this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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Multiple things can be true. Both of these claims are true.
It benefits NATO countries to curb the expansion of a rival power without losing a single soldier.
Assisting in a sovereign country in resisting annexation by a genocidal occupier is a good thing.
You don't always have to suffer to help someone else, some situations can be win-win.
If you forget all the death and destruction caused by this war, then yes. I'm sure it's very profitable.
It's not being caused by the ones providing weapons, but the attackers though?
Are you the kind of people that thells people not to help the bullied kid against the bully because it will just make them take more hits? Just surrender to the bully, easy.
Thing is, a total military defeat of Russia has seemed very unlikely for all the duration of the conflict. It's been ongoing for more than two years, and the only results so far are more Ukrainian territories occupied, and more death and destruction. Peace negotiations should be kept open at all times, and it should be up to Ukrainian people to decide the terms they agree to. Sadly, it has surfaced in an investigation from Foreign Affairs that some western powers like the UK or the US pushed Ukraine to stay in the war, for reasons that we can only speculate about. So, what's the best course of action now?
"Rival" power is a matter of choice though, isn't it? The EU could as easily have chosen to align with Russia as with they've done with the US. In the same way that both France and Germany are powers but they're not really rival. EU should have gone its own way after 1991, NATO stopped making sense after the communist block was dissolved, and the fact that it kept growing and moving further towards the east in violation of the agreements reached last century, kinda shows that it's not a defensive alliance as much as it is subservience to US's geopolitical interests.
This isn't to say the EU should be aligned to Russia or that the war in Ukraine isn't primarily Putin's fault, or that there shouldn't be a military alliance in Europe, I'm just saying the US shouldn't belong to it, let alone dictate its terms.