Does the cost of the war in Ukraine exceed the benefits?

I'm not even sure what the claimed 'benefits' of the war actually are.

Allegedly the war is to ensure Ukraine retains the right to join NATO.

This got expanded into "the right to choose their own future".

But all Russia demanded was not to join NATO because that could
lead to a whole bunch of scary weapons on Russia's border.

Was that really worth a war with more than half a million soldiers
killed?

Was it even worth a war at all?


I have become increasingly skeptical about all the wars we keep 'needing'.

 

One additional question that has to be considered in this thinking is whether the Ukraine conflict could have been avoided -- you know, if the U.S. had more adept diplomacy (and maybe more competent leadership).

If you talk to the Russian leadership, they would tell you that the invasion didn't just come completely out of nowhere. They had longstanding complaints about what was going on in Ukraine, issues that seemed to be escalating, and the Russian complaints were totally ignored by the U.S. The Russian leadership may have felt they were being backed into a corner.

For all the talk the Left usually has about "peace", trying to avoid war with diplomacy, they are treating this Ukraine conflict as if it were inevitable.

This is only half the story, but some might argue the Ukraine conflict happened because the U.S. was being hard-headed and stubborn, "provoking the bear".

Sure, Putin would like to incorporate Ukraine back into the Russian Empire. But would he have launched this invasion if that had been the only main motivating factor?

 

The U.S. doesn't even have the money for this war. They are having to borrow it.

At a time when the U.S. is already in a fiscal crisis, with inflation and interest rates on the debt shooting up fast.

This war is going to threaten the U.S.'s long term national security, and I mean just the financial component of this war.

The U.S. is "running out of money", and how are they going to fund the next major war?

It's just astounding there are so many people in the public who are so stupid they can't understand that.

 

As a retired Air Force member, I hate wars. I have lost too many friends and acquaintances. However, if there was ever a worthwhile war, this is it. Putin will not stop with Ukraine. We are bleeding Russia dry without shedding a drop of of our own blood.

Russia is not very good at waging war, but they are hell bent on conquering the world.

My only regret is the national debt. Somehow, in spite of this, we need to stop bleeding red ink.

 

The question, as I see it, is not really will he stop, but would he have stopped.

Maybe you are uninformed about what the U.S. was doing in Ukraine even before the war, and how the U.K. prime minister goaded the Ukrainian leadership into not caving in to Russian demands, which the U.K. prime minister would never have done unless it was at the behest of the U.S. White House under Biden, so was basically a statement that the U.S. would back and support Ukraine, giving the Ukrainian president the greenlight that he could continue with policies that were agitating Russia and know that the U.S. would defend them from Russian action.

 

It is pretty simple. If Putin has the capability, he will not stop with Ukraine.

 

You don't think the Russians take that same sort of view, when it comes to U.S. policy in Ukraine?

 

Yes he would.

 

The claimed benefit is that it hurts Russia.

...though this only from people who actually think Russia has (or soon will have) the means to potentially invade, occupy and control all of Europe if we don't fight them to the last Ukrainian. Which is, of course, completely looney tunes level ludicrous.

And nevermind how much it hurts Ukraine, who even now have little hope of a population recovery in the forseeable future. I guess they can just take in a bunch of immigrants from the third world to compensate? I'm sure Svoboda and the Azov Battalion would happily welcome multicultural enrichment from Africa and the Levant

 

It's not about freedom it's about petroleum. More importantly American hegemony over the petroleum dollar. Ukraine is a bargaining chip. They grow green something that Russia struggles with so to this trade goes between these two countries and it's about keeping Russia in its place not because Russia is fascist American politicians don't care about that.

It's about being in a position to force Russia to trade oil with American dollars versus gold this is the same thing that's happening in Iran and why we're dealing with the Middle East.

What's it worth it then how you see the US. Do you want the US to be a world empire or just a country. I don't know.

 

So you claim and believe. But I wonder how much of that opinion is due to lack of full information about the background behind this conflict.

The modern war-machine media is not telling the American public or giving them the full picture behind this conflict.
It's still possible to perpetrate a lie even if no one thing individually stated is lie, simply by selectively stating certain facts and then withholding critical elements of the truth. Individual facts cannot stand alone by themselves without the relevant context.

 

Putin is right in one sense, and that is that Ukraine is kind of a historical accident. It was, for all essential purposes, annexed by the Russian Empire (complete by 1783). It remained under the de facto control of the Russian Soviet Union. But for the sake of keeping up appearances, the Soviets granted Ukraine the status of Republic (mostly a distinction devoid of real practical meaning, since the Communist Party gave orders to the SSR -- the Ukrainian parliament members -- how to vote). And another reason the Soviets wanted Ukraine to be considered a separate Republic was to have an additional vote in the United Nations, one that would be sure to be under their direct control. When the Soviet Union fell apart (1991), the status of Ukraine was kind of an afterthought, in the moment.

I suppose you could ask what the people in Ukraine want, or would have wanted, but that is kind of a redundant question, since in this case the people are too stupid to understand for themselves what they want, or what the situation really is. The population believes as they are told. I guarantee you if Russian propaganda was allowed to take over Ukraine television, within less than a single generation the majority of Ukrainians would feel loyalty to Russia. Or likewise, if they never saw or read anything about Russia in the news, the vast majority would have no opinion of their own.

There's really only a small percentage of the population who independently form their own opinion based on the facts.

There's really no objective way to claim that Ukraine should be a part of Russia, or should not be a part of Russia. Ukraine never really formed in the same way that other nation-states in Europe developed.

 

Probably do. Our record is not so hot.

 

This is becoming a serious question. Putin is from the Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin school of international behavior. If Putin respected the sovereignty of his neighbors, NATO would be necessary. Putin wants NATO to go away so he can conquer Easter Europe and beyond. It’s all about Mother Russia and nationalism which has been the bane of mankind throughout history.

As for the value of the War in Ukraine, it’s become a tough call. Unless the rest of Europe joins the effort, Putin will get what he wants. Russia has more cannon fodder than Ukraine. He doesn’t care how many Russian troops die to get what he wants.

 

As even NATO stated, the 'unreasonable demand' of Russia was not
to allow NATO into a country on their border: Ukraine or Georgia.

And NATO stated correctly that the war in Ukraine started in 2014
directly contradicting the believe in America that it started on Feb
24th 2022, which is easily disproven.

A lot of what is commonly believed by the hawks in America is about
what Putin dreams at night. That is a fundamental misunderstanding
of the way the government of the Russian Federation works and
the reason V. Putin was chosen as President in the first place.

In clear contrast Biden was made President despite his offer of a punch-up
with a factory worker in Detroit and is even now trying to get into a war
with China, and Iran, and it should be remembered sent a shipment of
weapons to the Kyiv controlled army in Ukraine that allowed them to
'get in the first punch' you might call it, on Feb 19th 2022.

 

I'm curious what the benefits are of letting Russia reconstruct the Soviet empire. That has yet to be explained.

 

Are you referring to the Russian Empire, or to the USSR or to something else?

V. Putin spent most of the time until Joe Biden and his neocons came on the
scene, making improvements with the Russian Federation.

In five years time nobody will remember the crap they were saying about the
war in Ukraine.

 

I don't believe that for a second.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The war is to insure that Ukraine continues to exist as an independent nation.

No, you're trying to conflate resistance to Russian tyranny into something it never was.

Russia started the war by invading Ukraine.

War is never worth it when judged by the human cost. War is only ever worth it when it buys and ensures the right of those who survive to exist without being submitted to the boot of tyranny.

AbsaByGodLutely! If I were a Ukrainian I would shout AbsaByGodLutely.

I'm am skeptical of your skepticism.

 

Thanks for today's 'John Bolton' commentary but back to reality....Putin has no desire to expand beyond historical Russian lands that are occupied by majority ethnic Russians. If you've ever listened to the man, he despises Lenin and has frequently spoke about the mistakes made by the Soviet Union, which are the same mistakes now made by the US. Governing peoples that don't want your presence is doomed to fail.

 

You have to be gullible to believe whatever Putin has to say. If he really placed the welfare of Russia ahead of his imperialist ambitions, he would do all he could to bolster the Russian economy. He would be striving to make Russia a member in good standing with the rest of the western world and not a rouge state, allied with China, Iran and North Korea.

 

Unless you have a magic wand to go back in time with, questions of the past tense are completely worthless as a matter of present policy.

Don’t plague us with your crappy appeasement policies just because you think we screwed up way back when and we therefore deserve it.

 

Nope because there is a long history of Russian aggression to dominate, control and expand its borders.

Only an idiot would think the US would turn Ukraine into a US territory.

 

The $60 billion going to Ukraine will mostly be in arms to help them fight the aggression by Russia. The Europeans are also helping Ukraine. The theory is that unless Putin is stopped, he will invade country after country in an attempt to put the old USSR back together. Or will Putin stop after he captures Ukraine? Who knows for sure? But if you equate Putin to Hitler then you want to provide all the help possible to Ukraine.

 

Your arguments are a perfect example of the toal ignorance of the MAGA crowd about this matter. The russian bear didn't need to be provoked.

The reason why Putin invaded Ukraine is that the Ukrainians had decided since 2014 to turn away from the Russian model and to opt for the occidental way of life, i.e. freedom of speech, of movement, of political opinion etc..

This was unacceptable for Putin, specially as the risk of contagion to his own people was too important; it should be noted that Putin's popularity had gone down sharply, already before the 2012 presidential election.

The complaints Putin had about Ukraine were mostly created by Russia itself. In 2014, Russia invaded Crimea and 2 Ukrainian provinces in the Donbas (eastren part of Ukraine), after russian-supported pro-Russia separatists had started a rebellion against the Ukrainian government. The pretext was that the russian language had been removed as an official language. (Granted, this was a psychological mistake, but most countries in the world only have one official language, and the young Ukraine republic needed to cement its unity).

Putin behaved in a civilized way for a few years after he became president of Russia in 1999; his country and his people started to gain in economic prosperity and western leaders were favorably impressed.

But the honeymoon didn't last long. At a Munich conference in 2007, Putin revealed his true nature and resumed his former KGB colonel attitude.

As an example, he declared that the demise of the USSR was the worst catastrophy ot the 20th century.

By invading Ukraine, Putin made several big mistakes:

1. he believed his secret service opinion that his invasion would be "a walk in the park" and that his soldiers would be welcomed with flowers by the ukrainian population;
2. by his invasion, he prompted Sweden and Finland to do what he so strongly wanted to avoid: i.e. to immediately join NATO, although they had resisted doing so for years;
3. he reinforced the cohesion of the EU, as well as that of NATO.

It is essential that the western world doesn't let Putin win this war. Ukraine wants to leave the Russia world where corruption is an institution ran by the Kremlin nomenklatura itself. Corruption indeed still exists, though to a lesser degree, in Ukrainia, but as a candidate now to join the EU, they have entered a procedure which requires it to make regular progress toward the EU standards in all matters, including the fight against corruption.

Regarding the benefit of this war for the US, we can list:

-most of the aid the US sends to Ukraine goes to US weapons and equipment manufactutrers;
-even most of EU's aid to Ukraine (almost at the same level) translates to orders from US manufacturers, as EU's own military manufacturers don't have the capacity, yet, to supply enough of the Ukrainian needs.
-and, last but not least, NATO will probably add Ukraine as one of its next members, which will definitely be an asset as its army is becoming one of the best trained in the world.