Excargodog

The Balkans are a "strategic location" for us? Explain why? You do realize that from 1940 until 1990 - a half century - Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were part of the USSR, don't you? Yet somehow the US survived that quite well.

Your buddy Albania? You do realize that from 1944 to 1991 it was not only a communist dictatorship, but a communist dictatorship so severe it made the USSR seem benign.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/glo...unism-victims/

Yet the USA was entirely unaffected by it.

And the list goes on, Romania, Moldova, most of Eastern Europe was in the hands of the USSR either directly or as Warsaw Pact satellites, but life went on in the US pretty much unimpeded. I'm pretty sure it was "relevant" even before the USSR collapsed in 1990.

Either you are ignorant of history or you are being overwhelmed by the interventionist fear porn.


https://youtu.be/0ACDoxjj9WQ?si=LQGjpTyMvZqDT3Ms

Excargodog

https://youtu.be/0ACDoxjj9WQ?si=
LQGjpTyMvZqDT3Ms

The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming...😬🫨😰

ReluctantEskimo

Gaslighting Russian aggression has been a favorite pasttime of isolationists.

Excargodog

DERA claims the US and the world will somehow come apart if the Balkans weren't part of NATO, yet they weren't part of NATO for over 50 years and the US somehow survived it. H€11, for that matter the Ukraine was a founding member of the USSR in 1922 yet the world still went on.

But the choice isn't an either/or one. Just because you no longer desire to be the world's policeman doesn't mean you need to be strictly isolationist, not that isolationism hasn't been the default position of the US for most of its history.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/15...ernationalism/

dera

US was entirely unaffected by the cold war?

Man you are something special.

Excargodog

The US was entirely unaffected by the USSR controlling much of Eastern Europe - even half of Germany. It was a helluva lot more affected by interventionists trying to salvage French interests in Indochina. Sometimes it's just best to let feuding cultures fight their own fights. And again, the Walter Lippmann quote:

ReluctantEskimo

The United States failing to meet its obligations would be the weakest link of all.

Lowslung

You mean other than having to spend a metric s..t-ton of money on defense, a nuclear arms race, keeping bombers, missiles, subs, and quick reaction forces on alert 24/7, massive espionage & counterespionage operations, whole fleets of satellites & aircraft keeping an eye on Soviet movements day and night, the psychological effects of a population that's vulnerable to nuclear annihilation at any moment, the constant threat of miscalculation of the intentions of the other side, the potential lost economic activity resulting from having much of the world under Soviet control, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera? Yeah, other than all that stuff, entirely unaffected". 🤣

Excargodog

None of which had squat to do with the USSR occupation of Eastern Europe and half of Germany which OUR PRESIDENT agreed to at Yalta. And, for that matter, it was agreed to because they were our allies against Nazi Germany, which had swallowed up pretty much all of Europe and much of North Africa by the time we got in the war. Nobody ever said the world was a safe place. Do you think we would have done better in WWII if the USSR hadn't absorbed 8.7 million military (and 19 million civilian) casualties fighting on OUR side? And given that we went only five years later into a war in Korea involving Communist China, in which our troops lost 36,000 dead service members do you think we wouldn't have built up those forces anyway? Or the Vietnam War where we lost another 50,000 dead?

Interventions anywhere are costly, nor is there any guarantee of eventual success. All the more reason we should enter them cautiously.

Excargodog

Explain our obligations to Ukraine. Cite the Senate ratified treaty making them somehow our responsibility. Not what some US diplomat promised over canapés at an embassy event, but a Senate ratified treaty.