Interesting. Do you think its a fair to compare the 60k american deaths with the 3m+ Vietnamese deaths?
If it's a war of O&G, then it's our biz to swing the biggest dick and knock the other down a peg... But with how everything has devolved, the Russians are making it difficult not to frame this as a humanitarian war than a fancy geeohpoliticul conflict.
I am still not sure if I fully understand the value of containment as a military strategy. Both numbers are sad, and the North Vietnamese ultimately won despite the cost.
Completely agree. I dont know if we will ever know if the 3m deaths was worth it all. Im not sure if keeping Putin from taking Ukraine is worth 3m deaths. Its likely Russia will end up with it one day and Ukraine might be better off than being kept as a proxy war zone for the next 2 decades.
Russian "man on the street" interviews, about what life is like in the European Union. The power of propaganda. Reminds me of a certain Frank L Baum character discussing life in San Franscisco. Five times overcooked pulp from the TV sounds like this: in Europe there are 85 sexes, brothels for zoophiles and exile to gays if you don’t choose your gender at the age of three. The optimization of health care has led to the fact that there are no longer enough places for psychos in hospitals. Nightingale Litter
I have to disagree. While parallels can certainly be drawn, the Soviet Union never supported North Vietnam to the extent that we are supporting Ukraine, in my opinion. What the US, NATO, and the other military powers of the West allied to the US and NATO to one degree or another, countries like Australia, for example, which alone has given $655 million in aid, including $475 million in military assistance to Ukraine, is massively beyond what the USSR and it’s associated countries provided Vietnam. I don’t think it’s close to comparable. What the US, under the leadership of President Biden, NATO and the EU, under the political leadership of those countries, as well as the political leadership of the other associated countries who believe in the “rule’s based order” that some may smirk at, but which has enabled the bulk of the world to grow and prosper, unevenly, to be sure, but largely without killing each other in world spanning conflicts since the end of WW2, has me cheering. It’s remarkable. Putin and his close advisers, politically and militarily, in their wildest dreams, or nightmares, never imagined that their invasion of a very large European democracy, one they had already bitten off chunks of with little serious response from the West, would bring about what we, and they, are seeing today. While Biden deserves a large amount of the credit, he is far from alone in leading the effort to crush Russia and Putin’s effort to absorb Ukraine in it’s entirety, a dream of Putin, who yearns to recreate the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union by another name. The countries that once lived behind Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” remember it well, bitter memories, and they have no intention of returning there. So they do what they can to fight revanchist Russia in Ukraine. Far better to have the fight there than within their own borders. I certainly agree.
This is one of the rare times I'm in agreement with Jon Bolton but what the US is getting out of Ukraine is many times greater than the cost. It's greatly degraded a strategic rival and revived alliances that had been frayed under the previous US leadership and other factors. I was talking to some people here in Singapore who noted that the failure of Russia in Ukraine has given the PRC pause in Taiwan. XI and others in PRC strong, at least rhetorical, support of Putin early on is looking worse and adding to the problems that Xi facing.
This is a flawed comparison considering the North Vietnamese were the ones taking on a foreign power on home soil to fight the partition of their country. The Ukrainians are the ones taking on a foreign power who at the minimum is already claiming the partition of their country. For this comparison to have worked it should've been that the North Vietnamese should've just accepted the partition of their country.
