My listing of Old Soviet Empire countries who have joined NATO and/or drastically increased their national defense budgets since 2014 was in response to your unjustified claim that:
- "...no qualms about fear-mongering with the scenario of Russia attacking Poland and other NATO countries. "
You even dishonestly put those alleged words in quotes!!
And yet, I said no such thing.
Of course, I am saying that Vlad the Invader's threats of nuclear war are indeed, "irrational and insane".
Now, if you wish to discuss such threats rationally and sanely, we can do that, I'm happy to if you want, and I'd begin by asking you if there is any place on earth that you would risk the possibility of nuclear war to defend?
Gaffer: "Honestly, you just cannot STAND anyone not hopelessly committed to going down with UKR and you cannot STAND anybody disagreeing with this almighty NATO deism cult thinking.
NORTH ATLANTIC, dammit.....how hard is that to understand?"
Seriously? Americans are not "going down with Ukraine", though we are helping Ukrainians defend their own country.
But if Vlad the Invader does defeat Ukraine, then there is no way Americans can avoid the negative consequences including:
- Feeding the CRING's (China, Russia, Iran, NoKo Group) "decline of the democratic West" narrative.
- Reductions in deterrent values of US and allied militaries.
- Loss of American defense leadership.
- Accelerated slide in US economic leadership affecting the value of the US dollar, making Americans poorer.
- Growth in powers and prestige of the Authoritarian East (the CRING).
- Encouragement of aggressive & revanchist authoritarian dictators everywhere, threatening smaller countries from Taiwan to Israel to Guyana and many more:
This list shows unresolved territorial disputes by continent, including:
- 36 different disputes in Asia and the Middle East
- 28 different disputes in Africa
- 14 different disputes in Central and South America
- 12 different disputes in Europe
90 total territorial disputes around the world
This list shows border conflicts resulting in actual fighting -- dozens just since 2000.
All of these are kept in reasonable check by the deterrent values of America's military alliances.
As deterrence declines, expect such conflicts to increase. - The end result will be a world in which the US power is less effective, and the world is therefore more inherently chaotic, violent and subject to the whims of aggressive authoritarian dictators.
That’s just wishful thinking."
Sorry, but no, it is only your wishful thinking which denies the obvious, namely that NATO and other Western countries have been treating Ukraine as if Ukraine is our ally and already strongly supported by NATO, if not a de jure member.
I think at this point eventual official NATO membership for Ukraine is all but inevitable.
Gaffer: "In end neither you or I will agree because I didn’t lose anything in UKR and I don’t believe them losing or ceding territory will result in my children fighting Russians in Europe where everybody secretly agrees not to use nuclear weapons (because it’s and insane and irrational fear)....."
Sorry, your lengthy sentence is a little hard to follow.
It seems you are trying to tell me that you don't want to send Americans to fight a nuclear war against Vlad the Invader, and you fantasize the best way to prevent that is simply to concede to Vlad whatever territories he demands, be they in Ukraine, or Moldova, or Georgia, or Estonia, or Latvia, Lithuania, Finland or Poland or Romania, Slovakia or anywhere else, right?
Have I stated your argument here correctly?
Gaffer: "What I do know is that when it does lose, there are going to be some awfully disappointed Zeepers here who will be going through some pretty serious postpartum depression."
Your words "win" and "lose" are matters of definition.
In one sense Ukraine has already won and Vlad the Invader lost when:
- Vlad's February 2022 "special military operation" failed to overrun all of Ukraine in a matter of weeks, if not days.
- Ukrainians liberated about half the territories Vlad had conquered in early 2022.
- Ukrainians have prevented massive Russian "Meat Wave" assaults around Bakhmut and Avdiivka from gaining more than a few miles, at the cost of tens of thousands of Russian casualties.
- Ukrainians have inflicted around 315,000 total casualties on invaders, which is roughly 90% of Vlad's total force in 2022 -- according to US intelligence estimates.
Ukraine's own estimates of Russian casualties are somewhat higher. - Ukrainians have largely destroyed Russia's Black Sea fleet and forced its remaining ships to evacuate Crimea.
- Ukrainians have destroyed Russian supply, transportation and command centers ever further in Russia's rear lines, resulting in ever increasingly sporadic support for Russia's front line troops.
- Ukraine's "summer offensive" was not very successful, but I think Ukrainians now have a very clear idea of exactly what it will take to become successful in the future.
The most likely outcome I see today is similar to what we have in Korea, now 70+ years after the Korean War armistice -- still no formal peace treaty and in the mean time North Korea has become a uniquely authoritarian & paranoid caricature of some of our worst historical dictatorships.
Today, NoKo's Little Kim is a subservient client of the CCP's Xi-snake, and that is also where Vlad the Invader is taking his new Russian Empire -- it will be the CCP's vassal state.
Finally, there's this, a map of the world color coded by levels of democratic government where green & yellow = more democratic, while red and black = authoritarian dictatorships
This is the larger issue at stake in Ukraine today.