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A peace deal where there is some type of integration of Ukraine within some sort of broader alliance system and there is some peacekeeper force to dissuade aggression, is actually the morally best path and an end to a nightmare of never ending bloodpath. Interestingly Russian nationalists like Rurik Skywalker see peace as a case of Putin being a traitor to the west.
However a ceasefire as a prelude of WW3 and new war against Russia is a bad idea. As would a ceasefire that leaves Ukraine completely vurnerable. Having some boots on the ground but with the leadership behind not be warmongers, as a way to dissuade Russia, and to stop new conflict, seems to actually be the morally superior path that ends the bloodpath and sustains peace. This kind of peace deal then would have most of Ukraine integrate itself with NATO forces alliance even if nominally it doesn't enter NATO and would also include a failure of Russian war aims.
There seems to be a show where American and friends policy makers intervene with plenty of corruption of contractors and client groups making money and help escalate things in a region both through their own warmongering or supporting other groups and then other Americans frame things from the perspective of how Americans don't need to help these foreigners. I do think that sometimes going there, creating chaos and then washing your hands away from the whole issue is also irresponsible. And now Trump has been trying to get a very onerous agreement on Ukraine that gives profits even from income of Ukrainian harbors.
There isn't a conflict where we have a moral do gooder side and an immoral side here among American interventionists. Europeans should actually not like the mainstream neocon agenda sans Trump, because it has been at their expense in regards to destroying nordstream, steering conflict, and isolating them with Russia and cheap energy.
I do think that Russia it self is a potential threat to other European countries if it was more successful.
Anyway, the neocon warmongers are probably responsible for the most death and destruction in the 21st century both directly and through the chaos they caused. And every time a simple moral fairy tale that tries to copy WW2 narratives was used to justify the destruction of various countries. It is actually the moral and better path for this kind of agenda to stop.
A peace deal here would be an improvement that genuinely helps Ukraine. I actually agree with the Ukrainians that Trump's demand is too onerous. However, it is also true that Ukrainians although much less, and much less successfully than Jews, in the USA are trying to influence the country in their direction. And there are also other than Ukrainians, deep state creatures. Secondarily, there is a problem with throwing many billions around in wars. There must be an effort to audit where the money went and to go after and punish corrupt and to stop biological weapon research, and defund deep state intelligence types getting funded. Like the attempted minsinformation czar in the Biden administration, that had Ukrainian ties. I sympathize with this idea of not blindly throwing around billions of money.
In general, it would be preferable for both the Russians, Chinese and Americans and European countries to try to deescalate from great power and spheres of influence conflict, and see more benefit through trade and peaceful relations. This does involve though not allowing the Chinese for example to send fishing fleets worldwide and deplete fish supplies, and actually organizing to stop this fleet. While rhetoric about the evil Putler isn't the way to go, what I am recommending of diplomacy, requires of course countries like Russia and China to go along as well and it isn't just one way street. Even though we should see a freeze of the fanatics from the western foreign policy leadership. Whether they are fanatics due to having grudges related to the area, or fanatics about American world domination. But not being fanatical, doesn't entail letting Russia or China walk all over the interests of european countries. So peace requires strength. It doesn't require blindly throwing money around and not curtailing corruption though.
Also, it is good for European countries to be more skeptical of USA and to stop seeing Trump and republicans as the only bad guys. It is really self destructive for European countries to like the American Democratic party and its agenda because it has been a very anti european agenda. Skepticism is warranted towards MAGA agenda too. Again though, cooperation is better than conflict, and diplomacy is important. But from some of the rhetoric I see, there is this delusioanl interpretation of vassalage as being in the own good of European countries. To an extend European elites buy into this and there is a lot of delusion and irrationality. The USAID type of American influence can be detrimental in many key ways. So part of this might be the fact that European elites might had been funded by such programs or world economic forum new leaders programs or such.
And the right is correct that there is a bigger threat. And USAID was part of the problem of this threat but only one facet of the influence of a worldwide faction. The agenda of self destruction through self hatred of one's own national identity, community and its right to exist, and siding with all sorts of foreign nationalists who combine their forces with local likeminded political factions, to take over and make the natives into second class citizens colonized in their own land, is in fact a huge problem that requires focus. The fake moralistic neocon agenda, in addition to all the destruction and conflict it has brought, can both can distract from that and justify some of the key people pushing this who are part of this agenda. Although there are others, including people who might be funded by Russia or China which historically (in Russia's case more when it was USSR, but it isn't necessarily against it today neither) sided with this kind of agenda as well.
I'm no neocon, but successful interventions are easily forgotten, botched ones never area. How many lives did intervention save in Sierra Leone? In Kosovo? Operation Barkhane (until Mali kicked them out)? How many might have been saved if the West have been more active in Rwanda or Bosnia?
Foreign policy decisions seem to often suffer from the lessons of over-learning from the past. True, this does indeed mean that not every dictator is a Hitler. But equally not every plausible intervention is another Iraq.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria are the four major interventions prior to Ukraine. All four were complete disasters, and the two we committed hardest to did meaningful long-term damage to America in the form of trillions in additional debt and eroded social cohesion.
These were pretty marginal 'interventions'. In the case of Libya it was a no-fly zone and some sporadic airstrikes, and for all Hillary bloviated I doubt that the outcome of the Libyan Civil War would have been any less disastrous if the West did nothing except maybe Gaddafi kills a few more rebels on his way out. Post-Gaddafi the West has done almost nothing. While there has been slightly more involvement in Syria, this has been mostly fighting ISIS and didn't really start until the civil war was well underway - again, it's hardly as if absent US action Assad would have regained control over Syria. Occasionally airstriking an airfield hardly changed the course of the war. Objectively, in terms of actual action taken by the West, Kosovo and Sierra Leone were far more 'major' interventions and were successes.
Iraq was obviously a total disaster, but it was preceded by totally disastrous non-interventions and some successful interventions - this is precisely the point I'm making about over-learning lessons - not every intervention is another Iraq.
After all, Ukraine or most other contemporary foreign policy problems are not analogous in any meaningful way to Iraq or Afghanistan. The west should take some lessons from those two disasters, but the ghosts of the past can't dictate foreign policy forever.
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