Well, Shawn Fain of the UAW doesn't seem to share your angst. Or maybe he is not a union supporter in your eyes. 400,000 active members and 580,000 retired union workers.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/10/trump-uaw-auto-union-shawn-fain-tariffs.html

Maybe the answers aren't quite as black and white as you want to make them out to be?

Us? Who do you mean by 'us'? That leaves the people of Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and Noth Macedonia far better off than they were. It allowed them to able to determine for themselves what kind of political leadership they want. It left Europe with relative stability and peacefor over seventy years.

No, because as your article pointed out Estonia and Latvia joined NATO over 20 years ago and they both border Russia not to mention Poland and Lithuania which both border Kaliningrad.

Sorry, but you continue to miss the point entirely.

Dude, you realize the 2 questions you answered were not my questions don't you? They were musing from an article from University of Notre Dame International Security Center.

I took the questions as "thought provoking topics" worthy of a discussion because the answer maybe isn't as black and white as some(apparently you) want to make it out to be.

Q. Do you know what a rhetorical question is?
A. Yes, a question that someone with TDS answers "proving" orange man bad.

Most reasoble people understand rhetorical questions(like the ones in the article) aren't meant to be answered

You are awarded 1 gold star for extra effort and also get 1 demerit for lack of social awareness that forum musing of grey area topics probably can't be answerd in black/white answers.

And so did I, so I discussed them pointing out how the 'buffer' argument was inane given Estonia and Latvia border Russia and joined NATO over twenty years ago.

https://americanliterature.com/author/james-baldwin/short-story/the-blind-men-and-the-elephant/

Maybe you are touching the tail or the trunk but think you see the whole picture.

Maybe the expansion of NATO cumulatively over 75 years from 12 to 32 nations( more than half after 1990) and 2 countries in 2023/2024(Finland, Sweden) is putting pressure or causing Russia to reassess geoplitical threats.

I in no way support Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but since possession is 9/10 of the law, I'm waiting on viable solutions from the left or "Ukraine supporters till the bitter end no matter the costs(people/money)". I see alot of "Trump bad" but haven't seen 1 solution that would be palatable to Russia.

I think Trump's assessment of "Ukraine doesn't hold the cards" is closer to reality than anything put out by the left(which I haven't seen or a solution hasn't been proffered)

Easy to criticize but hard to fix. Before a problem can be fixed, it must first be identified.

Fain is for the tariffs, which is a bit more nuanced a matter than the subject of this thread- the union busting at the TSA. To my knowledge he hasn’t celebrated that move.

Of course you don't. How do those new NATO countries threaten the country with more nuclear weapons than any other country on earth?

You, on the other hand, sound like a delightful 4-day!

If the US was invaded, would you be fight fight fight or just let the invaders keep the occupied states? And you realize most of the money is staying in the US? The weapons we are/were given to Ukraine were older weapons you were paying to store, maintain, and eventually decomission and scrap and are being valued at full replacement cost vs valued as used military equipment that they are. So we are modernizing our own military while off loading the costs of getting rid of older equipment. All while giving an invaded country and ally means to defending themselves.

And use the invaders talking points to justify the surrender?

Do you think the US should have resumed supplying Japan oil after Pearl Harbor?

Solution is easy. Russia leaves Ukraine and respects borders of pre-2022 invasion, Ukraine gives up trying to reclaim Crimea, changes constitution to remove NATO mandate, and western allies promise to keep on protecting Ukraine, but no weapons outside of those given to Ukraine for their military to be stationed in Ukraine. Should be palatable to Russia if NATO expansion was their concern and nuclear missiles stationed in Ukraine.

And their invasion is what led to the latest expansion with Finland/Sweden. Russia is worried about a defensive pact invading Russia, but it is their own actions that is driving the eastern European/former USSR countries to wanting to join NATO in the first place. They don't want to get invaded by Russia. And so far ones fears is pure paranoia and the other fear is closer to reality thanks to Georgia and Ukraine.

So I guess Russsian/Chinese/Iranian/N korea backed Cuban based missiles would be ok with you? Not any difference exept the " eye of the beholder". Seems as if the US has been down that path before.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/global-nuclear-warhead-stockpiles-1945-2024/