As usual we are largely in absolute agreement.
I also am for being very selective in our deployment of actual warfighting capability. I am distinguishing war fighting capability from military training missions. They are two very different things for two very different purposes.
For instance, I stated, while on active duty, that I believed an invasion of Iraq was not merely foolhardy, but was not in our national interests. Saddam Hussein was merely a nuisance to the US. He was an existential threat to Iran. Every fellow Arabist in uniform, State, or either of the two agencies pretty much agreed with that assessment. I only say that because I absolutely do not believe in issuing a chief executive, even the mentally cognizant ones, a blank check for the deployment of our warfighting forces.
This is one occasion where I think we have been totally reactive from jump street and that it is in our absolute national interests to stop Russian ambitions right now. In other words, I think we should do more and insure that it is Putin who reacting rather than NATO. Moreover, we have the ability to do so without directly utilizing American troops. A not entirely different situation than that facing Roosevelt, France and the UK in 1938. Sadly, Czechoslovakia did not have a Zelensky, and the UK did not yet have a Churchill. This time we have at least one half of that equation.
Assuming Ukraine, along with its desire to to join the EU, survive, it will have a government and economy under far more European supervision than ever before. Like much of the rest of Eastern Europe, I am hopeful its Tammany Hall government model will whither away. The analogy is deliberate.
