercut German+Spanish+Czech companies and benefit French+Italian+Romanian companies, and as such Germany has been lobbying against it (and India has retaliated by fining Volkswagen group $1.4B in back taxes and an additional $1.4B in interest [1] - an amount that will destroy VW Group's business in India [2] and maybe even globally depending on Chinese and NAM sales as it's an amount that's 17% of their net income). And this is one of dozens of examples where individual European nation states do not have strategic alignment, and why when push comes to shove, they all ignore the EU and prioritize their own domestic needs. [0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-eu-agree-push-conclusion-free-trade-pact-this-year-2025-02-28/ https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-eu-agree-push-conc... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/india-singles-out-vw-14-billion-tax-dispute-says-kia-corrected-course-2025-02-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/india-... [2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/indias-14-billion-tax-demand-matter-survival-volkswagen-india-unit-lawyer-says-2025-02-17/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/indias...
- selimthegrim 2y agoExactly how were they managing former Yugoslavia let alone the other two
- alephnerd 2y agoUNPROFOR was primarily lead by French, Swedish, and Canadian military leadership. KFOR and IFOR was largely German and Italian. Most of the blood, sweat, and tears of the UN and NATO intervention in Yugoslavia was European militaries like the Dutch, British, French, and Swedish. The Clinton admin primarily provided air support and diplomatic cover, but most boots on the ground were European (and Canadian). Lots of people forget that the UN was in Yugoslavia before the NATO intervention happened.
- selimthegrim 2y agoThe EC monitors were first. UNPROFOR was there for Croatia initially. The Lisbon agreement in Bosnia in 1992 was supposed to have things like European judges on the constitutional court, which is something that people forget when they complain about Dayton. The national militaries famously had partiality to different sides of the conflict - French and Dutch vs Swedish and British.
- alephnerd 2y agoYep, yet nonetheless, it was an European initiative that helped solidify "Pan-Europeanism" as a doable initiative (it was also during the early stages of the EC turned EU).
- dexterdog 2y agoWithout WWII the US would likely have never become the world's superpower.
- AlecSchueler 2y agoAnd without abandoning its allies it would have likely remained a superpower going forwards. That's suddenly in question.
- encoderer 2y agoI would argue that we did our bid for European stability, that everybody thought Ukraine would be quickly overrun. We don’t need to defend every inch of Ukrainian soil for us to consider it a success and a deterrent. We did far more here than Obama did to protect crimea.
- JohnBooty 2y agoI would argue that we did our bid for European stability, that everybody thought Ukraine would be quickly overrun. Have we? I think we've taught Russia and China that they can annex whoever they want to annex. We've taught them that it may or may not come at a high price, depending on which party happens to be in power at the moment.
- encoderer 2y agoYes we raised the stakes considerably. Russia thought the Ukraine operation would be over in weeks. Fast forward a few more years. Russia is encircling Kiev. Are we supposed to put American boots on the ground? Give them tactical nukes? Wouldn’t giving up then just “teach them” the same thing?
- matusp 2y agoIs having a conflict in Ukraine somehow making Europe more stable? To be entirely honest, from realpolitik point of view what Trump is doing makes cold and calculated sense. He will sacrifice Ukraine so that it will become a rump buffer state between Europe and Russia, and then he can trade with both. That will satisfy Russia as well as their strategic goal (no NATO in Ukraine) was achieved and they can return to business as usual.
- AlecSchueler 2y agoIt won't satisfy Russia, though. It will just give a thumbs up to them and anyone else wanting to make a land grab that they can go ahead and the US will look for appeasement. This is exactly the kind of thinking that lead to Chamberlain letting Hitler take the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia.
- matusp 2y agoAnd there is also hundreds of years of historical experience where establishing buffer states worked.
- dboreham 2y agoLike Belgium. Oh wait...
- AlecSchueler 2y agoSo how are you buffering Finland, or the Baltics? Where is Poland's buffer once you sacrifice Ukraine?
- weaksauce 2y ago> you might want to read about World War II. you didn't read enough about wwii then. giving putin ukraine emboldens him further just like hitler
- xorcist 2y agoUS had interests in the Ukraine because it was a buffer state. By sacrificing a whole country to Putin, NATO suddenly has enemy neighbors.
- vardump 2y agoMoney. US profits immensely from a stable world order. Peace and predictability is good for business. Security guarantees also prevent nuclear proliferation. If Ukraine is defeated, the lesson many countries will learn is to have a strong nuclear deterrent.
- rayiner 2y agoHow much money? Can you point me to studies that show this?
- ziddoap 2y agoYour debate tactic reminds me of some variation of the gish gallop. I thought there was a word for it, but I can't find it. You just ask question after question after question after question, with an extremely disproportionate amount of effort required between you and the person you are asking, and hope that the other side eventually gives up. Edit: jakelazaroff pinned it down for me, "sealioning"
- ceejayoz 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts
- jakelazaroff 2y agoI think GP is probably looking for sealioning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
- ziddoap 2y agoThat's the one! Thank you.
- torstenvl 2y agoNo. vardump specifically said that the money from stability justifies spending money to support Ukraine. That is only true if the latter is outweighed by the former. We know the amount spent in support of Ukraine. The only missing piece of the puzzle is the specific dollar valuation of the deterrence value of further assistance to Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion. If Ukraine regaining its pre-2022 (or pre-2014) borders is not worth a dollar value that exceeds the cost to achieve that outcome, then vardump's assertion of "money" as the reason is insufficient.
- reducesuffering 2y agoWhy does it matter to the American people what happens to Poland in WW2? Do you think we exist in a vacuum? The whole reason we have foreign policy is because there are major dire ramifications to conflicts across the world. Especially, as we've seen the past century, in Europe.
- rayiner 2y agoIs Ukraine like Poland, or more like Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan?
- svariello 2y agoVery different type of war... Especially Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan...
- svachalek 2y agoWhat is the basis of this analogy? Is it implying that the difference between North Korea and South Korea is negligible to the world?
- ForOldHack 2y agoUkraine checks all the boxes for exploration by Oligarchs, North Korea does not. Kuwait had oil, Iraq
- attentive 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoNo personal attacks, please, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- rad_gruchalski 2y agoLook, the fact that you guys came here to Europe and liberate us from the nazi Germany, then you defeated Japan, made you a global superpower because you effectively won the war. You have been in this position since the war until 20th of January this year. Trump is actively removing USA from the position of the leader. Talking about leaving NATO, removing soldiers from Europe, … something that took decades to establish takes weeks to destroy. What’s next? “TSMC give us all trade secrets or we don’t defend Taiwan”? You have all there benefited from these decades of being in that position.
- michtzik 2y ago[flagged]
- rad_gruchalski 2y ago[flagged]
- _t9ow 2y ago> TSMC give us all trade secrets or we don’t defend Taiwan Trump has already threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Taiwan if TSMC refuses to transfer technology to the US (thus effectively undermining Taiwan's own Silicon Shield defence strategy) and revitalise Intel: https://techsoda.substack.com/p/tsmc-faces-tough-choices-amid-rumors https://techsoda.substack.com/p/tsmc-faces-tough-choices-ami... I hope Taiwanese leaders have the balls to say no -- it's not as if Trump has a stellar track record of honouring his word anyway. Besides, tariffs on Taiwanese chips will end up seriously hurting American companies like AMD and NVIDIA, so Trump might walk back the tariffs once Jensen Huang and Lisa Su pay sufficiently large bribes.
- ActorNightly 2y agoThats like asking, who cares if a drug dealer moves next door, he/she is not in your house.
- rayiner 2y agoOkay, we’re getting closer to a real point. Why do I care about a drug dealer taking over the house next to him when both houses are in another state?
- ActorNightly 2y agoBecause him taking over a house gives him access to resources which he can use to build up strength, unchecked, and before you know it, the state next to you is involved in serious tumroil that affects your job, getting certain products, and so on. And next thing you know, people who directly work for that drug dealer are all in your states government, and your way of life is slowly starting to get worse, and the only option you have is either go along and be constantly afraid, or revolt and risk of losing your life. If you dont think it can happen, i envy your ignorance.
- exe34 2y agothat drug dealer has managed to make the executive of the federal government act as if they work for him.
- insane_dreamer 2y agobecause the world is highly interconnected and it's much more expensive to deal with the results of instability than it is to try to prevent the instability in the first place
- rayiner 2y agoSo you think Kissinger and all the GOP neocons for decades were actually correct? I thought we had discredited that whole ideology—from Kissinger to Bush—but apparently we haven’t.
- ForOldHack 2y agoWe are more interconnected, and Kissinger and the GOP agreed with this, but they are just evil German Socialist Democratic Party. His observation is well taken, but its a false flag to equate it with the entire neocon, unalive and steal at any cost philosophy: They are not the same: Clearly they are not the same. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/opinion/30iht-edkissinger.1.16585986.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/opinion/30iht-edkissinger...
- insane_dreamer 2y agoSaying we're more interconnected and that it's important to support stability doesn't mean that I support US hegemony, the domino theory and the need for military intervention everywhere. In fact I'm quite against US military action abroad, certainly in places like Iraq and Vietnam where it had no business being. But in this case, if a country like Russia is able to push its way into Ukraine unopposed, it does threaten the stability of Europe (a place where warfare was almost continuous going back millennia) which is a ReallyBadThing for Europe and for the US (and I don't mean for US hegemony, but for the US economy and wellbeing).
- kristjansson 2y agoYou’re a very smart guy. You can’t seriously be wondering how allowing a major power to wage and win a war of aggression in Europe might be contrary to American interests? He’ll surely be appeased by the Donbas and stop there, right?
- rayiner 2y agoI am a smart guy—which is why even as a college student I knew the Iraq War was going to be a monumental cluster fuck. To me, it seems like the people supporting American involvement in Ukraine are throwing about the same vague platitudes about “dictators” and “interests” without anything concrete to back them up. At least Iraq and its neighbors had oil—there was a credible narrative that what happened there would directly hit Americans in their pocket books. American interest in Europe seems even more attenuated. It seems to be nothing more than romantic sympathy.
- anigbrowl 2y agoFundamentally different situation. A more appropriate comparison would be the first Gulf War, when the US helped to kick Iraq out of Kuwait. Equating the later Iraq war with the situation in Ukraine is a category error.
- smallmancontrov 2y agoDon't let Mr /r/iamverysmart duck the question about Donbas by diverting into a conversation about Iraq.
- kristjansson 2y agoOn your aside: I'll admit, I said that completely sincerely, they've had pretty informative and well-informed things to say in other discussions around here. Coming back with "Yes I am" has caused me to update my beliefs a bit.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- catlover76 2y ago[dead]
- digitaltrees 2y agoWell the US created the global system starting in the 1900s with the League of Nations and continuing with the UN, NATO, free trade agreement and multilateral alliances. So nearly one hundred years of constant policy across administrations felt it was a system that served our interests. It also lead to absolute transformation of people’s lives for the better in America and globally. Who didn’t like that system? Russia. They were isolated and sanctioned. So please explain why trump’s 180 degree turn served the US. The burden of proof is on you given the history of US policy.
- rayiner 2y ago> Who didn’t like that system Most of the world didn’t like that system, along with most american liberals until five minutes ago. We even made movies mocking it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_America:_World_Police https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_America:_World_Police. Eisenhower thought that system should be temporary, and Jimmy Carter took pride that an american bomb was never dropped anywhere during his term. Our foreign policy has been stuck in a doom loop of thinking that everything is like World War II for 70 years now. And whatever benefits we might have gained can’t possibly offset what we lost fighting pointless war after pointless war: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. We have spent trillions of dollars to make the world free for trade that has hollowed out the economy and enriched globalists. That’s not even counting all the millions of people we have killed in the process of our liberal democracy jihad.