Taiwan is strategic for the US, would have a totally different motivation to protect it. TSMC makes 90% of the world's advanced semiconductors. Ukraine had trade amounting to 5 billion. Taiwan is 105 billion.
This is the sort of statement, I feel, that were I a Ukrainian woman whose country had been attacked and whose people were being killed and who desperately need all the help they can get, I would feel put out by. We have rated the importance of their lives and their country as to the amount of trade we have with them. How much money and stuff we get from them. What important stuff we can get from them. It's not exactly what I would call friendship. It would probably be insulting.
I mean, I understand the cold logic of realism in foreign policy does this. But what I find strange is that often the same people who have this view of foreign policy, of others, have a completely different view when it comes to domestic policy. The United States should only help those that it has an "interest" in, AKA makes us money. But their view on immigration, healthcare, public works, welfare, and social services in general are often completely different. It seems to me that a person with such a cold realist approach to foreign policy and foreign peoples, should have the same approach to domestic policies as well. "What is in it for me"? "Why should I pay to help others if there is nothing in it for me"? "What is my interest"? I find this dichotomy to be inconstant at best and hypocritical at worst.
If relations between states or nations should be as relations between individual people, then I see no reason why New York should send ambulances and aid to Mississippi if it gets hit by a hurricane. I'm sure that New York State does more trade with France than it does with Mississippi.
But beyond a moral evaluation of the matter, I think we could expand the definition a bit further, in an exercise to meet the realists on their home ground. After all, I think few would argue, even idealists, that the heart should rule all matters in foreign policy.
I would offer that the United States does have an interest in Ukraine. It specifically has an interest in if Russia conquers Ukraine, beyond the amount of trade we have with the country. After all, presumably if Russia took over the country, trade would resume and be basically the same.
First, the United States has an interest in maintaining the integrity of national sovereignty. I hear some howls in the background, but try not to lose the script. If you think the United States has violated this, we might disagree, but we should both agree that the US SHOULD respect national sovereignty and has an interest in maintaining that respect throughout the world. I have no time for whatabouts here or tu quo. The sovereignty of nations must be respected and maintained, regardless of a nation's contribution to another's GDP. When the system breaks down in once place, it effects the entire system.
Secondly, the United States has an interest in not having a belligerent nation suck up and absorb another. The Ukraine is a powerful country. With many brave people. It's quite likely that many people in the United States think of Russia as some powerhouse and a nation like Ukraine as some kind of lightweight. But a quick look at the CIA factbook would show otherwise. The US has no interest in seeing a nation that has shown itself to be hostile to US foreign policy aims and hostile against US allies, to grow stronger by conquering and absorbing a neighbor. However powerful Russia is, it would be more powerful if it absorbed the people, economy, and military of Ukraine. That is just the simple fact. It is not in the interest of the United States to have Pooter's Russia begin an imperial expansion into eastern Europe.
Why you ask? Why should we care about eastern Europe? It's their back yard you say? Well, look at the map. Taking Ukraine gives Russia greater access to the Black Sea. That's why this all started with Crimea. It gives Russia access to threaten Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Moldova. Russia has shown itself to have no problem threatening neighbors to get what it wants. What Pooter wants is more power and expansion.
But NATO you say? But what interest does the United States have in Finland or Lithuania? If Ukraine is not important to the United States, then surely Lithuania and Estonia are not either. I don't know how many billions of dollars the Lithuanians give us, but it's probably even smaller than what the Ukrainians give us.
NATO serves a purpose. It is an extension of the foreign policy of the United States and our interests. NATO is the result of our interests, it is not the interest itself. One is the servant, the other the master. The treaty is not the master. The interest is. If the United States has an interest in Lithuania and Poland, it obviously has an interest in Ukraine. Every country that we abandon as being unimportant weakens the alliance as a whole. The weaker the alliance, the easier time an opponent has to exploit these fault lines. This doesn't just go with NATO and Russia. It applies to China as well.
The trade that Ukraine has, while completely unimportant to the United States in comparison to it's trade with Taiwan it seems, is very important to other countries. Ukraine feeds China, Holland, Egypt, Spain, and several countries in Africa. The loss of Ukraine's exports means the price of food rises in the global market. This reverberates around the entire market. This means that people in Texas might be paying more for Doritos. I remember the uproar, in this very forum, when apparently global warming was causing the cost of corn to rise, meaning poor people in the United States would not be able to afford as much and be hungry. Apparently it is not good for global warming to raise the price of food, but it is okay for Russia to do it. Does the United States not have an interest in keeping food prices down and maintaining global trade, regardless of how much it effects GDP?
It has already become apparent the results of the support the United States has given Ukraine. NATO has been strengthened. China is wary and intel says that China has postponed any invasion for at least 2 years. Europe seems to have woken from it's malaise concerning the threat from Russia. It would certainly have been much better had Europe never fallen asleep in the first place. It would certainly have been much better for Ukraine, Europe, the United States, and the entire world, had war been deterred in the first place.
