Watching how the USA has abandoned its ally, Ukraine and just let innocent people and brave soldiers die, Japan would be crazy not too start gaining back their independence.
Not sure what happened to the USA but I never thought I’d see it side with autocratic war criminals. Quite concerning for all our allies.
If the orange man wins again this year, we’ll god help everyone.
While I agree with the sentiment and the conclusion, Ukraine was never an ironclad, formal ally, in the sense that NATO countries are, or Japan or Australia. The closest to a formal alliance is the 1994 agreement, whereby Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons in return for its borders and sovereignty being guaranteed, by Russia, UK and USA.
So within these parameters, the USA has actually done a lot, and a lot more than nothing. I'm not sure at what point it has fulfilled its duty.
I'm not defending the US decision though, it seems that bang for buck of helping Ukraine is one of the best spent defence money in this century so far.
Duty is not the right way to frame the situation. This is more about the overall goals of US foreign policy.
If the US wants to maintain a favorable status quo and its position as the dominant superpower, it must support Ukraine until Russia admits failure and withdraws its troops. The current world order is based on a simple deal. The US supports friendly countries around the world and provides them security against regional threats. Those countries in turn support US policy goals in faraway issues they wouldn't otherwise care about.
On the other hand, if the US is happy to be just a regional power that doesn't care about what happens on the other side of the Atlantic and the Pacific, it has no duty to support Ukraine.
> On the other hand, if the US is happy to be just a regional power that doesn't care about what happens on the other side of the Atlantic and the Pacific, it has no duty to support Ukraine.
The consequences of such a mindset need to be understood: this would be catastrophic for US business interests and economy. Not saying you're unaware, but others might be.
Many Americans romanticize the idea of business interests and the economy failing. We are well past levels of wealth inequality that aught to cause bloodshed. The US will have its hands full with its own insurrections. A civil war would hamper power projection around the globe. Its good to see Japan released from its pacifist obligations.
Now the US can get onto the business of civil war 2. End slavery again.
The world does not need a single superpower - it needs multiple medium powers, preferably equal powers. A single superpower is like a very big market monopoly. Nobody besides the owner is happy - including the employees of the monopoly.
This, I fully agree with. My point is only, sad as it is, I don't see America's disengagement as in flagrant violation to it's pre-2022 commitments.
The sad counterpart to the great institution that is NATO is that NATO countries won't go out of their way to defend non-NATO countries. NATO already is a stretch of capabilities and goodwill, and I think it's telling that the fractures that show go along cultural boundaries: the "loosest" parts of NATO right now are US and Turkey.
Again, I think NATO and US would be stupid to not continue supporting Ukraine, just not because they are reneging on an alliance.
Well, one of the other three nations in on the deal reneged so hard they invaded (twice, or once with a delayed extension of the invasion depending on perspective). The US has supplied materiel and training, but not personnel (in the combatant sense, at least). And if the House would pass a funding bill for it, more would be supplied.
And to be incredibly clear, ¶ 4 of the Budapest Memorandum committed the United States "to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine...if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used" [1].
Assuming we sever the last "or" such that the clause activates if "Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression," the commitment was to seek UNSC action to provide assistance. America sought that. And it's directly providing assistance. America never guaranteed the security of Ukraine.
Well, it poured tens of billions of military aid on Ukraine over 2 years, supplied tons of intelligence, training, conceded to US made arms being transferred. I'd say that is a lot.
More would be better, but I don't think we are in the realms of "reneging on promises".
The original agreement was very vague. Was it to mean that the US would defend Ukraine will all it's military might, up to conscripting Americans and sending out nukes? Surely not.
Anyone who is honestly advocating for an Iraq-era world police mobilization (with the bonus threat of nuclear decimation of the host country) is clearly trolling. The exact same people would be decrying occupation and the loss of US lives within x number of years if the inverse has happened. So they were ready to complain either way.
As it is, the administration has threaded the political needle perfectly (or luckily) and the Ukrainian people have proven that their bravery and resolve has been vastly underrated.
Giving them some weapon systems (Patriot defense batteries, HIMARS, Artillery, radar) but then not supplying ammo or parts or maintenance capabilities is an extremely punk move, extremely shitty, and was never the intent.
Helping this new found ally is the easiest thing in the world, is such an incredibly important bulwark for the whole world.
But there are nutjobs, absolute crazy shit insane people that rail against Mainstream Media, for whom doing sensible things dangerously allows reality in. They can't support this because to support it would be to support something that the rest of the politicians support, and their attempts to politically "alt" themselves would be in trouble by working with others. These vainglorious fools have invited madness in, and held up support that should never have been delayed.
I personally think this was all well orchestrated by Russia, social media has given bad state actors the ability to "backdoor" the minds of millions in the west. It's really quite genius.
"USA has actually done a lot" - so did USA guarantee Ukraine's " borders and sovereignty"? Or did it not?
The worst thing to do (which USA did) is to make a promise and not deliver. Had Ukraine knew that USA will abandon it, it might have entered negotiations in early 2023 from a much more favorable position.
US. Obama a famous republican refused to help "not to provoke russia". On the current delayed vote it was a sizeable amount of democrats that refused to sign to force the vote (coincidentally the same ones that signed the letter calling for Ukraine to surrender and get exterminated by russia)
What is even less hypotethical is that dozens of countries are now actively making plans to arm themselves with nuclear weapons, as the US refuses to take the risk to step in.
Dare to guess what are the risks of nuclear war (even by accident) when that becomes the new normal?
The Russian aren't going to make less nuclear threats if the US keeps folding.
Because if Ukraine falls I can guarantee you that first it will be minor incursions into Poland and/or Baltics airspace. Then false flags attacks. Then more. Each time testing "escalation management" and sewing disagreements into political scenes in the West. Then more.
putin has said many times that he considers collapse of USSR the greatest tragedy ever. He wants revenge for this. And he is getting it.
They're referring to the sudden end of support for Ukraine, done at the behest of Donald Trump. Republican lawmakers were actually considering continuing it until he demanded they not do so.
> If orange man wins my children won't go die for Ukraine? This is a bad thing?
We were never sending American troops to Ukraine. What has happened is the chances of American troops having to go somewhere else in the world, or being directly attacked overseas, has gone way up.
> We've given Ukraine billions in money and resources
On a drip feed. That means when a strategic opening emerges, e.g. Russian warships within Storm Shadow range, they got one or two pot shots off before running out of ammo, letting the Russians retreat and adapt.
Ukraine needs more air-defence batteries and ammunition. It needs F-16s. (For both offense and defense.) And it needs the ability to strike valid military targets in Russia, the way it has been doing with its own weapons, the way Russia has been doing to it.
31 Abrams and 190 Bradleys, zero planes, zero cruise missiles. All while there are 3 million DPICM, thousands of Bradleys and hundreds of ATACMS waiting to be scrapped in US, all decommissioned and on a list to be send to expensive recycling.
If Orange Man wins your children won't see the US with the number of friends and influence it used to have.
And this isn't a patronizing statement - it's literal. The US has allies and friendly nations who are aligned with the US because they want to, not because they are forced to, or compelled by treaties.
In my country, an old dictator used to say: Orgulhosamente sós.
No, I assume op wanted boots on the ground for Ukraine. I'm not sure what else is left considering the billions in support we've given them, which I do support.
$75B is a lot of money. The problem is that due to concerns about escalation, The U.S. has fairly consistently provided just enough to maintain the status quo.
Just as an example, The U.S. finally provided ATACMS in October of last year, and in their first night they destroyed a ton of Russian attack helicopters, and essentially made the whole area close to the front off-limits to Russian helicopters. Had these missiles come six months earlier, those helicopters wouldn't have been eviscerating Ukranian armor conducting the counteroffensive.
The real question is what the goal is here. Are we going to just keep putting in calibrated amounts of weapons to keep the meat grinder going, or are we trying to provide Ukraine some sort of victory?
It's not about Ukraine alone, it's about defending the ideals which America and the west at large has prospered greatly from and it's about messaging. There is absolutely no way US ally's are watching this favorably. Is America out of money and weapons, so they can't afford to help? I doubt it. Seems like the actual problem is a cultural shift with the US leadership towards favoring autocrats over those who want to defend democracy.
You don't get to be in charge of the global world currency by ignoring those who want to partner with you while they are being destroyed by an autocrat. It will erode trust.
Nothing is free, especially being the top dog.
I also don't see people complaining so much about the ridiculous amount of aid going to Israel, even though I don't really have a problem with that either because I personally think it's for a good cause. But this really seems to be about votes, and here, I'll say it, US politics being hijacked by nut jobs and conspiracy theorists.
I personally think the US at large is currently the victim of Russian propaganda efforts. I just can't imagine how the US would've ended up helping out Russia so much again it's European allies all on it's own.
> You don't get to be in charge of the global world currency by ignoring those who want to partner with you while they are being destroyed by an autocrat. It will erode trust.
Brazil and China have already started trading without USD precisely because of that.
Why is the US the only one being argued to have abandoned its ally despite being the single biggest provider of aid?
Why do most of the European allies literally next door to Ukraine need to have their hand twisted or given additional American guarantees to provide aid to a mutual ally despite already having the nuclear umbrella and NATO's mutual defense guarantees? Are they not siding with autocratic war criminals? Don't they also believe in the "rules based world order"?
As it stands the US already has its energy focused on helping their other ally slaughter children, and Trump seems just as keen to keep that going. It's clearly a more important task to the ruling class.
> Why is the US the only one being argued to have abandoned its ally despite being the single biggest provider of aid?
The US has only been accused of abandoning Ukraine since (approximately; there’s some blurriness because of some trickling out of previously-approved, unused, aid) it stopped providing aid. That’s the point of alleged abandonment.
> Why is the US the only one being argued to have abandoned its ally despite being the single biggest provider of aid?
We’re Europe’s security guarantor. And the U.S. and U.K. signed the Budapest Memorandum. While we aren’t in breach of that Memo (as Moscow is), we are sort of violating its spirit.
It isn't, people think NATO and Europe are letting them down too. However, the USA is the most capable and outspoken when it comes to the ideals Ukraine is fighting to defend. Freedom, democracy, justice, are all major ideals that countless American and innocents have been killed to defend. Whole countries have been ripped apart over this, Vietnam, Syria, Iraq...
This makes the abandonment of Ukraine now even more noteworthy considered they're bravely trying to defend all the things we thought the USA was about.
It seems shocking, considering until we now, we considered Russia an adversary to the the west and not someone we'd be helping win.
The US was the single biggest provider of aid earlier in the war. It still is, if you count only military aid. The EU has surpassed the US in overall aid. In addition to that, the combined contributions from EU member states may also exceed US aid. They certainly do if you also include other European countries.
USA abandonment of Ukraine clearly shows to everyone that promises from USA mean nothing at times of real hardship.
The sad lesson of all this is that if country wishes to be both safe and independent it must posses its own nuclear weapons and means of delivery.
The USA no longer has the productive power to win any sort of protracted conflict. For example, the USA has virtually no ship building capacity, being almost entirely reliant on Japan and South Korea. It’s a bad look for a country that fancies itself a naval superpower.
Not sure what happened to the USA but I never thought I’d see it side with autocratic war criminals. Quite concerning for all our allies.
If the orange man wins again this year, we’ll god help everyone.