Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
I’m not convinced more war will result in less rape and less murder, in fairness.
I acknowledged the high price the Ukrainian people are paying and would pay in a prolonged war above. To be more clear yes, I meant more than a financial price when I stated that.
You yourself acknowledged above the benefits to the USA:
This isn’t toy soldiers. There’s real people out there getting killed every day. For every death there are reprisals. The unpleasant reality of war.
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I did indeed acknowledge there are great strategic benefits (to all of NATO, in fact, and not just the USA), but it doesn’t matter how self-interested you think America is, an alignment of interests between NATO and Ukraine doesn’t lessen Ukraine’s right to defend itself in any way, any more than the Western allies’ cause was less just in WW2 for having made a pact with Stalin.
Based on what was discovered in the briefly occupied territories in the north and northeast, Ukraine has every reason to suppose that long-term occupation of the south and southeast would be equally intolerable for Ukrainian citizens there. It is quite at liberty, given the events of 2014 and since, to believe that ceding territory to Russia will not only impoverish those trapped beyond the line of control but give Russia a new start line for its next military action against Kyiv, even if that action is another 10-15 years down the line.
Ukraine clearly - justifiably in my view - sees itself as in an existential struggle, and if it is able, via diplomacy or outright propaganda, to skin Western nations for $billions worth of weapons in order to pursue that struggle as far as it possibly can - even to the complete liberation of its internationally-recognised borders, if possible - then it is free to do so. And no foreign policy aim expressed by the USA or its allies this century changes Ukraine’s basic right to act as it has.