Opinion. One political stunt just put us behind the nuclear 8-ball...

 I've been raging about the President of the United States going to an active peer vs peer war zone.

I personally thought it was batshit stupid and his security package was probably big as hell, full of Rangers/MARSOC, Delta and SEALs...not to mention the 160th and an Air Force Air Wing.

Putting all that to the side.

Martin said it best in that blog thread.

Russia used this visit as a pretext to pull out of the start treaty.

China and Russia are obviously forming a military alliance of some sort.

So we don't have just China to worry about but if (heaven forbid) a big fight with them goes nuclear, we don't just have to worry about a massive strike from them but also Russia.

We are behind a massive nuclear 8-ball.

So where are we with this ill conceived war in Ukraine with our massive support?

It will linger because no one wants to see the Chinese start fully supplying Russia.  We don't have the manufacturing capacity to support Ukraine while modernizing our military.  Our economy is shaky at best and our debt outrageous.  Our borders leak and we don't know who is coming across (now we're seeing Chinese nationals at our southern border...only God knows what's sneaking in our northern border!).

Plus because of the actions by the Russia, the uncertainty of what the Chinese will do, we will either have to ramp this up massively (with unforeseen consequences) or we will have to slow roll it and drag out this war for a decade.

Neither option is palatable.

We're screwed and historians will point to this stupid photo-op as the starting point of something obscene.