US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
5 Ways ISIS Can Reduce Its Carbon Footprint
"As ISIS continues to expand its operations in the Middle East, it is more urgent than ever for this group to enact sustainable policies that will have the least impact on our environment. Here are some expert tips to help the Islamic State go green!
Requiring cars to stop at a military checkpoint leads to fuel inefficiency and idling engines, especially if an ISIS agent has to search the vehicle. Limiting checkpoints to one every 20 miles provides similar security with significantly lower emissions!"
https://news.clickhole.com/5-ways-isis-can-reduce-its-carbon...
"North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world, but they save consumption by simply not feeding them"
"Truly elegant in its simplicity"
Edit: It would be more interesting to compare pollution from the military vs other countries or other militaries as a function of their size. Similar problems often arise when comparing states - it's unsurprising when California is the largest and Wyoming is the smallest; please normalize your data! For example, the US military budget of ~$650B is comparable to the GDP of Switzerland or Saudi Arabia, or alternatively comparable to the GDP of the ~80 smallest countries. That 80 country GDP vs 140 country pollution difference is already more illuminating to me...
In terms of men (2.2M active and reserve), combat tanks (6,300), artillery (1,700), war ships (130), submarines (70) and fighter planes (2,400) it’s dwarfed by militaries of the past.
Of course the firepower is much larger nowadays and nuclear weapons also make conventional military play a different role, and the US military - although engaged in several conflicts around the world - is mostly a peace time force, but I still find it amazing that the armies of the WWII era were so much larger.
The US regularly fights wars so the troops are not only well trained but there is a lot of individual and institutional experience.
This is a strange mischaracterization of Israel's and South Korea's militaries, which are two of the largest in proportion to population in the world.
Other countries with large armies don't have to pay for the enormous logistical tail the US uses to deploy worldwide, and the unique readiness levels and naval/air capabilities required to do so on reasonable notice.
Sounded like they didn't know what to do with the conscripts they were being served up by the system.
Maybe he was unique or maybe he exaggerated.
Well yeah, it's a tiny country. In terms of active duty personnel per capita, it's fourth in the world (2.1% of population, as opposed to 1.2% for South Korea and 0.4% for the USA).
> from what he told me after basic training he basically served his time doing nothing near the dmz.
The security strategy of Israel and South Korea is:
* Be able to call an army of ~10% of the population into being within 48-72 hours
* Have an active-duty military with the latest and most up-to-date equipment and training to hold the line until that enormous reserve is ready
* Have intelligence services capable of giving advance warning so the active-duty military doesn't need to hold out as long
So yes of course someone drafted into the ROK army will be trained for combat, and then spend several years on equipment maintenance and training waiting for The Big One to roll around.
Israel is a bit different in that, in addition to its preparations for high-intensity conventional war, its active-duty army is also involved in low-intensity conflict continuously. This is a major concern for the army, as it needs to make a tradeoff between levels of force to apply to the daily grind in the West Bank and the Gaza border areas, and the level of readiness for high-intensity conflict - Israel's poor performance in the 2006 Lebanon War was widely attributed within the Israeli military establishment to the reduced training for conventional warfare while the army was caught up in the counterinsurgency work of the Second Intifadah.
This last figure illustrates the real character of the US military - it is an imperial/expeditionary force, with enormous amounts of cash spent both on maintaining an overseas presence and on the logistical capabilities required to deploy the remainder overseas on short notice. Most other countries build their militaries to fight in or near their own territories, and so get much more combat power per dollar.
The militaries of WWII were fighting an active, unrestricted, war. The US military of today is active, yes, but highly resstrained. aRather than occupy and subdue, its primary role is to project power -- think "gunboat diplomacy" for an earlier example, rather than exercise it. The nuclear arsenal as a prime example.
Where the US does exercise force, it is typically highly focused and targeted. It is not unreasonable for foreign journalists to repprt on ongoing air raids from exposed locations within the cities directly targeted (see Bagdad, in both gulf wars, in ways that reporting from a firebombed Tokyo or Dresden would not have been. Murrow's rooftop reporting of the London Blitz was notable specifically for its daring.
Several authors have noted (some, such as Robert J. Gordon apparently unconciously) of the near le=inear relationship between energy input per worker and productivity, particularly in the case of factory manufacturing of the 1st half ofvthe 20th century. Whether measured in mechanical horsepower or kilowatts, the relation holds. The US military brings a tremendous amount of energy (itself largely responsible for the pollution mention in TFA) per soldier, sailor, airman, and marine. That includes embodied energy in vehicles, arms, and structures, as well as motive and destri]uctive power, again with the nuclear arsenal as its apex.
To wrap my examples: the military is also a highly-tuned logistics system. Much of the task of a military is package delivery -- parking hot lead, dU, HE, or other actives, where they will have a desired effect. Getting the parts and support where and when needed is complex, and the DoD is a masterwork of central planning efficiency. Result: fewer workers -- combatants -- required.
As a parallel to the role of mechanisation and automation in general employment, there are multiple lessons to draw.
Wikipedia lists 186 countries GDP [1]. The 46th (186-46=140) listed country is Romania, with a GDP of $239 billion. In 2018, the U.S defense budget was just under $700 billion. Spending more money, and especially on a Navy at that, will obviously lead to more pollution.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
For countries/governments that doesn't even have or have a very limited garbage disposal, that must mean they pollute very little on paper when in reality people just throw stuff into the ground / ocean etc.
I don't really believe this article. It seems like a typical clickbait shit article actually. Pollution is not only how much CO2 you release into the air, just look at some rivers in India which are incredibly polluted or countries in Africa where people simply burn metal in hunt for rare metals which they can sell. That pollution is probably not included in this statistic which makes me call bullshit on this claim.
On top of that, many of things that need to be done to reduce global warming will directly positively affect biodiversity, such as reducing deforestation and thus habitat loss.
So no, fixing global warming is more important since its a prerequisite to stopping loss of biodiversity.
Maybe we can spare a few murder machines for the Imperial army until we figure out how to stop choking the planet to our collective toxic, entirely preventable deaths?
And my point was literally that there is several countries that simply cannot measure their carbon footprint since they barely have a functional government.
And even if the article only talks about CO2, it is still very, very misleading and the title is even worse. Like I said, a clickbait article.
I'm going to take the wild stretch of imagination that the people who are professionally interested in pollution and study it full-time have also considered this and are doing something a little more sophisticated to measure it.
Interestingly at one point, the US Navy wanted to go all nuclear. That would have helped carbon emissions. https://www.wearethemighty.com/gear-tech/navy-nuclear-power-...
Also anecdotally - but maybe someone with closer knowledge can corroborate - army divisions (?) want to maintain their budgets from cycle to cycle, and to do so they need to prove that they _need_ that money. I have heard that the Air Force, as an example, will rapidly spend down their budgets at the end of a budget cycle by dropping jet fuel and firing off missiles willy nilly.
This is true for all large organizations in existence, both on the military and civilian sides of government and in large corporations.
If we look at list of countries by population, 140 countries have less that 10m people (90 have more than 10 million). So on a per capita basis, the US pollutes maybe 7x as much per capita but again, because the military is using so much transportation it’s not surprising. I would bet CEOs have a bigger per capita carbon footprint.
Then, a good bet would be to assail the country that contributes the most to consumerism.
As a bonus, this would take out a large portion of the Southeast Asia pollution.
Social security goes from taxpayer to retiree often to be spent immediately at market for goods and services useful to many fellow countrymen.
Medicare removes the burden of caring for your elderly from the lives of millions. Its a huge economic boom to not have your parents retirements costing you your time and productivity.
The military, the third largest expense, has three principle benefits - its a direct jobs program for ~3 million people (the enlisted proper military and their tertiary federal contractors supporting them). It keeps in business a dozen or so arms corporations that use their revenue to lobby congress to spend more on the military to make themselves and their investors more money. And it projects American power abroad to use gunpoint as a weapon of trade negotiation and to "maintain the peace" (even through ideological warfare) in our zones of trade globally.
The first two are obviously awful for what purpose they fulfill in a vacuum - you could much more cheaply just house 3-5 million people and give billionaires free money instead for a fraction of the actual cost of maintaining the US armed forces. And as a US citizen the idea that my tax money goes to maintain peace in the world for the benefit of all of mankind might be passably acceptable if there were no other choice, but organizations like UN peacekeepers exist (though palpably suck at) fulfilling a similar role except without the bias towards US economic interests. Perhaps without this one nation acting as world police collaborative organizations could fill the role, but probably not.
So it comes down to a moralistic argument - is it worth it to waste the time of millions of Americans to perpetuate a theater show dick waving competition with hostile dictatorships like Russia and China around the world for the express purpose of maintaining US economic imperialism. Because its really up to you - we slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocents in deserts and huts the world over but in exchange few nations have the spine to try engaging in organized warfare amongst their neighbors for fear of US intervention. There are benefits, its just if the costs we pay, and continue to pay and more each year, especially when any benefit that could generally be perceived as of universal benefit are things I would at least more generally like to see all of humanity not only pay but participate in the management of are worth it.
It isn't the US governments fault the military industrial complex is so large, it's ours. So long as we continue to sheepishly abide by the ignorant notion that our public officials are moral actors whose ambitions and initiatives are driven and monitored by their superb ethical standards we are doomed.
We have to hold the women and men in office accountable not only for their actions but for our agenda. We have to stop living under the yoke of fear and distraction pumped out by the media machine. We have to be brave and fight back or else, when the shit hits the fan, we can only blame ourselves.
If you have a solution that scales up to the population at large I'm all ears.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/fake-news-vaccine-works-...
The link to the actual game is here: https://getbadnews.com/#intro
However in 2019 I see the rise of authoritarian states such as China, Russia and their "fellow travelers" and I think that freedom is very much at risk.
Green Party activist Howie Hawkins, for instance, goes to rallies where they want to see NATO demolished but when Russia is carving up the Ukraine like a steak and where trouble is spilling out of Africa and the Middle East into Europe it seems like NATO is more relevant today then ever. I told him that.
Similarly, the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" is a stopped clock that always tells the same time. They are up in arms that the U.S. is adding a "super fuse" to our warheads that will increase their effectiveness against hard targets (e.g. enemy missile silos.) Where are they when Russia and China are developing greatly upgraded missiles, hypersonic weapons, etc?
However for many of those who live outside of USA, overseas where the US military operates, we understand that power vacuums are very potent and if not for US, some other country will fill the void, with soft or hard power. It’s not just China and Russia; its also Turkey and Iran, for example.
We don’t have much for a frame of reference, but I’ll tell you that the this era of Pax Americana, spanning WWII until today, has been, more or less, heavenly. Free trade and democracy have been sprouting everywhere, and under the US military umbrella and peace keeping, many nations were able to divert resources into developing their societies, not worried that they’ll be plundered by some aspiring empire.
I much prefer democracy to autocracy. I also see the convenience of NATO. But sorry, I refuse to call American imperialism heavenly. It has been bloody, violent and with very little care for actual democracy and self-determination of nations.
Calling the last 70 years "bloody and violent" is the definition of the lack of historical reference I've been talking about in my previous post. In any historical comparison, it's been a period of unprecedented peace, quiet and prosperity; that aside, most of the conflicts of the post WWII 20th century have been supported encouraged by USSR on the other side. It's not just USA unilaterally attacking sovereign nations.
Well, sort of. Depends on whether or not you elect a government that the CIA approves of.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3...
No, not for those of us in Latin America where US-propped brutal dictatorships -- trained in the School of the Americas -- have left scars which have not yet healed. It was a Cold War playground for the US, and little to do with democracy (though free trade, which does not require democracy at all, was of course involved).
Not for those in Vietnam who got to "enjoy" the lasting effects of Agent Orange.
And not in many other parts of the world, either.
In any case, you're moving the goalposts. "But the USSR...!" isn't a good refutation of "the US wasn't about bringing heavenly freedom and democracy to the world".
Students detained, tortured and disappeared by dictatorships trained and abetted by the US. Pregnant mothers raped, electrocuted, and their babies illegally relocated to strangers. Democratically elected governments taken down by force. In some case, even US citizens caught in the crossfire and murdered. "But the USSR...!". Right, I guess nobody told them it was for their own good!
"Fighting against Communism" is not a good reason to torture and murder civilians, or to topple elected governments.
No. When you or your loved ones are tortured and murdered, it's not better if done in the name of the interests of the US.
There's nothing magical about the US that torture in the name of their interests is somehow "better", and I'm sorry -- and horrified -- that you think there is.
Meanwhile, the US backed Colombia is doing fine, is democratic, has seen considerable improvements in most regards, and has doubled the size of its economy in ~15 years (inflation adjusted). Colombia looks like it has a very bright future.
The US also maintains near-guaranteed border security for Latin American nations. It's why there are no giant wars between Latin American nations, with rampant annexations, et al. They all know the US would intervene and whichever side the US was on, that side would likely win, so nobody wants to risk it. The US has also guaranteed the lack of foreign power conquering via the Monroe Doctrine, for more than a century, which is a rather sensitive concern given the history of Latin America.
The US has been a superpower for ~75 years now and has not attempted to use that extreme power imbalance to annex swaths of Latin America. It easily could do so. What other superpowers throughout history have ever behaved that way?
Only for Venezuelans. It was none of the US business.
> Meanwhile, the US backed Colombia is doing fine
For debatable values of "doing fine".
> The US also maintains near-guaranteed border security for Latin American nations
Not really.
> The US has been a superpower for ~75 years now and has not attempted to use that extreme power imbalance to annex swaths of Latin America.
It hasn't used overt military power (except in limited cases, like their own CIA-backed agents going rogue on them). It has meddled in Latin America democracies to often terrible results. In many cases, it has abetted bloodshed.
"For debatable values of "doing fine"." It's doing better politically, and economically than most countries in Latin America. Almost any value that you evaluate it by, its doing fine compared to most countries in the Americas.
The UN is wholly inept and incapable with a security council that overrules decisions and is composed of both democracies and dictatorships, but in theory you would want to have organizations akin to it that could maintain nation state power balance and avoid the propagation of further empire or subjugation between states. Having this one nation beholden largely not even to its people but to its richest dictate global morals and ethics between societies is an oppression of its own, even if the alternative is recognizably worse in the current state of affairs.
NATO is not required for the Ukraine. Under the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, 1994 - the USA, UK, and others committed to defend the territorial integrity of the Ukraine in exchange for them giving up the 3rd largest nuclear arsenal.
Then you didn't.
Why would NATO be different - under an actual peer-level invasion?
In a moment of touching naiveté they agreed to give it all up and accept the word of other nuclear powers (who got to keep their nukes) that they could rely on said others for protection.
One invaded them and the others had a sudden case of acute testicular fortitude failure.
Unsuprisingly, South Africa politely refused Obama's repeated, kind-hearted offers to let the USA take their weapons-grade uranium in exchange for (wait for it) a whopping $5 million worth of nuclear fuel.
A lesson to all.
Maintaining nuclear arsenal is quite expensive. The Ukrainian elites at that time thought they were just being extremely clever by getting 'guaranteed' security without paying for it. Their successors were dumb enough to threaten Russia's own security by inviting NATO to expand to the Ukraine.
The funny thing is that the only reason for Russia to intervene in Ukraine is the NATO expansion to Russian borders and specifically the intention to expand to the Ukraine.
Now you, the righteous one, see Russia's reaction to NATO's actions as justification for the existence of NATO. NATO is a corrupt jobless firefighter turned arsonist hoping to become relevant again.
With the rise of China and its exponential military spendings, do you think that decreasing us military budget would be a wise strategic move ?
I'm surrounded by people who take our position in the world for granted and don't see any problem with gutting our military, though.
Europe endures and prospers without threat of violence or economic imperialism by bomb across the globe.
What's wrong with you people.
Personally, I'll settle for having it over not having it.
We have lived under the protection of the US Military for so long that most have forgotten what a world would be like without it. Eventually you begin to believe that if the military was simply gone things might still be the same, or perhaps even more peaceful.
But they’d be wrong. They simply have no idea what others will do for power.
And magically... they don't get attacked. Funny how that works...
[1] http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ (Skip to the 14 minute mark if you're impatient)
Interestingly, this convention is signed and ratified basically by the whole world, but not by the US.
[0] https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2019/04/russia-scor...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_t...
During WWII, do you think appeasement would have worked?
The reason many evil countries aren't bombing the US and Canada is because they know they would be obliterated by the US military due to past campaigns.
Protected from what? From the White Walkers?
Who is there to attack Canada (besides the US itself)? The Great Britain is trying to return the lost colony? France is thinking about taking over the Quebec?
To give you an couple examples in the current real world, imagine if South Korea or Taiwan didn't have such good relations with America in the post-WW2 peace. It is not that far fetched to think that there could be a single communist Korea, Taiwan could have been swallowed up by mainland China.
I don't think that Canada in your alternative universe would've been worse off than Finland in this one. Finland's neutrality kept it safe ever since the WW2.
When push comes to shove, neutral countries eventually need to pick sides or they will be taken over.
You cannot seriously assert that if Germany beats the UK and Russia, they will decide to simply leave Switzerland alone?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum#Nazi_atti...
Want to scare the world and become known? Canada probably isn't the place to do so, the US is way bigger, has more news outlets, and enough targets that you can probably hit at least one of them.
Want to show the world how cruel you can be, and inspire revenge? Attack Canada out of the blue- the stereotype of Canadians being super chill and apologizing is international, and attacking them will get everyone and their dog angry at you.
Want to do a lot of damage? US.
Want to show that your country is capable of going toe-to-toe with a first-world country? The USA is your best bet.
As alluded to by other commenters, Canada is also protected because its physical barriers touch the United States', and anything major that affects Canada will also affect the US, too.
And magically... a lot of countries that aren't Canada still get attacked. Funny how that works.
In any case, the crux of the US-China competition is that the US has a presumption of global primacy, and feels that it cannot even allow a regional power like China to establish itself. All of the problems in the relationship do not disappear if you drop that presumption, but many of them do - and certainly the idea that we should prepare for World War Three does, which in any event, would almost certainly lead to a global nuclear holocaust.
Also, US Presidents have not been 'prevented' from drawing back from the world stage by 'external events'. Events happened, and they responded as such. There was nothing foreordained or deterministic about it. They could have chosen differently.
The budget is essentially unchanged[1]. The value of that budget has increased exponentially because the value of Chinese currency has increased. China has not directed any more of its resources to its military.
Even more foolish is acting like the Chinese military is capable of threatening the US any time soon. Like fuck, at least we still kind of fight proxy wars with Russia; we do nothing of the kind with China. China is totally incapable of force projection outside tiny pacific islands. China is the only nuclear country that has a "no first use" policy on nukes. They have a single aircraft carrier, compared to the US' eleven. The US has as many carriers (which are the single dominant mode of force projection) as the rest of the world combined.
The US military is so absurdly oversized that we would benefit strategically by spending the money on R&D or the economy instead. Until such a time as the US expects to literally fight China, Russia, and the EU at the same time, the military is massively excessive.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_China#/medi...
When China's economy is another 50% larger, matching where US GDP is at today, you can expect China's real military spending to considerably exceed the US today.
Thanks to drastically lower salaries & benefits, the personnel costs for the Chinese military is a far smaller portion of its total military spending as compared to the US share.
Adjusted PPP comparison: https://i.imgur.com/SY22Whj.png
Sanctioning China economically though is a moralistic move. It has real absolute costs to the US economy, and such sanctions would need the broad consensus support the Russian ones did - if you don't punish aggression unilaterally and in global unison then the aggressor still has inroads into the global economy to ease any impact.
It is never a solution to spend several hundred billion more dollars on weapons of war that are wholly irrelevant to any legitimate threat of conflict with any other nuclear power. They only serve as a dick measuring contest of how much of your economic productivity you can wholly waste before your economy collapses. That is pretty much exactly how the Soviets fell, and the US is too egocentric to realize its going down that road too.
Nope, just regrettable but necessary reaction to the NATO expansion. Your words, however, perfectly describe the American illegal adventures in Iraq in 2003.
"to try undermining US elections"
If that is what you say Russia was doing, what would you call the American meddling in Russian elections? [0]
[0] 'Yanks to the rescue. The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win.' http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html
I am not an expert, but my feeling is that overwhelming military power is not the only thing that contributes to the survival of an empire (which the US de facto is).
The US GDP is orders of magnitude bigger than the other countries, and also has no land borders to defend so it's "defense" spending should really not be as big as most other countries.
Of course "defense" is a joke here, because US Military Defense spending is mostly "Offense" - power projection. Patrolling the international waters, and flying air missions to ensure the entire world knows the US is in charge.
Whether this has value in the world today is subjective. It's a pretty deep divide between the left ("why can't we all just get along?") and the right ("i'm afraid of anyone with a shade of skin darker than a mango, so i want an F16 flying around their country's borders 24-7 and an aircraft carrier parked outside their front door")
It didn't make much sense for most of the 90's, once russia collapsed.
It didn't make sense post 9/11 where the enemy was no longer a state, and too ephemeral to be affected by aircraft carriers.
It doesn't make sense post 2016 because the war Russia is waging on the US is one with Information (fake news, Facebook), and by compromising one of the two major political parties.
Hilariously, like a broken clock, the US is about to be right again, because it WILL make sense again over the next decade as China enters it's own "World Police" ambitions.
And as evil and self-centered the US government and international policy is, I'd rather have them in charge than China (Because while they are bastards, they are my bastards, and I, as a westerner, reap the benefits of their policies).
You're right. Which is why we went from spending 12.5% of our GDP on defense to less than 4% after the end of th cold war. That's literally a 3-4x reduction.
And what do you think their endgame is with this information war?
They aren't pumping out the disinformation for shits and giggles, it's for a very clear distinct foreign policy reason when you consider Georgia, Ukraine, etc
> "...the ignorant notion that our public officials are moral actors..." - Yes good point. Politicians are inherently evil. We should just let Walmart run the country.
> "We have to be brave and fight back or else..." - Gotta love militant pacifism.
EDIT: we agree to disagree but my impression is that when it comes to army and security services the tail is wagging the dog almost everywhere - not only in US. Any congressman can be presented with classified information which with the right interpretation can justify basically anything and the said congressman will simply ignore the public will.
Congress funds the military. The military funds large corporations. Large corporations fund congressional election campaigns. And "the people" base their votes off of campaigns.
Now, the current admin is cutting back on involvement. Some candidates call for more interventionism. That we’re retreating from “our duty” to be international police, essentially. So what is it?
Deterrence is good. Running roughshod like Bush and Obama resigned himself to is not good. But completely shutting it down is worse than even that.
Can't be tempted to start a war without an army to match.
Yes we’re made monumental mistakes like Arab spring and gulf war II. But those would pale compared to what would happen if we just let things go. All those repressed military desires by dictators everywhere suddenly given a green light.
The size of the losses aren't the same, though. Saddam was by no means a benevolent Dictator, and he had plenty of people disappear, tortured and executed. But not nearly anywhere close to the number of people that died because of the Regime Change campaign.
And don't forget: a dictator usually keeps order. A civil war, ISIS roaming through the no-mans-land etc is much worse than a cruel strongman.
North Korea is Soviet (and later China) interference, but the U.S. was involved
Zimbabwes problem dates back to Brtitish interference, and now like the rest of Africa is starting to fall under China's influence.
Once you interfere, it can take generations to recover
This went political, and the topic was ecology. As this wasn't bad enough, this all goes with a huge ecological toll which impacts a broader number of people than those involved in conflict.
Lybia is still a country in a bloody civil war with local warlords and militias fighting for power. The number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan is still growing yearly, with a ever increasing opium production and the Afghan National Police is also far from upholding law and order. And have you looked at Syria? Its a bloody proxy war with barely enough involvement to keep the conflict going at the cost of the civilian population. Not to mention the groups being supported by weapon shipments are fundamentalist Islamist, most notably splinter groups of Al Quaida. I am having a hard time as seeing it as anything else then a Afghanistan revival with the support of jihadist groups to keep the soviets busy.
I just hope US never experience this types of logic on their soil if in some future US loses world dominance and some other power decides that US "needs liberation".
And that was in the past? The US had no problem segregating schools at one point. It's not compelling to bringing up an ancient relationship, where not a single person involved in the whataboutism, is still in power.
We have the internet and extremely timely war coverage now. That no longer flies.
I didn’t say it’s better now. What I said was that a lot of those places have a tumultuous history of instability (Afghanistan) or are run by dictators where a violent power struggle is a certain eventuality (Libya, Syria).
Gadaffi was going to lose power eventually (through death is certain) and the power struggle that results is going to be ugly.
Too bad there is no one to repress the military desires by your American actors that are given green light to start arbitrary wars around the world, right?
My second thought is that the US MIC is out for itself. It would be one thing if we had a defense system like the Swiss which I look at as pretty sensibly invested civil defense infrastructure (which, btw, the Swiss are rapidly losing as they forget the lessons of the past). Instead, we spend billions on expensive, fancy technical weapons systems that don't necessarily measure up. For example, the Littoral Combat Ship that has an aluminum hull that cracks in cold water. Or the F35 which has to be one of the biggest aeronautical boondoggles in history. We just keep pouring billions down rat holes because of corporatism. I currently work in the health insurance biz and it's the same tune--billions going in all kinds of odd directions in order to make money but outcomes haven't changed or have gotten worse. But our stock price is great!
Defending a country with a set of borders is very different to the capability of the U.S. military, and relying on a country you have no say in for your defence is never a one way deal.
Now you can argue that nuclear weapons are the root cause for current stability, and ask if a world with nuclear weapons but less aggressive US would be better off.
Bottom line, the first world's prosperity is based on an efficiency in terms of work done per person, which stems from energy mostly coming from fossil fuels. The US just happened to get first dibs on the resources, but I doubt it would be any different with others. The societies have a tendency to grow and the only real backpressure is resource exhaustion (manifesting as cost).
China is building islands all around the South China Sea: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/21...
China now has a presence in Africa too: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/africa/pentagon-accuses-chinese...
The Africa still isn't a proper comparison - building few bases where you invest tons of money and extract crutial resources isn't the point here, bloody invasions that destroy whole region for generations and kill millions innocent are. And this is something specific to US, even Russia didn't do anything comparable.
Anything after WWII, maybe but just maybe including Korea is actively adding evil to this world. But I suspect not many americans are willing to accept truth here
As for countries being militarily aggressive, and causing direct conflict since WW2, sure the US, but there have been numerous wars since. A few at the top of mind —-First Afghanistan War ( Russia), Battle of Falkland Islands (Argentina), Iran vs Iraq War
>In March, Hanoi lodged a protest with Beijing after a Vietnamese fishing vessel crashed and sank after it was chased by a Chinese maritime surveillance vessel in disputed waters. https://www.inkstonenews.com/politics/once-bitter-rivals-us-...
Increasing budget can mean active wars or it can mean preparation (modernizing).
The UN is a political org, it doesn’t achieve much. It makes a whole bunch of corrupt officials rich.
You are absolutely right. This statement is as true as saying you have to balance eating lavish restaurant meals 7 nights a week against letting your children starve. Completely true. However, if you're currently eating lavish restaurant meals 7 nights a week, the direction you need to go in toward balance is obvious.
Would you support reducing U.S. military spending from 2-3x that of China (the 2nd highest spender), to 1.5x?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
If Russia and China were to enter the fold and be good world citizens and share a common vision and cooperate, then yeah. We only need to be as strong as the combined strength of our nearest rivals.
Ah, so you want to cut the U.S. military budget in half, then? I guess we're on the same page.
So eternal arms race then?
China is currently constructing 2 new aircraft carriers (they have 1) with as many as 3 more planned by 2030 based on intel out there.
From 2001-2006 they built at least a dozen new classes of ships, putting 60 more into the water.
They have at least 10 known new ships/subs coming online with some being constructed, some seeing sea trials and some being fitted out.
Etc.
My point is, China is very much building up their military
>China's military salary structure is similar to other countries’. In terms of salary level, China’s level is comparatively low. "For example, a U.S. colonel who has served in the military for 30 years will have a monthly salary of $10,000. However, the salary of a Chinese who has served in the military for 30 years is just 8,000 or 9,000 yuan,” said Zhang.
It's also worth noting China has state owned oil wells, state owned oil refineries, state owned natural gas companies, state owned fuel companies etc which all likely keeps their fuel costs artificially low.
I'm guessing they also don't provide things like the GI Bill to their military personnel and similar benefits that we give to our military personnel.
Could this be in response to the U.S. having 11? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_ships_of_the_U...
Two of which are in the Pacific now? https://www.navy.mil/navydata/nav_legacy.asp?id=146
Or could it be in response to them being very effective platforms for patrolling territorial waters and even providing cover for coastal regions? And because China has 9,010 miles of coast?
I think this behavior is common among us all, us vs the rest. Its jsut that this is so much more obvious if you see it from outside of the bubble. Look at former colonial powers, many citizens of western europe still consider enslaving and raping whole nations for hundreds of years an enlightened period ("but... we build them rails!" or similar is a phrase I heard more than once on this topic).
But since we don't have time machine, its hard to say whether US was/is overall the force of good vs evil. Somebody would have to fill up power vacuum otherwise, and trust me, you wouldn't want the communist USSR earlier chinese to run the whole show.
Because it prevents foreign troops from attempting to land on U.S. soil and attack us, it also gives us means to take most air and ocean-based attacks out long before they get near the continental United States. With the exception of 9/11 (which wasn't actually military but does seem to have been state-sponsored to some degree), we've gone the better part of 2 centuries without hostile military action on the continental United States.
Because it has provided jobs for many of us and our families. My mother retired from DoD, I have no less than 2-dozen friends that served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq and many more that are/were guard/reserve, my aunt's husband retired from the USAF and then went to work as a contractor for them, one of my half-brothers was in the Navy and even served on a sub, one of my aunts was USCG reserve, from my grandfathers (Army Air Corp, Navy) back we've fought in every single war since the War of Independence, my godfather was Navy UDT, the guy I owe my sobriety to is a purple heart carrying 18D. Several members of my Lodge are veterans, several members of my Ward are members, several people in my office are veterans or are married to them, the founder of my company that employs 425k people is a Vietnam-vet Marine and a lot of our pilots are former military. Several of my friends were able to get college educations thanks to the military, my mother's father had multiple heart surgeries over the years thanks to the VA, etc etc.
Because space exploration, GPS and literally every other type of satellite our civilization relies upon, effectively all nuclear technologies (power, medicine), advanced prosthetics, handheld radios, RADAR, airliners, digital photography, the internet, etc etc so on and so forth are all direct results of technologies developed by various branches of the U.S., and foreign, military branches?
I mean, without the U.S. military, you wouldn't even have safe and reliable ocean shipping. The United States Navy and United States Coast Guard patrol international shipping lanes and are the largest deterrent to piracy (which is a multi-billion dollar economic loss annually)
It's depressing and utterly pathetic that we refuse to listen to wise words because our primitive monkey feelings don't jive with the advice they gave.
You have to factor the pros and the cons in any situation. This kind of headlines and focus only focuses on the negatives with regards but forget to ask why we have a military, to begin with and what the cost would be if we didn't.
A much healthier approach IMO is to look at how we can improve energy production in general as that's at the heart of things here. And once we look at that we will quickly realize that we are already looking at that but finding out it's not as easy to improve the way we currently use energy as people might want it to be.
But then again that wouldn't create as many clicks.
Somehow that underlying reality is lost on a surprising amount of people.
Our relatively wealthy, safe, modern lives with all the bells and whistles and freedoms we in the west take for granted, only is possible because it ultimately sits on top of military dominance that allows us to secure acccess to the proper resources and gives us negotiation power.
The problem is Europe not the US.
This belief astounds me. Do you really think your material condition requires the constant death, destruction and turmoil inflicted by the US military around the globe?
We should ask the 1 million dead Iraqis and Afghanis what the pros and cons of the past 20 years of American military policy. How about asking the average Libyan, Syrian or Yemini if our actions were worth it for "access to the proper resources"?
Or ask your children, who will be saddled with tens of trillions of dollars of debt spent on the military industrial complex for decades to come - money that could have been spent on improving health and welfare domestically for them.
Peace based upon respect and respect for hard-won rules and structures is the right road.
Switzerland learned this lesson through bloodshed, after a disastrous campaign in which nationals supporting the Duke of Milan got caught in reprisals from his foes, thus beginning the great Swiss tradition of neutrality in foreign conflict.
While I won't argue about the relative morality involved in World War 2, I will argue that all ensuing wars the USA has been involved in have ultimately undermined it's prospects for future peace.
It seems like many of my fellow Americans need a history lesson vis-a-vis Iran.
The USA and UK conspired to overthrow the democratically elected Iranian prime minister Mossadegh, as he threatened to nationalize (their own) oil, which Standard Oil, among others, didn't like very much (Shades of United Fruit and Guatemala anywone?)
We then attempted to install the Shah (we knocked down their democracy because it was too lefty, then we put a king back on the throne.)
The 1979 revolution was a direct reaction to this, and could have been seen coming from a decade before.
This was initially a real revolution, but of course, they purged the lefties and students out and installed a right wing religious government, rather like many Republicans want for America.
And we have the nerve to hammer on them for desiring self-actualization... incredible.
Hypocrisy is not even the beginning of it...