Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
“The Case Against Western Military Assistance to Ukraine”
A superb essay (link below) that constitutes a valuable contribution to this matter. The author painstakingly (and, in my view, compellingly) lays his out arguments for the following propositions:
- It’s extremely unlikely that, had the West not helped Ukraine, Russia would have attacked a NATO member next
- Western military assistance to Ukraine makes proliferation more, not less, likely
- Providing military assistance to Ukraine is not cheap once you take into account the indirect costs
- The argument that committing to Ukraine’s defense was necessary to deter wars of aggression is flawed
- The argument from credibility is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a recipe for the sunk cost fallacy
Link:
https://philippelemoine.substack.com/p/the-case-against-western-military
Published in General
FIFY
The US put the kebosh on Ukraine’s two negotiation endeavors (one Turkey-facilitated, the other Bennett-facilitated) in March/April last year.
If the US were to conclude at some point that things have gone far enough, and that the wiser course of action would be for Ukraine to start negotiating again, Ukraine would have little choice but to comply.
He who signs the front of billion-dollar checks makes the rules.
Why is Taiwan able to make these chips? Were they invented there? Who owns the patented technology? Who contracted Taiwanese companies to produce these?
Warm regards
Is that like saying Lincoln passed away after an evening out?
They say the sun never sets on American corporations. I wonder how a map of an empire’s military bases would look different. Roman? Mongolian? Persian? Incan? Has any historic empire ever had a greater military reach? Semantics.
The answer is ASML.
You have a grandiose view of America’s power. It reminds me of my old girlfriend from Kuwait. Because America and Allies were able to roust Iraq from her country in no time flat, she was under the impression that America could accomplish pretty much anything in the world that it wanted to, including impossibilities that I cannot remember right now.
We don’t “control” most of Latin America or Europe anymore than China or Russia, or any other country controls them. For instance, we can’t even keep Latin Americans from crossing our borders when we want to, and like every single other country in the world is able to do. We can’t get Europeans to drop their excessive tariffs against us nor could we persuade them from buying Russian gas and oil, even when it was obviously a foolhardy enterprise.
We certainly have an outsized influence (the most) with Western countries, but all these countries have sovereign political leadership that very often parts ways with U.S. policy. We can hardly even get allies to vote our way on many United Nations resolutions.
Umm, do you have evidence that we’ve ever really wanted to stop Mexicans et al from crossing the border?
Okay, so when I say ‘ you’ I mean your deep state but you hear ‘ordinary Americans’ or the elected government. Fair enough – easy for us to talk past each other on this.
As Whoever invested in Nordstream discovered. (Boom! And also controlling behaviour.)
Trump tried to stop them and he may have slowed them down, but the flow continued nonetheless.
That’s because of internal political opposition from Democrats, open-border libertarians, and sundry other interests of the commercial kind benefitting from the cheap labor that illegal immigrants provide. IOW, “we” cannot control our border , and “we” cannot get Mexico to control theirs, because there is no sufficient domestic support for doing so.
That’s because we are a Democracy and no one person gets to say what gets done in our country. That is one of the factors as to why we do not “control” most of Europe nor Latin America. On the other hand, real control was exercised by the Soviet Union over its satellite countries with the use of military force. And it looks like that is what Russia is attempting to do today.
All of this is definitely possible. It might not be possible to shutdown Ukraine at that point. My broader point is that Russia has to be losing for them to be willing to negotiate, or at least feel they have accomplished what they credibly can for the moment, and Ukraine will need to be forced to the table by its Western counterparties. I am assuming if Ukraine is in a bad enough place to want to negotiate Russia won’t be interested and because the West has already intervened I don’t see what could it could do to compel Russia to the negotiating table. I offer the Crimea scenario as a possible point where Russia would be willing to negotiate and the West “might” have enough sway to compel the Ukrainians. I also think it is likely there could be negotiations assuming the Presidency changes hands, especially if it changes parties, because it introduces a new variable that both sides have to factor in. Usually uncertainty in the wake of a transition can lead to changes in diplomatic status.
A brief historical refresher:
”1964: Leftist President Joao Goulart of Brazil is overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup that installs a military government lasting until the 1980s.
1965: U.S. forces land in the Dominican Republic to intervene in a civil war.
1970s: Argentina, Chile and allied South American nations launch brutal campaign of repression and assassination aimed at perceived leftist threats, known as Operation Condor, often with U.S. support.
1980s: Reagan administration backs anti-Communist Contra forces against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and backs the Salvadoran government against leftist FMLN rebels.
1983: U.S. forces invade Caribbean island of Grenada after accusing the government of allying itself with Communist Cuba.
1989: U.S. invades Panama to oust strongman Manuel Noriega.
1994: A U.S.-led invasion of Haiti is launched to remove the military regime installed by a 1991 coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The invasion restores Aristide.”
https://apnews.com/article/north-america-caribbean-ap-top-news-venezuela-honduras-2ded14659982426c9b2552827734be83
And we lost deterrence when we pulled out of Afghanistan, got back into the SALT treaty, and begged to get back into the JCPOA. Not to mention the White House and Pelosi’s public squabble over her Taiwan visit. It also didn’t help when Biden seemed to indicate that a small incursion might be okay.
That only works if Russia is willing to negotiate for anything less than the whole enchilada. Otherwise it isn’t easy to negotiate with them. Unless you are willing to surrender your culture and your country. I am sure some would be willing, most probably wouldn’t. How do you decide which way to go?
In fairness that is what is being reported. We have no really way to know if that is true or not. I suspect it probably is given who in in the white house; however, if we were urging Ukraine to negotiate we wouldn’t want that to be public because it would hurt their position.
He was pretty ambiguous on it; however, he was NATO skeptical. It may be that Putin inferred from that he would have opposed their membership. Trump’s actual foreign policy was more robust verses Moscow though. He is the one that started arming the Ukrainians. He killed several Russian Mercenaries in Syria. He ramped up US domestic oil production with an eye towards exporting LNG, that could have hurt Russia’s gas sales. He also opposed and sanctioned Nord Stream 2. Additionally he restarted missile defense in Poland and pulled the US out of the Start treaty.
Ironically those two conditions will almost certainly be in the final agreement.
You forgot Poland, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. All of which have nuclear power, first world finances, and top rate scientific talent.
The Balts probably not. Finland isn’t in NATO yet. The Poles play their own game. The US contrary to popular belief hasn’t shown a lot of appetite to keep NATO member countries “in line”. Look at Turkey and Germany they pretty much do their own thing all the time that give the US headaches.
Ink on paper is rarely a barrier to something a country considers in its vital national interest.
That was actually part of my point, but it’s long past relevance now.
So? The U.S. intervenes. It often doesn’t even work. The Nicaraguan Government is still Marxist. The Bay of Pigs was a complete failure. We invaded Panama to capture one man, not to change their government, but give them the Panama Canal for free despite us being the builders of it. We once supported an invasion of Haiti to oust a military coup. How well has that worked out?
The small country of Cuba has directly intervened in South American affairs much more than the U.S. has.
China is the largest economy in Eurasia. Some say that what China wants is to end the fighting, secure farm products from Ukraine, secure construction projects in Ukraine, and establish a land route to European markets. Russia, who is now dependent on China, will do what they are advised to do.
But is that an Imperial action or a country acting in it own perceived self interest? I mean we would expect countries to try to avoid sanctions because it is bad for them. If they back down have they given the US “earth and water”? or are they just being rational actors in their own self interest. I have some sympathy for the notion of America as an empire. It is certainly a useful metaphor, but it can be taken too far.
Kudos to you this is pure gold.
??
I think it usually does. Plus – why does the US intervene in Latin America so much? Clearly the Latin Americans keep wanting to do something that they see is in their own interests and that you see is against yours – and you need to stop them. Otherwise why would you bother?
The elected Nicaraguan Govt is, that’s right. How long before the US funds the ‘moral equivalent of our founding fathers’ and the country descends into war?
How?
Mexico has always dragged its feet on Northern border enforcement. They seem to only make half-hearted overtures to complying with U.S. requests, just to placate us. They really have no interest in sealing their Northern Border.
I tell you what. You make a list of U.S. successes in South America and I’ll make a list of failures, then we’ll compare.