I haven't tried to do the numbers, but it would be interesting to compare the casualty count in Ukraine's war in the Donbass with casualties in Chicago. As you'll see below, that speculation is NOT tongue in cheek. But here are links to closer looks at the two situations.
Ted Galen Carpenter has an analysis of the situation in Ukraine--and a warning. Years ago I made myself unpopular as a commenter at another blog by arguing strongly that 1) our encouragement of Georgia vis a vis Russia was stupid and irresponsible--including provocative naval deployments to the Black Sea--and 2) that policy was especially stupid because the US was not going to actually intervene on Georgia's behalf. Carpenter warns that the US may be cruising for a similar bruising. There is simply a limit to how many wars the US can juggle at any given time, and war in Ukraine would be at a totally different level than anything we've experienced for decades.
Joe Biden’s Ukraine Policy: A Repeat of George W. Bush in Georgia?
It is a bad idea for Washington to give its partners the impression that they have a blank to go to war and expect American forces to come to the rescue if the fighting goes poorly.
Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute, begins by noting the extraordinary level of US rhetoric attacking Russia--and Putin personally--and encouraging Ukraine to adopt an aggressive posture toward Russia. He notes:
Ukraine’s government announced that joint military exercises with Ukrainian and NATO troops likely would take place sometime this summer. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that any deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine would force Russia to take “additional measures to ensure its own security.”
Russia appears to be positioning itself militarily to respond to all this sooner rather than later, meaning, sooner rather than waiting for the summer. This is all just incredibly reckless. Here's Carpenter's conclusion:
