Comment by myrmidon

14 days ago

I think classifying western aid to Ukraine as tax transfer to the military industrial complex is just incorrect. Because a lot of it does/did NOT need to be directly replenished for the donors-- instead the donations was more like getting rid of older stockpiles, and for some systems moving the modernization schedule up.

And I think the attitude "its pointless to try and keep helping against the Russians, people have suffered from them for so long anyway" is completeley beside the point (and dangerous!)-- the main gain from helping the Ukraine in my view is discouraging the kind of neo-imperialistm that led to this attack, and stopping the support just sends a signal to ambitious tyrants all over the world that you don't really care about them plundering their weaker neighbors (and with having the biggest military comes some kind of obligation in this regard in my view).

I also think that you are patronizing the Ukrainians themselves in the worst way-- if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.

16 comments

myrmidon

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Dalewyn  14 days ago

>instead the donations was more like getting rid of older stockpiles, and for some systems moving the modernization schedule up.

That is precisely the benefitting of the military industrial complex that I am fed up with.

>"its pointless to try and keep helping against the Russians, people have suffered from them for so long anyway"

That is not what I'm angry about. I am angry that this war is dragging on far longer than there is any reasonable reason to be. If we hadn't trickled in support Ukraine would have lost already, if we had placed our full weight behind Ukraine they would have won already; either way the war would have ended long ago.

With the question of warmongering settled at this point (it's okay to warmonger, whether any of us like it or not), the only thing I care about is people not dying. I sincerely don't care how the war ends anymore, all I care about at this point is that it stops ASAP, that people stop dying.

>if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.

If they want to continue fighting that's totally within their right, but I as an American taxpayer am not obliged to foot their bill much less in the manner we've been doing it.

  • mrguyorama  14 days ago

    >the only thing I care about is people not dying

    If you think Ukrainians are just going to roll over and submit if everyone abandons them and Ukraine must capitulate, you are an idiot.

    These are people who's ancestors had their ethnicity half erased. Even this war is part of that erasure. Russia literally kidnaps children to ship them off who knows where.

    The Ukrainian people will resist. It will be Afghanistan all over again.

    Plenty will continue to die.

    A lack of ATACMS will not change that. The ONLY outcome that stops people dying is Russia going the fuck home. Ukrainians have been dying to push out Russian invaders for 10 years now, not 2.

    • dagenleg  14 days ago

      The war is not going well and I could see how cutting the western support could force the Ukrainian loss. We have seen that when the front started crumbling during the period when the ammunition supply from the US was interrupted for half a year.

      The west can definitely force Ukraine to sign a humiliating treaty, ceding land and freezing the conflict, there's plenty of leverage for that. If that happens, the days of Ukraine as an independent state are numbered - a new invasion will happen as soon as russians rebuild their forces, and this time it will be done right. People will continue to die even if the country gets erased from the map, just maybe not in the trenches, but in the torture chambers and prisons instead.

    • Dalewyn  14 days ago

      Common Ukrainians are increasingly suffering war exhaustion[1], if current trends continue then next year could reach a point that Zelensky might lose popular support all together.

      This is alongside war-support exhaustion from America. One of Trump's campaign promises was to end the war immediately ("in 24 hours", I personally think that specific timeframe is untenable), and he won the popular vote which cements that promise as a popular American mandate.

      Wars are oftentimes inevitable, but I am strictly of the mind that if wars must be waged that they be decisive and swift so that human suffering can be kept to the absolute minimum. The war as it stands is neither decisive nor swift, and we (the west) absolutely share responsibility in the blood being shed.

      And on the note of blood shed, another commenter asked "Whose lives?"[2] when I rebuked him for calling human lives "cheap". I believe we can all agree that all men are created equal with an unalienable right to life.

      If we are seriously going to say certain lives are less valuable than others, then I think Putin has absolutely won his warmongering bet on every front possible. If we are happy to see Ukrainians die in place of our own countrymen so we (the west) can point at Russia and laugh, man maybe we deserve to lose the Pax Americana era.

      [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42197023

      5 replies →

  • myrmidon  14 days ago

    > That is precisely the benefitting of the military industrial complex that I am fed up with.

    This whole position just strikes me as misguided, because the numbers simply dont work. At all. Because if what you mainly care about is reducing US taxes flowing into weapon manufacturers, then the Ukraine is such a marginal portion that it basically does not matter at all:

    If you said "lets reduce US spending on military to what all the rest of NATO together spends" (mind you, that is still the largest military budget in the world!), then that change alone would save in a single year over 4 (total!) Ukraine aid programs (and this is including all financial and humanitarian aid so far).

    If you look at the stock price for major US arms manufacturers (RTX, LMT, NOC-- picked for being large and majority non-civilian revenue), then the whole Ukraine thing is basically not even a blip-- you would not even be able to tell (contrast the whole bitcoin/AI boom which is clearly visible in Nvidia price).

    > With the question of warmongering settled at this point

    I strongly disagree that this question is settled with a yes. I do absolutely agree with you that the answer from the US and especially its european allies should have been more decisive and unambiguous.

    In the end, what the Ukraine war did and still does is establish a price on blatant imperialism. That price needs to be as high as possible to discourage and prevent repetitions as much as possible.

    I would argue that this was a success in that regard already, but a small one, especially regarding the EU. Cutting further support would undermine and weaken this even more.

    I'd also like to challenge your position on wanting to force an end to avoid further loss of life: How can you be confident that an (immediate) conclusion in Russians favor by cutting Ukraine military, humanitarian and financial aid (possibly also from allies) would actually be a net benefit in lives saved?

    If you just look at the first and second Chechen war and the 8 years of insurgency directly after, what would make you confident that the exact same atrocities would not repeat at 20 times the scale?

    To me personally, cutting support for the Ukraine when ones country is founded on principles of self-determination, freedom and democracy is peak hypocrisy.

    Sources:

    https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RTX

    https://de.finance.yahoo.com/quote/LMT

    https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NOC/

    Ukraine aid volume:

    https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine

tmiku  14 days ago

> if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.

Looks like the popular sentiment over there is shifting towards a negotiated peace with territorial concessions. https://www.newsweek.com/ukrainians-changing-their-minds-war...

  • n4r9  14 days ago

    Are there other less partisan sources reporting this? From what I understand, Newsweek has been an alt-right mouthpiece since 2022.