LightningStrikes posted...
So foolmo what do you think should be done in Ukraine for peace then?
I am far from a military strategist, but I would point to 3 examples that show the US using its uniquely powerful military & economic position for anti-escalation.
Israel: Build and maintain the Iron Dome. It has worked for many decades to keep the wars de-escalated and even surrounding countries seem good with it. Counterpoint to this strategy is whether Israel was only quelled because we let them colonize and terrorize Palestine? If we gave them the Iron Dome but also enforced a 2 state solution, would they stay quelled, or would they escalate? With Netanyahu I think the answer is clear, but after him I dunno.
Vietnam: Total war on both sides. Hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Pullout defeat from the US. Then we started doing commerce and now it's a strong economic ally that we would never fight. Counterpoint here might be Afghanistan, which looks a lot like Vietnam but maybe it's far too ruined by Russia, the US, and the Taliban to recover into an economy ally. Only time will tell, but people definitely used to see Vietnam as we see Afghanistan today.
China: "Trade War" but never an actual war. It's basically the same as Vietnam but skipping the whole war nonsense. The top 2 countries of the world fighting every day for superiority, but there's no killing, and the end result is economic competition that has been advancing global technology for decades, plus huge improvements in freedom for Chinese people (still not great tho). Our economies are just too mutually beneficial to escalate to war. Counterpoint is capitalism bad or whatever. Also similar to Israel, are they only happy because we let them claim sovereignty over neighboring countries?
The key here is that economic coupling, even as enemies, prevents war. Sanctions by the way, are not an economic policy, but a military act of war. We enacted sanctions against Russia after Crimea, which is definitely not an escalation compared to literal invasion, but it does erase all progress in economic coupling.