•  Sonori   ( @sonori@beehaw.org ) 
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    9 months ago

    Was bipartisan, keyword was. Trump is an isolationist, and both has an continues to run on a platform of appeasement and withdrawal. See withdrawing for Kosovo for instance. Moreover, support for Russia is probably very high among the maga crowd as it has been heavily marketed as a white christian ethnostate pushing back against the ‘woke agenda’.

    If the GOP was so interested in supporting Ukraine, why did they delay any action for months and constantly attach absurd border riders to an bill that has nothing to do with the border.

    The idea that Nato lacks the industrial capacity to fight Russia in a peer conflict is so absurd I don’t even know where to start. The US provided Ukraine 31 tanks, at the same time it sold 116 to Poland. Simultaneously, the US provided some long range strike capability to Ukraine in the form of ATACMs -A, a weapon system that forced the Russian air force to withdraw all quick reaction forces from bases in occupied Ukraine, including Crimea, and which ceased production in 1997 owing to haveing been replaced by more modern designs and which was being broken down for spare parts when the decision was made to send some.

    How many systems that the US considers modern enough to use itself have been sent? How many Aegis systems? How many Tomahawks? How many of the thousands of F35s that have been built in the last decade have been sent, let alone F22s?

    Maybe the Patriot system, of which Ukraine has three batteries, putting it on par with Jordon and the UAE? Japan alone has six whole battalions of Patriots, and there hardly the largest user.

    Russia is not the Soviet Union, that included over a half a dozen major industrial nations that are now Nato members.

    Russia is not a peer to the US or China, it is a hypercapitalist dictatorship with a lot of 60s and 70s tech laying around rusting in fields, and which self proclaimed opponents are fighting to a standstill using decades old scrap and in the US case, a line item worth less than a quarter of what the federal government spent on subsidizing health insurance providers alone.

    We dont think Twitter with win this war, mearly the basic economic scale of a small dictatorship trying to pretend it is some great imperial empire by amexing yet another of its neighbors.

    But hey, they managed to take Adivka, a town within walking distance of the center of a city that they took in 2014 and which has seen constant fighting since day one. It only took three years and a large donation of shells from North Korea to do it.

      •  Sonori   ( @sonori@beehaw.org ) 
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        9 months ago

        Isolationism, national policy of avoiding political or economic entanglements with other countries… Isolationism was a common charge leveled at paleoconservatives who rose in response to the statism and internationalism of the neoconservative movement, which dominated the political scene during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. - Encyclopedia Brittannica

        One can withdraw from foreign diplomatic and economic agreements, such as Trump’s first day executive order that withdrew the US from and made China the leader in the the Trans Pasific Parthership, while also favoring assignations. Indeed, using assignation and small, frequent unilateral military action to presue foreign policy Instead of multinational, diplomatic, or economic means is foundational to isolationist foreign power.

          • How is fuck you, got mine, i’ll take what I want and if you start to say anything anything about it i’ll blow you up posibly the lesser evil over diplomatic negotiations?

            • What diplomatic ends have been achieved under Biden? The US has explicitly stood against the rest of the world to oppose diplomatically ending the three new military engagements that have started under Biden.

              And even then, diplomatic negotiations with whom and for whom? Security agreements with other honky nations to keep Africa from developing? Diplomatic naval bases in the Philippines directly escalating the risk of starting WWIII? I’m sure orphaned Gazan kids will be relieved to know that we have good diplomatic allies in the region.

              I’d far prefer an erratic isolationist than someone who uses every opportunity to forcefully impose upon other nations. But again, Trump is no better in that regard.

              • Um, ever heard of the Kyoto Protocol, Paris Agreement, and UNFCCC? All treaties that Trump either attempted to or successfully backed out of and which Biden rejoined. Slow and too little yes, but all of which do create a legally binding commitment to make at least some progress. Maybe the IPCC, which is heavily reliant on Amarican government agencies like NASA and NOAA to gather the data they make thier reports on, as well as funding for studies?

                How about building and distributing green technologies to fight climate change, most of which require economic cooperation with foreign countries to both build and distribute.

                How about the 50 to 60 Billion a year in humanitarian aid and free food that the US provides to the poorest parts of Central Africa and South America that were most heavily damaged by colonialism? You know, programs that save millions of families from dying of starvation and which Trump either attempted to or successfully stopped, and which Biden has re-entered and expanded. You know, the sorts of programs isolationists like Trump primary fight as reparations.

                I’m certain to know the Gazan kids will be thrilled to know that the person who is actively ordering Amarican drone strikes on them to posture to his base is really a cool dude because he also cut off food to Guatemala and Ethiopia.