If the Republicans abandon Ukraine, US credibility will take a huge hit, probably worse than when the US abandoned South Vietnam.
Russia presents a threat to Europe that it doesn't present to the USA. Europe needs to tool-up. I say this as a former pacifist.
And so far, NATO has to actively participate in the fighting in Ukraine. Since this would be a major escalation, one that is extremely hard to sell to NATO country citizens, that will obviously not happen anytime soon.
And even if you'd want to use that metric. How exactly loosing zero US personnel at the cost of getting a real-life assessment of NATO combined mobile warfare against the Soviet artillery superiority doctrine is a lose situation for US?
But I'd say that this makes it even the more valuable lesson. Battlefield characteristics is still very close and Russians (now) are acting like they would act against the NATO-trained forces.
And, of course, it's liberal on my part to put Ukrainian Army in the basket of NATO forces as that is only true for maybe a year (after the first rotations ended).
That being said. I think that there's unprecedented amount of military intel US is getting out of this conflict for pennies on the dollar.
I don't think they are even close to that - their meat assaults Avdiivka type is not something that would ever happen in conflict with NATO involvement, because the frontline would never stabilize in a way that would enable russia to employ those tactics.
NATO-trained is very wide statement, some African armies and Afghanistan ones were NATO trained and it went nowhere.
>That being said. I think that there's unprecedented amount of military intel US is getting out of this conflict for pennies on the dollar.
Sure. There's no EW piece that russia had in 2022 and wasn't captured intact in the first few months :)