Someone please tell me: what compelling national security interest does the USA have in Ukraine???

 

All the current talk about threats of war with Russia over Ukraine are about the stupidest thing I can imagine . . . except that the Biden administration has painted itself into a corner with its incompetence and buffoonery, and the oligarchs that are pulling its strings realize that their exploitation of COVID-19 to increase their control over the citizens is in tatters, and Russia sees in our weakness an opportunity to assert its status as a "recovering superpower", if I may use that term.

There is no, repeat, NO reason for Americans to lose their lives to defend a corrupt, incompetent regime in Ukraine.  We have no compelling or vital national security interest to defend there.  Anyone who disagrees with me is free to identify such an interest and explain it in a comment to this blog post.  I'd love to read it.

Tucker Carlson and his guest put it well yesterday.  The segment is only about five minutes long, and is worth watching.

We've seen this tactic used time and time again in multiple countries over many centuries.  Are things getting out of hand for the powers that be in their own country?  Then, quick - let's make the citizens focus on an external threat, something around which they'll feel duty-bound to unite and ignore anything else.  While they're focused on that, we can get away with whatever we like internally.

China's doing that right now over Taiwan.

Russia's doing that right now over Ukraine.

The USA's doing that right now over Russia.

No war is necessary in any of those examples . . . but given the rhetoric of the leaders concerned, and the need they all share to distract their citizens from internal problems and the manufactured (in every way) threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, they'll grasp eagerly at any and every available straw.

Afghanistan wasn't worth the thousands of American lives it cost to conquer and occupy it.  Ukraine isn't worth even one American life, because there's nothing there that we need or want, and nothing that's of direct and immediate importance to us.  Let the Ukrainians and the Russians sort it out.  It's their business.  If Europe wants to get involved, let them.  They're near enough to the problem for it to be their business.  We aren't.

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  See CDR Salamander's views for an interesting insight into how and why Russia is reacting as it is.