Everyone looking at the price tag vs the results knows a proxy war with a well-trained army, the side of the US and Ukraine, against formerly your biggest adversary is the least costly way to cripple your foe while hardly lifting a finger.
~$125 billion TOTAL, including humanitarian, in a sea of $800B+/yr is play money in war, and throwing Russia back with dollars is the largest blow to a man who thinks he’s militarily strong.
It even makes China hesitate. I’d pay a lot more just for that.
Edit to add: This is a sad justification to be involved in ending human life, regardless of merit.
It’s especially peanuts when you consider that the VA won’t have to take care of the veterans either. In the long-term, that’s where most of the funding actually goes after you put boots on the ground.
Edit to add:
The costs of caring for post-9/11 war vets will reach between $2.2 and $2.5 trillion by 2050 — most of which has not yet been paid.
Source:
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic/budget/veterans
That is roughly 1/3 of the total estimated past/future costs of the wars.
Don’t worry, there’s still going to be plenty of vets who “hurt their backs” during training excersize and get lifetime disability pay. I got a cousin who brags about his.
Yes your cousin is still allowed to have a comfortable life after being hurt on military duty… That’s not “bragging”. That’s being recompensed.
I bet if you actually talk to your cousin about the stuff they miss out on in life due to their disability… You’ll find that the trade still isn’t worth it. Things like being able to play with their kids without worrying about debilitating pain. But you know… At least they don’t have to actively work to live a normal life.
Even if they’re 100% disabled. I don’t know anyone who “brags” about $45k a year. I have military associated hearing loss. The time I waste every day just trying to parse things other people are saying isn’t worth the ~$200 a month I’m given for it.
It’s not just that. It’s about oil & gas too. Ukraine is gar friendlier to the US and the EU. They also has the ability to sever Europe’s need for Russian energy.
Every dollar is worth it.
And it provides your weapons industry with real life data from a large-scale conflict with equipment from multiple origins.
And it advertises a competitors products as inferior, and yours as superior.
I despise all these things, but from a purely economic viewpoint, this is interesting for business.
True, but unclear what that implies. Some people say weapons kill people so we should not produce / supply weapons, expecting less people would die. Others point at aggressors using (their home made) weapons to kill people, pointing at the need to supply their victims, expecting less people would die.
Comparing the track records of Russia (frequently invading and killing neighbors) and Ukraine (not so much) it’s easy for me to take sides. But the tragedy exists, which is why I despise all these things.
I wouldn’t call $125 billion “play money”, even if the US yearly military budget is $900 billion.
The US military budget is egregious, and this just shows how much war is about funneling taxpayer money to the MIC.
proxy war: a war instigated by a major power which does not itself become involved.
Please don’t call it a proxy war, because it’s not.
Technically… this war was “kind of instigated” by the EU out-bidding Russia in 2013 for the investment in a commercial agreement with Ukraine. Everybody at the time knew that Russia had to keep Ukraine under its boot or risk getting fucked long term in the Black Sea, so buying-out Ukraine’s allegiance was sort of like poking a bear… and the bear reacted pretty much as expected, by instantly invading Crimea… which also worked as expected to fortify Ukraine’s allegiance towards the West… which ultimately lead to Russia launching its “special military operation”… which everyone kind of expected to end in a couple days with the loss of Kyiv… but instead turned out to spectacularly show off Russia’s hand and military weakness, allowing for a proxy war to begin.
The instigation was very tactful, playing the long game over 10 years, but it was there. Which is also expected when trying to start a proxy war against a nuclear power; even this low-key instigation, already got Russian crazies clamoring for nuclear retaliation, even when the war was obviously their own fail.
Russia’s military budget in 2019 was $65 billion. It’s a waste of money that’s only practical because the US is literally swimming in taxpayer money (mostly because the US doesn’t invest in itself, but that’s another issue).
At the federal level, taxes don’t pay for anything. They literally used to be burned when we still collected actual dollars. These days a number in a digital ledger gets set to 0. Taxes are the primary anti-inflationary device that government has to maintain inflation.
Deficits don’t cause inflation, if they did Japan would be in hyper-inflation because of the massive deficits they have been running for 30 years. Instead they are barely able to hold off deflation of the Yen.
Interestingly China could still invade and expand their territory, without the rest of the world getting involved. Not Taiwan. Vladivostok. That peninsula was part of China till Russia took it, and a fairly large section of the population is ethnically Chinese. They would just be “looking out for the interests of ‘their people .’”
This allows Xi to take advantage of the current situation, expand territory to look strong at home, and maintain the status quo everywhere else.
Sometimes when I’m bored, I’ll do some google maps “tourism”, and just cruise the globe. One of those spots I’ve visited, is right at that tri-border with Russia, N. Korea, and China.
I always thought it was weird that China doesn’t have a direct shore/port on the Sea of Japan. It doesn’t really look like the Tumen River would cut it to give sea faring ships access either. Annexing Vladivostok would fix that.
Oh thousands of people are dead but at least it wasn’t me and all it cost was billions of dollars.
Yeah bro just roll over when you’re getting taken over and if you ask for help you should think of the thousands you’re going to kill.
Way to victim blame.
