Theres a lot of reasons for people to not want to get involved in this conflict that doesn't involve liking Russia at all.
This is irrelevant to what I was trying to engage Rocinante on.
People who say 'I just don't think we should be involved,' I think their position is unwise, but I respect the principle behind it.
Rocinante has not just been saying 'I don't think we should be involved.' He, and almost everyone else who does not support Ukraine in the conflict, keep popping up with pro-Russian propaganda about
how the war is going.
If it's genuinely
just a strategically unwise stance of severe non-interventionism, there's no reason for them to believing such things.
I want to see if I can get Rocinante to understand why even a non-interventionist or isolationist has no reason to think Ukraine
can't win the war, even if the US in specific did completely stop supporting Ukraine.
1. You are trying to falsely equate stupid people's nonsensical and proven to be false prediction (whomever said japan cannot ever strike at usa) with reasonable predictions (putin is not going to be able to strike at usa. he will die well before russia could grow that strong).
It isn't even clear what you're trying to say here.
2. You are trying to argue that we should completely ignore the notion of prioritizing targets because... just because. Ignoring the existential threat that is on the cusp of exterminating us (woke cult / WEF / etc), for the sake of the slim imagined future thread that might one day arise if all the stars align somehow (Putin).
Here you are putting words in my mouth. If you'd bothered to recall, I'm one of the people who was in favor of 'no support for Ukraine until we're making meaningful moves to defend our own border,' because serious domestic problems take priority over foreign problems, even though I do believe we should in general support Ukraine.
The rest of this point is just you failing to understand how international politics, especially around the use of military force, work.
3. Pearl harbor was not "they thought the US had a weak spirit".
it was because Japan viewed USA as its prime rival blocking it from becoming a global super power while at the same time saw an opportunity to cripple the USA navy with a single strike due to strategic failure (entire fleet moored at a single under defended base).
And this is ignorance of both history and present.
First off,
Putin views the USA as Russia's primary global rival. Exactly like Japan viewed the US as their rival for dominance of the Pacific in the 1940's.
Second off, the Japanese specifically thought that a crushing first blow would bring the USA to the table to negotiate a peace, rather than enrage America, because they thought the US lacked the will to fight.
Third off, even if the attack on Pearl Harbor
had been successful in crippling the US Pacific Fleet, Japan still lacked the military, industrial, and logistical capacity to attack the US West Coast, much less drive through to its industrial heartland, or around to its ports and shipyards on the Atlantic Coast.
These capabilities were not going to materialize in the near future, either. Japan still had not been able to fully subdue China, and the lion's share of the IJA was tied up there. Japanese shipbuilding was not up to the task of building an invasion fleet that could attempt to storm US cities in the near future, and even if they
did, the quote used about how to expect Americans to respond is 'there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.'
There are first-hand accounts of young teenage boys being told 'if you see Japanese landing, take your rifle and camping pack, and fight from the wilds.'
The Japanese not only had no meaningful ability to threaten the US mainland, they
knew they lacked that ability. The best they managed was sending a bunch of balloons with bombs attached to ride the jetstream. Even if they managed a landing, they wouldn't be able to take and hold US soil, even if they managed
that, they had no ability to push through the rockies, even if they managed
that, they would need to fight all the way across the Great Plains, before
finally at long last reaching the significant parts of the US industrial infrastructure in the great lakes area.
Victory through military action wasn't even on the table.
The Japanese also knew that the US industrial base utterly outclassed them on every single level. Part of how they knew this, was because
the US refusing to sell them scrap steel anymore due to their treatment of the Chinese was part of what started causing hostile relations between the two nations.
Why? Because the Japanese war effort was
so dependent on being able to make use of US
scrap steel for its industry, that them being denied that was a major blow to their attempts to subdue China, much less the wars it picked shortly thereafter with Great Britain and the USA,
the two most powerful navies in the world.
The Japanese leadership knew that they were industrially outclassed, and in terms of standing naval capability, outclassed on
every single level, but they
still picked a fight.
Because they thought they could bully the larger and more powerful nation into backing down.
Putin and his cabal in Russia are more sensible than the Japanese. They aren't picking a fight with the US
directly, but they absolutely
are testing our resolve. If they're allowed to take Ukraine, like they were allowed to take the Crimea, and part of Georgia before it, they will find another way to expand next (probably a smaller and more digestible chunk of one of the Stans), and continue the pattern. Or maybe Moldova, if they can get all of Ukraine.
Putin is no direct conventional military threat to the US right now, but if Japan had been
permitted to take and keep part of the Aleutians, and Midway, and the southern Pacific islands, and then fifteen more years of industrial and military build-out...
Well, at the least they would have had the capacity to seize Hawaii at that point.
Who knows what Russia might think they can get away with in fifteen years, if they're allowed to take and keep all or part of Ukraine now?
