Other flips have been more weird. Russia is one. I can't imagine the party of Ronald Reagan complaining about military aid to Ukraine to halt Russian expansion. Yet here we are. I won't say that the Republican Party has become "pro-Russia", but they've gone from being the anti-Russia party to more along the "eh, we don't like what Putin is doing but we'd just rather not be involved" party. I don't get it.
This one I completely understand because it applies to me and what I can't understand is the opposite. I'll explain:
I was five when Reagan was elected in 1980 and 14 when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. When I was a kid in the 1980's the USSR had 50k tanks in Central Europe ready to pour through the Fulda Gap. I believed that this was an existential threat to the continued existence of West Germany, France, and other Western European NATO Allies of the United States.
I further believed that West Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, et al were vital strategic interests of the United States.
Based on the above, I believed in the US side of the Cold War. I cheered when Reagan said "Tear Down This Wall" and cheered more when the Wall actually did fall.
Back then the leftists thought Reagan was a warmonger and by extension they thought that I and all those on my side were warmongers. They fought against Reagan and for a softer approach to the USSR.
Fast forward to today. The Wall has been down for 35 years, Russia (not the USSR's) tanks are mostly decrepit Cold War relics, and literally NONE of them are in Central Europe nor a credible threat to Germany (unified, not West/East) nor any other vital strategic interest of the United States.
In my opinion, Ukraine simply is NOT a vital strategic interest of the United States. Further, it clearly is a vital strategic interest of Russia considering that it is adjacent and was under some form of Russian rule for centuries.
Further still, Russia is in an odd military situation. Their conventional military frankly isn't all that good. A lot of it is made up of, as I called them above, decrepit Cold War relics. Realistically, they simply aren't a viable threat to the United States let alone the combined force of NATO in a conventional war. However, they still have a MASSIVE nuclear arsenal. That makes them VERY dangerous because their weak conventional military gives them very little choice but to resort to ICBM's and WMD if they feel threatened. In my opinion, we should not risk a war with a nuclear-armed adversary over something that is vitally important to them and is NOT vitally important to us.
Now explain to me why the Democrats didn't think Russia (as USSR) was an existential threat to vital US Strategic interests in the 1980's when they actually were and yet now that they actually are NOT, a slew of Democrats do think that they are a threat that should be confronted in Ukraine (significantly east of the Fulda Gap).
