Russia invading a country that was legitimately starting a new chapter in becoming more democratic is what changed my mind on military budgets.
However you want to frame globalism, nationalism, etc. I think it’s a perfectly rational reason to think, “huh, maybe it doesn’t just have to be pork barrel spending and to invade countries with oil…”
I agree. American misadventures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have eroded the American peoples appetite for intervention. But there is somethings to be said for being the arsenal of democracy and defenders of a liberal world order. If we don't defend a LWO, we will sit and watch as illiberal dictators carve up the world and subjugate its people. Maybe thats okay if we save money and don't risk becoming the bad guy ever.
All of those disasterous mistakes were justified in terms of defending “a liberal world order.” Look in the mirror—you’ve become a Reagan Republican now. You’ve embraced the same disasterous ideology of liberal universalism.
The US supports obedient dictators and actively creates them. There is no heroically rescuing people from terrible oppressors but you can imagine why it is sold like that.
>Russia invading a country that was legitimately starting a new chapter in becoming more democratic is what changed my mind on military budgets.
I'm definitely less of a pacifist than I used to be, because of Russia's nonsense, and I know believe in Armed neutrality instead.
But we don't actually need to spend $1 trillion a year to be a sufficient world police. We were absolutely removing Russia's ability to make war for pennies compared to our military spend. Best investment since Alaska.
The US military budget is sized such that we intend to be able to singlehandedly fight off literally the entire rest of the world's expeditionary militaries all at once.
We could cut hundreds of billions off our defense budget and still hold Russia out of sovereign nations, and still keep China out of Taiwan.
But we already did the thing we are doing in Ukraine back during the first gulf war, protecting Kuwait. It may have benefited us that their oil stayed being sold to us, but we were legitimately liberating Kuwait, and it was the right thing to do, and we even had a coalition with boots on the ground. Funny, there weren't a lot of people screaming about a few hundred billion dollars then.
Meanwhile Trump is insisting now that we should pull out of the nordic countries entirely, for some reason.
The agreement was that we would not put rockets in their back yard. The response was therefore entirely predictable which means we should now consider if it was worth putting rockets in their back yard. What was gained by it?
Weakening Europe was of course good for the US economy. Blowing up our gas pipe was also good for the US economy.
But if you want to follow the official narrative: How democratic is Ukraine now that everyone is dead and the elections have been cancelled a year ago?
NATO’s rockets. The U.S. would never stand for Mexico to join the Soviet Union. Of course it’s completely insane to expect Russia to stand for Ukraine joining NATO.
However you want to frame globalism, nationalism, etc. I think it’s a perfectly rational reason to think, “huh, maybe it doesn’t just have to be pork barrel spending and to invade countries with oil…”