I think we are keeping our promises to Ukraine. I’m sure they would like more help - I completely understand that. Many countries have called for US help in the past, and many more will do so in the future. Each one has to be weighed against the national interest. We, and the EU, have taken concrete steps that will have real impacts at home in an effort to help Ukraine. US citizens and EU citizens will bear those costs. They are nothing compared to the costs Ukraine is bearing, but they are real costs.
I have no illusions about how horrible things are for Ukraine, and how bad they will get. Just like I have no illusions about how nasty things are in Yemen (to cite just one other example of many).
But honestly at some point we have to trust that the true experts, which hopefully are the ones sitting in the State department, the CIA, and the Pentagon, have charted out the various options and are pursuing the one that is in the best interest of the United States and the World. Which may not, sadly, align with the one that is in the best immediate interest of the Ukrainian people.
Is it possibly that certain red lines will be crossed that will call for more robust action? Possibly. But again I think making this a battle between Ukrainians and Russians of good will on one side and Putin alone on the other is perhaps the best way to position it. There are some signs that is what is happening.
I don’t support direct NATO or US intervention. But what’s to stop Ukraine from offering citizenship and major cash incentives (provided by friendly governments) to recently retired American and NATO airmen and drone operators? Something similar to the Flying Tigers in WWII China. Maybe it’s naïve, but I would imagine it wouldn’t be that hard to find willing and qualified people, and countries willing to lease the equipment under the current circumstances.
Ukraine has already asked for foreign volunteers to come in. They aren’t offering citizenship or anything like that, but supposedly they have had thousands of responses already. I don’t know what criteria they are looking for wrt MOS (gunbunnies, electronics, drones as you mentioned, etc), but they are doing this already.
Ukraine doesn’t have any American aircraft or drones to give their “foreign legion” forces. The Flying Tigers were flying aircraft that were fundamentally not that different from those they were used to, and in any case pilots were sent into combat with weeks or days of training anyway. You can’t train someone to operate a modern fighter or attack aircraft in months, let alone weeks.
There was talk of some ex-Soviet bloc states donating their MiG and Sukhoi aircraft to Ukraine in exchange for discounts on modern European or American aircraft, since the Ukrainian pilots were familiar with them. But even those discussions seem to have fallen through.
I’m of much the same opinion as you, but also that I’m very perturbed by the message that is being sent by non-action because Russia has nukes. Someone else said it better on Twitter than I could.
If the West is saying “We can’t lift a finger in terms of direct military intervention to stop what’s going on because Russia has nukes,” then this gives maximum incentive for other hostile states to go nuclear. Iran now has ZERO incentive not to pursue a nuclear arsenal. North Korea has ZERO incentive to nuclear-disarm. This is rewarding proliferation.
I hate saying wait and see, but I think we have to. If the humanitarian crisis gets worse, if the UN somehow manages to get around Russia to issue a resolution that gives NATO international cover to go in, then I start thinking the risk of a limited exchange might have to be worth it.
I do wonder how many of those warheads and rockets even work, though. Half the economy of the state of New Mexico (okay, that’s a joke, but it’s still a lot of money) comes from the need to keep America’s stockpile in working order, including having an idea of when a warhead may need to be replaced, complete with active pit manufacturing at Los Alamos. The Comprehensive Test Ban treaty was good for the world (even if it’s not technically in force, the US hasn’t detonated since 1992) but required other ways to try to approach the management when you can no longer go dig a deep hole in the Nevada desert and see if one works.
I understand that. I was suggesting that modern NATO equipment could be sold or leased to Ukraine, and operated by foreign “volunteers” who already are trained on that equipment.
Emotionally yes to ending this fast - including no fly zones or even sending boots on the ground. But pragmatically no to avoid nuclear war both on the people of Ukraine as well as everywhere else.
However it is damn hard to watch the people of Ukraine being used as a shield against Western ideals and democracy. My continued freedom is being bought with Ukrainian blood.
But I’m all for donating the very best of advanced material equipment - regardless of the cost. What use is a reaper, a F-22 or a F-35 sitting in a hanger somewhere when it could be making a big difference. While I understand Ukrainians may not yet have training to use or fly high tech planes or other weapons - I wonder if there couldn’t be qualified volunteers who could be discharged from a Western military and join the Ukrainian foreign legion. Highly advanced weaponry could help end this sooner and wouldn’t really be an escalation over giving more standard military donations.
This has nothing to do with ‘Western ideals’, though it does have a lot to do with democracy…Ukraine’s democracy. This isn’t your continued freedom being bought with Ukrainian blood, it’s THEIR freedom and continued existence as an independent nation state being bought with their own blood.
How you interpret an action being escalating or not is irrelevant. How the guy with the hand on what may be the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and who may still have biological weapon stockpiles, such as smallpox, interprets actions does.
So of course the US could stop this and quick if it were merely conventional. But it isn’t.
I seriously thought about going. I was very close to buying a ticket for a vacation in Poland. I’m honestly still on the fence. If I could figure out the finances for it, then I would likely go.
No honey let’s not take the Bentley, it uses so much gas … take the Corolla (but make sure you wear mask and shade so nobody sees you)
they cant afford to fly and they probably only have a few of their “latest-tech-war-gadgets” built and working - just like potjomkian villages … see how we can “appear more than we are”
I have heard that an examination of photos of the Russian vehicles by experts has concluded that they have not been undergoing routine maintenance. Apparently (and I’m no expert), the tires show a kind of wear that happens from overexposure to sun on one side. This causes the tires to be very prone to blowing out. If the tires are in that kind of shape you can just imagine what the motors and such must be like.
Factor in reports of officers selling fuel on the black market, and soldiers just dumping fuel so they don’t have to fight and really much of the Russian army seems to be currently dismounted infantry. That convoy being stalled is very indicative of the state of affairs.
I just heard that Turkey may be sending more drones. Great news as those drones have been super effective, and I hear there’s a certain stalled convoy that needs the kind of fixing that a drone can promptly provide.
After WW2 a lot of vehicles were just parked out on the open on old airfields and left. Even by the Korean War, immense efforts were needed to cannibalise just enough vehicles from the wartime stocks.
that also begs the question - how would a really high-end US fighter like a F22/35 fare with “foreign” war infrastructure, (eg. russian origin. radar, that kind of thing) … or is a fighter plane pretty stand-alone…?
Betting on poor reliability of Russian nuclear forces is not a good wager:
Russian ground forces have never been in a high state of readiness or good maintenance going back to the Soviet Era (and fears that they Red Army would beat a path through the Fulda Gap and plow into Western Europe were always tempered by the fact that they were perpetually short of refined petroleum to logistically sustain such a push), and while they’ve demonstrated technological advances in aviation it isn’t clear that this has translated into enough aircraft to obtain effective air superiority against NATO air forces, but the effort to modernize Russian nuclear capabilities certainly gives them good enough parity with the combination of NATO forces (and China, should it come to that), and despite nearly four decades of development of anti-ballistic missile technology there is fuck-all the US could do to protect against a strategic nuclear attack.
That being said, allowing Russia to run roughshod over a sovereign nation just because Putin has a fit of pique is not good policy (as evidenced by Western indifference to the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and incursions into Odessa encouraging Putin) and even if Russia gets so bogged down in Ukraine that it cannot advance elsewhere, it is still problematic for anyone else who may decide that they can arbitrarily invade and annex foreign nations in this post-Westphalian world. Of course, the US has plenty of experience invading and annexing other nations and getting away with it so it is a little difficult to call the opposition to Russian invasion of Ukraine as taking the moral high road, but from a realpolitik standpoint it is necessary to stand behind Ukrainian sovereignty rather than to negotiate any kind of settlement that normalizes this behavior. Certainly, China is watching and considering whether their long term plan off surrounding Taiwan and economically forcing it into submission could be accelerated by greater military pressure, and this is a lesson to anyone who might be considering whether having nuclear weapons offers parity with major powers (already well demonstrated by North Korea and the counterexample of Libya).
I’m honestly still on the fence. If I could figure out the finances for it, then I would likely go.
Great news as those drones have been super effective, and I hear there’s a certain stalled convoy that needs the kind of fixing that a drone can promptly provide.