Position of strength, which keeps Ukraine independent, and leaning inevitably westward (maybe not officially in nato, but more likely looking towards the EU), is a major win for the west and international democracy, and a major loss for Putin, and Xi. In fact if regime change were your goal, I can think of no better way to weaken Putin and strengthen his opposition.

Your post only makes sense if you assume Putin can simply outlast the fickle west. That seems to me to be what you’re surrendering to. Otherwise, all he’s going to do is increase his losses. And that’s the danger. If Xi knows he can simply wait out the west if he initially runs into a brick wall, then he’ll do that. If he doesn’t believe that, an invasion might be more than he can risk with all their other internal pressures.

All we have to do is be willing to pay…less now than we’ll ultimately have to pay if Putin, Xi, and Iran believe they’ve got a green light. Which, I’m sorry to say, Trump and his sycophantic supporters in Congress, are giving them. Then, we’ll be losing more than money.

Trump now claims he’ll immediately put 60% tariffs on all Chinese goods. He may not follow through, but he’s not going to have anyone other than yes men around him this time. He also claims he’ll put 10% tariffs on everyone else. That means instant total decoupling from China, and trade wars everywhere else. I suspect the term “economic trumpression” could enter the lexicon if he did all that. While abandoning Ukraine at the same time? We’d be losing our economic ties, while signaling our willingness to abandon allies facing aggressive despots. We can ignore Trump’s words, which is about all you can do to justify voting for him, but his words paint a very dangerous future.