The whole defense industry leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Once you peel the narrative that we are supposed to be the good guys (hint: in some/most cases, we are not), you realize that you really just help to kill people.
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The 2014 invasion of Ukraine was not a significant news event for me. Ukraine was weak, and the tepid response to the invasion from Ukraine and the rest of the West meant that Russia just rolled in without opposition or much drama.
Fast forward 8 years, and Ukraine has further developed its national identity and is starting to become a real democracy. The 2022 invasion was a big wake-up call for the West. We had thought that we had won the Cold War in 1992, and that our geopolitical rivals, while still warranting concern, were not a direct threat to us and our allies anymore. Nope! It turns out there is still a need for the USA to be an unrivaled global superpower, and for the rest of NATO to get its ass in gear and modernize.
This doesn’t make sense to me. Russia remains a backwater with a GDP the size of Italy. They are not a significant threat to US interests, any more than Italy could possibly hope to be.
If anything, a strong America just lends a false sense of security to countries like Ukraine, which might be better off understating that they must see to their own safety and security.
Historically speaking, few of America’s international adventures have had a beneficial outcome. Pretending that the world ‘needs’ our meddling is a stretch. We need to be able to defend ourselves and to ramp for war quickly. The rest is pork for the military industrial complex.
Name a full member of NATO who has been invaded. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Even without NATO membership, China currently isn't occupying Taiwan. Guess why.
> Historically speaking, few of America’s international adventures have had a beneficial outcome. Pretending that the world ‘needs’ our meddling is a stretch. We need to be able to defend ourselves and to ramp for war quickly. The rest is pork for the military industrial complex.
Did you even read the first part of my comment? Do I sound like an apologist for the USA's recent foreign policy?
There is a lot of pork spent for the USA's military. Cost overruns and unnecessary systems abound. That doesn't obviate the need for a strong military to keep the peace for ourselves and our allies.
The world is different now than it was 100 years ago. Many counties have at least a few nuclear weapons. We can't afford to let things spin out of control. We need stability, and NATO provides a lot of that.
Name the last time a NATO country invaded another NATO member. Oh, wait, that never happened, and never will happen. That's called stability.