Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevin_thibedeau | Hacker News Reader

The US only intervenes if a rich American has a profit motive that benefits them. Standing up for the Bosnians was the last rare instance where this wasn't the case. Selling bombs to both sides to maintain perpetual conflict is the usual favorite play.

View on HN

The US intervenes in plenty of places where there is no profit motive outside of the standard military industrial complex. I think, for example, it's hard to argue that there was a profit motive in somalia, or bombing that pharmaceuticals factory in the sudan, going back further and getting out of africa, Grenada, e.g. Not that these interventions weren't stupid for other reasons.

Not sure about Sudan but Somalia is a key shipping chokepoint. There very much is a profit motive there.

Then why did piracy spike after the US intervention?

I didn't say it was a success.

The US is no stranger to strategic military intervention that costs lives and money and achieves nothing very substantial - from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan.

Speaking of which - what was the profit motive in Vietnam? There was definitely geopolitical motive, but I can't imagine there was a "rich American" person or corporation calling the shots for themselves in indochina

What are you talking about, the military industrial complex made an insane amounts of money from that war.

> The US intervenes in plenty of places where there is no profit motive outside of the standard military industrial complex.

It was the cold war. I'm pretty sure the MIC could have justified so much spending in other ways besides vietnam, but we are venturing into counterfactual territory.

"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose" - Captain Picard

Thats not what happened. There was no piracy problem. Then the US toppled the government. Then there was a piracy problem. The US didnt intervene to stop a problem that didnt exist. I was responding to the claim that destabilizing the Somali government in 1993 was profitable to wealth Americans because shipping lanes are near Somalia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_off_the_coast_of_Soma...

>After the collapse of the Somali government and the dispersal of the Somali Navy, ... groups, using small boats, would sometimes hold vessels and crew for ransom. This grew into a lucrative trade, with large ransom payments. The pirates then began hijacking commercial vessels

Thanks for the insight, I really wasn't aware of the extent of their actions.

The quote I posted is a bit cryptic by itself. What I meant by it was that perhaps the US had plans that would lead to greater benefits for them in the region, but these plans backfired by inadvertently creating the Somali piracy problem.

They did everything right with regards to whatever they were hoping to achieve, but they still failed and then pirates happened.

Geographically. Somaliland might be, but that's a de facto independent region only marginally connected to Mogadishu, where the intervention was.

Right, US stood up for Bosnians for the goodness of their hearts, not to weaken Serbs, historically Russian allies, and to signal Turkey and middle eastern oil holders "we support your foothold in Europe".

Probably, but it was also the right thing to do.

And it was also clear nobody in Europe cared or was going to do anything, even if it was also in their craven interest.

Probably didn't align with their August vacation schedule plans or something.

They were a little more hesitant to engage in airstrikes because they knew that Serbia would step up the ethnic cleansing if they did.

& they did.

The US was more concerned with there being instability in Europe than any overriding moral concerns.

300,000 of Serbs forced out of Croatia in period from 1991 to 1995. Where were US bombs to prevent that particular ethnic cleansing?

US bombs landed on Croatian Serbs on multiple occasions thus enabling ethnic cleansing. But no biggie, what's small ethnic cleansing between NATO friends?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com