I don't think estimates of Russian war spending are reliable - but to give an idea, the Moscow Times estimated Russian spending at $300M per day in the war, while Newsweek cited an outside estimate of $900M per day.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/05/18/russian-defense-spending-surges-to-300m-per-day-amid-ukraine-war-a77712
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-spending-estimated-900-million-day-ukraine-war-1704383
While I don't doubt that there is plenty of cruft in the Ukraine aid package, at least it's going towards a known problem of the Russian war on Ukraine. What I find far more ridiculous is the U.S. spending $770 billion every year in *peacetime* on its military.
Perhaps we shouldn't spend quite that much, I would agree. But look to things like our refusal to help out Ukraine due in part to military concerns and the fact that analysts are unsure an undistracted USA could protect Taiwan and prevent vicious Chinese expansion if it came down to it... and I don't things are quite so clear cut as you and I would like. IF we are to reduce spending significantly, we will need to both temper that reduction, and acquire alliances that more than pull their own weight, moreso than they do now, and as I think most of our diplomats would say, that's not as easy as it sounds.
Hi, KindaMeh. You're new here - and this has been discussed before.
Briefly, my position is that all countries should militarily cooperate to prevent and/or punish wars of conquest. I believe it's vital to make wars of conquest non-profitable, because if attempted conquerors get rich from plundering countries, it encourages more conquest. We've had a relatively good run since WWII of reduced wars, and I think that's largely thanks to the lessons of WWII that countries have cooperated globally to oppose wars of aggression.
I have been opposed to the vast majority of U.S. military actions, but my three exceptions are WWII, the Korean War and the Kuwait War. There, hostilities were started by one-sided military conquest, and we worked with allies to oppose the aggressors. For similar reasons, I support Ukraine against Russia. I think the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not justified by legitimate security concerns - it is a one-sided war of conquest.
However, in our other interventions, the fighting was most often started by us -- invading another country to conquer it or install a government to our liking. Our policy of permanently placing U.S. troops and warships all over the globe supports the latter far more than the former. We should have a standing army sufficient to defend our own borders, but that's far less than what we have - especially given that we're a nuclear superpower.
If this was recently in this thread then I apologize, I also may have inferred more from your words than perhaps I should have on your position.
So, I still stand by my earliest unquoted (presumably due to having less relevance to what you posted, not an attack) argument that the amount we’re sending probably isn’t enough by itself. Also, I know you didn’t say otherwise, but I personally think maybe we should have acted sooner. Or Biden shouldn’t have outright told Putin no troops would be deployed in the case of Ukraine itself being invaded, because why give away your hand, and if your opinion on intervention in the case of an instance like this were to be followed, shouldn’t we defend them as a group of nations ex:NATO.
Regarding your overall theory and motivations, I respectfully disagree to some degree that intervention is only warranted in cases of nation on nation violence. Ex: France helped us gain rights like representation and all our Constitutional rights by seceding from England. And if the citizens of a nation are genuinely oppressed by their government and beg for help, I feel we may at least have a moral duty to assist given the right circumstances. It’s a reach, but maybe if we intervened in Syria before the jihadists co-opted the revolution things might have been at least a bit less terrible. Also, as examples of “conquest” that ultimately did not hurt the world or the conquered from my perspective in the long run, see WW2 where we sort of ran for a while Japan and Germany but legit helped out them and the world by rebuilding. Even terrible ideas with iffy execution, like the invasion of Iraq, arguably gave some semblance of rights, democracy and the like for the people there after. And I think that’s in part because they weren’t traditional wars for conquest and directly taking a nation’s land and resources. Then doves demanded a sketchily conceived withdrawal from Afghanistan, showing they didn’t have a monopoly on getting to call out bad decisions. Heck, we provided no real help or structure in the wake of the collapse of Libya, which might have happened without our help and seemed to me like our duty to assist in the recovery from if we helped cause it at all. IDK, I don’t support unjust wars or wars of literal conquest, but I don’t know if that necessarily means all governments deserve to survive indefinitely at the expense of their people, or that at some point an active intervention couldn’t ever be warranted involving force. Also, if legitimate strategic defense interest could excuse Russia’s invasion from the perspective of us interfering (which I don’t think it would, but you did mention that in whether intervention was justified), I feel that sets a very bad precedent in realpolitik I wouldn’t condone or want. But also one that would excuse the US acting in its own preventative interests.
As for our current military efficacy, that’s kinda what I meant to highlight the weaknesses of within the quote you used. We didn’t have the force to stop with the Allie’s that could actually be mustered both Ukraine and Taiwan if they had made us choose, which they kinda did. This is an example of the potential inability of us and our regional allies to save Taiwan with China’s current unexpanded military if they commit, from an admittedly biased source:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/05/31/asia/china-taiwan-invasion-scenarios-analysis-intl-hnk-ml/index.html . So our current “overbloated military” while it is perhaps overfunded, is arguably not enough to do the interventions with allies I think I understand you to have said we should do when a democracy (or any other state, so I guess that might also mean terrible oppressive ones) is invaded for conquest. So I feel like I’m still making a legit point in that quote even with your stated position.
That said, I acknowledge we will likely still have our differences in opinion. And your stance, while not my own, is still I feel principled in its own way and I can respect that. I’m just speaking my bit now that you’ve outlined your stance.