Stand up and fight for what? Most people are completely blind to the realities and driving forces behind various conflicts. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times et al are usually not telling an accurate or comprehensive story.
This is problematic because the real motivations for war are practical and strategic and not actually moral. But since military personnel require moral justifications, there is no choice but to fabricate them. For this reason, information control is a key aspect of warfare.
The reason people are blind is because they have been inundated with propaganda. US intelligence must require large outlets like NBC, NY Times and Wall Street Journal, etc. to toe the line when it comes to certain key war propaganda. If they do not do this, then soldiers will not fight. Soldiers are not going to go to battle if the president gives a speech saying "well, the oil executives say that if we can't maintain the status quo for pipeline protection then we can expect 8% higher oil prices next year". They are not going to risk their lives for something like that. They _will_ happily go kill an "evil dictator" and his "evil minions".
But the bottom line for control in our world is deadly force. If we want to get away from that then we need everyone to start following an entirely new paradigm.
Doing nothing and letting someone die is just as immoral as potentially killing someone.
After all, even Hitler hated his enemies, so no one can be free of being hated by at least someone unless they are a passive rock.
Nation states currently operate like violent criminal gangs. In the same way that street gangs indoctrinate their members into loyalty, nation states indoctrinate their populations.
And in the same way that most of the benefits of gang crime go to the leaders, most of the benefits of war go to a country's upper class, while everyone else bears the risks.
WWII was a thing, the Nazi party came to power and started pushing their agenda, and the holocaust actually happened. And the farther back in history you go, the more it becomes apparent that it's not really all that much of a statistical outlier except in scale.
That we don't need to continuously make sure we're strong enough to defend ourselves is a fiction that people in countries with strong governments that enforce the rule of law like to tell themselves. That's only possible because the government is there to be the ultimate arbiter, and as libertarians will quickly point out, that's only possible because they have, and ruthlessly enforce, their monopoly on violence (to our collective benefit, IMO).
No such thing exists for nations between themselves, except for pacts like the U.N. or NATO, and that's not a solution, it's just kicking the problem up the chain so we can act like it's not our problem.
Indeed it was, but many people act like the whole thing just sprung up from a vacuum. There was an entire history which went before, and at least libertarians seem to attempt to dig a little deeper. If you don't want to hear out the prologue to these kinds of dastardly events, there isn't much difference between your acceptance of propaganda and your supposed adversary's.
"Because the politics of Europe so clearly had nothing to do with America, it took a massive propaganda campaign to solidify American involvement. This allowed an overwhelming victory for the allies and the disastrous peace agreement that followed. So much of the ensuing horror of the 20th century, Scott and Woods contend, resulted directly from Wilson’s foreign policy."
https://scotthorton.org/interviews/11-12-18-tom-woods-on-wor...
Yes, I am sure someone will come and point out some nutty thing some or the other libertarian said. You don't have to be in complete agreement with someone's viewpoint just to hear out their views.
Full video (3hrs): https://youtu.be/jiHm2S0w3_Q
* stop making China rich. All the stuff they're building is built with US money.
* vote for a president that isn't more friendly towars the US's traditional adversary Russia than towards European allies.
Military hardware is useless if the politicians continue to make strategic blunders.
Do you think not helping China as much economically (read as: hurt us both economically to suppress them somewhat) would prevent their research of military technology, including both hardware and software/network capabilities?
I disagree with how the current administration is dealing with Russia and China, as I disagree with a great many (most!) the things they do, but I don't think that really affects the calculus of the equation on whether we should continue to invest in our own military technology.
I do not want it to be this way, it's just how I perceive it to be, and as much as people have taken exception with my statements, I'm not seeing a lot of arguments that explain how it's wrong or can be escaped.
> Military hardware is useless if the politicians continue to make strategic blunders.
It's also useless if it doesn't exist. Available but unused when needed is a step up from not available when needed. The ultimate outcome might be the same, but one is a precursor to "available and used when needed" and the other isn't.
Obviously yes. It's absolutely evident that the large majority of the economy of China is based on export towards rich countries. Without US investments China would be extremely poor.
Yet, the US decided to embargo communist Cuba (and Vietnam) and invest heavily in "communist" China. The latter being very capitalistic.
You say obviously, yet fail to link why making China poorer would significantly affect military investment and which type. How much money does it take to throw people at software? And people are something China has a LOT of.
Depending on how you measure it, China's economy is between the 1st and 3rd largest in the world (I think first largest is a stretch, but there's apparently some metrics which rank it that way based on purchasing power).
The United states is not the only country that China exports to. It's a large chunk, and it would hurt, but as we're seeing, China is not willing to let the United States dictate everything in the relationship. Why would they let the United States use economics to tell them they can't research what they would describe as technologies used to protect themselves when they aren't willing to do so for lesser reasons, as evidenced by the current tariffs?
At most, we'll cause them to hide their activity. Why would they stop in light of the aggressive stance by other countries to dictate their future? North Korea certainly doesn't seem to like it, and China is in a position of much more power.
> Yet, the US decided to embargo communist Cuba (and Vietnam) and invest heavily in "communist" China. The latter being very capitalistic.
Well, yeah. Because doing otherwise hurts us economically, and economics drives a huge amount of decision making. And barring a concerted world effort to to China to stop investing in any military tech, while the rest of the world would undoubtedly continue, I doubt China would be willing to stop. It's not all that different than if some nations came to the United States and told us to stop researching and building up our military. We'd tell them it's none of their business and they have no say in what we do. Why would we expect China to act any differently?