[The West as a whole is morally weak. ]
It’s physical, not moral weakness, that tempted Putin. You can’t defend your territory with equipment you haven’t bought and soldiers you haven’t trained. The left has weaponized Eisenhower’s military industrial complex speech to drive defense expenditures down to feed their never-ending list of welfare state programs. The thing is - what he said isn’t that defense spending should go to zero, but that we need a big standing military:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp
[A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.]
He cautioned about not letting the expenditures get out of hand. How much did the US spend during his 2 terms? 10% of annual GDP. What do we spend now? 3.5-4%.
Our problem is with every category of non-defense government spending. *That* is out of control.