Why the US Must Help Ukraine Defend Itself Against Russia's Invasion

Foreign affairs
#1

I admire Tucker Carlson and strongly agree with him about most domestic issues. But I think he is wrong to advocate non-involvement of the US in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I quote part of an answer to him from FrontPage with which I concur:

It’s not surprising that there is a movement among conservatives that takes the position that America’s effort to support the resistance to Russian savagery and imperialism in Ukraine is a dangerous distraction and a threat to American security. The leading voice of this movement is not some fringe right-winger but rather Tucker Carlson, arguably the most articulate and courageous defender of the American values, institutions and freedoms which are under attack by the Biden administration, which has belatedly come to the aid of Ukraine - most recently with a $40 billion package of military and humanitarian support.
Tucker and the conservative patriots who have joined him are wrong – wrong in their analyses, wrong in their priorities, and wrong in their opposition to a war that the West, led by the United States, must win.
Tucker has argued that Ukraine is a remote European country, and the United States has no security interest there that is worth the cost or the risks involved in defending it. But in today’s world there are no remote countries. According to the U.S. Air Force, Russia’s new hypersonic missile can travel 1,000 miles in 12 minutes, which means it can deliver a nuclear payload to American cities from Russia in little over an hour, and from a conquered Ukraine in even less time.
The question the isolationists should be asking – but don’t – is this: What would happen if Putin got away with committing his genocide of Ukrainians, and was rewarded for his war crimes and aggression? This is a question the isolationists never seem to address. Is Poland next? Would Europe fold under Putin’s threats if his Ukrainian genocide succeeded? If a madman can get away with crimes like this, what could he not get away with? International aggressions and genocides would no longer be unthinkable. What impact would a Putin victory have on China’s determination to swallow Taiwan, and who knows what other countries the Communists covet?

An aggressive Russia is also a problem for us. There are plenty of good reasons to criticize NATO and European nations. And to be skeptical of the culture of corruption in Ukraine, along with much of the region and the world. President Trump rightly pointed out that the United States has wrongly been doing most of the work and paying most of the bill for an organization that defends wealthy European countries like Germany. Those are also some of the points that Tucker makes, but President Trump also understood that Americans could not just ignore Russia or Ukraine. That’s why he was the first to provide real military aid to Ukraine.
"Why do I care what’s going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia?” Tucker has asked. The answer is that it’s not really about Ukraine. Much as China threatening Taiwan isn’t just about an island, and the last world war wasn’t just about Czechoslovakia and Poland. Russia is aggressively expanding. That’s a problem and one way or the other we’re going to have to deal with it.
We’re part of a world market in food and energy. Even if we did achieve energy and food independence (which we urgently need to do) the impact of the invasion of Ukraine on world markets would still hurt us financially. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait dragged us into two wars in Iraq. But that’s nothing compared to being dragged into two world wars in Europe.

There are compelling moral reasons to supply people who are fighting for their freedom with the weapons they need to do the job. But there are even more compelling realpolitik reasons. China is closely watching the outcome of this conflict. And if Russia loses, that makes it much less likely that the Communist dictatorship will go through with its plans to invade Taiwan. And that would keep Americans out of a truly devastating military and economic conflict.
This is not just a proxy war between Russia and America, but also China. If America can demonstrate that supplying weapons is enough to hold off an invasion by a major power without our military involvement, China will have to consider that it could invade Taiwan and lose.
Tucker is right to be suspicious of the woke and feeble Pentagon brass, multinational institutions and the political establishment. Under President Trump, this crisis would not have occurred. There’s a reason that both of Putin’s invasions of Ukraine took place under White House Democrats. That’s also why Russia’s Alaska incursions flared up under Obama and Biden. Weakness is much more likely to bring on a war. Abandoning the Ukrainians would be a sign of crippling weakness.
Biden badly mishandled the Ukraine crisis. But we should not let the corruption in the White House or other political institutions, here and abroad, blind us to the human suffering or the bigger issues at stake for our national security. If Russia’s efforts in Ukraine fall apart, it will not be due to Biden or the European Union, but the resilience of ordinary people in the face of war.

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#2

I’m not convinced by their argument that they’re presenting. I think that David and Daniel are wrong about this one. We keep being told that Putin wants to bring back the Soviet Union but this part of his speech says differently:

“The advocates of so-called ‘social progress’ believe they are introducing humanity to some kind of a new and better consciousness. Godspeed, hoist the flags as we say, go right ahead. The only thing that I want to say now is that their prescriptions are not new at all. It may come as a surprise to some people, but Russia has been there already. After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks, relying on the dogmas of Marx and Engels, also said that they would change existing ways and customs and not just political and economic ones, but the very notion of human morality and the foundations of a healthy society. The destruction of age-old values, religion and relations between people, up to and including the total rejection of family (we had that, too), encouragement to inform on loved ones – all this was proclaimed progress and, by the way, was widely supported around the world back then and was quite fashionable, same as today. By the way, the Bolsheviks were absolutely intolerant of opinions other than theirs.”
https://www.global-review.info/2021/10/24/putins-speech-at-the-plenary-session-of-the-18th-valdai-club/
They’re worried about emboldening Xi when they forget that Xi and his agents are all over this country already in academia, the government and worst of all our military and scientific research labs. They own us already. China will win either way whether we intervene or not. Xi is playing both sides in this conflict by backing Putin to keep them going economically and at the same time lending Biden money to give to Ukraine (Remember Biden’s financial ties to China?) China is the one that is a bigger security threat than Russia.

I don’t think that David and Daniel are aware that Ukraine is a corrupt country and isn’t a democracy and the case that they are making to get involved makes no sense. A couple of quotes from this article:

“In case you were not aware, according to the Ukrainian regime, there are three sorts of Ukrainian. When we speak of ‘the people of Ukraine’ and their rights, bear that in mind.”

“The red ‘Sort 1’ on the poster are in Galicia, which may be about to be occupied by the Polish army. There is a statue of Ukrainian nationalist and wartime Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera in Lvov, the regional capital and the base for most Western journalists.”

“Sort 1 Ukrainians are not native Russian speakers. In Sort 2, there is a minority (less than 25 per cent) who speak native Russian. Sort 3 is the worst offender, because every area here is populated by a majority of native Russian speakers.”

“One emotional basis for the proxy war the US and NATO are fighting is the “right of the Ukrainian people to decide their own fate”. Which people – which “Sort”?”

“This right was not relevant in 2014 when the US, through its then Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, deposed the Yanukovich government and replaced it with one of its choosing.”

“Yet ruin is what we all face, after two years’ money-printing combined with a sanctions policy that will push the European economies off a cliff. This is a strange way to save Sort 1 – and some of Sort 2 – of the Ukrainian people.”

And I don’t think that they have even read what is inside the $40 million Ukraine aid package which European countries will freeload over. The reality is, it’s a continuation of the money laundering in Ukraine on a big scale.:

Here’s what David and Daniel miss about what Trump has been talking about for years, the US has been paying for defence for other countries but other countries don’t pay the US for the defense of their freedom in their nations:

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#3

Yes, an aggressive Russia is a problem for us, which is why this conflict should have been resolved before it got started, through negotiations.
It was the failure of the U.S., under Biden’s incompetent leadership, to accomplish this that is at the root of the problem.
Now that the war has started, Biden isn’t even trying to stop it - he’s doing the opposite - throwing gas on the flames and encouraging further bloodshed and the danger of nuclear war by pouring more money and weapons into Ukraine. It won’t surprise me if, before its over, he sends U.S. troops there.
Then we are committed to war with Russia, and World War 3. Is Ukraine’s democracy really worth that?

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#4

Thanks for the link to Putin’s speech, Yazmin.

There are some nice things in that speech. His understanding of the value of the nation-state is pleasing to read - ironic in the light of his invasion of an independent nation-state a few months after he pronounced that opinion at the conference.

But then he said various things that could come straight from the mouth of Klaus Schwab, or any of the socialist-minded World Economic Forum globalists. I too quote from the speech:

Quote:
The socioeconomic problems facing humankind have worsened to the point where, in the past, they would trigger worldwide shocks, such as world wars or bloody social cataclysms. Everyone is saying that the current model of capitalism which underlies the social structure in the overwhelming majority of countries, has run its course and no longer offers a solution to a host of increasingly tangled differences.
Everywhere, even in the richest countries and regions, the uneven distribution of material wealth has exacerbated inequality, primarily, inequality of opportunities both within individual societies and at the international level. … No doubt, these problems threaten us with major and deep social divisions.
…
Verbally, all states talk about their commitment to the ideals of cooperation and a willingness to work together for resolving common problems but, unfortunately, these are just words. In reality, the opposite is happening, and the pandemic has served to fuel the negative trends that emerged long ago and are now only getting worse. The approach based on the proverb, “your own shirt is closer to the body,” has finally become common and is now no longer even concealed. Moreover, this is often even a matter of boasting and brandishing. Egotistic interests prevail over the notion of the common good.
…
The re-alignment of the balance of power presupposes a redistribution of shares in favour of rising and developing countries that until now felt left out. To put it bluntly, the Western domination of international affairs, which began several centuries ago and, for a short period, was almost absolute in the late 20th century, is giving way to a much more diverse system.
…
In order to achieve a global solution, states and people have to transfer their sovereign rights to supra-national structures to an extent that few, if any, would accept.
…
One of the ways to promote these efforts could be, for example, to draw up, at the UN level, a list of challenges and threats that specific countries face, with details of how they could affect other countries. This effort could involve experts from various countries and academic fields … We believe that developing a roadmap of this kind could inspire many countries to see global issues in a new light and understand how cooperation could be beneficial for them.
I have already mentioned the challenges international institutions are facing. Unfortunately, this is an obvious fact: it is now a question of reforming or closing some of them. However, the United Nations as the central international institution retains its enduring value, at least for now. I believe that in our turbulent world it is the UN that brings a touch of reasonable conservatism into international relations, something that is so important for normalizing the situation.

… we need to build a social welfare state.

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#5

So what objectives, what opinions do Putin and Klaus Schwab share? These, according to his speech:-

Believing that capitalism is “no longer a solution” .
Deploring “uneven distribution of wealth”.
Stressing “the common good”.
Wanting to empower the Third World.
Advocating “global solutions”.
Urging nation states to cede power to “supra national structures”.
Valuing the UN - for its “reasonable conservatism”!

Members of this Forum who have consistently condemned Klaus Schwab and his Great Reset, do you find his objectives and opinions more palatable, even supportable, when they come not from his mouth but from Putin’s? Surely you don’t?

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#6

I’m think half of the speech is true but i’m not sure that Putin and Klaus Schwab share the same objectives anymore if you remember that Klaus Schwab took Putin off the WEF website for invading Ukraine, all I know is that it’s a confusing contradictory mess the current foreign policy that is being adapted, the $40 billion to Ukraine which is most likely money borrowed from China as Rand Paul points out, while Xi is giving Putin the know-how on avoiding economic sanctions by adopting the technological production processes of copying western products (you can thank politicians like the Clintons for their policy on China)

A quote for this blog says it best: “the most enormous unintended consequence of US foreign policy has been to drive Russia and China together, along with Iran, Central Asia and countries along the Belt and Road initiative.” A summation that getting involved in a war against Russia is empowering China economically. China will still win regardless of Russia winning or losing which will have China succeeding in replacing the US as not just the world’s superpower, but also the dominant world’s currency.

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#7

Yes, Putin seems to share the same values as Schwab, but also wants to appeal to nationalists.
Nothing he, or almost any other political leader says, can really be trusted, anyway, its all platitudes.
But the question isn’t whether to trust him, its why should we be provoking a war with him.
His initial demands would have been reasonable enough to accept, or at least use as a basis for some kind of compromise. He wanted Ukraine to remain neutral. Now, because of the Biden regime’s stupidity (or ulterior motive to profit off the military/industrial complex?) a peaceful resolution seems impossible, and all-out war seems inevitable.

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