1. The Soviet arsenal has largely been neutralized.
Ukraine has smashed the formidable Soviet stockpile of tanks, vehicles, weapon systems, and munitions hoarded for decades specifically to invade Europe. What a boon for European security, which ultimately means American security because Europeans are our ride-or-dies on the global stage. A lot of these weapons were old and outdated, but it means a lot less stuff in general for the Russians to someday use against a NATO ally like the Baltics or Poland.
2. Russia has been humiliated, humbled, and may never be able to claim to be a peer rival of the US military ever again.
It’s obvious the Russian military-industrial complex is trailing far behind NATO’s capabilities, and has no chance of catching up with America’s technology. The war revealed that Russia has a bit of a Potemkin military. Most of Russia’s domestically produced military systems showed major quality issues, and, nukes aside of course, analysts who feared Russian technology can sigh a breath of relief.
Putin spent two decades working to modernize the Russian military, and his efforts were a kleptocratic failure because his government sucks, and is filled with opportunistic thieves who raided the military budget every chance they got (dictatorships inherently inspire and hire thieving opportunists). It will now take Russia years to replace the stockpiles it has lost in Ukraine.
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 another millionish young Russians fleeing the war means Putin has really shot Russia in the leg by invading Ukraine. Demographically, Russia is beginning to death spiral.
3. 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 and sadistically invade 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 several 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 frees us from foreign energy crises.
4. Reminder: 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 the dark, depressing Iron Curtain.
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 constantly buddies-up with America’s other antagonists of China, Iran, the former Syria of Bashar al-Assad, and North Korea.
Putin’s main goal in life is to peel away as many countries as possible from the US-European consensus. Russia is actively trying to turn Serbia, Hungary, and Slovakia into thorns in the EU’s side. And we can’t forget to mention that Putin literally started the first major war in Europe since WWII.
Putin👏does👏not👏want👏to👏be👏America’s👏friend! He wants to create a new Russian empire that can challenge America’s authority. WTF is “America First” about helping Putin violently compel more countries to oppose us?
5. 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. They want economic ties to the American-led West, NOT the Russian-dominated East. Ukrainians have been repeatedly fucked over by Russia for literal centuries, and now are sacrificing their lives to continue being free. Thirty-seven million Ukrainians hate our chief antagonist, and want to become our partner and ally. That is so good for America.
And Ukraine would instantly become our toughest ally! They’re the most battle-hardened military in the world, and they’ve spent years now developing the next generation of drone weapons and tactics.
The US has also effectively integrated the Ukrainian military into Western weapon systems, supply chains, and training. A long-term alliance with Ukraine will lead to riches for America’s own military industries because there’s a LOT of very expensive NATO gear and tech that Ukraine will want to stock up on for the next time Russia tries to genocide them.
Plus, Ukraine is literally a giant, physical shield for the rest of Europe against Russia’s perennial delusions of imperial grandeur. Ukraine stopping Russian aggression now prevents the likelihood that the US will someday in the future have to send millions of soldiers to liberate Europe again. Look at a map. Ukraine’s military bogging down the Russians in Luhansk and Donetsk keeps them out of Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and the Baltics. Putin fucks with these countries’ politics already, so certainly if Russia swallowed Ukraine and drafted Ukrainians into invading deeper into Europe with the callous meat-grinder tactics Russian generals subject their own citizens to, these countries are in danger. Many of them are in NATO, and the US is sworn to defend them. Make Ukraine victorious, and we won’t have to.
(Reminder: the only time NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause has ever been activated was for the US after 9/11. America benefits from having, keeping, and adding to its list of loyal allies.)
6. I mean, WTF? 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— autocratic psychos with delusions of territorial grandeur never fuck off with their constant warring and conquest salivating until you physically make them stop.
7. Supporting Ukraine is cheap and industrially motivating.
The US has ended its Middle Eastern Forever Wars so the military’s budget ought to have a little wiggle room to take advantage of the opportunity of a century to neutralize a hostile regional power. It’s not breaking the bank, and the best part is America doesn’t have boots on the ground in the trenches.
Besides, 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 (for the US) obsolete weapon systems. Supporting Ukraine is actually helping the US wake up and streamline its lethargic industrial capacity.
The war is also giving the US military valuable insight into how modern wars with drones can be fought. The US is learning and helping develop the next generation of combat with Ukrainian partners.
This is all valuable experience in a world where China is flexing its military muscles, and running quite a bit ahead of the US in total industrial capacity.
8. What would America’s Founding Fathers think?
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 survives and preserves liberty, self-sovereignty, and liberal democracy against dictatorial authoritarianism should be revered and rewarded with as much assistance as we can give. President Zelensky is a George Washington type character of history, and we can do for Ukraine what France did for us in assisting our independence to fuck over its chief geopolitical antagonist, Great Britain. We’re sticking it to our chief geopolitical enemy AND gaining a formidable ally who fucking loves freedom as much as us? The realpolitik is providential!
9. Russia can’t keep this war going a whole lot longer.
Putin can’t maintain much longer the 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, falling global oil prices, growing American energy exports to Russia’s former customers, increasing Ukrainian attacks on energy infrastructure, and excessive deficit-spending for meat-grinder signup bonuses.
Worst of all is the death or maiming of a thousand young Russian men daily. Russia’s demographics were already embarrassing with a plummeting birth rate, proliferating Shit Life Syndrome, and a GDP per capita lower than 64 other nations, but now Putin is stomping on the accelerator of Russia’s geopolitical demise wasting an entire generation of young men to steal a chunk of Ukraine that is now flattened and filled with unexploded ordnance. There’s valuable lithium there, but Russia barely has the technological and economic prowess to extract it.
It’s also somewhat important for a global police state such as America to enforce the laws enshrined in international law for 80 years that stop countries from invading their neighbors to steal resources.
10. As a bonus, we learned a bit about North Korea when it contributed to the war and lost thousands of soldiers.
Kim Jong Un’s 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 epiphanies on civil rights thanks to media outside the Kim regime’s manic propaganda.
11. 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, and its propaganda fools only dummies of the right like Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, who confuse a few photo-ops in glitzy neighborhoods of Moscow for supposed Russian superiority. Russia gets real rural and ethnic fast when you leave the big cities in the west of the country, and unfortunately it’s disproportionately people in these areas who are dying for pyrrhic inches of Ukraine.
International relations experts have identified for years 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 in exchange for letting Putin be the new Czar.
The Ukraine War, no matter how it ends, will be leaving Russia much poorer, older, and more socially ill. That’s Putin’s real legacy no matter what slivers of Ukraine he’s capable of keeping.
12. Russia’s influence is waning all over the map.
Putin’s Ukraine War has given the ick to former Soviet Republics in Central Asia who have historically rubber-stamped everything Russia wanted. Now some nations in Russia’s vaunted Asian sphere of influence are beginning to shop around for trade, energy, and export deals elsewhere. Some are even flirting with greater European trade ties. Sucks to suck, Russia!
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. And Russia’s African meddling was turning into a mess anyway.
13. Europe and America together dominate the world, split apart the US will lose its hegemony over world affairs.
Consider global population trends for a moment: if America wants to stay ahead of 1.4 billion Chinese, 1.4 billion Indians, and 1.5 billion Africans economically and geopolitically, it helps to add 450 million Europeans to our relatively small 340 million Americans.
In everything we do on the global stage, it is better for America if Europe goes along with us, whether its trade relationships, economic sanctions on mutual enemies, world policing, UN motions, etc. It will soon be inevitably bad for both America and Europe if we both have to act alone on the world stage.
14. Ukraine is a rare home run for America’s self-identified ideals of democracy, liberty, and freedom.
Russia is perpetrating a barbaric invasion. Ukrainians do not want to be invaded by Russia. They have twice in the last few decades launched revolutions to throw out Russian-dominated puppet governments. Ukrainians have their own language and culture that is not Russian, and a history as a nation-state that goes back further than Russia’s. 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. It’s a shame Trump is either too stupid to realize it, or too blackmailed to acknowledge it. 🥃
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The Halfway Post 