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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAmerica Is Too Broke to Rescue Ukraine
PETER BEINART
If only America were fighting more wars, Russia would never have taken Crimea. Thats basically the argument John McCain made last Friday in The New York Times. For five years, he complained, Americans have been told that the tide of war is receding.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, military decisions have appeared driven more by a desire to withdraw than to succeed. As a result, Obama has made America look weak, which emboldened Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.
I have no earthly idea what McCain means by succeeding in Afghanistan and Iraq, but we can be pretty sure that in addition to claiming more American lives, it would require a lot more American money. Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a 2013 report by Linda Bilmes, a public policy lecturer at Harvards Kennedy School of Government, are the most expensive wars in U.S. history, costing the U.S. between $4 and $6 trillion when you factor in medical care. For Ukraines sake, McCain believes, that number needs to go up.
Theres an irony here. If America and Europe have failed to adequately defend Ukraine, its not for lack of guns. Its for lack of money. Over the last year, the real contest between Russia and the West hasnt been a military one (after all, even McCain knows that risking war over Ukraine is insane). Its been economic. In part because of two wars that have drained Americas coffers, and in part because of a financial crisis that has weakened the West economically, the United States and Europe have been dramatically outbid.
The current Ukrainian crisis has its roots in Vladimir Putins desire to build a Eurasian Unionan economic zone comprising as many former Soviet republics as possiblethat re-establishes Russian regional dominance. Putin badly wants Ukraine to join the bloc. But that desire has collided with the European Unions bid to get Ukraine to sign a free-trade agreement linking it to the West. (EU rules, perhaps unwisely, made doing both impossible).
more
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/america-is-too-broke-to-rescue-ukraine/284463/
newfie11
(8,159 posts)And never hear from the war mongering senile old fart again.
Sarah Ibarruri
(21,043 posts)dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Maybe DU needs a vacant promises forum.