As an American, you should be against this. We've already got a perfectly good defensive treaty with them that would compel us to act. Tripwire troops are only necessary if you don't believe the other party would honor the treaty, which is a perfectly reasonable stance for Latvia to have but I'd hope my fellow Americans wouldn't be so grim about that.

Permanently stationing troops there is only a cost burden to the American tax payer. It does advance American imperialism to have Latvia surrender some of their sovereignty to us, but that isn't exactly a noble goal. And certainly it doesn't materially improve the lives of the average American citizen.

> Americans are suddenly much more popular in Europe again

If you're concerned about hearts and minds, more bases is certainly not a good thing. American military personnel tend to be wildly unpopular in the surrounding areas, actively building resentment.

Tripwire troops are also to make sure Russia knows that we will act.

The biggest disaster would be if Russia thought maybe the US would stay out of it, and then we didn't.

The only thing worse than WWIII, is WWIII by accident/miscommunication.

When push comes to shove, it's D.C. they call, not Beijing or Moscow (definitely not in this case, haha).

As a French citizen, I believe this won't last.

1. Europe will rely on Russian natgas for quite sometime. We can't force Poutine to withdraw for this very reason as long as China continue to support Russia. And China stated this morning that they intend to do so, and accuse the West to be responsible for this war: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-europe-gl...

2. The biggest countries of Europe will realize that the most eastern countries can't decide how the EU defend itself (and without a consistent EU policy, there can't be stability). At some point, France, Germany and others will weight in and possibly negotiate with Russian to ensure that no more armed conflict arise (we may have deny Ukraine's membership to EU and NATO, if necessary). The US and the EU interests aren't aligned, as the US continues to work against multipolarity in the international balance of power.

3. The only entity that is gaining now is China, and the worst outcome of this conflict is Russia to become a close ally to China. Everybody would loses. Note that in January, China entered a 25-year parnership with Iran to provide them with weapons in exchange for oil & gas and China is forcing the West to remove sanctions on Iran and China in exchange for a nuclear deal https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20220119-china-plays.... Why wouldn't they do the same with Russia? Also, China is using the Ukraine war to remind everyone that Taiwan is theirs and that they expect to control the South China Sea. The EU also say that only China can be a mediator in this conflict https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3169407/ru.... That's worrisome.

4. Western countries are slowly realizing that we should have considered Russian concerns about its security more seriously (even if they are exaggerated and exploited). Note that 68% of French people surveys believe NATO is partly responsible for the war in Ukraine (slide 9: https://harris-interactive.fr/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/202...).