I met a Ukrainian today. He is my age. I met him at school drop off, our sons are in the same kindergarten class.
They recently arrived here from overseas. I welcome them, but I wish we had done more to help Ukraine.
There are numerous places in the world where people are being displaced by state violence, but I don’t think there’s anywhere that it’s being done by a global power so directly. It’s similar to Gaza/Palestine & Israel, but Russia can end the war by simply going home.
If we had been meeting our NATO obligations for the last 30 years, would this family have been driven out of their home? I don’t know. (I actually know almost nothing about their personal circumstances)
I just feel like we should have done more, and that it’s not too late.
I think that if all NATO members had met or exceeded their obligations, there would have been an obscene amount of weapons to supply Ukraine with, within weeks of the start of Russia’s invasion, and it likely would have been over immediately. As it stands right now, nobody has a meaningful stockpile. Of that stockpile, there’s no capacity to replace it. In terms of building new capacity, it would take years – because the process and equipment are so specialized that it can’t be hammered together in a weekend, a month, or probably even a year.