First of all, people need to read the article. Biden is apparently contemplating sending troops into NATO countries in Eastern Europe, like the Baltics and Poland. If Russia launches a territorial invasion of a NATO member state, we are probably all going to perish in nuclear hellfire regardless of how many troops are in eastern Estonia, and I think it would be hard to blame Biden for that.
Also, I'm going to take a heterodox position for a maroon avatar here and say that the recent national trauma involving ill-informed military misadventures abroad has given the American left a reasonable but misguided impulse towards absolutely pacifist rhetoric when I think that few people, if pressed, are actually absolute pacifists. Like, the reason the Iraq War was bad was not because it was a war and wars are always bad. It's because it was born of a combination of bad intelligence suggesting that Iraq had or would soon have WMDs, an inexplicable belief that an invasion would ameliorate this situation, and a post-9/11 impulse to "get back" at the people who did this to us and impose democracy. A war with that rationale was never going to be beneficial, either for Iraqis or Americans. The current Ukraine crisis is almost entirely different. If war breaks out, it will be because of a territorial invasion of a sovereign nation in order to expand a sphere of influence. That's far closer to Czechoslovakia 1938 than it is to Iraq 2003.
I sympathize with the people arguing that war with Russia isn't desirable. God knows that the American military is too involved in too many parts of the world already, and war between nuclear powers is scary to think about. At the same time, though, this shouldn't get in the way of making rational foreign policy decisions. Is war with Russia going to be more desirable if it were to finish the job in Georgia? Or if it were to demand the dissolution of NATO and reincorporation of the Baltic states? Of course it won't. So is the thinking that the United States ought to meekly acquiesce to whatever terms Russia imposes given that they have a looser trigger finger than the United States? It should also be remembered that, in the event of invasion, American isolationism isn't going to prevent war, or even necessarily nuclear war. All it will do is ensure that the people killed in the inevitable ensuing war will be entirely Ukrainian. From an ethical perspective, it seems to me that the preference for Ukrainian deaths over American deaths is an entirely arbitrary one.
Thoughtful post, but I take major issue with this last line and it has been used time and time again to justify unnecessary intervention. The job of the United States government is to look out for American citizens first and foremost. If our government places Ukrainian lives, or Zimbabwean, or Bolivian lives at the same level of importance as American lives, what is the point of having borders or a government at all?
