The other poster raises a valid point that war, as it is typically been envisioned, might be far less prominent than people realize. The argument is that the tank has a task on the battlefield, but we should ask ourselves how much that battlefield matters in this day and age.
Deport the unfavorable people to Siberia. Then import the willing population into Ukraine.
Given the Russian "tactics" and "strategy" for its war in Ukraine, it is clearly a threat of cultural genocide. Russia aims to destroy the Ukrainian people and their history, and disperse them into Siberia where they won't be able to become a threat.
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USA tries to "win hearts and minds" because we've convinced ourselves that we're the "good guys", and want to win under certain conditions. Without hearts and minds, we lose and we're willing to accept that.
When Russia fights, they're not aiming for that at all. Its just destruction. Even against "brother Slavs", its better for Ukraine to be destroyed than for it to play nice with NATO (or so they want to believe).
Under these circumstances, the only solution is to arm the Ukrainians and give them a fighting chance. Otherwise, the Ukrainians will be completely, and utterly, annihilated as a people.
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Russia has the will and the right strategy here in broad strokes.
They fortunately, don't seem to have the right tactics or approach. So it looks like the Russians will fail. But even as they fail, they will cause hundreds-of-billions, maybe trillions of dollars worth of damages, and likely cause the largest famine event the world has ever seen.
Better weapons and a better defense could have prevented the Ukrainians from losing their coastland. Better weapons could have allowed Ukraine to continue their grain exports. Better weapons and defenses could have protected Ukrainian's grain silos, which are being blown up and pillaged.
The West will HAPPILY fund the Ukrainians to proxy destroy the Russian military, and proxy bankrupt them.
We'll see how long Putin lives with cancer. The speed of deployment and assumed schedule for victory would point to very fast cancer.
Not many Ohlone on hacker news.
The US tried exterminating the Taliban, but failed.
What is that based on? What good outcomes has Russia had from a war, in centuries?
But the world has changed faster. All use of military now is misuse and futile.
We don't look at veterans now and say wow what heroes. We just thank them for their service. We don't celebrate them for "Mission Accomplished". Thanking is like a participation trophy.
A state is always going to need a military to defend its stability and continuity from existential threats. Despite what the internet would have you believe, the world is a massive place with a vast diaspora of peoples with tons of different contradictory policy preferences. I don’t think we could give up preparing for the next fight if we wanted to.