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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   23210 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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I wouldn't completely discount the idea of a vague security guarantee as "useless." That's more or less what we have with Taiwan, and that's managed to keep the peace for over 50 years so far. Obviously Ukraine would want something more explicit, while Russia would prefer an explicit guarantee of independance/non-interference. But sometimes the only political viable compromise is a vague muddle.

That's more or less what we have with Taiwan, and that's managed to keep the peace for over 50 years so far.

It seems to me that this is effective because "Will American forces open fire on Chinese troops if they try to invade Taiwan?" is still an open question, and the possibility that the answer is "yes" has thus far been enough to deter invasion. However, "Will American forces open fire on Russian troops if they try to invade Ukraine?" has already been answered in the negative.

I don't look at it in terms of certainties, but in probabilities. It's not like a videogame where war is automatically declared when you declare on an ally- it's always subject to the whims of politicians and public sentiment.

So yes, this time, NATO countries chose to stay out of it, although they did provide massive amounts of material aid. I note the steady escalation as we went from financial and medical aid, to obsolete weapons, to eventually sending top-shelf military equipment. There's also been a divide in our politics, with Trump and the republicans being much more isolationist, while the Democrats want to get more involved. I could see a future where there's a cease-fire for a bit, a Democrat in the veign of LBJ gets elected, and the Republics flagrantly violate the cease-fire in a way that really pisses off the American public, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Or it could go the other way. I have no idea! I don't think Putin does either. Just saying that he'd be a fool to completely ignore the US and assume he has carte-blanche to conquer all of non-affiliated Europe just because Biden and Trump chose not to get involved in this specific instance.

Of course, what I would really like to see is a massive build up of our munititions stockpiles, so that even if we don't get directly involved, we could just send enough shells and missiles to stop the invasion. it's embarrassing how badly we're getting outgunned by 50-year-old Soviet tech.

Ukraine had a vague security guarantee at the time of its independence. And we've seen how well that worked.

It's worked out reasonably well. Ukraine got a ton of aid to keep their country going, while NATO was able to avoid a direct fight with Russia. Not ideal, but i can imagine a lot of ways it could have gone worse.

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