MaxPower said:
I'm not convinced peace is really feasible with Putin in charge. The only "peace" plan Russia will accept is one that hamstrings Ukraine for an easier takeover later. Ukraine isn't getting its full territory back but if it wants to exist as anything but a puppet state it will need to survive long enough for Putin to die or motivate Russians to overthrow him. For Putin, he has to hope western political will runs out to support Ukraine. Ukraine has to hope for the opposite.
My will as an American has run out. We have accomplished what our main interest should have been, which was to ensure Russia paid a heavy price to deter future aggression and give the Euro's time to wake up. The question should transition to how much Europe wants to support Ukraine's efforts. They are the ones who want a buffer zone with Russia, not us.
I think the second part is a bad take. One of the global takeaways over the last few decades is that America can simply be waited out. Other countries and terrorist groups think, often correctly, that they can just bide their time and wage a war on public opinion. As long as we don't fully commit and see things through, we sabotage our ability to project hard and soft power.
Trump is a perfect example of that. He made a lot of bold claims about ending this conflict quickly, and he's made 0 progress. Why? Putin, knowing that any kind of escalated aid or support would be politically unpopular for MAGA, called his bluff and ignored him. It's really difficult to negotiate and project power when people stop taking you seriously.
And the idea that it's not our problem will inevitably bite us in the ass. Problems don't stay isolated forever, and we've seen countless times throughout our history where that has proven the case. We and the Europeans didn't give a **** about the Bolsheviks because it wasn't our problem and we were tired after WWI. There was minimal support for the Whites, and because no one had the will, we got 70 years of the Soviet Union and the poison of global communism. If the Bolsheviks had been crushed, we wouldn't have had all of the conflicts and problems of the Cold War. Probably far less communist and leftist propaganda and influence in academia, a non-communist China and Cuba, no interventionism under containment policy, etc. Even this conflict likely wouldn't exist.
WWII was the same thing. A lot of people decided it wasn't their problem, and eventually it created a whole host of issues. If war in Europe was avoided or nipped in the bud with stronger, earlier support, Japan probably doesn't try to capture European colonies and territories in Asia. That whole conflict might not even happen. The Holocaust wouldn't happen, and we wouldn't have seen hundreds of thousands to millions of Jews fleeing to Israel. That whole situation would look vastly different and, IMO, probably better.
Somalia is another example. Clinton pulled out because our nose got bloodied and it was no longer our problem. That's sent a signal of weakness that emboldened Al Qaeda. Thanks to that one decision and Clinton's weak responses to other attacks, we got the GWOT a decade later.
In a micro form, think of all the rich people in Beverly Hills, LA, San Francisco, etc who pushed for less policing. Different motivation, but effectively the same action. Have people less capable and effective handle crime while we live in our ivory towers because crime out there isn't our problem. Yeah, that was great until crime got out of control and started spilling over into their neighborhoods. Then all of a sudden they wanted tough DA's and more cops.
