Surprise, surprise, the military-industrial complex is destroying our planet. How people can still support this is beyond me.
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.
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.
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)