Reasons To Still Care About Ukraine
From geopolitically selfish reasons for the US, to altruistic promotion of America's ideals of liberty
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The Soviet arsenal has largely been neutralized.
Ukraine has smashed the formidable Soviet stockpile of tanks, vehicles, weapon systems, and munitions stockpiled specifically for European invasion. That’s a major boon for future continental peace. A lot of this stuff was old and outdated, but it means a lot less stuff for the Russians to someday use against the Baltics or Poland.
Russia was humiliated, humbled, and may never be a peer rival of the US military ever again.
The war revealed Russia’s military to be a paper tiger. Putin spent two decades trying to modernize the Russian military, and his efforts were a kleptocratic failure. It will now take Russia years to replace the equipment it has lost in Ukraine, and the Russian military-industrial complex has proven widely incapable of keeping up with NATO’s capabilities.
Most of Russia’s domestically produced military systems showed major quality issues, and analysts who feared Russian technology can sigh a breath of relief that, nukes aside, Russia has a bit of a Potemkin military.
Furthermore, the combination of three years of Western sanctions, frozen Russian currency reserves and assets, Russia’s pariah geopolitical status, a million young Russian men killed or wounded physically and mentally, and the brain drain from other young Russians fleeing the war means Putin has really shot Russia in the leg by invading Ukraine.
Also, it means Russia becomes a weaker participant in any potential axis-style alliances against America and the West. If China
Sanctions against Russia have led to a US energy export boom.
Extractible fossil fuels are basically the only thing keeping Putin’s government afloat pretending Russia is a real, 21st Century country, but the successful American sanctions have plummeted Russia’s energy market share in Europe. What country is filling the void and making a lot of money selling oil and liquid natural gas to Russia’s former customers? The US! Russia’s decision to appall the Western world sadistically invading a sovereign neighbor has been an economic disaster as well as a geopolitical one.
An added benefit is that the more energy the US sells, the more energy independent America becomes, and the less power Russia, as well as Middle Eastern dictators, have to manipulate American and European energy prices. The US has gotten to a point where, when the price of oil goes up, America makes a lot of money, and then the US can choose to sell more of its own oil to stabilize the price where it wants it. This gives the US strategic power over energy pricing, and helps free Americans from foreign energy crises.
Russia remains America’s longest ideological enemy, geopolitical competitor, and most annoying antagonist.
Russia expanded the Soviet Union to try and pit the globe against America, and the Russia that emerged from the wreckage of the USSR has never given up its grudge that relative US freedom prevailed over Soviet oppression.
It’s important to note that Putin in recent years has paid bounties to Afghan mercenaries to kill US troops, he barely tries to hide his election interference, and he has buddied up with America’s other antagonists of China, Iran, the former Syria of Bashar al-Assad, and North Korea.
Putin is right now actively trying to turn European countries against US-Western Europe consensus like Serbia, Hungary, and Slovakia, and Putin literally started the first major war in Europe since WWII. Russia. Is. Not. America’s. Friend.
Ukraine wholeheartedly wants to be a US ally.
Putin is invading Ukraine to prevent it from ever joining the European Union and then NATO, because that’s the trajectory Ukrainians want for their country. Ukrainians have been repeatedly fucked over by Russia over the centuries, and want greater economic ties to the American-led West, NOT the Russian East. Thirty-seven million Ukrainians want to become American partners and allies. That is good for America, and bad for America’s enemies.
Helping rebuild Ukraine after the war will also be good for America’s European allies because Ukraine’s developed weapons and drone production will be useful for Europeans allies who will be able to buy large quantities of high grade, battle tested drones and other military systems perfected on the battlefield.
US support for Ukraine has ALREADY turned Ukraine into a valuable US ally.
Ukraine now has one of the strongest armies in Europe, and is perhaps the most battle-hardened nation on Earth. Ukrainians are currently developing and perfecting the tactics of the next generation of warfare with drones. Ukraine is a badass nation, and is a more valuable asset for America’s national security than most nations in Europe.
The US has also effectively integrated the Ukrainian military into Western weapon systems, supply chains, and training, and Ukraine will remain a physical shield against Russian expansion, which helps prevent any chance of the US having to send millions of soldiers to liberate Europe again. Look at a map. It is 100% in America’s geopolitical interest to chip off Ukraine from Russia’s wannabe neo-Soviet Empire and make it a NATO ally within America’s bloc of European partners.
(Reminder: the only time NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause has been activated was FOR the US after 9/11. America benefits from having, keeping, and growing its list of loyal allies.)
Vladimir Putin is a psycho dictator butcher.
I don’t know why we have to explain to MAGA fans why dictators like Putin are cancers on Earth that must be stopped.
We’ve seen this movie a million times in history: however you want to call it — dictator, czar, emperor, pharaoh, god-on-Earth — autocratic psychos with delusions of territorial grandeur never fuck off with their constant warring and conquest salivating until you make them stop.
If Putin conquers Ukraine, he’ll draft Ukraine’s military into the Russian military, and then reorganize his armies to start stockpiling for an invasion of the little Baltic states. Will Trump do anything to defend them?
After the Baltics, the shadow of Russia’s military would bear down upon Poland, or maybe Finland. Would Trump finally agree to do something about Putin after an invasion of Poland? Would Germany, France, the UK, and the rest of NATO have to fight a war without US leadership and power?
Can the Congressional Republicans who still care about US national security convince him that NATO is spectacularly good for America, and spectacularly bad for America’s enemies?
The Spider-Man Ethos
With America’s power comes the responsibilities of protecting the free world, and at some point Putin, or perhaps a more psycho Russian successor, will have to be stopped.
America should conceptualize that it’s easier, cheaper, preventative to do it now while Russia is bogged down in Ukraine losing an untenable 1,5000 soldiers a day rather than when Russia has totalitarian control over hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians, and is sucking the blood of those countries’ wealth to further shade Poland with a new iron curtain.
With America’s great power comes the responsibility to try and preserve global stability, and protect the fledgling democratic republics of Eastern Europe.
Supporting Ukraine is incredibly cheap and industrially motivating.
The US has ended its Forever Wars so the military’s budget and funding has some wiggle room. This is not breaking the bank for the US, though the war is actually beginning to break Russia’s economy, and the best part is that America doesn’t have boots on the ground on the frontlines.
Much of the financial spending for Ukraine is actually going to American military-industrial companies to build new weapons systems and munitions for the US military so the US can give Ukraine the old ammunition and increasingly obsolete weapon systems. Supporting Ukraine is actually helping US wake up and streamline its somewhat lethargic industrial capacity.
It’s also giving the US military valuable insight into how modern wars with drones can and could be fought. The US is learning and helping develop the next generation of combat. That’s valuable experience in a world where China is flexing its military muscles, and running quite a bit ahead of the US in its industrial capacity.
No US troops are dying on the frontlines.
Russia, our greatest antagonist of the last 100 years, is getting curb stomped in Ukraine without America losing any troops. This is Ukraine’s Revolutionary War, and they’re doing all the bravery, the sacrificing, and the dying. The courage of the Ukrainian people to stop Russian aggression in its tracks, and their tenacity in ensuring their nation wins a committed victory for liberal democracy against authoritarianism should be revered and rewarded with as much assistance as we can give.
Russia can’t keep this war going a whole lot longer.
Putin can’t maintain for long the potemkin charade that life in Moscow and Saint Petersburg doesn’t have to suffer any consequences for his grinding invasion and international isolation. The Russian economy is starting to sputter, squeezed by the boa constrictor of heavy sanctions, decreasing global oil prices, increasing American energy exports to Russia’s former customers, shunned Russian pipelines, and pariah status in international relations.
Worst of all is the death or maiming of thousands of young Russian men in Ukraine daily. Russia’s demographics were already embarrassing with falling birth rates, proliferating Shit Life Syndrome, and a GDP per capita lower than 64 other nations, now Putin is stomping on the accelerator of Russia’s geopolitical demise wasting an entire generation to steal a chunk of Ukraine that is now flattened, useless, and filled with unexploded ordnance.
Helping Ukraine indirectly helps the Russian people who want to be free of Putin’s totalitarianism.
It’s unconscionable what Putin is doing to his country, and ensuring he loses helps the Russian people understand Russian nationalism and expansionism is not good for them.
Russia doesn’t exactly have free elections, but every Russian who dies in a senseless meat wave trying to steal land from a people who hate them and might never be pacified is increasing the powderkeg pressure of furious citizens who hopefully someday can overthrow the autocrats and oligarchs robbing and brutally oppressing them.
Tens of thousands of Russians are dying each month for Putin to save face his geopolitical all-in bluff for nothing, and eventually hundreds of thousands of wounded, psychologically damaged soldiers will be back in Russia, which, being a impoverished and corrupt country, will likely lead to shameful increases in violent crime, alcoholism, suicide, and other social woes. Russia needs revolutionary change, and letting Putin continue to get away with distracting Russians with constant war keeps the Russian people in a dictatorial purgatory.
We learned a bit about North Korea when it contributed to the war and lost thousands of soldiers.
The Kim Jong Un regime losing thousands of North Korean soldiers is probably good for South Korea, and the rest of the world generally. Can these allegedly elite NK soldiers be replaced quickly in such an odd society? Learning how North Koreans fight, and whether their developmentally backward hereditary communist dictatorship is capable of 21st Century military competence is productive for South Korea, and all the US military forces stationed throughout Japan and Korea who would likely be involved in any renewed Korean conflict.
North Korea is such a wildcard country that maybe something crazy could happen from North Korean soldiers going home after having had sudden access to the Internet via the cell phones Russians gave them for communicating. Besides discovering the joy of pornography, North Koreans soldiers might have gotten some ideas about their nation and had a few political epiphanies thanks to media outside the Kim regime’s manic propaganda.
Russian propaganda is crumbling internationally.
Supporting Ukraine helps shine light on the absurd Russian delusions of itself as the masculine, Christian continuation of the Roman Empire with Moscow as the third Rome.
Russia has been described more accurately as a gas station with nuclear missiles. Russian propaganda fools dummies of the right like Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, who confuse some choice, glitzy neighborhoods of Moscow for supposed Russian superiority, but experts the world over can see that Russia is a declining nation unable to climb out of the resource curse, and is controlled by a small oligarchical cabal at the top who have robbed the country for the last 25 years Putin has made himself an effective Tsar.
The Ukraine War, his lasting legacy, will be leaving Russia much poorer, older, more socially ill than before Putin took power.
Russia’s influence is waning all over the map.
Putin’s Ukraine War has given the ick to former Soviet Republics in Central Asia that have historically rubber-stamped what Russians wanted. Now some nations in Russia’s vaunted sphere of influence are beginning to shop around for trade, energy, and export deals elsewhere. Some are even flirting with greater European trade ties.
Russian military forces were also forced to pull out of Syria following the collapse of the Assad regime. This complicates Russia’s various meddling efforts in Africa because Syria was a key logistics hub.
Meanwhile, protests against Russian influence are regularly popping up in countries all around its former periphery.
Europe and America together dominate the world, split apart the US will lose its hegemony over world affairs.
Consider population trends for a moment: it makes little sense for America’s long-term goals to stay ahead of China, India, and eventually Africa economically and geopolitically to stop being a unified bloc with Europe. It is bad for America if Europe stops going along with all of our sanctions, world policing, free trade systems, UN motions, etc., and becomes its own independent bloc competing against the US instead of with us.
The US is standing up for its ideals of democracy, liberty, freedom, and self-sovereignty.
Russia is perpetrating a barbaric invasion. Ukrainians do not want to be invaded by Russia. They have their own language and culture that is not Russian, and their history as a nation-state goes back further than Russia’s.
Ukrainians’ democracy though is still new, and is liberalizing ambitiously. It has several times in the last few decades launched revolutions to throw out Russian dominated governments. Putin is a butcher dictator, and they don’t want him doing to Ukraine what he’s doing to Russia.
America has a checkered past stacking up against it’s mythical idealism, but supporting Ukraine has been a home run on the beacon of freedom scorecard. 🥃
If you read all the way to here, leave a comment of what you thought! I feel like on America’s list of pros and cons for Ukraine the pros are lopsidedly ahead. Can you think of any more benefits that should be added to the record?
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Thank you.
You seem to be one of thos great thinkers who believes that A) Ukraine should have been brought into NATO, because Russia wouldn't attack NATO with Article 5 hanging over it's head..and,
B) If Ukraine is defeated, Russia WILLl attack NATO,regardless of Article 5.
You high? It doesn't work both ways.
This was the most unprofessional assessment of the Ukraine conflict on Substack, by a wide margin, and so full of inaccuracies that I lack the patience or crayons to correct it.