If the USA was serious about "Slava"ing the lives of the Ukranians and Rus in general their policy would be very different than it is now. USG is supporting the Ukranian state which is unworthy of the sacrifice of even a single Ukranian.
Guns need men to fire them, and America is the most attractive place for people to migrate to. It would be straightforward to drain both belligerents' manpower pool with immigration policy such that combat operations are not viable. This is one of the core reasons the Soviet Union collapsed; the Berlin wall was the poster child for this. When a nation has to become a prison of serfs to keep things together its army quickly becomes incapable of anything beyond garrison duty. This is because a) that's costly and b) their best and brightest figure out quickly that an ounce of exit beats a ton of voice.
Instead what will we get? Tons of Rus boys get to enjoy the mobik to hamburger pipeline. Hordes of these young men that go fey will destabilize the region for a generation. All the contractors selling $31 million dollar blue tarps here will get away with it scott free, further damning these places to corruption. Millons of acres of land will be poisoned with heavy metals, and generations of people will end up missing legs thanks to landmines. Don't make me get Billy Mays out here, because just wait, there's more.
Anyone who thinks war through quickly figures out the worst peace beats the best war. People don't think it through because that would require a certain bell curve to be a standard deviation to the right of where it actually is. The discourse as such is deoxylated "military intelligence". If the above sentence requires explanation, here's your sign.
America could play a non-malign role on the world stage. That would require a level of intelligence that is clearly not here.
Hell, they can't even manage competently malign! USG may have the best weapons systems on earth, but its pearls before swine. These west point droolers hardly even use transformative weapons that are in the stockpile! They'd rather pretend these systems don't exist so they can keep zipping around in tanks and attack helicopters oblivious to the risk posed thereby. Meanwhile they waste hundred thousand dollar missiles blowing up $300 trucks rather than expose themselves to danger in these expensive boat anchors. But hey, at least they get to go home safe blowing up some shit 200km away that is as likely to be the milkman as Osama Bin Laden. I'm sure strategic hamlets will work this time. We just need to COIN harder guise.
Meanwhile the mainstream discourse is that it would somehow be "bad for America" if we don't smear such incompetence over the entire world. In reality, the reason the 20th Century went so well for the USA was because we largely allowed the war idiots to enervate themselves. Their loss was our gain. If the world descends back into chaos (which is far from guaranteed) we would be better than fine so long as we stay out of it. This of course won't happen, and China gets to laugh all the way to the banks in Taipei and Hong Kong.
The Matthew 5:5 strategy remains 100% vindicated. Stay strapped and hydrated my friends.
“If they cannot get those machines, they will develop them themselves,” he said in an interview. “That will take time, but ultimately they will get there… The more you put them under pressure, the more likely it is that they will double up their efforts.”USG acts like the people in Taiwan don't have families over in Fujian, and a strong incentive to get recruited to assist the Chinese build this expertise. Invincible ignorance.
If mastodon is to be the poster child of the fediverse it needs to drastically simplify the requirements to run and maintain an instance. There should be a single binary, self-updating, single-user instance.It's the tragedy of the commons. The core problem to crack is how to make the costs bearable by the users themselves.
