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Comment by ahelwer | Hacker News Reader

There’ll always be something. When you have a presence and interests (???) in most countries of the world, along with a compliant domestic media willing to go along with whatever story you put out there about how our Capabilities have to be Augmented to Address the Emerging Threat, there will never be a time now or in the future when we can all agree that it is finally safe to massively decrease military funding.

You just have to see the game for what it is (a giant scam) and opt out.

The US military should be disarmed and turned into a purely domestically-defensive force.

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So your solution is for Taiwan to be annexed by China?

Do you think your computer chips (Apple M1, AMD Zen, etc. etc.) are going to be readily supplied from Taiwan under these conditions? Is this annexation good and proper for the world? Is it a benefit of US interests to let this happen?

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China has no ability to attack the USA domestically. The issue is what China can do in the Asian-sphere of influence, and whether or not that's net-benefit to us in general.

Not just China either, North Korea almost certainly would flatten South Korea and take over it without the US military presence holding the DMZ. We've also been able to force a peace between Korea and Japan by outlawing Japan's military, and promising protection of Japan with our forces. A lot of our foreign influence and politics revolve around military strength, both the good and the bad.

EDIT: Finally, pirate attacks are virtually nonexistent. Any pirate dumb-enough to try to take over a ship on the high-seas is obliterated by the US Navy. For better or for worse, we actually need a strong navy (with special ops units) to hunt down would-be pirates and discourage them from popping up.

> China has no ability to attack the USA domestically

I kind of getting tired of controlling myself about this type of comments that lacks the most basic understanding of the reality...

For God's sake, China has nuclear ballistic missile in the 60s...

What kind of sutpidity am I seeing...

Nobody ever counts nuclear weapons when they’re talking about this, and for good reason.

For starter, maybe the US doesn't need to be involved in both Ukraine, the middle East and Pacific at the same time don't you think? An army twice or thrice less big could easily fend off China's threat on Taiwan, but it cannot do so while threatening Iran and Russia at the same time…

> Do you think your computer chips (Apple M1, AMD Zen, etc. etc.) are going to be readily supplied from Taiwan under these conditions?

And how many computer do you think you're gonna make with those chips without all the other parts which overwhelmingly come from China?

> For starter, maybe the US doesn't need to be involved in both Ukraine, the middle East and Pacific at the same time don't you think?

We aren’t, at least not militarily. The only thing we’re going to do about Ukraine is try and convince the Europeans to agree to multilateral economic sanctions, which some of them won’t do because Russian natural gas is their only reliable source of energy now that they’ve decommissioned a bunch of perfectly good nuclear power plants.

> An army twice or thrice less big could easily fend off China's threat on Taiwan

Look at a map sometime. Taiwan is an island, which means the primary means of defending it will be the Navy, not the Army. If the Army gets involved at all, something has already gone significantly wrong.

Even setting that aside, China has a bigger army than we do. So if we were going to take your suggestion and use our army to deter theirs, making ours even smaller would not be helpful.

> Taiwan is an island, which means the primary means of defending it will be the Navy, not the Army

My mistake, English isn't my native language, thanks for pointing that out. I actually meant “military”. In French «Armée» is used to refer to all military branches together and I mistakenly translated it to “army”.

> For starter, maybe the US doesn't need to be involved in both Ukraine, the middle East and Pacific at the same time don't you think?

So your plan is... to cede Ukraine to Russia, cede Taiwan to China, and let the Kurds get slaughtered and have Iran build a nuke?

Sure, its annoying that there's problems all around the world, but we all know that no one else is going to step up to do something about it. If no one else is stepping up, then we should. That's about it.

Letting Iran's nuclear program complete would seem like a major mistake. Letting North Korea's nuclear program progress + their space / ICBM program progress is also a mistake IMO. Etc. etc.

> cede Ukraine to Russia, cede Taiwan to China

First, Ukraine and Taiwan are independent themselves. No one can cede them to any other. One can refuse to offer helping hands when they are needing them.

Second, get your facts straight. There had not been evidence, I mean evidences that not manufactured by the Iraq WMD type nonsense, that Russia or China really planning to invadr Ukraine or Taiwan.

China openly stated that they would invade Taiwan if they declared independence. And Russia already did invade Ukraine. Were you not paying attention?

> China openly stated that they would invade Taiwan if they declared independence

I mean Taiwan is effectively independent. Everyone knows that. If China want to save face, why not grant that? China never said that they would invade no matter what, right?

China's official policy is that Taiwan is a secessionist sect that is truly part of China.

Its not an invasion. According to their viewpoint, Taiwan doesn't exist as a nation. Its just another part of China and always has been.

That's called save face.

Like US pretend that there is Uyghur genocide, but literally does nothing to prevent it. Because they know that there is no genocide.

Same here, China knows Taiwan is independent, but as long as everyone does not say so, China is perfectly OK to play along.

It's a question of pros and cons. US failed Ukraine and Kurds, but might be effective at protecting Taiwan. However, when you compare this with downsides - from one million killed on Middle East to problems with basic necessities like medical care in US, to god knows how many civilians dead because of economic sanctions, to multiple countries destabilised and democracies toppled to protect US interests - it's clearly doing more bad than good.

> cede Ukraine to Russia

It's EU's problem, not the US (and I say that as an European) and the current Ukraine crisis originate from US's push of NATO eastwards, in complete violation of American engagements towards the Russians in the 90s.

> let the Kurds get slaughtered

Well, the US's involvement with the Kurds cannot really be counted as a major success…

> have Iran build a nuke

That's Israel's problem. (Even though, btw, I'd argue that it would have a stabilizing effect on the area, not the opposite). And the US army isn't actually doing anything to prevent that (nor did they prevent NK from getting it one decade earlier).

> Sure, its annoying that there's problems all around the world, but we all know that no one else is going to step up to do something about it

The US is creating a good chunk of those problems by themselves though… (Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Irak) And I'm not even sure it's entirely by accident: the Defense has been needing enemies to justify its budget since at least the down of the USSR…

> And how many computer do you think you're gonna make with those chips without all the other parts which overwhelmingly come from China?

USA / Europe have plenty of PCB manufacturers. The important components (resistors, inductors, capacitors, and chips) are made by Taiwan, Japan, USA.

USA _can't_ make TSMC's 5nm chips. We've given them tax-benefits to encourage TSMC to build a fab-lab in Arizona but no. That technology is literally outside of our reach (until TSMC's Arizona lab is finished anyway).

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Even then, that Taiwan was able to build such a technology is incredible. Clearly they've got a culture worth protecting.

Keep spinning those stories! Now I feel much better about paying hundreds of bucks a month in health insurance premiums to a company that would happily leave me to die in more excruciating pain than normal if it fit their bottom line. Any alternative must be foreclosed because $2022_STATE_DEPT_VILLAIN is on the verge of committing some dastardly deed!

To single it out, the idea of NK desiring invasion of SK is utterly ridiculous. Tom Clancy tier ridiculous.

> The US military should be disarmed and turned into a purely domestically-defensive force.

How would US specifically benefit from this?

There are a few ways:

(1) Many people living in the US (myself included) would feel much relieved at their tax dollars not going toward bombing teenagers, weddings, or whatever other Enemy Combatants were yesterday identified with a High Degree of Certainty

(2) The money currently flowing toward said bombing could be repurposed toward general domestic social good, for example in housing, healthcare, or education

(3) Hard to overstate the whole "not continually murdering people on an industrial scale" thing but many people in the US are general humanists and would probably appreciate it

The ability of the US to pay for all of this is a function of our ability to be the strongest kid on the block both economically and military. Your supposed return value of money would go up in a puff of smoke if the US did what you suggested. The dollars place as a reserve currency is key and moving away from that as you suggest would leave zero for the programs you suggest as the economy would collapse. I am not making a judgement on the value of greater investment in social wellbeing, which I generally support, however I am pointing out that our ability to do this is strongly linked to our place in the world order and can’t be so simply disconnected. Your moral outrage, correct or not, does not change the economy reality.

Not sure what you're envisioning as a "purely domestically-defensive force". For instance, would our Navy just guard our shorelines?

An effective "defensive force" for a nation like the U.S. in today's world needs offensive capabilities.

While degree is arguable, we certainly cannot simply ignore everything else that goes on in the world and expect to retain a viable domestic defense.

Not sure why this is controversial.

The idea that we'd have a "purely domestically-defensive force" doesn't compute. What does that even mean—defensive weapons guarding the homeland and forces deployed to protect only our coastline/waterways, land masses, and airspace?

Meanwhile China claims Taiwan and Russia re-annexes Ukraine and the rest of the former Soviet-bloc countries, etc.?

Of course we need to project power in various spheres of influence in order to provide for our overall defense. And, of course, that means offensive capabilities as a deterrent.

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