There are no “arguments” being raised here. An argument would be something like “America relies on Ukraine as a key source of XYZ so it would be bad if Russia took it over.” Can you even tell me without looking how much U.S.-Ukraine trade there was before the war?
All these platitudes about “interests” and “soft power” seem to be predicated on an assumption that nobody is willing to articulate. Are we all expected to be Francis Fukuyama cultists here who take it as axiomatic that it’s in america’s interest to defend the borders of european countries? If that’s the argument, then I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. Because I happen to think liberals have actually been right on that issue since the 1970s.
That's shockingly first-order. Even if there was zero bilateral US-Ukraine trade as of 2022 there's:
(a) trade with other EU partners that depend on Ukrainian food imports, gas transshipments, etc., and also on those trade partners. y'know, not being embroiled in trench war on their eastern front.
(b) trade with APAC partners that depends on EU partners that depends on (a). Even the most blatantly obvious ASML -> TSMC -> NVDA -> FAANGetc relationship transits that entire chain.
(c) the entire web of mutually beneficial international trade that benefits from (1) a more or less stable system of borders and laws and (2) again, participants in said system burning the minimum amount of blood and treasure trenches.
So what is it you really think? US involvement is unnecessary to maintain both its current position and the rest of the international system? Or that system unnecessary to maintain the state of the world today, and some alternative arrangement would be preferable? And we can smoothly transition to your preferred system with a belligerent Russia?
I'm being a bit unfair in the preceding paragraph, so I'll ask in all sincerity: what's your alternative policy in 2014? 2022? now? what outcomes do you predict under your policy? Who is (dis)advantaged?
The argument is that appeasing Putin in Donbas will work about as well as appeasing him in Crimea, creating successively more damaging conflicts in Europe until Article 5 gets tested and either NATO falls apart or we enter a hot war with Russia, and yeah, that's gonna cost money. You know that this is the point of the WWII comparison, which is why you have so studiously ignored the argument, trying to dodge it harder than neo dodging bullets in the first matrix.
Nobody in America knows what a Donbas or a Crimea is. These all sound like Russian places to me. The names of the places alone sound like they are none of America’s business.
You need studies to show that peace & stability support greater productivity and wealth?
Likely as it is that research can indeed confirm this, given the depth & tone of your inquiry, perhaps the most immediate convincing experiment would be best: find someone you can employ to harass and threaten your property and your person, occasionally to devastating effect, alongside another person who can study your productivity and wealth before and after.
Perhaps with further similar efforts here you can even persuade some people to volunteer for half of that project free of charge.
Your 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"
No. 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.
If “interests” means something concrete it shouldn’t take a lot of effort to explain what it means. To me it seems like the word is used to avoid acknowledging that “there’s no there, there.”
Enough that it makes Trump very upset whenever another country talks about using a reserve currency other than the dollar. Why would you need studies when you have the leader's own words?
