(no subject)
The few times I read an analysis of the Ukraine War that mentions the repeated actions by Western powers (primarily the United States), my skin crawls, because I can never frame a refutation of the proposal: This war is aligned with the United States's neo-imperialist mission. I don't want to address that as a moral question. And my concept of "neo-imperialism" is as if it was an advertising slogan: the results of imperialism obtained by new and improved means.
The United States has managed to extend its security boundaries, the outer border of the water and land controlled by itself and solidly allied countries, to this zone:
This is surely the largest empire in history.
This is an extremely convenient situation if the U.S. wants to operate "in a rules-based international order" within which the U.S. can make a lot of money by trade, with only the inconvenience that the U.S. needs to do the politicking to keep the allies aligned, and maintain a military that can suppress any threats to the order.
I'm reminded of this paragraph in "The Jacksonian Tradition" by Walter Russell Mead:
Those who prefer to believe that the present global hegemony of the United States emerged through a process of immaculate conception avert their eyes from many distressing moments in the American ascension. Yet students of American power cannot ignore one of the chief elements in American success. The United States over its history has consistently summoned the will and the means to compel its enemies to yield to its demands.
Within this framework, clipping Russia's wings is always in order. And acquiring Ukraine as another solid ally would push the border of our neo-imperium another 800 miles east. (If I read the map correctly, the easternmost point would be east of Moscow.)
It's clear from the Iraq and Afghan Wars that it's politically possible to spend $200 billion per year on a war that the public doesn't actively support. And at least for now, Ukrainians are volunteering sufficiently to man the Ukraine army. So it would seem that a solid policy for the United States is to continue to fund Ukraine to keep Russia bleeding. Indeed, a rapid, definitive Russian loss is the thing most likely to get Putin to strike out wildly ... and an endless, gradual bloodletting is the thing most likely to eliminate Russia as a power with world pretensions.
And within this broader context, I don't expect anyone to be talking about how Western actions made the war largely inevitable. And that may not have been a mistake.
The United States has managed to extend its security boundaries, the outer border of the water and land controlled by itself and solidly allied countries, to this zone:
- from the western edge of the Pacific basin,
- running east to the Americas,
- eastward across the Americas,
- running east across the Atlantic,
- eastward across Europe,
- to at most one country away from the western border of Russia
This is surely the largest empire in history.
This is an extremely convenient situation if the U.S. wants to operate "in a rules-based international order" within which the U.S. can make a lot of money by trade, with only the inconvenience that the U.S. needs to do the politicking to keep the allies aligned, and maintain a military that can suppress any threats to the order.
I'm reminded of this paragraph in "The Jacksonian Tradition" by Walter Russell Mead:
Those who prefer to believe that the present global hegemony of the United States emerged through a process of immaculate conception avert their eyes from many distressing moments in the American ascension. Yet students of American power cannot ignore one of the chief elements in American success. The United States over its history has consistently summoned the will and the means to compel its enemies to yield to its demands.
Within this framework, clipping Russia's wings is always in order. And acquiring Ukraine as another solid ally would push the border of our neo-imperium another 800 miles east. (If I read the map correctly, the easternmost point would be east of Moscow.)
It's clear from the Iraq and Afghan Wars that it's politically possible to spend $200 billion per year on a war that the public doesn't actively support. And at least for now, Ukrainians are volunteering sufficiently to man the Ukraine army. So it would seem that a solid policy for the United States is to continue to fund Ukraine to keep Russia bleeding. Indeed, a rapid, definitive Russian loss is the thing most likely to get Putin to strike out wildly ... and an endless, gradual bloodletting is the thing most likely to eliminate Russia as a power with world pretensions.
And within this broader context, I don't expect anyone to be talking about how Western actions made the war largely inevitable. And that may not have been a mistake.