Reasons To Still Care About Ukraine

From nationalistic selfish reasons, to altruistic promotion of our ideals of liberty

Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash

I’m taking a break from comedy today to write something more serious about the incredible courage of the Ukrainian people fighting for their freedom, and why Americans should still care about Ukrainian independence:

The Soviet arsenal has largely been neutralized.

Ukraine has smashed the formidable Soviet stockpile of tanks and munitions stockpiled specifically for European invasion. That’s a major boon for future continental peace.

The war revealed Russia’s military to be a paper tiger. Putin has 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 might.

Most of Russia’s domestically produced military systems have major quality issues, and analysts who feared Russian technology can sigh a breath of relief that, nukes aside, Russia has no capacity to seriously threaten NATO’s military superiority.

After nearly three years of Western sanctions, frozen Russian currency reserves and assets, Russia’s pariah geopolitical status, and the massive brain drain from battle deaths and people fleeing Russia, Russia will not be able to pretend to have military parity with NATO for a long time.

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 was an economic disaster.

An added benefit is that the more energy the US sells, the more energy independent America becomes, and the less power Russia and 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 anymore, 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.

The rules-based order that Putin is assaulting in Ukraine is the order the US put in place.

Putin is violating America’s global rules, rules that have brought lasting peace for three-quarters of a century when Americans, after our greatest hour victory in WWII, pivoted immediately to altruistically rebuilding the smashed up European powers into a militarily and economically intertwined bloc of the most loyal allies in US history.

In fact, the only time NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause has been activated was for the US after 9/11. America benefits from having and keeping such loyal allies.

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 from Russian expansion, which helps prevent any chance of the US having to send millions of soldiers to liberate Europe again.

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 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? 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?

And, after the Baltics, the shadow of Russia’s military would bear down upon Poland, a powderkeg of world war already. 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? The US should not betray and abandon Europe.

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 encroach into Poland.

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. This is actually helping the 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 in its industrial capacity.

US troops are not 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, 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.

Russia is wasting an entire generation to steal a chunk of Ukraine that is now flattened, useless, and filled with unexploded ordnance. Tens of thousands of Russians are dying each month 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 large increases in violent crime, alcoholism, suicide, and other social woes.

Ukraine taking one for the team of European peace while Putin self-destructs Russian society is a gift to the US, Europe, and NATO because, from now on, maybe for the rest of time, Russia will fade and shrink and never be powerful ever again. That’s good for America, and bad for America’s enemies who would like to benefit from Russian participation in a potential axis against America.

The Russian military is kind of on the ropes.

Putin is subjecting his militay to World War I style slaughter. It’s estimated there are seven dead Russians per Ukrainian death, and their deaths are in vain because the people they are trying to conquer will not submit.

Russia cannot keep this up, and Putin is increasingly dependent on North Korean munitions and now even frontline soldiers.

We are learning about North Korea while it is also beginning to lose 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 well-trained 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 having long-term access to the Internet via the cell phones Russians have been giving them for communicating. Besides discovering the joy of pornography, North Koreans soldiers might be entertained by media from outside the Kim regime’s 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 may fool dummies of the American right wing like Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump who confuse 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 their country for the last 25 years Putin has made himself an effective Czar.

The Ukraine War has essentially eroded all of Russia’s geopolitical gains over Putin’s reign, which history books will record as a colossal failure. Thanks to Putin’s war, he will be leaving Russia much poorer, older, more socially dead, and more Shit Life Syndromed than before Putin took power.

Russia’s influence is waning all over the map.

Putin’s continued ineptitude in Ukraine is embarrassing and giving the ick to former Soviet Union nations in Central Asia that used to rubber stamp anything the Russians wanted. Now some nations in Russia’s sphere of influence are starting to shop around for trade, energy, and export deals elsewhere, and showing interest in greater European trade.

Russian military forces were also recently forced to pull out of Syria after the fall of the Assad regime. This seriously complicates Russia’s various meddling efforts in Africa because Syria was a good staging ground.

Meanwhile, protests against Russian influence are regularly popping up in countries all around its periphery.

The US is standing up for its ideals of democracy, liberty, freedom, and self-sovereignty.

Russia is perpetrating an illegal, unwarranted, sadistic, and 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 is still new and is liberalizing ambitiously, and has several times in the last couple decades launched revolutions to throw out Russian puppet governments. Ukrainians do not want to be enslaved by a butcher dictator like Vladimir Putin, and, though America has a very checkered past in stacking up against it’s mythical idealism, supporting Ukraine has been a home run on our beacon of freedom scorecard.

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Did I miss any good reasons to still care about Ukraine? Let me know in the comments! 🥃

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