US's Republicans have been so afraid of '1984' that they took it as an instructions manual.

Very well played!

https://www.abhafoundation.org/assets/books/html/1984/24.htm...

And a bit further back, ask anyone who the Red Army helped liberate in WW2 what has happened later, and how long it took the Red Army to actually withdraw.

I lived through the 1980ies, and I still have trouble processing the idea that the anti-Soviet, rah-rah patriot types that loved movies like Red Dawn are now in bed with the Russians. It's just bizarre.

And that made sense, as there was a point in time that Russia did seem like it had a chance of becoming a normal democracy. At some point even the idea of the EU membership was floating around.

By the 2008 attack on Georgia it was clear that there is no democratisation of Russia, but some people didn't want to believe it for a long time, not even after 2014 attack on Ukraine.

Sure, back when Russia looked vaguely like a democracy for about ten minutes.

Well, there was a point when everybody, including European politicians, wanted to normalize relations with Russia. But the guy had a different view and chose to invade Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. At that point some people still chose to believe that he can be civilized. It backfired badly in 2022. So now Trump trying the same thing and pretending to be Putin's buddy and trying his best to make Ukraine miserable is just sad.

Obama's 100% correct point was that Russia was incredibly weak economically. Obama never said we should disengage "with the rest of the world military." Bush, Clinton, W. Bush also tried to normalize with Russia. Everyone hoped Putin was sane. Obama strengthened our alliances. And he has been proven right. Ukraine has depleted Russias military stockpiles and their National Wealth Fund. Russia was weaker than people thought.

It's almost like things have happened between then and now.

> You must have been traveling in some neocon circles a decade ago. But normalizing relations with Russia and disengaging with the rest of the world military was the goal for us liberals back then

I don't know which is more wrong, the broad claim here or the claim that you are a liberal.

I mean, what you describe was generally the case...but between the fall of the USSR and the start of the new US-Russia Cold War around 1998-1999, with the belief that Russia was on a path that, while rocky, led to Western-friendly democracy with the right support.

From 1999-2014 (but generally declining through that period) engagement was viewed as useful, in part because Russia’s hostile turn was seen by some as curable with reassurance, but more because Russia was seen as a generally hostile generally but having useful alignments of interest in some parts of the world.

But by a decade ago, 2015? “Normalizing relations with Russia and disengaging with the rest of the world militarily” was certainly not a common, much less the dominant, American liberal position on foreign policy.

If you add to this cutting power and water supply you really need some infrastructure upgrade.

But why do we need “power projection?” Why do we need bases all over the world?

I think that's kind of the point. The Trump admin takes a very isolationist view of things, so I don't think they even want all those international bases.