When the dust settles, the US will surely be able to claim their intentions were for the greater moral good - saving sovereign ukrainians from evil russian imperial ambitions. It's a noble cost most US citizens were surely behind of!

Oh come on... nothing of substance changes by China finally dropping the pretense of not siding with Russia in this war and officially being "neutral". Let me know when China starts sending troops or heavy arms to Russia, or when Chinese companies expand their business in Russia to fill the gaps left behind by the withdrawal of Western companies.

And of course China likes the current Sino-Russian relations - Putin has lost his best customers and effectively become China's bitch. Of course they're gonna love them some additional cheap oil and leverage.

Was the question on 'how the US benefits from their position in this conflict' ever answered?

Weakening a geopolitical rival who has just demonstrated that he's willing to pursue his revisionist, imperialist ambitions with the use of force, is in America's interest.
Finland and Sweden joining NATO benefits the US-led alliance. Other allies are also more willing to increase their anorexic defense spending.
And if Russia can ultimately be prevented from capturing the majority of Ukraine and be sent packing with a bloody nose, that would strengthen the deterrence against China with regard to Taiwan.

A lot of the means employed in this war are misguided, in particular the energy sanctions and the slow start to the shipment of heavy weapons to Ukraine - but the ultimate goal is worthwhile. Even setting moral or humanitarian concerns aside, this is a fight worth fighting. (Not at any cost though.)

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 10 2022 06:57pm

China moves at a glacial pace. When Chinese ambassadors drop a pretense and start openly siding against the US and with Russia, that's a significant deal to the geopolitical balance. And they've already been looking to replace Russia's foreign business that was cut off by NATO countries. With their own petrodollar. Which, again, is a huge deal geopolitically. We're uniting the major powers of the world against us and united the minor powers of the world with them, and we're undermining our own greatest tool of global hegemony, the oil markets.

Making other countries into our bitch for cheap oil and labor and leverage aka exploitation is how we've been the world's leader for the entire post-war era. And we're accelerating our downfall



Even on moral and humanitarian grounds, this is not a war worth fighting. We're fighting to prop up a regime that overthrew a democratically elected government in a coup d'etat and split a country in half, and we're only willing to expend Ukrainian lives in a war they cannot win. Having the poor schmucks of the third world die en masse on behalf of their glorious America benefactors for the umpteenth time. They're fighting to pull Ukraine into the western geopolitical sphere even though it spent the past few centuries in the eastern sphere, even though the majority of Ukrainian citizens opposed it. And we're unwilling to invest the military capital and risk world war on their behalf, so we'll just feed them into the wood chipper and pat ourselves on the back for it.

This post was edited by Goomshill on Aug 10 2022 07:24pm

Sorry, not in the mood to go over every single point of disagreement, let me just selectively pick out a few:

China and Russia are not the only non-Western major powers in the world, and they have always been united in their opposition, politically and economically, to the West. It is indeed frustrating that countries like India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia or South Africa did not side with us, but them doing what's in their best interest does not mean that they are aligned, let alone "united" with the cause of Russia & China. Dito for minor powers like Indonesia, Egypt or Ethiopia.



- You keep repeating the talking point that "Ukraine cannot win this war" time and time again, and a lot of your reasoning rests on this key assumption. It is still patently wrong. There is zero reason to believe that it would be fundamentally impossible for Ukraine to win back the provinces to the west of the Dnipro river and otherwise hold the lines at roughly the current state, thus preserving its independence and statehood. Aside from bombing Sieverodonetsk and Lyssichantsk into the ground and then taking their ruins, the Russians haven't been able to gain any major territory over the past 3 months.

- The poor schmucks in Ukraine are dying at the hands of the Russians who have vowed to erase Ukraine's statehood and to thoroughly "denazify" its society, which is an obvious code for "purge it from any dissidents". The poor schmucks in Africa and other countries are starving because Russia has been weaponizing grain exports (and the interconnectedness of the global economy in general).

- A majority of the elected officials in Ukraine wanted the president to ratify the EU association agreement, which the Russia-aligned president refused, sparking the Euromaidan protests. Even today, the vast majority of Ukrainians are fighting for their pro-Western government. So no, a majority of Ukrainians did not "oppose the orientation toward the West" and we don't have to artificially and egoistically "pull Ukraine into the Western geopolitical sphere" - the bulk of Ukrainians outside of the Donbass and Crimea want to fight for their independence, fight for their right to choose an alliance with the West over becoming a Russian satellite.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 10 2022 08:12pm

Two things

1. Ukraine cannot win. They were never going to win. Winning for them is not losing more territory than they already have lost. They are severely outgunned and it's taking billions in weapons aid from all of Europe and the US to simply keep some posture of defense.

2. Most Ukrainians want to be west leaning, now more than ever as they see Russia's aggression but no they don't want to keep fighting. That's absolute nonsense. Most Russians and Ukrainians want the war to be over like yesterday. My wife has family in Zakarpattia in western Ukraine and we talked to her aunt a few days ago and there are many dead Ukrainians. It's something that's being hushed but the locals are seeing the number of MIA Ukrainian men. Realistically that number right now is in the six figures. No one on the ground at the front actually wants to fight but when the choice is between prison or going most go. Don't confuse that with self-determination.

Dunno where you're getting these figures. The military casualties reported are in the low tens of thousands. At its worst (after the first 2 weeks) the war was claiming some 100-200 soldiers a day.

They might be downplaying the numbers slightly but given the huge focus and international attention it would be impossible to downplay to that extent. Every osint org and individual is contributing to mapping conflicts and casualties.

We may well hit 6 figures eventually but not yet. Putin is far closer to having lost that many if he hasn't already.

I mean the Ukrainians themselves have repeatedly said that they were losing 100+ men per day with many hundreds wounded and that when it comes to artillery they are severely outgunned. It's nonsensical to believe the side that fires 10 rockets for every one on the other side would have lost more men.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Aug 10 2022 08:56pm

The Russians and the cowboys they brought in from Belarus and Chechnya have been utterly indiscriminate in their use of rockets etc. It's entirely possible for that to be the case. They used tonnes of rockets to simply flatten a largely empty Mariupol.

E/also I'm talking military casualties. A significant amount of Russian munitions have gone towards civilian targets.

This post was edited by MxVivianWulf on Aug 10 2022 09:02pm