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Comment by ceilingcorner | Hacker News Reader

Disappointing that this is so downvoted. Say what you want about militaries as a general concept, but compared to essentially any prior state/country/empire in the history of the world, the American military is remarkably benign, especially considering their overwhelming military strength in comparison to rivals.

If the Americans had even 10% of the imperialistic mentality of the Roman Empire, British Empire, Ottoman Empire, Japanese Empire, Mughal Empire, etc., the entire world would be a single imperial state.

That certainly doesn't justify the numerous crimes that the American military has done, but context is key, and like should be compared with like.

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The only reason that the middle east is in such dire situations is because we refused to do what crueler militaries would do, which is crush opposition, what Assad would do, what Saddam would do. They may be cruel dictators but they brought stability and the ability for people to live within those rules. The US's military has and probably will do cruel things too but not to that degree.

This is really glorifying dictatorships, people who live within the rules are still targeted and killed if that happens to benefit the dictator or those in his favor.

No its not. The people of these countries would rather have a dictator who brought stability than chaos. That is true worldwide, for example in Russia. There is hardly a country with constant anarchy for long consistent periods.

I've found this is to be a common sentiment from people who've lived in 3rd world countries especially during times of conflict. Anyone born in America, or any peaceful first world country would have a hard time understanding how this could be a desirable situation.

I don't think that's true. Warfare in general has advanced quite a bit, and expertise exists in many places. You can't really hold an empire with just force these days. The US would crumble under an attempt to take over anything more than North America.

The approach of the modern superpower is much more effective: decentralized power but overall alignment. There's no coincidence to America's approach. It isn't ideological. It's pragmatic.

Maybe that is true today, but:

1) Much of that expertise has come directly from US involvement. See: Western Europe, Japan, Korea.

2) Much of the other expertise developed specifically because of US non-involvement. See: the Soviet Union and the states it influenced and supported. There were even plans to attack/nuke the Soviets, who were the only real rival post-WW2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

Had the U.S. wished to, it could have easily formed an imperial state following WW2. That would have been in-line with essentially every large state in human history. Thankfully, they didn't, and the world is better off for it.

The invention of nukes and a couple failed military campaigns were probably bigger factor.

I actually think America couldn’t have formed an imperial super state. That is really, really hard. Even the pre-eminent superpower of the pre-World-War Era, the United Kingdom, was having her empire fray and tatter before the Wars. The forces at play are too powerful. Rapid collapse would have followed. And that’s even assuming we could have beaten the USSR by 1949 (First Lightning), when opposition nukes enter the picture and the game changes again.

The tools of modern warfare are too widespread and easy to adopt. You can’t do it anymore, the old school empire is just as dead as old school fortresses. Technology has broken it.

I have friends who served in Afghanistan. I’m not unfamiliar with how powerful the US military is. But even that power is too weak.

America’s approach is way more resilient and the control exerted is much easier to retain.

Every empire collapsed. That didn't stop every other large state from creating one.

Besides the technology of weapons, a big change here is that the economics of running an empire was completely changed by industrialization.

Every empire since the year dot captured land, with peasants farming it, who could be taxed, to pay the soldiers, to capture land... that was the business model. A little profit was left over to pay for cities, palaces, pyramids, etc.

This flow of money from country to towns was reversed by the industrial revolution. Within almost every country now, the cities are taxed to pay the rural voter base (or to pay off the rural might-be-revolutionaries, in places with less voting).

Not the only thing going on, of course -- changes in weapons matter to the balance, as mentioned. So does the rise of literacy & nationalism, which made the idea of rulers who are too distant (by ethnicity, language, or religion) from the population base (as they were in empires, almost by definition) into a rallying point. And thus raised the cost of holding land.

>Roman Empire, British Empire, Ottoman Empire, Japanese Empire, Mughal Empire

Imagine, for a moment, that each one of these had nukes. What's the probability they'd use them to make a point as an aggressor/opressor? Even risking MAD?

Considering the actions of all of the empires I listed, I'd say: absolutely likely that they would use any and all weapons available.

Also: MAD only exists if you let your opponents acquire nukes too.

The US definitely would have used nukes, especially in Vietnam - I believe that the reason the US President is the one with the nuclear suitcase and who it the end decision maker (probably something more people are nervous about now) is because when Truman learned about the nuke project (I'm not sure he had been aware of them until he became president) and used them he was afraid the military would use even more. Former SecDef Perry does a lot around nuclear nonproliferation and has good free courses, a podcast, and a book https://www.wjperryproject.org/

Probably the same, with the same knowledge available. If you just gave a Roman Emperor unlimited use of nuclear weapons, sure, he might go ham. He didn’t even know the extent of the world. But you don’t get nukes without awareness of what a nuke is.

Given everything, I think the highest likelihood outcome is that they behave similarly.

I think it is true.

You're right that you can't hold an empire with only force, but I would argue that was just as true during the days of the Roman empire as it is today.

Sure, the Romans used (for the time) overwhelmingly advanced technology and amazingly brutal tactics to conquer Gaul and Britain, but they maintained their hold over those territories by culturally assimilating the native populations. Gallic and Britanic Romans spoke Latin, wore Roman dress, and even followed Roman sanitary customs -- there's a reason there's a town called Bath in southwestern England.

That culture continued to exert influence long after Rome fell as a central military power.

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