Ukraine And The Big Money
In yesterday's post, I noted that the US has an open-ended commitment to aid Ukraine based not just on a goal of securing its pre-2014 borders, but on a vaguely expressed additional objective that embraces preventing Russia from being able to re-invade in the future -- although this must also imply changing Russia itself in some fundamental way, which Anne Applebaum, an ally of Secretary Blinken, explains. This will inevitably involve remaking the global political and military order in a way comparable to the Congress of Vienna, Versailles, or Yalta/Potsdam. In fact, looking at circumstances from that perspective, it appears that Russia's decline as a major power has already rendered Potsdam and its consequences obsolete. Resolving the dilemma will be expensive, and expensive at a world war level. I assume that Secretaries Blinken and Austin see the problem from specific diplomatic and military perspectives, but I would also guess that if pressed, they would say that evalua...