this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
23 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22058 readers
58 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There's the real strategic concern that escalating too quickly will have nuclear repercussions. But the deeper reasons are visible if you view most governments as military industrial corporations stacked under a trenchcoat. The true motivator is that the longer the war continues, the more money will flow from their respective tax payers into their pockets. They don't care about Ukrainian lives, they don't care about Russian lives. The popular support for the war and lack of domestic casualties means they get to ply their trade of death, and they come out smelling like roses. Opposing Russian colonialism is a noble cause, but the nobility belongs to those who are dying in the foxholes, not the warmongers who are squeezing this crisis to get more capital.
Western leaders don't want Ukraine to win. They want Russia to lose. A quick cauterized wound is less damaging than a slow bleed out. Total bankruptcy of the Russian war machine is the objective, the economic elimination of their primary trade competitor.
He's already made thousands of bad decisions with this conflict. He's a petty little tyrant. He'd do anything to preserve his ego.
Trade competitor?
Russia is still the world's #2 arms exporter. Using supply domestically means that less can be exported, and more importantly, demonstrably under performing compared to western offering reduces demand.
The hesitation to do that still baffles me. Like all the pontification over providing the tanks prior to this. We all knew NATO counties were going to provide these weapons eventually. The constant hand-wringing is so embarrassing and downright disrespectful to the Ukrainians who are sacrificing everything.
I keep hoping for another big gain like Kharkiv and Kherson, but all that time let Russia dig in their fortifications and mine everything, so the line just won't move that quickly anymore.
If only we could get the chickenhawks here in the US to care about desperate people and half-measures within our own borders as much as you care for desperate people in a country you only care about because you're told to by your favorite nightly news program. The hundreds of billions in aid we've already sent is more than most countries' entire annual military budget to begin with.