Ukraine Fatigue, Not Palestine Fatigue

Even, Taiwan now learns [successful] HAMAS with less than 1,200 troopers, destroy entire southern Israel and USD2.5 billion border, no longer [learns] about Kyiv, to anticipating China

Jerusalem 3.22pm / Kyiv 2.22pm

Some people actually afraid ‘PALESTINE FATIGUE’, gave up, tired after thousand or ten thousand [aggregate, across the world, total] of protest action, [but] entire the West leaders still greenlight-ed genocide in Gaza by Israel. Surprisingly the fatigue now in / about Kyiv.

Anger inside GOP high-rank and GOP voters read a lot of Ukrainian enjoy the party in Adana, Bodrum, Istanbul, Ankara, Milano, Monte Carlo, London, Dubai, Singapore, Taipei, until Denpasar Bali, and CONTRARY in US soil, the US debt situation looks 'unsustainable,' per the IMF. 1.8 million Americans lost their millionaire status in 2022, according to UBS' 2023 Global Wealth Survey. Secretaries Lloyd Austin III and Antony John Blinken testify today before Senate Appropriations Committee on President Biden's $106B national security supplemental request, providing US$14.3B in aid for Israel and US$61.4B for Ukraine.

The collapse in Treasury bonds now ranks among the worst market crashes in history. Losses on Treasury bonds with maturities of 10 years or more have reached 46% since March 2020, with the 30-year bond experiencing a steep drop of 53%.

US has a GDP of about $27 trillion annually, i.e. US$54 trillion over two years. The past two years of aid to Ukraine have cost US$75 billion, or about one-tenth of a cent out of a dollar of national output.

U.S. policymakers have grown comfortable viewing overseas bases as strategic assets and guarantors of stability. But they can just as easily be strategic vulnerabilities, especially in regions prone to explosive violence. Follow the money.

Conceiving every political event on earth primarily as a blow for or against the "American-led order" will leave American paranoid, brittle, and overextended. NO, American cannot to fund every war in the world. A gentle reminder that the so-called rules-based international order Western leaders preach about on a daily basis is, in reality, a p.r. talking point thrown into the garbage whenever it’s convenient.

A lot of people may still focus about genocide Israel, but 5 days ago, according to Rolling Stones, Donald Trump wanted to pull the United States out of NATO during his first term, but was repeatedly talked out of it by senior administration officials. For a possible second term in the White House, the 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner is already discussing how he could actually get it done, if his demands aren’t met by NATO.

Trump and his policy-wonk allies are also gaming out how he could dramatically wind down American involvement to merely a “standby” position in NATO, in Trump’s own words. One reason Putin is sticking it out in Ukraine is almost certainly the hope that Trump will win and pull defeat from the jaws of victory by doing something like this.

This narrative that the world is collapsing because Washington was too focused on China / Asia is comical. Short of a mild rhetorical shift a true resource shift never materialized and there remains a deep lack of Asia literacy in Washington.

By this I mean being able to articulate regional priorities and policy prescriptions beyond insisting “Asia is important and China is bad.” The typical Washington natsec official could name the streets of Baghdad in 2007 or the cities of Ukraine in 2023 before they couldn’t rattle off the countries of Southeast Asia especially Indonesia or the islands of the Ryukyu’s or the defense systems Taiwan needs.

Another lesson here is that many internationalist thinkers who have offered rhetorical support for a Asia being a priority in recent years have done little to nothing to make it a reality but at the first sign of trouble in Europe or ME their resourcing muscle memory quickly returns. Regrettably, I’m not confident a peacetime Asia can ever truly be Washington’s enduring focus, as much as it’s warranted.

US may win small, tactical victories but often on the coattails of larger non-Asia issues. PDI became a thing (sort of), but only after years of EDI funding. Munitions and the industrial base are finally important, but only after war in Ukraine woke us up. Security assistance for Taiwan is being considered, but only after Ukraine reminded us inter-state war was possible. Can US truly organically jump-start Asia budget initiatives during peacetime? Asia is likely to remain the largest geographic, economic and military theater for US interests all while receiving a relative share of resources that fall well short of Washington’s rhetoric and what is warranted.

United States spent one third of one percent of its annual national income so far, the UK a bit more at 0.49%, while the biggest spenders among our NATO Allies are in a range of 0.99% (Germany - 3 times more effort than the U.S.) to 1.82% (Lithuania - 5.5 times more effort than the U.S.).

None of the high effort countries are going bankrupt and life is peaceful and comfortable in each of them. Their governments understand: this war is important, it's worth putting their money where their mouths are, and really, this is the absolute minimum one can do to help a friendly nation fighting a war of national survival that was imposed upon it by a cruel and reckless revisionist aggressor.

Ukraine holds the line not just for Europe but for the global order writ large. Anyone who still hasn't connected the dots should recall: because US slow-walked aid to Ukraine, it hasn't been able to win.

As the war dragged on, Iran saw an opportunity to test US limits: it started giving attack drones to the Russians for them to bomb Ukraine with. Foolishly, we failed to punish Iran, and we failed to increase aid to Ukraine to make it win. Nine months down the road from that crucial juncture, we have a new war, helped by Iran again, and to the delight of the Russians, this time against Israel. That's the price of hesitancy. And it must stop.

That they involve common foes in the background that we must defeat - Russia and Iran - and that they imply immediate assistance to both theatres, no games, no fake trade-offs.

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-prada- Adi Mulia Pradana is a Helper. Former adviser (President Indonesia) Jokowi for mapping 2-times election. I used to get paid to catch all these blunders—now I do it for free. Trying to work out what's going on, what happens next. Now figure out and or prevent catastrophic of everything.