Quote (MadMan87 @ Nov 19 2024 02:47pm)
The scary part of this is if Russia comes out of this in good shape the US loses a lot of relevancy.
What decision makers in the west i think fail to grasp is the public is not going to endorse these forever wars for decades to come. So you have to be selective and basically engage when you absolutely need to. Iraq is an example of a huge mistake that spent a lot of 'public willingness capital' for lack of a better phrase. Most Americans aren't on board with throwing hundreds of billion at Ukraine either. I find it so dishonest when the media 'presses' the new border czar saying deportations will cost upwards of $80+BN which is super expensive apparently (with the reporter implying high cost little utility, so the watcher would question the policy) but then have nothing to say about $100+BN being sent to Ukraine on per year basis, now 2 years in a row. We can spare more and more money for unclear geopolitical ambitions thousands of miles away from our border but domestic issues that are felt and seen are something framed as too expensive.
Russia is small potatoes when it comes to actual geopolitical threats on the horizon over the next 20,30,50 years. Europe is an aging continent, which is losing its economic advantage it once held to places like China. The more money we dump on dumb unfruitful wars, the more domestically people will say we don't want it anymore and we've had enough. So when China is restricting shipping lanes in the south China sea and basically quietly pushed us out of hegemony, the populace may be so fed up and tired with the previous wastes of wars, that there wont be any appetite to actually counter the real threat to hegemony.
This post was edited by ofthevoid on Nov 19 2024 02:02pm