My morning's inbox included rants about Zelenskyy saying Ukraine needs more money "now," a worry over how the "America first" "crowd" sees Taiwan v Ukraine, and an R Senator yapping about where to send our arms this week and next. (The idea, 70 years ago, that seeing one's own country as primary would include you in a condescension-laden "crowd" would've gotten your ass kicked by your dad or brother who had just fought a real war; you know, the last one we tried to, and so did, win.)
Ask yourself: what is the point of war? To change the behavior of an adversary when all other options have failed.
What used to be the point of America going to war? To ensure the freedom of those who could not do so themselves in the face of a larger power.
So our wars have been, at least politically, to keep others free.
This requires, of course.... others.
If there are no others, there is no point in war.
How does this apply to Ukraine? Taiwan? S Korea - another tripwire hotspot we're in because we refused to defeat the adversary when we had the opportunity? How about NATO & the EU?
Let me repeat myself: If there are no others, there is no point in war.
The Total Fertility Rate of a nation or group of nations is the number of children a woman in that nation or group has. A TFR of 2.1 is considered “zero population growth,” or bare replacement. A nation above 2.1 will see its population grow, its market and jobs grow, its prosperity grow.
A nation with a TFR below 2.1 does not believe in its own future enough, even, to populate that future.
The World Factbook (1) lists 227 countries. Searching on Total Fertility Rate shows the following: Ukraine: #224 (1.22 TFR), S Korea: #226 (1.11 TFR), Taiwan: #227 (1.09 TFR).
Defending these countries makes absolutely zero sense. America, (#134, 1.84 TFR) sending our kids and our tax dollars off to defend a nation INTENTIONALLY DEPOPULATING, is insane.
The european average TFR (2) – those countries making up the bulk of the EU and NATO, is 1.5. Not only has NATO been obsolescent since 1992, their rejection of their own future shows that defending them is a fool’s errand
Perhaps if our rulers stood back from the WW2 movies, and the Military Industrial Complex writing all their legislation and increasing all their portfolios, ignored the long-gone immediate post-war world which no longer exists, and focused on the reality of the world today, we could STOP having our troops deployed in 189 of those countries, stop pretending that defending a nation intentionally going out of business makes any sense at all, and worry about governance, freedom, liberty and prosperity – and education – here at home.
Because worrying about the future of countries and populations that have chosen to have no future is just stupid.
(1) https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/country-comparison/
(2) https://www.statista.com/statistics/612074/fertility-rates-in-european-countries/
I disagree completely. Nations are not defined by fertility rates, and even if they were, what matters is GEOGRAPHY, including all that geography's natural resources, and who controls that geography. To illustrate this point in the extreme: there are three tiny sets of islands in the southwest Pacific: Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. Together they outline a sector of the Pacific Ocean that's about the width of the USA. It's almost all water. Our ability to control this area depends on these nations' willingness to allow us to maintain military bases and other assets on their islands. If they can be swayed or threatened to instead grant such access to China, our military's ability to conduct operations in that area will be decimated, including our ability to access & defend Taiwan, the Philippines, New Guinea, Indonesia, and Australia. To contemplate the fertility rates of these islands is ridiculous; Chinese or Russian occupation of these islands would be a disaster. You can learn more about this by watching a recent Epoch Times episode of "American Thought Leaders" entitled "An Impending Disaster for America in the Pacific?" But back to Ukraine. We might also look to history to see if there are any dictatorships which, after conquering one nearby neighbor, have decided to stop with that just one neighbor. Putin's intent is obviously to reassemble the USSR, one domino at a time; anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding himself.