The US should leave NATO. The conflict with Ukraine and Russia was sparked in part by NATO expansion eastward over the last couple decades and US intervention in Ukrainian politics. There are persistent rumors of CIA involvement in the 2014 revolution and Ukraine/Russia war then. This doesn't excuse Putin's invasion, but it does help explain it. The Hunter Biden laptop story still demonstrates Biden family involvement in Ukrainian corporate and government interests in a downright corrupt relationship.
It should offer some hope that Russia is bogged down so severely in Ukraine as it stands, and if they overextend into other former Soviet satellites, it will spark open conflict with Poland, Germany, and other EU nations whether the US is still involved or not. With more US participation, nuclear war is on the table, and that is not acceptable. If the US arsenal is out of the picture, Russia still faces European nuclear power, but less incentive for ICBM mutually-assired destruction.
On a simple practicality basis, the US cannot afford to be taxed and indebted further by foreign wars. I still think Harris would have been more likely to lead from the current simmering unrest to open war across eastern Europe based on her association with the Cheneys, but only time will tell what Trump will do, and the counterfactuals are impossible to guess.
The conflict with Ukraine and Russia began when Ukraine rejected the leaders Russia and Putin wanted to be in power there. By wanting to be free and making their own decisions about what happens in their own country is the true reason why things went the way they did. It is the oldest trick in the book of Russia. They have done so many times through the history. Placing favorable inserts in power to then pluck all the benefits under different flag. Great example for it is Belarus today.
If Baltics weren't in NATO, they would have tried this here as well. I live in Latvia and we are one of those former Soviet Union satellites. Time and time again we are being threatened by Russia how we are next after the Ukraine.
Who else would stand up for these much smaller countries? Or the idea is that it is okay to just squash the little guys? It is okay to just squash everyone who want to have their freedom in their own land? I guess, maybe so. Maybe we should just let them. But then you will not have Europe to visit some day. It will all just be Russia here. It will be Soviet Union 2.0. I thought we all were over that shit.
True, but yet somehow through the history US has found itself on every continent wherever there is something to gain anyway.
There's an old song by Tom Lehrer from the 1960s poking fun at US international relations.
The whole "make sure foreign governments elect someone friendly to us or else" isn't just a Russian habit. Ukraine is still caught in cold war power plays from both ways.
There's also a disconnect in how people perceive US intervention and imperialistic overreach as destructive until they want aid or military support in turn. Is US influence a deterrent, or cause of more escalation? Hard to say. Without the US, you would still have all the EU nations and their militaries as potential allies.
Ukraine could have allowed secession. The Soviet Union disintegrated only a short while ago on the historic timetable, and regional autonomy has apparently been asserted since. Before the 1917 revolution. Borders should be allowed to shift peacefully.
None of this justifies Russian aggression, obviously, and I hardly think Putin is a benevolent statesman. Nonetheless, I doubt some of the fearmongering. But I also don't even live on the same continent, which is also why I think the US should bow out of the conflict.