That's the trouble with lefties. It is all about personality, who is mean and who is bad. And who should be punished because he is not to be trusted. And why my morals are better than yours or his. All so self-satisfied and smug. Give the assholes some power, and Katy bar the door, they will screw things up in such a huge way. They are incredibly dangerous. Gawd, I am so tired of that bullshit. Especially when it is mixed with wokeism, lotus-eating, smugness, and a complete denial of reality.
I had a fantastic international relations professor who drilled into me the notion that we cannot judge a nation's actions on the world stage on the basis of personalities but only on the basis of its interests, which it will pursue as it sees fit. His thesis, to put it bluntly, is that nations often act amorally when their national interests are at stake. If Putin were not alive, I am sure that more or less the same chain of events would have happened under someone else's leadership.
Problems happen when a country misperceives its interests and takes action on its misperception.
This is where we screwed up royally. Ukraine should never have been on our radar as a significant national interest worth going to war over.
Russia - lead by Putin or some other goon - cannot be expected to tolerate a NATO country on its border enjoying the full nuclear Art. 5 guarantees the US has to offer. It's too damn dangerous for it, particularly since the US has no strategic interest involved in offering those guarantees to Ukraine.
There is a long 2015 lecture by Mearsheimer on Youtube that explains all this in this exact context. He gets into the history, the trends, etc. He predicted back in 2015 what is now taking place. I think someone who got it so right seven years ago needs to be listened to. So, here he is:
youtu.be
I make these arguments to others, mostly lefties, and I get the response that I must be a treacherous, USA-hating, Putin lover. The irony is rich: where are all the allegedly peace-loving Dems? Barking like mad dogs for war but, please, do not involve their children. Dump war's tolls on the lower and middle classes, not on them.
We are screwed. There are no adults in the room. |
