Let me ask you the same question I asked deflave. How much of Europe are you willing to see under Russian control? A return to the old Soviet borders up to Berlin, or all the way to the Atlantic?
A/S: I wouldn't know you if I met you on the street but in a way I consider you a friend and I know you are a smart man.
But as to Europe. Every bit of it if requires our money or men to stop them. Europe has been at war for 2000 years that I know of and we have broken our treasury and ruined the lives of millions of our citizens with our meddling over there and Asia when we should have been only trading with whoever was in charge and had the gold at the time.
What have we gained by fighting two world wars other than a lot of debt and a world ready to go to war again. My family had men killed in both world wars and others mentally seriously scarred by what they went through.
Ok, you give Russia all of Europe. All the heavy industry in Germany, warm water ports, and a population twice that of the United States.
Then what happens?
If the former Soviet Union could support 240 divisions, how many could the support with all of Europe?
What's that do to the world economy?
How about the Middle east? Can they have that next? How about South Africa and the other rare earth mineral producing parts of Africa?
Do we get Russians back in Cuba, and Venezuela, Grenada, Argentina?
What about Guatemala and Nicaragua?
How about Mexico? Can they have Mexico?
What fight would you choose with the Russians, Americans along the Rio Grande, or Ukrainians along the Dnipro?
You start this argument with a faulty premise: Europe isn't ours, therefore we can't "give" it to anyone.
Well there is that but also the point that our former government actually wanted to stop the spread of communism. There is no will for that anymore. Communism is promoted and inundates us daily and iys effects evident in the far less than red wave we see in this election cycle. Russia won't need or likely want Canada or Mexico when what everyone, all countries, understand is that US policy is now solely based on keeping secrets hidden and maintaining the money laundering. If Russia captures all of Europe and the mayor of Moscow can just write another check to Hunter B or whoever in our state department -and the Big Guy gets his 10% - there will be no moral outrage or call for anything. Ask the kids that were victims of those on Ghislaine Maxwell's list or Hunter Biden's laptop. As Joe himself just said- Good Luck with that.
Yes,
In response to the expansion of communisms our policy was one of "Containment".
Here's a picture of what that looked like in 1959:[
Linked Image]
You'll notice there's basically a blue ring around the Soviet Union, beginning with Japan and Korea to control the Tsushima Strait and bottle up the Soviet Fleet in Vladivostok, down through the remainder of the First Island Chain, i.e. Taiwan, Philippines, along with Vietnam to control the southern water ways approaching China, Thailand and Singapore to control access to between the Indian and Pacific oceans.
We have the southern chain, Pakistan, at that time Iran, and Turkey. With Turkey, Greece, Italy, again, we control access to the Black Sea and kept another Soviet Fleet bottled up. We controlled the entire northern coast of the Med and it's primary access point in the West, Gibraltar.
On west, Italy, France, Germany, with the Netherlands and Norway containing the Baltic fleet, and Norway and Iceland controlling the major water way between the Soviet Northern Fleet and the blue waters of the Atlantic, a line we began augmenting with SOSUS in 1966.
Now when you look at this map, all of a sudden some historical events make more sense. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan. Here's a clue for you. Afghanistan was never about Afghanistan.
As for the claim that Russians prefer free buffer states between them and NATO, the Soviets went into Hungary in 56, and Czechoslovakia in 68. They have a history of filling voids around their sphere of influence.
After their fall in 1991 containment moved forward. Czechs, Hungary and Poland in 1999, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004, and a smattering of small player since 2009. Now if you look at a map, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are right up against the Russians. The Kaliningrad carve out borders Poland and Lithuania, and Poland's, right up against the Russian Puppet Belarus, which brings us to Ukraine. Of course this is nothing new. NATO and Soviet Block solders faced each other just a few years apart at Check Point Charles for over 45 year.
Serious discussion about Ukrainian membership in NATO began in 2008 at the Bucharest summit. Neither was admitted, and a few month last Russia went into Georgia. Movement on admitting Ukraine essentially stalled until 2014 when Russia went into Crimea, but of course that little detail just gets glossed over. Now if the Russians has just stayed in Crimea, they could of probably gotten away with it, but as Orcs and the Borg will do, they just had to get greedy and as Russian always does (They didn't become the nation with the largest land mass by playing nice with their neighbors) they tried to take more, and now everyone on Russia's borders wants to join NATO.
Now you and I see Ukraine differently.
You see Ukraine. I see a pathway to all of north eastern Germany through Poland, and northern Bulgaria though Romania. And of Course they'd also need the 3 Baltic States to secure the Baltic coastline.
![[Linked Image from upload.wikimedia.org]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Europe_topography_map_en.png)
So our basis choices are:
1. Go Isolationist. Abandon all allies and trading partners at least outside the Western Hemisphere if not world wide
AT THE SAME TIME ALL YOU BABY BOOMERS ARE RETIRING. You think shortages are bad now? You have no clue what this would look like. Keep in mind, the proximate cause of the great depression was a tariff on raw materials. This would make the Great Depression look lie a picnic.
2. Do nothing in Ukraine. Let the Russians have it, honor our commitments to NATO and fight a series of wars across Seven NATO member.
3. Arm Ukraine. Spend a few hundred billion to Russian dry, bring the the edge of bankruptcy, leave much of a generation of their young men dead on the battle field, and leave them too exhausted for foreign adventures for the next 30 years, and make China reconsider it's plans for foreign adventures for a long time as well.
For anyone who can think past the nose on their own face, this is an easy call.
