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A good foreign policy requires convincing other nations, the friendly or neutral ones, to work with us to secure our goals, which usually means a concomitant promise to secure their goals.
What happens, though, when dealing with an adversarial relationship? Must we physically force our will upon the recalcitrant party, or are there other ways?
President Eisenhower avoided war despite the ongoing hostility of the “Cold War.” Richard Nixon ended our mistake in Vietnam. The means was wretched but, still, he ended it. President Reagan toppled the Soviet Union without firing a shot.
Most recently, Donald Trump intuitively understood Chinese Warlord Sun Tzu’s famous dictum, “It is best to win without fighting,” included in Sun Tsu’s still-relevant The Art of War. Therefore, Trump refused senseless military conflict. The current administration has gone on record as saying that, if Trump were president, there would not be fighting in Ukraine—as if that would be a bad thing.
Going back to our “business plan,” who in his right mind would have made Ukraine the centerpiece of America’s foreign policy? This conflict is devolving into the very real threat of nuclear war. Tucker Carlson has been the most visible opponent of this mad war. Meanwhile, the formerly anti-war Democrats are banging the war drums.
While the threat of nuclear war should be at the forefront of America’s concerns, Biden and the war hawks have committed another deadly error in judgment. The government is depleting our necessary weapons supply so substantially that we risk being unable to defend against true threats to our national security interests:
Top officers in the U.S. Navy warn that the Ukraine war is putting a strain on an already stretched industrial base, complaining defense contractors continue to fall behind in keeping up with the Navy’s needs, according to media reports. “If the conflict goes on for another six months to another year, it certainly continues to stress the supply chain in ways that are challenging,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said in a follow-up to his remarks at the annual Surface Navy Association conference Tuesday.
Most of the $29.9 billion in security assistance so far committed to Ukraine is withdrawn from existing U.S. stocks……. However, as contractors scramble to invest more in expanding production capacity for HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) Stinger missiles and other equipment, they poach resources that could be applied to filling the Navy’s orders, leaders warned according to the Navy Times.
Admiral Daryl Caudle had announced the day before a goal to keep at least 75 Navy ships at “full mission capable status”, meaning that they are not in a shipyard undergoing maintenance, manned and ready to go, Defense News reported. The Navy stripped parts from other ships to fill roughly 1200 orders for replacement parts in 2022–twice as many as the prior year. Of the 10 new attack submarines the Navy ordered in the past five years, only six have arrived.
John Solomon’s Just the News staff echoes these concerns:
@Honeybee
There are a few uses, but none of them speak well of the West. As the money-laundering capital of the world, Ukraine serves a useful purpose in helping the financial schemes of the Washington elites, as it similarly serves for other nations and intel groups around the world. It has also lent itself to the US biolab research which was outlawed from being conducted in the US. And then, as well, it serves as a captured and expendable Western proxy, allowing the West the ability to confront Russia in an open state of war, without any of the liabilities which the West, themselves, would face if they honestly acted out their own fantasies rather than leaving it for their Ukrainian lackeys to do for them. Imagine the intel which is being collected in regards to the capabilities and limitations of the vast array of Russia’s weapons industry products as well as of Russia’s ability to produce them in real time. In addition to this, consider all the Russian military hardware being depleted in Russia. Of course, the real prize was suppose to be for Ukraine to draw Russia into war, following which the US economic blitzkrieg was intended to settle the matter in a Maidan-in-Moscow type revolt, but, of course, as we have seen, this greater gambit by the West failed utterly and has been seen to actually cause many regime changes in Western powers and allies, but not Russia.
In fact Trump was the first to arm the Fascists. And he boasted of it too.
What is our interest in Ukraine?