Elon Musk "secretly" disrupted a Ukrainian sneak attack on a Russian naval fleet by turning off Starlink's satellite network near the Crimean coast last year.
During the cold war, there were plenty of instances of fighting between us and soviet forces, not to mention the huge amount of proxy fighting done. Personally, I'm not interested in drawing up a sequel to the cold war.
Why though? There's been plenty of hot and cold wars, plenty of proxy wars.
This isn't special in that regard, except now using the propaganda talking points of view a fascist enemy is done without a hint of shame from the stooges who do it.
As I see it, we're at a turning point. Either we continue a path of escalation, or we back down, either would be feasible given our current position, but that said current position isn't somewhere we can stay. We either need to accept that sacrificing some global influence is necessary to avoid foreign wars, or that maintaining our current global influence inevitably requires putting soldiers behind our words.
This is a weird take... The war in Ukraine is largely being fought because Russia isn't going to stop with Ukraine. We're protecting our allies in Europe, and looking to prevent further escalation, not simply exerting influence on a far-away foreign war.
The escalating party is 100% the aggressing party that's invading a sovereign nation. That's Russia, not the United States.
I mean, unless you're speaking as a Russian citizen? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point of view here.
This is the exact attitude I was trying to call out. We are absolutely escalating our participation in this conflict. Trying to strattle the line of participation, where nothing we do is our own fault, and neither are any of the consequences we face. Because I'm not sure how well you did in middle school geography, but the US is, in fact, not a part of Europe. This war has no direct impact on the US beyond the extent we choose to be involved.
Now if you view the benefits of involvement as greater than the risks, fine. That's a perfectly coherent position. One I don't agree with, but a rational position nonetheless. But to pretend our involvement is just a force of nature we have no control over? That's just a bunch of excuses to support involvement without having to openly commit to a position of involvement.
Lol, we tried your strategy, it just just emboldened Russia. Remember their attach on Georgia? How about their first invasion of Ukraine? Obviously, Russia wants to do what they want to do, especially if there's no consequences. Let's try this different approach and see if they feel being violent still helps them secure their goals.
Give an actual reason we shouldn't care about Russia's history of attacks, that show you're not ignorant of the topic, and I'll actually provide you an answer. Your reply appears extremely ignorant.
Starlink is not providing an essential service to Ukraine. They do not have the right to expect SpaceX to cooperate with their military effort when SpaceX is a US company under dual-use rules to not unilaterally provide military connectivity to weapons systems to foreign nations.
Ukraine must do military procurement properly and go through the US government to get approval, not whatever this is. They used a civilian service for military purposes, so they are in breach of the terms of use of Starlink and should not be surprised when services degrades at SpaceX's whims.
The law priorities the health of people, but Starlink isn't meant for use like this, so this analogy is moot.