09-21-2023, 04:07 PM
(09-21-2023, 01:59 PM)Dill Wrote: To B and C
You are again placing profits over principle. And I think it is in part because we measure US power differently; because of that, we have different ideas of what constitutes US power and what maintains or weakens it.
A great part of US "power" is a consequence, not simply of how many aircraft carriers we have, but of our alliances and treaties. The most important ones--with Europe. Japan, Australia and NZ--we maintain by defining and working towards COMMON interests, not just what's good for the U.S. at this moment. People are willing to partner with us, to the point of fighting alongside us, to the degree that we stand for the well being and rights of others as well as our own, i.e., to the point that we, with them, want to secure ends like global trade and international order based on rule of law and human rights.
Japan and our European allies, and many others, don't have the oil resources we do, and so want a peaceful and structured international order which allows them to barter for it without coercion. That makes it important NOT to look the other way when national sovereignty is violated by aggressor nations, and especially when disruption of hydrocarbon resources is leveraged into the aggression. All the more important when the victims of aggression are countries that "don't contribute much," because in those cases it is most clearly about principle.
C) Certainly ceding Ukraine to Russia is different from ceding a NATO ally, whom we are treaty-bound to defend, to Russia. But
I don't see how it is different from ceding the Pacific to the Japanese in 1941, especially if the argument back then were that Singapore is corrupt and the Pacific Islands don't contribute much to the world. We leave a vacuum filled by an aggressor, strengthening him and weakening our allies, who must then negotiate their security with the aggressor, on the aggressor's terms, strengthening him and weakening us.
Trump's already ceded massive diplomatic space to China by pulling out of the Iran Deal and the TPP; that hasn't "saved us money." Rather it has cost us and our diplomatic/trading partners, and sent shock waves through our allies and encouraged Russia and China to step into the vacuum.
Are we talking about Ukraine or Europe? We’re in several different threads here. I never said we shouldn’t honor our treaties with NATO. I said we shouldn’t break the bank for Ukraine. Had we not interfered, there’s absolutely no way our NATO allies would’ve cared. Now we run the risk of looking weak if we back out. Russian hostility would have been a bigger problem when it came to trading had we stayed out of it, but again, that’s why Trump pleaded with European nations to not be dependent on Russia. He was dead on about that issue. Dead on. Just ask Germany.
As far as the WW2 comparison… I don’t think it’s in the same ballpark. You can’t compare the theoretical ceding of control of the Pacific to letting Ukraine fall to Russia. The Pacific was/is the most important ocean in the world. As far as Singapore is concerned, even though it was supposedly corrupt at the time, the US knew if the Japanese maintained control of Singapore that they could disrupt Allies’ supply lines in the region. I should also point out that Guam, Hawaii and the Philippines were of high interest in the US because they were not only strategic locations in the Pacific, but rich in resources (forests, minerals primarily, maybe fish I guess). The US saw big economic upside with Hawaii’s potential for agriculture, trade, as well as being a huge tourism hub. Same with Guam.
And then, there was Pearl Harbor…….
