World military expenditure passes $2T for first time | Hacker News Reader

World military expenditure passes $2T for first time

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156 pointsgeorgecmu421 comments

I really don't know what to think about this. Military spending makes me feel very conflicted inside.

I'm the kind of weird pacifistic person who literally sat down at school and took the beating from the bullies, safe in the knowledge that I had the moral high ground. It didn't make me feel much better when they broke my ribs, but I've never punched someone in my life. I've always loved the look of fighter jets and the fact that humans can hop in and go faster than the speed of sound in them, but I've always hated their application. The engineering is amazing; the technology brilliant and the things that are discovered along the way undoubtedly serendipitous. Unfortunately, I know that for a human population to completely disarm is to invite trouble: and armies can and do far worse things than just beat you.

I once went on a trip as a fresh-out-of-college person to a firm that made "kinetic armaments"; I went in with an open mind and left, three days later and with an (unaccepted) job offer, with a very shut one. That was a career pathway that was decidedly not for me.

Eisenhower's famous quote sums it up quite well.

> “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

Ok this is very nice, but as someone who was also bullied but is from a country that's been invaded at least 5 times by various empires in the last 1000 years, every gun ever made that wasn't used to feed people - was also made so that my ancestors could defend themselves against some king or dictator who wanted to invade other countries.

You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die. That's generally the choice throughout history, because hardly any country has ever always been the aggressor.

Violence is at the root of all human existence. To deny it is to live in a fantasy land. In the end violence is what rules, because if you are weak at some point someone stronger will rule over you. That doesn't mean a violent person will always rule, because 2 peaceful collaborators can usually take down a violent ruler, but it still means that at the root of it whoever can dominate the other in some way will win.

And this isn't unique to humans of course, it's how it is in nature and most tribal animals.

He’s not saying no military expenditure should occur but it has to be in balance with other things. In the US, where our military more often than not is used imperialistically rather than purely defensively, while the poor are allowed to starve or work for less than living wages, homeless suffer on the streets from mental illness, people are allowed to drown in medical or school debt, and where we got caught with our pants down in a pandemic when we should have been the most ready nation on earth, suddenly spending ever increasing amounts to defend ourselves from some imagined future threat doesn’t make much sense.

Take it from someone who's non US and so isn't caught up in self guilt - the US is a much more passive military superpower than almost any superpower in history.

I really don't think the US is imperialistic TBH. Just because a few countries got bombed for oil doesn't make you imperialistic. Read a bit of history about what empire building countries/kings/tyrants were actually like.

It’s not just direct military action by the US it’s also that we support a lot of the current dictators around the world while claiming to be the beacon of democracy. But the whole point of whether we are passive or aggressive is besides the fact that we don’t care properly for the people who are paying for the military that it’s supposedly defends.

> we don’t care properly for the people who are paying for the military that it’s supposedly defends

Close to a century of no war on the homeland, close to two on the mainland; not too shabby. Yes, we have problems. But enemy tanks aren’t one of them.

How much of a problem would they be if we just spent a bit less?

if we go that route I think we would have to allow some time for other countries to arm themselves because they rely on US assurances, bases, weapons for their security. Right now a whole bunch of small countries are asking the US to have bases troops, nuclear weapons in their countries because all the conflicts going on.

False economy. The problem with letting predators get the impression that they can take you down is that they start trying to do so (as current events illustrate), causing you to have to spend more on defense anyway.

False assertion. Does deciding to spend less on military on more on social services give these supposed predators the idea they can take you down when your military is still the largest in the world? Seems like we could probably divert a significant chunk before anyone thinks we're an easy target.

>"Just because a few countries got bombed for oil doesn't make you imperialistic."

If you bomb country for oil it makes you a fucking bandit and war criminal.

Oh goodness, here we go. What country did the US bomb for oil?

We went into Afghanistan because the Taliban harbored the organization that committed 9/11 and refused to turn them over.

We went into Iraq primarily because a group of Neoconservatives were drunk on the unipolar moment and believed the US could spread democracy at the barrel of a gun and remake the Middle East. Haliburton definitely made money in Iraq, but we did not go in for oil.

The invasion of Iraq was based on the fact that Bush and Cheney were neoconservatives, which means essentially liberal Trotskyites. They believed that human rights were universal and it was legitimate to uphold them by force. So in their logic, Saddam Hussein was a bad a guy and Iraq was a good candidate for showing that the US can start rolling into places and giving the people their freedom, just like that.

The basic assumption was that stable democracies grow on their own once you get rid of the dictator. So show up to a country, get the dictator, rinse and repeat. Now you have nice democracies all throughout the world. In that view, not invading is immoral because it means you’re condemning millions of Iraqis to live under Saddam’s dictatorship.

The basic lesson from this is that countries don’t act out of material self-interest as much as armchair cynics assume. Instead they’re frequently operated on an emotional or ideological basis.

>"We went into Iraq primarily because a group of Neoconservatives were drunk on the unipolar moment and believed the US could spread democracy at the barrel of a gun and remake the Middle East"

Ah sorry. All valid and noble reasons. No crime here. Dead, mutilated, starved, displaced and otherwise abused Iraqis salute you.

Also message outlining your honorable goals should be directed to the parent to whom I was replying. Was not my claim that the US did it for oil.

Uh, mind the quip, I’m actually trying to frame the invasion as more unhinged given the solely ideological bent it was predicated on. At least invading for oil would have made sense.

Most of the oil companies now in Iraq are non US. A bulk of the oil in Iraq goes to asian countries.

> You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die. That's generally the choice throughout history, because hardly any country has ever always been the aggressor.

Absolutely. When my home country declared independence, Pakistan engaged in genocide to stop it. Having been disarmed the British, the independence fighters had to steal Pakistani weapons: https://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/bangladesh-liberation-...

> Most of the weapons used by the Mukti Bahini were taken from defeated soldiers. Then, there were homemade bombs, knives and even instances of the use of bows and arrows…

> The better equipped Pakistani army used imported guns, automatic weapons, mortars, artillery trucks, armoured personnel carriers, tanks, airplanes, and ammunition.

Eventually, Bengali regiments of the Pakistan military defected. Even then, independence wouldn’t have been possible without India joining the war against Pakistan.

> You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die.

That is just untrue. Historically, especially before the advent of nationalism, national hatred, ethnocentrism and ethnic cleansing ( so from mid to end 19th century to mid 20th century) conquest very rarely meant death. It was a different set of powerful and rich men on top, but the peasants were usually.. not really impacted that much. They were certainly more impacted when the war passed through their lands ( plunder, rape, etc.). Slaughtering the enemy civilians was rare and only done in specific cases ( like the Mongols, sone Vikings, earlier Anglo-Saxons).

What in the absolute world have you been reading?

What about neighboring tribes? You think they always traded berries and had a happy life? Do you know anything about Native American tribe life before Europeans arrived? How about African tribes even recently?

What are you even on about? Nationalism has nothing to do with violence when compared with any other system of organisation.

But just take a look at chimps and how they treat someone from another tribe (hint: they literally tear them apart). Do chimps have nationalism?

God this “everything was ok before western culture” crap is getting really tiring and ridiculous

Slaughtering the conquered enemy was the exception, not the norm, at least throughout Eurasia with whose history I'm most familiar. Was that the norm in the Americas? Considering the negligible amounts of historical data preserved about many of civilisations there, can one even make such a sweeping conclusion? Even if that were the case, significantly more people lived in Eurasia so that would still be the exception for the generic human population.

It has nothing to do "western culture", but with the evolution of warfare from the "Cabinet wars" to nationalistic "total wars". Colonial wars were often with brutal consequences, but again, massively slaughtering the native population was the exception, not the norm ( Herero and Namaqua genocide). The vast majority of humans conquered in the last few centuries weren't slaughtered en masse for the sake of it.

>Eisenhower's famous quote sums it up quite well.

It's a nice quote, but it's not backed up by the research.

>[...] A basic regression reveals no consistent relationship between GDP growth and military spending for the 38 countries in the OECD.

>A sprawling body of research has come to a similar, albeit more nuanced, conclusion. In a discussion paper at Monash University in 2014, Sefa Awaworyi Churchill and Siew Ling Yew examined 42 separate studies. Effects are generally quite small, but they found two distinct categories: military expenditure in poorer countries is often detrimental to growth, whereas in wealthier countries it is more likely to be beneficial. One possible reason, they suggest, is weaker governance in developing countries; a big military budget is a juicy target for corrupt officials. Another possibility relates to the gun-versus-butter framework. The potential returns on civilian investments, from health care to education, are so great in poor countries that military spending has a particularly high opportunity cost. In rich countries with good schools and hospitals, the opportunity costs ought to be lower.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2022/04/16/w...

> military expenditure in poorer countries is often detrimental to growth, whereas in wealthier countries it is more likely to be beneficial.

I wonder how much of this is that as a very best case for poorer countries, the military expenses are an attempt to guarantee minimal sovereignty and stability. Poor countries which are well-protected client states of a larger power may not need to spend anything on military.

Whereas for wealthy countries, marginal increases in military spending are generally towards force projection. This is often used to decrease costs associated with international trade…so there’s potentially a direct return on additional spending.

For example, our leadership in overthrowing[0] the government of Guatemala to ensure continued access to unconscionably one-sided contracts for the United Fruit Company (now “Dole” fruit company).

The USA still gets >85% of our pineapple from Costa Rica and Guatemala, which was secured via direct forceful subjugation as well as military spending to quietly support favorable factions.

I don’t think all our wars are directly profitable to the winning belligerent, certainly the GWOT has not given USA access to enough resources in the Middle East to offset the cost. But these indirect benefits of forceful interventions absolutely do at least subsidize our military, and may often make the marginal spending above the minimum necessary for sovereignty, profitable.

Small countries generally can’t leverage this “marginal profitability” so all their military spending is purely a cost center. Potentially necessary, but costly.

Even if the wars in the Middle East greatly increased our GDP through deficit spending, or lost money but enriched the powerful owners of defense companies, those profits came from destroying unbelievable amounts of value in other countries. Completely demolished infrastructure and millions of deaths.

I wonder how much richer USA businesses would be if that money had been poured into schools post-9/11 instead of into literal destruction of value overseas. People born then would be graduating now with greatly increased skill and ability. USA businesses would have far greater access to top talent, at significantly lower cost.

I wonder how much richer the world would be if we’d poured that money into creation, building, and education instead of into destruction and partial reconstruction.

Obviously I also wonder how much value the world might be missing out on from the intellectual capacity of South Korea if USA hadn’t spent money on a military intervention there.

The money for the global war on terror was enough to immediately build 50% more schools (reducing class sizes from 30 to 20), pay all K-12 teachers $100,000 (in 2006 dollars), and buy every K-12 student a new high end MacBook every year.

Lord knows how much internet, highways, railways, port facilities, and manufacturing facilities we could have built with that money. Perhaps we wouldn’t have a shipping crisis right now.

> Obviously I also wonder how much value the world might be missing out on from the intellectual capacity of South Korea if USA hadn’t spent money on a military intervention there.

I don't get that part of your (otherwise excellent) comment. If the US (and the UN) hadn't taken part in the war in Korea, South Korea wouldn't exist and the reunified country would have looked like something like either current-day North Korea or China and might not have gone through a similar economic boom, which allowed the intellectual capacity to get to work (and export the results of their work, which wouldn't have happened in a North Korea-style outcome)

A Vietnam or worse outcome would have been exceptionally likely for north-ruled unified Korea, especially if the Kim family had ruled it this entire time.

South Korea is expected to have roughly a $35,000 GDP per capita this year (barely behind Japan at $39,000; they're certain to overtake Japan this decade).

Vietnam is at around $4,100.

It's definitely implausible that South Korea would be anywhere near so well off had the US and UN forces not prevented North Korea from conquering them.

There is some question about how much NK/SK outcome disparity is due to economic penalties vs artificial support. For many decades after the Korean War, China’s economy wasn’t large enough to prop up North Korea.

One wonders, regardless of regime, how much better off North Korea would be if it similar trade opportunities as South Korea. Or how much worse South Korea might be without generous western economic aid.

UAE/Qatar/Saudi/Kuwait for example, are doing well on a per-capita GDP basis despite being absolute monarchies / authoritarian states. Perhaps their ruling families are a bit better than the Kim family, but perhaps the Kim family would have been better if they’d received similar levels of western support and constant access to top advisors instead of isolation.

All the "research" there says is that they couldn't find a GDP correlation between countries that spend 1.8% on defense and ones that spend 2.4% on defense. There are a hundred million billion factors that go into what your GDP growth looks like. It seems obvious to me without that study that defense spending would not be the deciding factor.

You cannot examine the what the world would look like if there was no military spending; that's a counterfactual. But we know from essential economic science that spending money on non-productive activity does not serve to increase the general economic welfare. In the US alone there are 2 million people serving in the military. Many are endlessly training for a war that most likely will never take place, others are glorified janitors, and the rest are in administration running the training and janitorial work. Imagine if the labor productivity of 2 million people were put to better use. Building houses and products and services that we all need and enjoy rather than mucking about in a field somewhere with $12000 of equipment on their back. (The division of labor is a major argument in economic circles against mandatory conscription)

Of course, militaries are important. The events in Ukraine prove this. But I don't think there is any point in trying to argue that they are good or irrelevant to the economy.

>You cannot examine the what the world would look like if there was no military spending; that's a counterfactual. But we know from essential economic science that spending money on non-productive activity does not serve to increase the general economic welfare

Right, but it's not exactly "non-productive", from the article:

> One way in which defence spending might be said to boost the economy is as a jobs programme. [...]

> Defence spending may deliver better returns as an undeclared form of industrial policy. [...] On average, they found that a 10% increase in government-financed R&D leads to a 5% increase in privately financed R&D in the targeted firm or industry. Moreover, there are knock-on benefits for productivity.

Jobs programs are not net boosters to the economy. There is a short anecdote of this, when a famed economist visited China in the 1970s. He was shown a work site where hundreds of men were digging with shovels. He asked why there were so many shovels, but no machines. The party member looked at him and said, "Oh, this is not a construction project, it's a jobs program". The economist promptly replied, "In that case, you should take away the shovels and give them spoons!". The economic situation in that instance would be improved if the workforce was cut in half and they used steam shovels, not if they paid wages for nothing of value in return.

And yes, it's true the military research provides benefits and applications outside the military, (GPS for instance), but if your goal is R&D, it's far more efficient to invest in R&D for R&D's sake, not retroactively justify massive military excess because of knock-on effects.

Imagine a jobs program that instead of pissing away money building rifles and tanks, we spent that money and labor building high speed rail, more light rail in cities, solar panels, wind turbines, e-bikes, electric cars, hybrid transit busses.

We spent two trillion dollars in Afghanistan. Imagine what that could have done for our country's energy and transportation infrastructure.

If Technological advances lead us to a world of abundance, then $2T doesn't matter.

Also, military provides plenty of people to

a) have a purpose b) be physically fit

Military spending also provides stable economies for a lot of countries.

Also conflict seems to happen in regions where there are no military spending.

Would US have gone into wars with Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan or Iraq if they had military spending (or nuclear warheads)? What about Russian invasion of Ukraine, Georgia?

Paradoxically may be its best that every country have strong military spending and a decent proportion of the population who are physically fit and working on technological advances even if it's military related. Innovations out of military almost always benefits general society.

Not "Always". A lot of spending in the military is wasteful. This typically means a lot of people just are free loading.

Then again there's a lot of consumer tech that comes out of military research like the internet.

> A lot of spending in the military is wasteful. This typically means a lot of people just are free loading.

Same could be said of any sufficiently large government run programme. Military, healthcare, social security, etc.

I mean a lot of people do crime. Doesn't justify it.

Not only government run. Large corporations can be similarly inefficient.

less so because of incentives. Capitalism is a bet saying that the incentives of the the commercial world makes it more efficient then an economy run by the government.

The US military has never passed an audit. Never. It took over 3 decades for the first audit to take place.

> Also, military provides plenty of people to a) have a purpose b) be physically fit

You know, have we considered maybe a massive increase in sporting leagues? The kind where generally people don't get murdered?

Training people to kill each other and then having them do so seems a literally sociopathic way of accomplishing the end of physical fitness and giving people a purpose, no? A massive network of athletic tournaments and government-subsidized athletes would probably be a lot cheaper for the outcome too.

I get this isn't really why we have militaries (I think? I hope?). I honestly think it's a pretty ridiculous suggestion to make that it is, or that it justifies them. If the military expenditure is to be justified, it's sure not for that.

The problem isn’t that the military can provide a sense of purpose or physical fitness it’s that there are so few structured alternatives outside the military for those not wanting to find purpose in a system that designs ever creative ways of killing other humans.

As someone born behind the Iron Curtain, here’s my reply to Eisenhouer: all those guns made, ships launched and rockets fired contributed to me, and a few hundred million people like me, being free now, rather than living in a North Korea-type Gulag.

Edit: they also contributed to a few other hundred million ( W Europe, Japan, etc) continuing to be free rather than being occupied by the USSR.

> all those guns made, ships launched and rockets fired contributed to me, and a few hundred million people like me, being free now, rather than living in a North Korea-type Gulag

Would add that had Ukraine kept its post-separation guns, millions today wouldn’t be dead or displaced. To say nothing of the millions who will likely face starvation for lack of the grain Russia tramples.

There is morality in a life of peace. But peace must be recognised as a luxury bought by the blood of others.

> But peace must be recognised as a luxury bought by the blood of others.

Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace. War is certainly one tool in that can cause (eventual) peace, but it is not the only one.

You don't always get a choice.

> Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace.

Which ways? Which way all invaded countries in WWII, WWI and other wars before could choose to sustain peace? They wanted peace and they got war because stronger nation invaded them. So which way? International organizations? UN security council? Didn't stop invasion of Ukraine.

There is an old saying Si vis pacem, para bellum which means - If you want peace, prepare for war.

Well, technically speaking, war requires opposing sides. If there is no opposition (say, like the bloodless annexations before the start of the WW2, or the relatively recent annexation of Crimea), there is no war, isn't it? Of course, the consequence for the ceding party or parties may be worse than the alternative, but still - no war, i.e. peace preserved!

so.. you are saying that if you are attacked, don’t resist, and then there will be no conflict/war?

I hope you noticed that conflicts arise from an inability to form a consensus during peace time. For example, wars are often fought over land or water. If you can come up with an arrangement that makes owning specific plots of land or direct access to water irrelevant, then those shared resources no longer become sources of conflict.

One idea is the democratization of land, meaning that everyone owns all land equally. If everyone owns all land, then there is no reason to fight over who owns it. Of course, one must ensure that the benefits that ownership used to grant are broadly shared.

The democratization of land does not solve the problem that someone needs to have the right to work the land. It may be highly efficient for thousands of acres land to be worked by a single organization. This means there must be a method to delegate the process of working the land to a third party without giving them complete control over the land.

One approach is Georgism with a UBI. The land value tax is paid out as a dividend per person.

> Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace.

Totally agree. “The blood of others” can still flow in their veins. The point is it has to be staked. There is no evidenced system of peace that doesn’t contain a threat of violence. We’ve tried for decades with sanctions; they fail in everything other than degrading the enemy.

History became irrelevant after nuclear weapons. Words like 'enemy' are the real problem.

In theory, yes, and it has worked sometimes ( the EU). But as many agressors have shown time and again, you can't count on anything but brute power in the end. Neutrality ( Belgium), UN ( Ukraine), they don't work sufficiently well.

As a sibling comment says, Si vis pacem para bellum has withstood the test of time.

Of course the US wasting money having 10 aircraft carriers and 10 "mini" aircraft carriers ( the same size as other countries' 1-2 aircraft carriers) doesn't really fit into that and certainly isn't for defence.

Agreed with the thrust of your comment, but I want to pick a particular nit out of curiosity: how do you determine that the EU is the cause of European peace when it has only ever existed under the NATO security umbrella? (no doubt EU has strengthened cooperation within Europe, but how do you attribute peace to it rather than NATO?)

Because the EU in itself is a pact of no agression between european countries?

Before that it was a fuckfest, name a country in Europe who hasn't been invaded at some point in time by a neighbouring state

You missed the point. How do you know that it was membership in the EU and not membership in NATO that deterred aggression? NATO predates the EU by a long time and there hasn't been war between NATO members or military aggression by a non-NATO European country against a NATO European country. A non-aggression pact without NATO enforcement is easily broken.

I’m not OP, but I will offer my point of view:

NATO is only defence in military sense from external threats.

Internal relationships are much broader: trade, laws, internal politics, multi-country alignment towards same goals, even goal definition etc. there is european parliament where representatives from all member countries gather and discuss a lot of different topics. none of that provides NATO.

> "There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace."

There are but only if both sides agree to it. Once once side decides to use war, what will you stop them with?

QED war will be forever with us.

My point isn't that war won't happen, but that the actual work of preventing war is valuable (and hard), and often quite successful. It's just, we don't necessarily even notice it, because it does work. The work required to prevent war is often extremely difficult, which should be acknowledged. People tend to give credit just to the warriors, and not to the diplomats, politicians, community leaders, and organizers who work extremely hard to build a stable society. Credit goes to everyone, not just those who fight wars.

You need to stop them by preempting their decision to choose war. Well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy, happy people don't decide to make war. People who don't want to get shot at and killed, nor see their brothers and sons (and sisters and daughters) shot at and killed; people who are aware and educated of the horrors of war (not like Americans of the last 20 years while we made war in the Middle East) won't vote for or follow leaders who decide to make war. People currently living in poverty and squalor, if they're generously lifted out of those conditions rather than left behind and exploited, don't decide to make war. People make war because they believe it will improve their lives; if they don't believe this then they wouldn't.

It may be unrealistic, but the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances. The question is whether that cultural advancement will allow us to cut it off before technological advancement dooms us with easily accessible superweapons....

> Well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy, happy people don't decide to make war

I have not seen rigorous evidence for this.

> the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances

Agree with this.

I suppose I have not seen evidence of it either, only evidence of the converse: People lacking the basics on Maslow's hierarchy of needs have repeatedly made war in an attempt to get them. I suppose I could have been more careful in my choice of characteristics, I'm just suggesting that because we know about this incentive for violence, it seems prudent to attempt to remove it if your goal is peace.

and in some sense we right now observe failure of this proposal.

Russia was included in majority of international organizations; trade was increasing with Russia with hopes that they will start prospering and become less agressive than before. I think it was such sentiment especially from Germany and France, there were multiple cases of “we need to be friends with Russia, trade with it and everything will be great”.

what actually happened was that government of Russia took all those trade benefits, neglected their citizens and intentionally made them poor so they would be more depending on the government. everything was intentionally oppressive, abusive. how do you solve that?

It wanes as people advance in age :)

Seems like there have been a lot of well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy organized crime gangs throughout history. "Happy" is anyone's guess.

I'm not convinced you've found the cure for violence.

What is your explanation for Russia invading Ukraine?

As far as I can tell, it's a war for glory or destiny or power or something. Not food or shelter or school.

Russia wants access to some of the best farmland in the former USSR, mineral resources and the strategic benefit of unfettered access to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean? It's a war for resources Russia doesn't have and Putin thinks it needs, and a target for the Russian population to distract them from how shit things are.

Populists and authoritarians are supported by those at the bottom of the pile with little to lose. Russia's actions are very much related to food and housing and education and jobs.

Wealthy people with everything in the world still stomp on those around them chasing more power. Once you get rid of this thread of human behavior, then there can be peace.

Blood is the only unilateral way to achieve peace. Your own viewpoint on the best way to move forward is irrelevant if your opponent doesn't want to play ball on your terms.

This mindset doesn't apply anymore. Nobody to wipe up the blood after total nuclear extinction. Nobody to imagine a future. Nobody to wish we made a different choice. Nobody left.

I’m sorry but there is a literal land war in Europe with plenty of Ukrainians imagining a future without Russia, wishing their neighbors had made different choices, still there. Still left.

This sort of hysterical nuclear naivety denying the continued existence of conventional war is best left to the 90s frankly.

Have a strong military and don't use it.

It has been shown time and time again, if you are weak, it will be taken advantage of.

It is far far far cheaper to spend the money to have a strong military, than to get into an actual shooting war with someone who thinks they can take advantage.

3-5% of GDP vs. all the death, destruction and reduction of GDP (50%?, 75%?, all of it).

Or use those resources to support all people across the world so they don't feel the need to resort to violence. Use it to investigate and reveal abusers (eg., oligarchs), to strengthen education and mechanisms of peaceful resolution.

Each generation must re-remember where we are at now--at the edge of self extinction. Lessons from a pre-nuclear age cannot guide us.

This may be a naive take, but it's something I've thought about a fair bit.

What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead")

But they've taken that money and waged war against people who you can hardly blame for feeling like maybe the West isn't so great. The harder you fight against "Terror" the stronger it gets.

Of course I've vastly oversimplified it, but it just seems like a tragically wasted opportunity.

> What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead")

The easy rebuttal: they're using their schools to indoctrinate our kids into their culture. I mean... this is an argument that is already made today against similar programs instituted by several major global powers (e.g., China).

You can also easily make hay of the mere insinuation that much of the world is in a state where it "needs" to be helped by foreign powers--this is essentially one of the main justifications behind colonization.

No good deed goes unpunished. So it probably wouldn’t work. America already helped Africa with so much aide, but didn’t market the help nearly as much as China did, so it is already forgotten.

you forget / ignore another aspect of conflict: territorial disagreements or historical arguments. some countries or politicians may feel that area of other country supposed to belong to their country based on history or something but that other country is happy with how it is right now. and no amount of charity money or help will solve this.

as we have right now with Russia.

another aspect: EU is doing great job improving new member’s economy and standard of living but after 10 years or so people forget why their country is in better shape and take it for granted. or worse - some politicians might claim that without EU country would be even in better situation.

so.. I don’t think that spending money on random people will make them like you.

It would have been better for the US and the world as a whole if it adopted Keynes' Bancor proposal. What the world economy needs is balanced trade between nations.

"Have a strong military and don't use it."

Is that possible?

Part of the reason the U.S. military is effective is because we are constantly involved in some conflict somewhere.

Russia's military is an embarassment right now and it's obvious they are out of practice.

They are not out of practice, they were just/are in Syria etc.

They are out-gunned, because Ukraine is being helped by NATO.

Russia was robbed by Putin, and the military was casualty of this corruption.

Did they have a convoy of tanks in Syria? My understanding is that it was primarily air assault. That would seem to support the idea that practice is necessary for an effective military.

There is a common conspiracy theory that roughly every decade or so, the US needs to get into a conflict as a means of flexing it's military. Whether it's to showcase the military-industrial complex or keep others in line by sending a warning is up for debate (as it the idea itself).

1983 - Grenada

1991 - Gulf War

2001 - Operation Enduring Freedom

2009 - Troop surge in Afghanistan

This isn't a good argument. The US has friendly neighbors on its northern and southern borders. It has thousands of miles of ocean separating it from Russia or China (neither of which have any major military blue water transport capacity). We could defend the US homeland with a tiny fraction of our current bloated 700+B / yr budget. That money could be going to fix problems that affect the common citizen rather than enriching the shareholders of defense contractors. I don't buy this at all.

Very much agree. You might find this book clarifying. I know I did.

Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7687279-nothing-less-tha...

> Would add that had Ukraine kept its post-separation guns, millions today wouldn’t be dead or displaced.

Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the soviet union. Makes you wonder why sanctioned india when they developed nukes. Makes you wonder why we currently prevent japan, korea, germany, etc from developing nukes.

> To say nothing of the millions who will likely face starvation for lack of the grain Russia tramples.

Isn't russia the biggest producer of grain? Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world?

Because they could possibly become another Russia or worse? It’s a bad idea to leave mass destruction weapons for unknown hands.

The US has strong institutions and yet it’s still a risk.

Anybody who wants a very sobering view of how the Cold War was waged by the US and its NATO allies and their strong institutions should probably read Command and Control. It's a borderline miracle we're all here to discuss this on the internet.

If anybody can recommend a similar book about the Soviet side, I'd be extremely interested in reading it.

no such book would ever exist on the soviet side.

> Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the Soviet Union

We were in the second nuclear age, that of non-proliferation [1]. As the USSR weakened, MAD became unstable. Non-proliferation was the superpowers’ solution. The system sort of worked. It started coming apart between the second Iraq war and Ghadaffi’s toppling (showing the consequences of lacking nukes) and Russia’s invasion of Crimea (showing the power of having them).

With the benefit of hindsight, non-proliferation stemmed from the same misplaced optimism that led the U.S. to welcome China into the WTO.

> Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world?

Nobody is targeting Russian grain, which continues to trade [2].

[1] https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03nuclear

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/russian-g...

> With the benefit of hindsight, non-proliferation stemmed from the same misplaced optimism that led the U.S. to welcome China into the WTO.

Totally correct. It's impossible to talk of global peace when you know that 2 most malevolent political entities on the planet were not only let to live, but empowered by yesterday's victor, all knowing that internal elites of USSR, and PRC were burning with "Never forget USA!" It was totally the West repeating the folly of king Helu.

Yet, I believe the humanity was close to achieving real global peace after the USSR's collapse if more effort was made.

We already seen that UN based security can work in nineties, when Russia, and China were made to lay cathartic.

If we can defeat the USSR 2.0, and PRC, we would have a very real shot at working global security system as was imagined by UN's forefathers.

>Yet, I believe the humanity was close to achieving real global peace after the USSR's collapse if more effort was made.

Does global here mean "the US, Europe, Australia and Japan"? I followed this a bit, but it's concerning that you don't consider the US a malevolent entity. By numbers alone, the in the last 30 years the US has done the most harm to innocent civilians worldwide.

I read the GP a lot more differently, in that non-proliferation was a mistake and if you are a nation-state it's likely of utmost importance that you begin to build nukes in order to prevent Russia (if you are Ukraine), China (if you are Taiwan) or the US (if you are Iran, Palestine, Libya), for fucking your shit up.

I'm interested what numbers you're pulling that tell the story of the US doing more harm (define harm?) to innocent civilians versus, just the first example that comes to mind, the uyghur genocide.

It might make sense to integrate the effect.

Are aspects of US power malevolent? Absolutely.

Did US protected trade routes also bring billions out of poverty by letting the spice flow? Absolutely.

Are all countries flawed? Absolutely.

>"were not only let to live"

At that point Russia was choke full of nukes. How can you possibly not "let them live" without being annihilated in return.

>"UN based security can work"

Remind me when did UN security ever stop the US doing whatever they've decided to do.

The reason is the very legitimate fear of a rogue nation with an unstable or autocratic government trying to use nuclear weapons as an element of international blackmail or to deter retaliation for its own military adventurism. Which is more or less exactly what we see happening with Russia right now, so the fear wasn't unfounded. I mean, if we could have gotten Russia to give up their bombs too, we would have preferred that.

As it happened, Ukraine turned out to be less of a risk than Russia. Which is unfortunate. But the logical calculus is pretty clear.

What about a mafia nation selling those assets to the highest bidder? I think that is what worried the US the most because it was more plausible.

I would rather a hundred, a thousand, a million people die in conventional warfare repressed by brutal dictatorships than a single nuclear weapon get detonated in anger. When that starts, the death of billions is not far behind. Nuclear weapons are the first of the real short term man-made existential threats, and as long as anyone has them we have to try anything and everything to make sure they don't proliferate.

I would advocate for the existing ones being destroyed as well, but I think that cat is not going back in the bag. It does make one consider the other short term (and longer term) man-made existential threats and why we aren't frantically trying to keep those cats from emerging from their respective bags.

> why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes

Partly because Ukraine never had nukes. They had Russian nukes on their soil, but no ability to use them. Letting Russia take them back was the only reasonable answer.

Also, it was hardly a guarantee that Ukraine was going to end up with a democratic government, could just as easily have been a string of dictators. We don't need yet more dictators-with-nukes.

Your arguing is a bit odd. You say that Ukraine had no abilities to use Russian nukes, but then in the 2nd paragraph you say -- hypothetically assuming that Ukraine would end up in a dictatorship -- that "we" (probably the western portion of the world?) "do not need yet more dictators-with-nukes".

But Ukrainians could not use these Russian nukes in the first place, so it would probably be better to let them keep these because they would end up not being able to use them anyway. I guess there is something missing :)

I think the GP is implying an "even if" between their two lines of argument.

On a side note, given enough time, they presumably could reverse-engineer plenty of bomb design secrets even if the permissive action links couldn't be circumvented. Permissive action links are insurance against maniac generals, rogue commanders, wealthy terrorists, etc., not against a decade or two of nation-state-funded reverse-engineering.

My understanding is that some of the PALs for two-point nuclear weapons will result in the wrong timing of the two initiations if the wrong code is used... resulting in a small dirty bomb instead of a thermonuclear blast. I presume reverse-engineering the correct timings for the two detonators is significantly easier than designing the weapon in the first place.

I guess there was a fear that all those former-Soviet republics would turn into rogue states or end up selling them to terrorists or something. But surely Russia itself would be responsible enough? That was a bit of a misjudgement.

Most of the world would much rather no Russian nukes but didn't have the power to get that.

They were Russian nukes. Yes, they were sited on Ukraine land, but Russia had the keys and controlled them. Ensuring they were disposed of was a decent option.

Later on, not deterring Putin, and actually encouraging him by showing massive weakness/ineptitude - that is inexcusable.

> Later on, not deterring Putin, and actually encouraging him by showing massive weakness/ineptitude - that is inexcusable.

You keep forgeting that Ukraine was basically a Russian puppet state like Belarus until the first Orange Revolution took place. Saakashvili tried it and lost because Russia would not allow a former militarised satellite which they do not control in its proximity. That's part of the reason for the Ukraine invasion: they would rather start a war or several wars than lose control over these countries. Kazahstan's Tokayev is playing the right card while Russia is being busy in Ukraine: diversifying, sharing and reforming power rather than militarising. I'd really like to see one or several trans Caspian gas pipelines to Azerbaidjan, Georgia and Turkey or through the Black Sea, allowing Kazahstan to sell gas to the EU. Militarising is an option when Russia grows weaker and Western money flows in your former Soviet satellite. It was also an option after '91, until the early 2000s, but the US was being busy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Central Asia and the Caucaz to a lesser extent is the key to further weakening Russia.

Ukraine found out they basically could afford to maintain the nukes. So the next best thing was getting an agreement that the worlds major powers would not respect its sovereignty and territory. Even Russia signed on to this agreement.

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

"War is peace" sounds like classic 1984 doublespeak. For example, we could be working to partner with China on mutually beneficial agreements, but instead we're choosing to promote conflict because we'd rather be the winner that takes all.

Agree--Humanity loses because of this posturing, well before the bombs are flying.

Mutually beneficial agreements with China exists. But, cooperation is not the same as peace or humanity. When mutually beneficial agreement with China empowers genocide going on in there or provides China surveillance to crack on human right activists, then it is enablement rather then something positive.

And vice versa in cases where west does something bad.

Beneficial for whom? Not American workers, just the business class. It's it's also iteresting that these accusations against China start popping up right about the time we've chosen to take an adversarial stance against them and they're overtaking us in GDP/PPP and influence in the world. The US has killed an estimated 6 million people as a result of the "War on Terror" so hard to say we've a leg to stand on.

We did partner with China on mutually beneficial agreements, from ~1972 to to ~2015. But that increasingly seems like a mistake.

Not sure either-or is the best way to frame things. Economic ties are clearly having a moderating effect both between the U.S.-China and even, at this very moment, Europe-Russia. Seems the problem is better framed as one of timing, calibration, and optimization.

All of this conflict doesn't disprove the thesis that economic ties moderate conflict. It might disprove the thesis that economic ties prevent conflict, but that's a straw man. The only actual thesis of that sort was that democracies don't go to war, and one of the proposed, non-exclusive mechanisms was their tendency toward deep economic interdependencies. AFAIK nobody, not even Bill Clinton, presumed that economic ties were alone sufficient to guarantee peace with China and Russia, nor sufficient to induce comprehensive political democratization. Here's Clinton recently recounting in his own words his reasoning wrt Russia: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/bill-clint...

Germany followed a mutual cooperation approach to Russia. It was foreign policy doctrine for years, Ostpolitik. It didn't stop Russia invading a sovereign neighbour and it prevented Germany from reacting due to the dependence.

What? We have been working with China on mutually beneficial agreements for 60 years, which is the direct cause of their rise.

> ...kept its post-separation guns...

What is this a reference to exactly? Did they agree to disarm themselves or what was the history here exactly? Was there some treaty about being neutral and not developing a military like Japan post WWII agreed to? What's going on with Ukraine in this space?

And the same applies to the American revolution, the English revolution, the French revolution, without which there would probably be no democracy today. Pacifism is free-riding.

The 'English revolution' is complicated. The military one (the English Civil War) was largely undone by the restoration of Charles II. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 (which replaced one monarch with another, less absolutist one) was peaceful (though with the threat of force if necessary). And the actual democratic aspects of the British constitution were achieved largely through constitutional means and certainly not by force of arms (the Great Reform Act etc.)

The American revolution worked out pretty well. I can imagine a much less violent (and consequently more successful) French one.

Did the industrial revolution and green revolution require military expenditures?

I think the most profound revolutions are orthogonal to the conflict-pacifism axis. When a revolution is seen primarily as conflict, the key ideas of the revolution are clearly not yet ripe.

Increased military R&D spending due to extreme events (great wars) certainly has jumped some technology segments forward, faster than those jumps otherwise would have likely occurred. In exchange for an acceleration the cost comes in the form of greater spending in a shorter amount of time and, typically, inefficiency of spend (government oversight on spending will tend to be particularly lacking at such times).

It is interesting to think about the history of technology in this way. For example, the Wright brothers seemed to make the most progress despite not being military funded, in contrast to the Smithsonian's Langley who failed despite (maybe because) of generous war department funding. Was the tech acceleration of aviation by military funding only to local minima that caused longer slowdowns?

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

Those weren't political revolutions. They changed everything, what caused some political ones, but they weren't themselves.

And the political changes that came with them did almost always come through conflict. Except that "military expenditures" doesn't really capture it, because revolutions normally come through civil conflict, not military wars.

> revolutions normally come through civil conflict, not military wars

I cant agree with you on this for two reasons:

1. A stipulated definition of revolution is needed to make a claim about what is normal or most typical.

2. Even when revolution takes the form of armed conflict (typically because its ideas can't win), I think the decisive expenditures are military as opposed to civil (i.e. police) because the territory has natural divisions within their military or because an outside entity/ies provides assistance to a side. Witness Lebanon, Syria, Vietnam, Korea, ....

> Did the industrial revolution [...] require military expenditures?

Given the mutual dependency it had with British imperialism, yes, quite a lot.

EDIT:

on reflection, though I edited it out of the question because I wasn't immediately responding on it, the Green Revolution has a quite similar relationship to mid-20th Century US imperialism and the global neoliberal order it supported/imposed, so yes, that too.

Military expenditures of those periods were coincidental and not necessarily causal. The causality may run in reverse. For example, the industrial revolution gave Britain the means and a resource need to project empire past the colonial project of excess population disposal and mercantilism of East India Co. Likewise the green revolution is coincident to US hegemony but the roots are in Borlaug's humanitarian effort in Mexico. The Wizard and the Prophet makes for interesting reading on this.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34959327-the-wizard-a...

> Military expenditures of those periods were coincidental and not necessarily causal

Resource and knowledge flows that were direct consequences of military expenditures and the empires they built were essential in both cases.

> The causality may run in reverse.

The causality absolutely and unquestionably runs in both directions; in both cases the economic revolutions were processes fueled by an fueling military-expenditure-dependent empires.

> Resource and knowledge flows that were direct consequences of military expenditures

Can't agree to that. As noted, correlation isn't causality from or consequence thereof. Wikipedia's list of critical tech for industrial revolution is textiles, steam power, iron working, machine tools. That seems reasonable. In context, the key developments of all happened upstream of military use/development (although they had military use, military expenditures were not causal).

Take Watt's steam engine improvements. The development was substantially if not entirely civilian. Ran water pumps for coal mining which supported many industries including military, and military use was not critical for development.

Possible counter example is Harrison's marine chronometer. Development was militarily supported and spurred on by a naval disaster. However, while contributory, wasn't essential to success of industrial revolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Importan...

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

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

>Pacifism is free-riding.

Normal peaceful life is free-riding. Our entire lifestyles and our inability to comprehend what it's like to live in a war zone is only due to the fact that millions fought for it 80 years ago, and won. Violence is not the answer only once someone's been violent on your behalf and crafted a world where violence can be rejected.

> Pacifism is free-riding

Soldiers succeed when they deter war; pacifists, when they prevent it. In the same way soldiers who never go to war aren’t free riding, pacifists who help prevent even one war every few generations add more than they detract.

Some have argued that the American Revolution was fought in order to preserve slavery in the then-colonies.

The UK declared slavery illegal in 1833, more than half a century after the Declaration of Independence.

Seems that I got my wires crossed. Many slaves in the colonies had gotten the wrong impression that Britain was easing up on slavery. The Crown tried to capitalize on that by trying to galvanize the slave population in the South against the landowners. The landowners were even more motivated to win the revolution. There were Black Loyalists who wanted to fight for their freedom (or what they thought would be their freedom) while others fought on the “liberty” side.

It would be naive in 1776 to think that adversarial manumission was performed out of beneficence.

In 1776? Well you would have to ask them.

In China, the cultural revolution was largely seen as the destruction of their culture and the greatest blunder in their 3000yr history. They now look at mob and revolution mentality as the most dangerous thing to peace and prosperity. That's why the people support what we call 'government oppression'. They have had a different fortune when it comes to our revered revolutions

China has learned there is a different way to achieve peace, that is not based on war, but on shared values. Unfortunately we are threatening the people who could teach us the way.

As these revolutions were against repressive anti-democratic institutions, I'm curious - how do you feel about today's rise of US Republican attacks on democracy.

Are you ready to defend democracy with violence if necessary as voting rights and democratic processes erode away?

> As someone born behind the Iron Curtain, here’s my reply to Eisenhouer: all those guns made, ships launched and rockets fired contributed to me, and a few hundred million people like me, being free now

No it didn't. China switching sides and joining the US is what led to the fall of the soviet union. Just like if china, india, etc abandoned russia today, the russian federation will implode within a generation.

> rather than living in a North Korea-type Gulag.

North korean style gulag exists because of increased military spending. Because north korea is constantly under threat of an attack from the greatest bully in the world ( who constantly increased military spending ), they have to set aside a significant portion of their budget to defense which leads an unhappy population which leads to suppression of the population.

> Edit: they also contributed to a few other hundred million ( W Europe, Japan, etc) continuing to be free rather than being occupied by the USSR.

It also led to much of europe being turned into rubble and japan being nuked.

Not a single bullet or tank or missile contributed to you being "free". But bullets, tanks, missiles, etc kept you under soviet rule.

As a French, I am thankful for the British and American bullets and tanks (and lives lost by all Allies) so that I'm not living under a German/nazi boot, even if I regret the destruction that was inflicted on my country (a few family members got bombed)

In 1945, 57% of French people owed the defeat of Nazi Germany to USSR – versus 32% to the USA and Great Britain.

Then, Hollywood won.

[0] https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/3025-1-study... (page 5)

I don't disagree with the fact that the USSR did most of the work for defeating Germany in Europe during WW2, but it was with heavy American logistical support, which is what the comment was about ("guns made, ships launched and rockets fired")

How nuanced to credit the usually thankless job of logistics. All those Hollywood movies about supply lines and transport during WWII is finally making an impact on the popular mind.

As the saying goes: Nazi Germany was defeated by American equipment, British intelligence and Russian blood.

Fighting over which pile of dead husbands and fathers was more important seems like a meaningless exercise.

Almost all the german military was destroyed by the russians. WW2 in europe was pretty much the eastern front. And we didn't even join the war until germany decided to declare war on the US.

If you are french, you should thank the russians for liberating france from germany. Certainly not the US. The russians beat the germans in ww2. Not the british, not the US, not anyone else. Just look at the data.

Also, if the germans won ww2, you'd be saying the exact opposite. You'd be saying how thankful you are that germany gave you freedom from the anglo imperial economic world order.

> the russians for liberating france from germany. Certainly not the US. The russians beat the germans in ww2

The Russians did take part in beating Germany, I didn't want to imply it wasn't the case, but they did with heavy logistical support from the US, which is what the comment was about ("guns made, ships launched"). And can you really say that the US were for nothing in Germany's defeat when more than half of the Panzer divisions were fighting in the Western front?

> Also, if the germans won ww2, you'd be saying the exact opposite. You'd be saying how thankful you are that germany gave you freedom from the anglo imperial economic world order.

well, I don't have a time machine to go and test that hypothesis, but considering how Germany was treating occupied territories, I think we got a better outcome under anglo imperial order than under German occupation (or soviet occupation had they continued West after taking Berlin).

"The russians beat the germans in ww2"

- Russia did tie up the bulk of the German forces. And they suffered and inflicted the bulk of the causalities. So in a sense, this is true.

- Regarding the topic at hand, the US and UK literally liberated France.

- As others mentioned, Russia was reliant on critical US industrial help. They didn't do it alone.

- The US had still not fully mobilized when the Germans and Russians were having some of their largest conflicts. I would argue that the US had not fully mobilized even by the end of the war (e.g., look % of population enlisted, industry still ramping up). Even if Russia had not fought, the US/UK would still have defeated the Germans. If you look at the size of the Armies that could be fielded, the Germans had little chance. Their best bet was to reach some agreement with the US and UK, occupy Europe and focus on the Russians. Having said that, when their opening push against Russia failed, they'd were doomed there also (i.e., once Russia regrouped, they could have defeated Germany alone).

- The US had strategic plans to defeat the Germans if both the UK and Russia fell. The size of the planned navy, army and air force proposed was bonkers.

Russians did not reached toward France, really. Also, they committed own atrocities in places they liberated. It just so happens that Russia was led by Stalin at the time - and Stalin did not had issue with killing thousands of people or comiting own genocides.

> Also, if the germans won ww2, you'd be saying the exact opposite. You'd be saying how thankful you are that germany gave you freedom from the anglo imperial economic world order.

Probably not, no. Germany was not promising freedom to people on the west. The plan was living space and genocide in east and domination under Aryan rule in the west. The freedom for French was not the plan. So, nazi in west would be remembered the same way Russia is remembered now.

And looking at history, Russia is not remembered as liberator in Ukraine or Poland or Czech Republic or Slovakia or Estonia either. Russia is remembered as the country that too away freedom, that stole and that killed or tortured people.

This is why I see D-Day not so much as the end of WW2, but the first battle of the Cold War; it wasn't necessary for the defeat of Germany, but it did ensure that western Europe was liberated by the western allies, instead of by the USSR, which I'm very thankful for.

> You'd be saying how thankful you are that germany gave you freedom from the anglo imperial economic world order.

No. Very few people were happy with the German occupation. Many occupied countries had very active resistance movements. The only people who were happy with the German occupation were fascist collaborators.

The western allies gave the countries they liberated their freedom and autonomy back. Neither Germany nor the USSR did that, and that matters a lot.

> China switching sides and joining the US is what led to the fall of the soviet union.

China switching sides is one of the many factors. An important one, but not as important as US/NATO matching and outspending (adjusted per-capita) the USSR in military buildup and proxy wars.

> Not a single bullet or tank or missile contributed to you being "free". But bullets, tanks, missiles, etc kept you under soviet rule.

Sorry, what? You're responding to someone who was born behind the Iron Curtain, and you're saying that Western "bullets, tanks, missiles, etc" kept him/her under soviet rule? As in, if the west had been militarily weak, the CPSU would have stopped occupying?

> Because north korea is constantly under threat of an attack from the greatest bully in the world ( who constantly increased military spending ), they have to set aside a significant portion of their budget to defense which leads an unhappy population which leads to suppression of the population.

Not because of the dictatorship then.

> China switching sides is one of the many factors. An important one, but not as important as US/NATO matching and outspending (adjusted per-capita) the USSR in military buildup and proxy wars.

China switching sides is the factor. USSR was never going to outspend the US let alone NATO.

> Sorry, what? You're responding to someone who was born behind the Iron Curtain, and you're saying that Western "bullets, tanks, missiles, etc" kept him/her under soviet rule?

Soviet "bullets, tanks, missiles, etc" did. Our bullets, tanks, missiles, etc kept japan, germany, korea, etc under US rule.

> As in, if the west had been militarily weak, the CPSU would have stopped occupying?

Do you think poland was occupied without bullets, tanks, missiles? Do you think korea, germany, japan were occupied by accident?

> Not because of the dictatorship then.

You need a dictatorship to protect a small nation free from a much larger power with a history of all kinds of evil.

> Our bullets, tanks, missiles, etc kept japan, germany, korea, etc under US rule.

If you think they were under US rule in the same way that Poland, say, was under USSR rule, then... well, if you mean pre-1957 or so, then yes, Japan and West Germany were flat-out occupied. After that, no, they were not "under US rule" in any meaningful sense.

> You need a dictatorship to protect a small nation free from a much larger power with a history of all kinds of evil.

So far, Ukraine is showing this statement is false.

Ukraine lost crimea and half the country. At least so far. They might lose everything in the next few months. Not good job of protecting itself and keeping itself free. North korea lost what? Not a speck of land and against a much greater and evil foe.

What "greater and evil foe" was North Korea facing?

>"You need a dictatorship to protect a small nation free from a much larger power with a history of all kinds of evil."

That evil seems to be way less for small nation than the one coming from a dictatorship. If I was North Korean I'll vote with both of my hands to not "be free" and ingested as one more state of the US.

In reality this however also leads to the US destroying countries and leaving them in the state of disrepair. And due to the US having the biggest military and economy dick it risks no punishment.

China under Mao was a non-factor.

Surely all those guns can also put people behind North Korea type gulags, and caused a few hundred million to be occupied by the USSR?

Putin is on the way down. At 70, time will surely sort him out. But the rest of the world needs to support the Russian people in building a more stable and inclusive political system. Change is possible. And we all have a vested interest.

look at gorbachev, he is still alive. so I don’t have high hopes that putin will be solved in natural ways any time soon.

Putin's health seems quite iffy like he's seen a thyroid cancer doctor 35 times.

That mistake was already made in the 90s. The West had high hopes of transforming Russia into a civilised member of the world, and they've just used that support to strengthen themselves. Russians are imperialistic, Russians opposing Putin are imperialistic too. They despise other nationalities, especially those of the neighbouring countries.

Uneven gun and ammo supply did that.

As someone also born and raised in Eastern Europe, I feel entirely the opposite.

All of those NATO weapons and aggression destroyed my country's economic independence and increased poverty and wealth inequality. I take no solace in being occupied by NATO troops.

> Eastern Europe

A huge part of Eastern Europe (but not all ofc) would disagree with you.

Can you lay out more how you are thinking about this? I don't see it that way, but would appreciate another view point.

Before 89, the working class of my country had control of the state and most of the economy. There were of course many problems, but wealth inequality was far lower, essentials were cheap (rent at 5% of income!) and jobs were guaranteed.

NATO waged economic warfare and funded fascists (particularly intensified in the 80s), culminating in a violent coup by the army. Since then, we've seen hyperinflation, privatisations, austerity and deregulation. While technology is much improved, the relative proportion of wages spent on essentials is vastly increased and most well paid jobs are for foreign companies that extract profits outside the country.

I think you should also consider tens of millions of people who lived under Russian boot in USSR itself and Warsaw pact countries. It appeared that wealth inequality is lower because there was no free press and thus no way to see it. People who waited years to be able to get a permission to buy a car or an apartment had no way to make their situation known.

A significant part of populations lived relatively well just because of their place in the society. The lack of free press caused them to think that everyone lives like them. However this was the exact consequence of the oppression of the rest of society.

This spanned countries: USSR extracted production from one set of countries and subsidized others. The populations of the latter group naturally saw the collapse of USSR as a bad thing since their standard of living became lower.

The fact that there were certain parts of the world that lived better under USSR does not make suffering of other people a good thing.

Which country? You're constructing a narrative that is impossible to challenge because you're being deliberately vague. If you want an honest discussion, you must be more forthcoming.

Edit: From dontlaugh's comment history, it's Romania.

Romania before 1989 had long lines for bread, it had food rations (like other countries in war time), people had to wait for about 5 years to buy a car. You could not move from one city to another, except if your job moved or you got married with someone from the target city. You could not buy milk, except if you had infants, or with a doctor’s notice. As a 14-old kid, convalescing from Hepatitis, I had such a notice, so my Dad had the priviledge to wake up every morning at 5am and go wait in a very long line for 2 hours, so I could drink milk (which was said to help the liver). We had electricity blackouts on a daily basis.

Yes, we were all equal. Equal in our collective misery.

Except for the Party leaders.

It’s very easy to look back with rose tinted glasses after 33 years. But in reality things were truly bad back then.

In the 80s, there was indeed a deep economic crisis.

It resulted primarily from economic warfare. The country was offered the chance to sell to the West, under the condition of taking IMF funds. After spending them on developing factories, we were denied the ability to sell the products (mostly industrial equipment). We were only allowed to sell agricultural products to pay off the debt, hence the rationing. Today, that would be called sanctions.

I'll bite the bait.

Do you have any sources that would cover your interpretation of events?

To the best of my knowledge, the crisis in 80s Romania was due to similar causes as in other communist countries of the period - the economy was quickly industrialized based on foreign loans (which were also spent partially on consumption) in the 70s, with most investments made in heavy industry. That is a very good base for building tanks and heavy armaments which the Warsaw Pact needed, but it's not suited so much for export to the West and bolstering the national economy.

The effects of those ill-thought investments are felt to this day in Eastern Europe - but it's not due to the West trying to sabotage national production, but due to inefficient implementation of obsolete production processes in the centrally commanded economies.

This is standard Russian propagated nostalgia. Romania was a poor corrupt vassal state of the USSR.

The working class did not have control of Romania, Nicolae Ceaușescu did from 1965-1989 as the general secretary.

The 1980’s in communist Romania were a time of austerity, not the other way around. Median household income is now 3x higher.

I’m not sure why I’m replying to such a disingenuous person and plain deceitful post but i guess i wanted to argue with liars on the internet today.

Which exact Eastern European country is occupied by NATO? Cause as far as I can tell, such a place does not exists. And multiple of them pushed, pressured, pleaded and lobbied very hard to get in.

The governments of several countries did seek NATO membership, but the overall populations have generally been at best neutral or even against NATO.

Especially the occupying US bases are almost universally disliked.

Polls done in the 90s in the Eastern European countries provide a picture contrary to what you're claiming here. As an example - Poland (my home country), https://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2022/K_040_22.PDF - 60% of population willing to join NATO in 1999. Only 11% against. You also should consider that support for NATO today is at a level of 94%.

Your statement is contrary to the information I’m seeing. Can you provide an example, please?

Most NATO members from East Europe/ex communist countries held referendums on NATO membership. And I can't recall a single state that would join NATO against the will of general population. Happy to be proven wrong if my memory failed me.

That is just not true.

In another comment, parent said he/she is from Romania. Any other Romanians want to comment on this "occupied by NATO" claim?

Romania is member of NATO.

Eisenhower was certainly no pacifist[1]. He fully understood the necessity of those weapons. He was simply recognising the very real cost, and lamenting that necessity. No one should want to live in such a world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower

Sometimes west is best, and US/Western colonialism/imperialism is good when it's preventing worse forms of authoritarianism.

People from the eastern bloc who were saved by benevolent US policy would do well to remember this.

that is the party line NATO would want you to believe.

A capitalist system that relies on ever expanding growth and profit to survive will always create imperialism and conflict over resources. There is no vision or long-term plan to these systems. A system based on this philosophy cannot and will not solve issues like climate change and poverty.

Only a system that relies on cooperation and mutually beneficial agreements can create peace and allow us to tackle big issues such as climate change.

Thinking of these issues in terms of winner take all and good vs evil limits our thought on more productive and sustainable alternatives.

> …will always create imperialism… > Only a system…

These are strong statements that aren’t proven but are stated as fact. Such statements limit our thought on solving this issues.

i do appreciate your perspective, even if others here don't seem to, yet disagree with it slightly.

perhaps not a vision or plan, but capitalism does have an intrinsic goal--or maybe more appropriately, a central value--which is the accumulation of capital (money). it's amoral[0] to be sure, and presents a clear opportunity toward corruption, but it's a driving force nonetheless. even adam smith acknowledged that capitalism cannot exist in isolation, that it must be constrained by political stewardship, to direct it toward productive good, lest it lead to decay. in fact, no economic system can exist outside a political one, hence the term 'political economy'.

so to sum up, it isn't capitalism per se that leads to imperialism and conflict over resources, but more simply, greed (which we all possess to some degree) accumulated over a population and effectuated via political and economic means of any sort. capitalism however is more efficient, and therefore reaches its waypoints, good or bad, more quickly.

on the topic of the thread, the US probably spends more than half of this $2T, if the hidden budgets and money funneled through other federal departments toward military aims is accounted for. our official military budget is something like $800B but most estimates of the fully-accounted-for budget is well north of $1T. it's shameful, especially considering the opportunity cost, for instance, replacing coal plants with nuclear the world over ($1T ≅ 100 nuclear plants per year).

[0]: i.e., without morals, not necessarily immoral

You don't seem to understand the fundamental contradiction. Demanding growth/capital accumulation, where there is no growth can only be satisfied by taking from one group and giving to another.

Endless hoarding in nature is not a problem, as your capital depreciates over time. This depreciation means that the amount of wealth you can store is a function of your ability to replenish the loss, i.e. your income. What capitalists have done is quite remarkable, they simply declare by force that this loss does not exist. So now everyone struggles to pass off this now hidden loss to everyone else, as if the division of labor were a negative sum game.

Imagine if you owed a capitalist 100 hours of your time and they decide to only use 50 hours of that and simply wait those 50 hours. You still owe the capitalist 50 hours but you also lost 50 hours from waiting(=unemployment). Your productivity must double to stand a chance. Another 100 hours pass, you lost 150 hours and must still work 50 hours. Now you must be four times as productive. Productivity must keep going up, just to stand still. At some point you are unable to increase your productivity at the rate your time is being lost and you are no longer able to give what is owed. The capitalist will now call you a thief, you stole the 50 hours you owe him, completely ignoring that your loss of time is far greater than 50 hours and yet as if to rub salt in the wound that time spent needlessly waiting is not worthy of being called theft.

I hope it is clear that "urgency" does not exist for those with money, only those with physical capital and those with mortal bodies that are dependent on work to earn money to afford the minimum quality of life society demands have to worry about that. I want people with money to worry just like everyone else, then nobody will have to worry.

> "You don't seem to understand the fundamental contradiction. Demanding growth/capital accumulation, where there is no growth can only be satisfied by taking from one group and giving to another."

the irony... you've literally just described greed. it can, and does, happen in any economic system (communism, mercantilism, socialism, all devolve because of greed); capitalism isn't special in that regard. it just happens to be more efficient at it (and in general) than other systems. you must account for greed in any and every economic system.

americans generally don't realize that our 'innovation' wasn't capitalism or democracy (rah-rah words), but it was the intrinsic separation of power and wealth that formed the basis of our eventual prosperity (along with resource-rich, isolated, and plentiful land). unfortunately, we've allowed that separation to be corrupted from both directions in the last half-century.

As someone living in a dictatorship, I fully agree.

There is no moral high ground in letting totalitarian regimes imprison MILLIONS of people all over the world.

Democracy has the moral obligation to fight for freedom.

Either that, or remove all migratory restrictions and let people live where they want.

But... Without guns, ships, and rockets you wouldnt have been imprisoned in the first place. Right?

Enemies of the freedom don't listen to pacifists in any way.

Some would point at the USSR occupations of the Warsaw Pact countries and say "See, this is why we need to defend ourselves from Soviet aggression".

But the USSR didn't take action to create an immoral buffer to it's borders until they learned about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

And if you want to bring up the USSR invasion of Poland in 1939, take a look at what Poland did to Czechoslovakia in 1938 while Germany was occupying Sudetenland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Olza#Part_of_Poland_(193...

It can both be true that the USSR was a violent, genocidal, repressive regime that oppressed it's own people AND that the ideological spread of Communism throughout the world was orthogonal to Soviet authoritarian tendencies, and was thus the threat that was described to people in the West was more to capitalist institutions and the richest classes, not to your freedom of prosperity.

tl;dr: You were never in danger of living in a North Korea-type Gulag.

The idea that a country would be surprised and shocked to find out that other countries - including allies - had plans in place for military operations against them is ludicrous. Every country's military war-games potential conflicts, even when they're far less likely to ever be used than plans for Britain ending up in conflict with the USSR after the end of WWII.

Those plans weren't even approved lol, Churchill was out of office shortly after ordering that plans be drawn up.

That doesn't make it worth it.

> took the beating from the bullies, safe in the knowledge that I had the moral high ground

Would you still just sit there if they were getting to the point where someone was going to kill you?

Are pacifists really of the mind that they're happy to stand and be killed if it comes to that?

Do you think that's what the Ukrainians should be doing right now?

Yes, some people are.

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

It would certainly shorten the war, but I’m not sure very many Ukrainians would be ok with that.

If people want to be this rational, they might as well just hang themselves now and save the climate impact of the Russian advance.

Note: You can have a higher moral ground while protecting others from bullies too.

In fact your morals can be whatever you make of them.

“Everything is relative except this fact”

Not all military spending is designed for offense. I currently work in the defense industry and the projects I've been on have either been intelligence gathering, passive defense systems, or currently some work on satellites.

Advances in these systems do lead to other technologies that are used in other industries. I understand your concern considering that the cost of a Tomahawk missile is $1.87 million dollars. I personally don't see myself working on technologies used for offensive purposes but I find a sense of fulfillment by trying to keep soldiers and sailors safe.

Have you considered that your perspective is "keeping soldiers and sailors safe" because it is crucial to your self esteem to believe your work is a net good for society, and if you didn't believe that you'd be unable to continue this work?

This is true for all work.

Most work isn't directly involved in the kill chain. That's a ridiculous dismissal.

I mean the mindset as “crucial to your self esteem to believe your work is a net good for society”

Because ‘net good’ is debatable, your beliefs will clash with others who think it is not a ‘net good’ regardless of the work.

E.g. people involved with sugar production have probably caused more integrated harm than those making missiles. This is especially true as obesity passes 50% of the population.

Causalities are going down. Indiscriminate killing is going out of "fashion" but there is always going to be collateral damage.

What surprises me on the other hand are those armchair drone experts that talk about swarms and extremely high levels of capability at absurdly low cost. Like, just run the "numbers" a can B-52 carry 100000 drones for the cost of one F-35.

The obvious problem is the lack of a mission that requires sending this many weapons. People just randomly got this idea we are going to carpet bomb everything but this time with drones.

I explicitly chose to not work on offensive technologies like missiles or drones because I didn't want to be associated with potential misuse. I don't think a lot of people on HN have a good perspective of the DOD to understand why certain mission critical technologies are necessary for the defense of our soldiers and our own people. At the same time though, there is a lot of bloat and I would argue from what I've seen that it mostly stems from contractors more than actual government employees.

> I really don't know what to think about this

Simple: it's bad, very bad. Increasing expenditure increases the threat level: it's the whole point.

Not to mention that the world is facing a climate catastrophe and the war machine is amongst the biggest sources of pollution.

Wouldn’t the war machine also be one of the most incentivised to find alternative energy sources? Can’t defend your country if you can’t source enough energy (legacy and renewables).

One of the first 'real' modern uses [0] of Opposed Piston Diesel engines in by Fairbanks Morse, for military uses.

the Army is funding [1] Cummins new $87M opposed piston diesel engines for vehicles, they will have about a 25% decrease in fuel use. (which is HUGE for an army that has to carry their own fuel) That will definitely be quickly implemented by the major transportation companies, since fuel is such a huge part of their cost for trucking.

0. https://www.fairbanksmorse.com/blog/new-opposed-piston-engin...

1. https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/08/20210803-ace.html

Not if the war machine has enough safe resources. While the Pentagon is "researching" alternative energy sources, I am not sure if they are just paying lip-service or actually serious about it. The US military is the single largest point source of pollution in the world.

[1]:https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/06/13/report...

In this context, "alternative" does not mean sustainable. The war machine has one priority: be ready to win wars. Sustainability is not a priority.

Unsurprisingly the US army is the organization that uses the largest amount of oil in the world.

> Simple: it's bad, very bad. Increasing expenditure increases the threat level: it's the whole point.

Not necessarily, after a certain point MAD comes to play ( assuming rational actors, which Putin is not).

> after a certain point MAD comes to play

That's the obsoleted narrative that the proliferation of nuclear weapons would create long-lasting world-wide peace.

Easily disproven by current events.

> assuming rational actors, which Putin is not

Hence the criticism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction#Cri...

Unsurprising the Doomsday Clock is showing increased threat level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock#Timeline

> That's the obsoleted narrative that the proliferation of nuclear weapons would create long-lasting world-wide peace. ... Easily disproven by current events.

It's clearly not obsolete nor disproven by current events at all.

The conflict would have to involve two nuclear powers at war with eachother. The US and Russia are not at war; NATO and Russia are not at war; MAD hasn't failed what-so-ever, nor has it even come to that context. The situation is presently one nuclear power vs a non-nuclear power (being supplied with weapons by foreign allies).

The present events don't disprove the effectiveness of MAD any more than Russia in Afghanistan did.

Nothing says "pacifism" quite like having the biggest guns (or, well, muscles in case of high-school bullying) and seldom (ideally never) using them.

In fact, deterrence is the best form of pacifism - the one that won't require surrender to maintain.

I learned a different lesson from school bullies.

Which was that, as a nerdy/shy but big/tough kid, I could protect other kids by telling bullies that they'd have to deal with me if they messed with anyone else in our class or anyone else I knew. I probably had to back up the threat maybe twice in minor ways. The end result was a very peaceful class for the last couple years of middle school. I was voted "Most Amiable" by my 8th grade class.

And that's how I view NATO's role: the anti-bully that is completely ready to fight if forced.

"I'm the kind of weird pacifistic person who literally sat down at school and took the beating from the bullies"

And sometimes, a lot of times, that's really the best option. People are under the impression, coded in our mythology and promoted by Hollywood, that if you defeat the bully your problem is over when in reality it often just escalates. You didn't fail because you weren't willing to defend yourself, the system which allowed such behavior to reach that point failed you.

But then what's the option?

At least you can maintain your dignity by defending yourself, even if it's supposedly not the best option.

The other option is mutually assured destruction. Probably works at the micro-scale as well.

We have proof of the contrary. There is quite a lot of reports about ppl killing their partners (children, family) when abandoned and then committing suicide. I'm not saying that you should not stand your ground, I'm just saying that your are making dangerous assumptions, some ppl can be irrational or just overwhelmed with emotions. With micro-scale MAD 2 ppl die, with a large scale one you just need 1 person go crazy and it's over. TBH I'd never believe that the real reason for avoiding ww3 was MAD.

The best option is to get the hell away from the assholes.

Every time I get angry at some idiot on the road I calm myself down by thinking "I should get the hell away from this guy" instead of escalating it further like my mother who used to get in all sorts of pointless trouble afterwards.

That’s generally very false. You don’t need to beat the bully. You just need to establish that you will respond violently. A credible threat of violence is a strong deterrent.

I'm not quite that pacifistic, because I do believe in self-defense, but I'm disgusted by the massive amounts of money that has been wasted on weapons, armies and violence, and I've always supported reducing military budgets.

But I do believe in self-defense. Simply surrendering when a powerful dictatorship attacks, and giving up your democracy without a fight, is unacceptable. And defending against that does require weapons. So now I find myself in the awkward position of supporting weapons trade with Ukraine, and expanding European defense budgets.

I hate this, but it seems to be necessary. I so wish for a world where we could just have peace.

The ugliest part is induced demand for violence. A lot of political actions are based on making sure their weapon manufacturer constituents are getting their bread buttered - leading to fabricated pretexts for killing humans to make sure the money train keeps rolling.

If hell is real, weapon manufacturer lobbyists are certainly on the guest list.

I'm painfully aware that a lot of weapon manufacturers are carefully paying attention to this real life test of their weapons.

When the Pentagon is regularly putting out reports saying "congress is giving us too much money, this isn't sustainable for society", it's time to sit up and take notice. They started doing that about a decade or two ago.

Congress uses the Pentagon as a pork barrel jobs program, buying votes. "Vote for me, I'll make sure the factory producing that troop carrier stays open." Next year: "vote for me, I'll make sure the proposed upgrade program to the troop carrier goes through" etc.

The only reason Susan Collins has a job is because she's kept Maine's shipworks in a diabetic coma.

Its the same thing with the NASA SLS in Alabama. Or how Washington state wanted more NASA funding so Blue Origin still has a shot at projects for NASA. Its all about bringing jobs to your state and keeping certain skills alive. If some industry is highly dependent on government funding, a lapse in project or funding means people will be let go. And it it happens long enough people will switch to different jobs and those skills will deteriorate.

But they could just as easily spend that money to create those jobs in repairing, maintaining and building infrastructure. Or education. Or health care. Or dozens of other things that would benefit Americans more than the ability to kill people in distant countries.

My personal wish is that they'd bring back the CCC for those purposes. There should be _good_ jobs available helping society, to compete with shit jobs like driving for Uber or working at Walmart.

It is a waste when there exists a world where violence isn’t used to solve problems. Until then, it is not a waste.

Unfortunately this is a normal event in the history. Every N years a powerful bloody disruption happens. It's like diffusion, or better to compare with an earthquake where a long stress rises sufficiently to break through suddenly at once. The best is to identify where the next dangerous stress is rising and act smartly, persistently, and efficiently.

I feel bad that you went to a school where the bullies could go so far as to break your ribs. While I agree that war spending is a type of monumental waste compared to what we could accomplish theoretically, it's also important to stand up to bullies I think, including the type that would beat anyone just sitting down.

> Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Eisenhower is quite wrong here, because the world is not lacking for food or clothing; we have plenty enough to feed, clothe, shelter everyone, and generally attend to their basic needs. What the world is in desperate need of is good policymaking that promotes human flourishing, as opposed to dictators or criminal cartels depriving their own people of the freedom they need to thrive and grow wealthier through good, productive work and investment. Good national and collective defense is a key part of the solution despite its drawbacks, and we haven't managed to come up with a workable alternative.

You do know the quote is in the context of defense spending, which spends tax dollars on guns, warships, and rockets instead of food and shelter? The “world” may produce enough food and clothing, but that is little consolation to the impoverished who cannot afford them.

> I'm the kind of weird pacifistic person who literally sat down at school and took the beating from the bullies, safe in the knowledge that I had the moral high ground. It didn't make me feel much better when they broke my ribs, but I've never punched someone in my life.

I really really heavily blame adults here. It is adults who prefer silence and own comfort that teach kids to be passive and just take it. This is not in kids interest at all. And I don't even mean that you should have beat them up back.

Adults should have work with both aggressor and victim. They should have teach the victim healthy assertively and how to set boundaries before bullying gets that bad. And they should have taught the bullies to stop being bullies. And when aggressors are uncontrolable and relationships impossible to navigate for victim, when it escalated to the level of broken ribs, adults are responsible for stopping it all.

Adults are just older versions of these kids. Passing blame around seems less helpful than fixing the problem. Good people need to act…

$2.7 billion per day on military, $0.3 billion per day on hydrocarbons from Russia (to release these as CO2 into the atmosphere). Sounds like wasting $3.0 billion per day.

Even if the world should achieve complete peace, some power-monger will rise with an ambition to rule everyone. All the weapons of the world exist only to deter that individual.

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

However, the intent for peace has to be there. Si vis pacem. You can also prepare for war w/ intent for war, after all.

Military spending is an example of prisoners' dilemma: the ideal option would be for nobody to have a military, but no matter what the stature of your enemies are, it is more valuable to spend money on maintaining a military than not doing so.

My personal views on the matter tend towards what I would call a militaristic pacifism. I am pretty against actually going to war, but I am generally in favor of maintaining a large, powerful military, far more than most pacifists are. Having that military power gives you better leverage in international affairs, and more resistance against others' leverage. While you can theoretically get a similar position with strong moral high ground, the reality is that you need a truly impeccable history of sustaining the moral high ground for that position to not be eroded with whataboutism, a history that I think no political actor has ever attained.

Another perspective I will point out is that a decent fraction of "military expenditure" is not on actual military readiness. I've been on research grants that are coming out of the defense spending bucket, but I've never worked on anything remotely close to a weapon (e.g., one line item would have been building compilers, which is difficult to even maliciously twist into working on weapons).

>one line item would have been building compilers, which is difficult to even maliciously twist into working on weapons

How so? Your compiler produces a binary, binary gets loaded on a chip inside a weapon system. Is that not working on weapons? That wasn't so difficult.

I get the overall point, military spending as a huge funnel of free money to be thrown at research, of which not necessarily all would end up in actual combat ready systems. But you don't know which of your research would the uniforms throw away in government labs and which they would put on assembly lines and send to the field. Compilers are extraordinarily essential pieces of software that lie downstream of literally any source program, so even if your compiler was a research toy, it can be scavenged for that one algorithm or tricky data structure that can increase the efficiency of production compilers that produces the binaries that animate the killing machines on the field.

For example, here's [1] an article about how formal verification helps unmanned helicopters be more resistant to cyber attacks. I didn't even search for it specifically for this comment, I had it on open tabs for 3 days.

[1] https://m-cacm.acm.org/magazines/2018/10/231372-formally-ver...

Formal verification helps everything be more resistant to cyber attacks.

Military spending means money flowing into science and education. WWII led to dramatic technological breakthroughs. The cold war inspired much stronger emphasis on STEM for decades.

A major conflict would force the government to be more serious about secondary education too and so help with reversing the decay (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31170431) of math programs in particular.

Thankfully we can make accords: under an accord, everyone can agree to simultaneously disarm themselves. It's not a perfect and forever solution to conflicts, but it's quite close. If everyone is disarmed, and we are under constant watch to make sure everyone is, the risk of conflict is very reduced. If a country breaks the accord others should have enough time to chase and seek peaceful solutions. Political instabilities can dissolve.

War really should interest no one with good intentions. Anything war can do, conversations, cultural exchange, agreements and even sanctions can do better (if everyone agrees to abandon war). It's like in a scientific discussion... there's is effectively no, zero, case where punching your peer is better at progressing science than discussion and understanding.

Of course, we also need to abolish fascism meanwhile -- it doesn't mean absolute tolerance, just that other tools should always be used to prevent and correct fascism and other dystopias that seem to require weapons to save yourself from.

I'm reminded of a recent survey I saw, discussing if NATO expansion post-soviet collapse was a mistake or not.

The Americans were all over the board. Some agreed strongly, some disagreed strongly.

The eastern Europeans were united - NATO expansion was vital to keeping eastern Europe independent.

Very well written , thanks! And what I don’t get is how even in 2022 decision makers can take a decision that results in killing of innocent lives somewhere. When there is even the slightest chance of dialogue why don’t they seize it?

Military spending is an easy trap for a developed country to fall into. Once all basic needs are met, there isn't much to do. A stockpile of weapons might not be useful immediately, but it is a better "investment" than doing nothing.

The problem with weapon stockpiles though (I include well educated personnel that can use those weapons as part of the stockpile), is that it is inherently negative sum. A neighboring country may feel threatened and thus increase their stockpile. Then one accident or harmless aggression occurs and the calculation shifts in favor of "deploying" those weapons, leading to a far bigger war than is actually necessary to settle the original dispute.

Suddenly it feels so stupid that we're spending so much money (or any money at all) in breaking things and killing each other instead of making things. What a waste.

We're all close neighbors in this isolated planet, bickering amongst ourselves. Maybe we need a proper alien invasion to bring us all together? Although we're facing global threats right now (climate change, pandemics...) and we can't get our sh...tuff together, so I don't have much hope in that scenario either. Makes me think of Don't Look Up.

Welp, I've made myself sad now.

I've been complaining about this for 30 years (and protesting sometimes too).

It feels hopeless, on some days I completely understand why some protestors immolate themselves... but younger generations have always made me feel a little better (I wish more of them would vote, but I understand why they don't).

There have been 14 cases of (political) self-immolation in the 2020s so far:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_self-immolat...

yes, notably just last week in front of the US Supreme Court for climate change inaction... some Buddhists consider it a compassionate act

That's what I thought right up until Russia invaded Ukraine. I couldn't believe it happened for 3 days.

Nah, as long as there's humans around, you better be armed and trained. Vicious animals, you never know when they'll decide to rape then kill you.

I agree that in this decade the invasion was unexpected. I couldn't believe it either until I read up on the history of the region.

In the 2000s, many nations (including Ukraine!) supported the second Iraq war that was motivated by the known false accusation of WMD presence in Iraq:

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

> In the 2000s, many nations (including Ukraine!) supported the second Iraq war

The leaders supported it, but I'm not sure the people in those nations did. The protests were huge and worldwide, even before the invasion started. This page makes inspiring reading:

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

Weird, to me it was pretty obvious for weeks if not months what was going to happen. I actually was not surprised at all when it did. Very disappointed, but not surprised.

If you are in the U.S. it's probably easy sitting on top of the world economically wondering why people fight. That's what I find amusing about HN. Life is great making $300k/year at FAANG. Why do people fight?

Think again, this is happening right at the border for me.

what a sad state of affairs that people think the most plausible solution to unifying us all is a common enemy serving us with a strong insecurity of our future..

Sad but real. Necessity breeds unity, however as creatures of natural selection, we are evolved to all make ourselves more fit and more successful for selection. We compete, have wars and are in conflict because it is woven into our basic biology.

Unity exists in biology only as an anomaly, because the complexity of your biological existence from your brain to your arms, hand and feet exist because your ancestors triumphed over others.

If there were an alien invasion tomorrow, conspiracy theorists would immediately begin claiming that aliens don’t exist and anyone who believes in them has been brainwashed by George Soros and CNN. Nothing will change.

Well, that's depressing and probably accurate.

A recognisable alien invasion happening in our lifetimes is... astronomically improbable.

I think it would be reasonable to be initially skeptical.

Certainly if I just saw it on TV, it seems most probable that the news has got it wrong somehow.

A recognizable alien invasion is astronomically improbably by itself, no need to constrain into a lifetime. If we got invaded, we would all die never knowing it's happening.

Don't Look up was a reasonably funny sendup in a similar vein.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Up

As a bit of a conspiracy theorist myself, I would have to disagree. I'm honestly thankful when a presumed conspiracy is verified and adopts mass support. The Snowden leaks are a great example. People forget that pre-2013, USA mass surveillance was a conspiracy theory. James Clapper lied under oath to downplay the scope of the surveillance, and anyone who suggested this was a conspiracy theorist. I was considered a conspiracy theorist among certain friend groups. WMD in Iraq is another example that was very frustrating.

Powerful people have conspired to commit crimes all throughout history. It seems we need a new word to describe this, because I guess conspiracy means something different to most people.

Same is true if God existed :)

This is a direct consequence of having a free will: if only one world leader decides (in his free will) to terrorize others, others must defend themselves against him - and so they are spending money for military...

This is the fatal game theory problem with peaceful utopia. All it takes is one sociopath to realize they can increase their power by breaking the rules, and now we need to spend resources on a global police force.

> All it takes is one sociopath

No, it does not.

The are probably tenths of millions of sociopaths out there and 99.99% of them are not given the power to become dictators/CEOs.

In healthy societies they don't even get hired as cops.

Power is taken not given. This is why highly competent sociopaths are magnetically attracted to founding and leading large corporations and running for public office. Once in power they use their influence in ways that harms society but helps themselves. I don’t see how a society populated by humans could survive without institutions to protect humanity from the tyrants amongst our own.

> institutions to protect humanity

But why do those institutions have to be armed? In theory, if corporations were under sufficiently vigilant democratic control, and the electoral/political system meant that leaders and policies reflected the best interests of most people, then sociopaths would have their power taken from them the moment they tried to wield it in an inappropriate way.

An armed organization to "protect us from bad people" sounds like the mob.

What do you mean we aren’t making things, I’ve seen all sorts of fascinating Raytheon weapons!

So many of our innovations come out of the military though. Yes its sad we don't do that sort of research in different circumstances, but its an incredible motivating and driving force to get things done

The military mainly funds military innovations and that's the only area where they are the unique provider of solutions. Too bad things like radar absorbing coating or pre-fragmentation of shells are useless for civilians.

Famous innovations from ww2 like radio, radar, and computers all had civilian precursors that were then expediently targeted with funding to develop further. That is not really a testimony to the unusual innovation powers of the military, it's a statement about the political power of war as a means to concentrate resources.

In the end, we are just sentient apes on a space rock.

We won't pass the great filter.

The great filter? You mean when the sun expands and burns everyone?

I feel some of us have a small shot of escaping it with hibernation and a spacecraft that can last millions of years. Doesn't seem too far fetched for this tech to be realized.

There are lots of ways humanity could be wiped off this rock long before the sun burns the earth to a crisp in 600M years. I'd argue if we haven't transitioned to a fleet of o'neil cylinders by then, we've probably earned our extinction.

Bring us all together around what? Everyone always leaves that part out.

The only reasonable answer would be freedom, so that diverse people can be happy together. Anything else is merely a call for everyone else to do things the way you want.

But there's no consensus around freedom. When it comes down to it, a lot of people don't want it.

That's why freedom is not enough. There's a reason why France chose to combine liberty with equality and fraternity.

But what does fraternity mean for diverse people? What is the unifying principle?

It's easy to call someone your brother if they are similar to you. Not so easy when they are truly different.

> What is the unifying principle?

I know it sounds self-referential, but the unifying principle(s) could be liberty, equality, and fraternity.

In other words, you exhibit fraternity by supporting your fellow citizens as they work with you towards expanding and defending those shared values.

What that means in practice depends on your skills and interests, but it could for example mean serving alongside citizens of different ethnicities in a non-segregated army (or military alliance), or hiring employees of a different religion in a non-discriminating business.

Unifying around freedom makes sense to me. Unifying around fraternity sounds entirely circular.

Military service doesn't sound like a way to unify the world -- who is the enemy?

Unifying around a business is about producing/creating. That is a major common ground in the world and has (in my opinion) created a lot of peace. It doesn't feel like a complete answer, though -- for instance China still feels very distant despite our economic ties.

> Unifying around freedom makes sense to me. Unifying around fraternity sounds entirely circular.

If fraternity were the only goal then I would agree with you. "Working together to achieve the goal of working together" doesn't make sense. But it does make sense for a society to identify fraternity as a core value, since it is a principle which is applied when trying to achieve other societal goals.

> Military service doesn't sound like a way to unify the world -- who is the enemy?

The enemy could be anyone who is working against that unity. Alternatively, if the consensus towards unity is so strong that no one ever tries to use violence against it, then the military could be devoted to humanitarian causes like disaster relief.

Some would say nobody is "truly different" in any way that really matters. We all want food, clothing, shelter, and beyond that, differences don't matter much.

> But what does fraternity mean for diverse people? What is the unifying principle?

Same needs.

>Maybe we need a proper alien invasion to bring us all together?

You mean Putin?

While the first graph does adjust for inflation (i.e., all years are in 2020 inflation-adjusted USD), it seems that it doesn't account for global wealth increase, i.e. while the absolute amount of money spent on war is greater than ever, so is our absolute wealth. I'm not an economist, but wouldn't it make sense to compare military spending over gdp, inflation-adjusted? Or put simpler: I'm sure there was a time in history where a relatively large amount of our total wealth was spent on war, because we generally didn't have much.

Yes, like say, World War 1 and 2.

This graph only goes back to 2000 but even on that timescale current military spending is lower than past peaks: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS

Well, 2009 was when the bulk of the impact from the financial crisis hit world GDP so the peak is mostly reflecting that GDP contracted while military spending was mainly flat.

You can compare the percentage of GDP figure to this one showing military spending as percentage of all government spending, where it looks like we're spending less and less on weapons: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.ZS

So while total dollar amount is maybe a coarse measure, the GDP or the fraction worldwide government spending are so contingent on the details of literally every other human activity as to unusable for quick observations.

This is an excellent point! As someone who’s totally not a data scientist, what approach would you take to counter this?

Assuming military budget planning has a window of a few years, would a moving average of GDP be an appropriate solution? Or am I thinking too simplistic?

Not directly addressing this, but perhaps the point is not to create a model to address every known limitations. No models are perfect. Points are made based on a model, and a limitation/assumption is pointed out. You need to judge given the assumption/limitation if the message made still some-what make sense.

I mean something X being highest right now is a pretty clear statement, it is either true or false, if X is well defined. But then your problem is you want to have Z instead, which hopefully is accounted for every other effect except for the factor you want to measure, such as inflation, GDP, etc. But the more you add, you either makes your Z definition sensitive to these other factors you’re not interested in (such as a peak comes from the denominator, not the numerator), or we really admit we can’t calculate Z for sure, and is now a statistical model (any kind of smoothing including the MA you mentioned is to admit we don’t know the true state but can only observe it with noise.) Now the statement of “Z is highest now” is no longer a true or false statement, but a probabilistic one.

Certainly then P(Z is highest) = 60% or so wouldn’t make much of a headline and can be confusing.

So my point was rather than trying to create a perfect model (which you can’t, and what you learn from it won’t be clear as well), sometimes just deal with the statement and methodology and judge if it is a clickbait or has some merit of truth there.

I agree and think it would be more useful if it was expressed as a percentage of global GDP instead.

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

Does inflation matter?

We are largely talking about bombs and bullets here. Yes, smarter and smarter bombs but bombs nonetheless.

I feel like the proper comparison point is tons of explosives.

And remember: every proximity fuse antiair bullet has a vacuum tube and mini-radar in it to run the proximity fuse logic (if close to enemy, then explode).

Modern weapons are smarter than that, but WW2 era weapons were still quite smart.

Warfare is much more than explosives. It’s people, equipment, information, transportation, logistics, and a lot more.

Sure, but military spending isn't necessarily war-making.

Case in point: the biggest expenditure of the US Military is... Healthcare, the Veteran's Affair's department. The next biggest expenditures are Research and Development (which includes DARPA-funded projects. Technically defense, but I don't think anyone would call the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Network_Challenge Darpa Network Challenge a "wargame")

By just looking at military spending per department, you over-estimate the amount of money spent on warmaking.

------

So defense-spending is one metric (too much money allocated), and maybe "tons of explosives" is too little.

USA didn't really have that many casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan (it wasn't like Vietnam or Korea where huge amounts of injured soldiers existed). As such, the VA-department is largely handling things like COVID19, diabetes, and other "typical" ailments. While technically "department of defense" funds, I don't think it really counts as "military expenditure", not in the way the article is discussing anyway.

That’s kind of where I was going with “people”, but certainly there are many other larger costs than explosives. Labor is the largest expense for most organizations and the DoD is no exception. They are, after all, the worlds largest employer.

2700000 million Americans served in Vietnam though.

There's really no comparison between back then and today with regards to labor costs and/or military manpower. The expectations for health care just rose in the last 60 years.

That's where I was going with "number of explosives", because I'd expect that the "number of explosives per soldier" to be relatively constant. (Sure, weapons can get more sophisticated, but soldiers have a hard limit to what they can efficiently carry into battle).

For example: a modern AT4 (anti-tank munition) is roughly the same weight as the WW2 Bazooka. This is because the weight-limits per soldier are set. I'd expect that Roman Legionnaires, Medieval Knights, and modern soldiers to have all carried roughly the same equipment weight.

The AT4 is more accurate, more sophisticated and more damaging than a bazooka, but the general form factor and use is the same.

> 2700000 million Americans served in Vietnam though.

I presume you meant 2.7 million.

But the DoD currently has 2.91 million employees on payroll.

And yes, the cost of employing someone has gone up significantly since then.

Yes, adjusting for inflation does matter if your base is devaluing at roughly 10% per year now.

Comparing tons of explosives doesn't make sense since information advantages and other factors have large effects on effectiveness of weapons (e.g. two rockets sinking Russia's black sea flagship).

Not that dollars make necessarily more sense here, but at least people understand dollar values.

Well, there's two ways to look at the data. One is how much we as a civilization are prioritizing military spending as compared to everything else. I think that if we charted military spending per GDP, you'd see the number on a pretty steady downward projection and possibly near 100-year lows. So, great, we're not building war machines at the direct expense of healthcare or infrastructure or education.

But, as the title says, spending in absolute amounts is higher than ever and it's the likely the amount of stockpiled "killing power" is an all-time high. Nuclear weapons are the big outlier, but the nominal amount of vehicles, munitions and soldiers and their respective increases in efficiency probably mean we are more deadly than ever.

Percent of GDP is a much better metric.

It is, but it doesn't make headlines...

Does the cost of defending a country increase linearly with GDP? Do linear increases in military spending result in a linear increase in security?

In the post-WW2 era, military spending peaked in the 1980s, and it's been (mostly) declining ever since as a percentage of global gdp

My key takeaways:

1. Total global military expenditure increased by 0.7 per cent in real terms in 2021, to reach $2113 billion

2. In nominal terms, however, military spending grew by 6.1 per cent.

3. As a result of a sharp economic recovery in 2021, the global military burden—world military expenditure as a share of world gross domestic product (GDP)—fell by 0.1 percentage points, from 2.3 per cent in 2020 to 2.2 per cent in 2021

4. ‘The US Government has repeatedly stressed the need to preserve the US military’s technological edge over strategic competitors.’ Russia increases military budget in run-up to war Russia increased its military expenditure by 2.9 per cent in 2021, to $65.9 billion, at a time when it was building up its forces along the Ukrainian border

5. Military expenditure refers to all government spending on current military forces and activities, including salaries and benefits, operational expenses, arms and equipment purchases, military construction, research and development, and central administration, command and support

6. The five largest spenders in 2021 were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia, together accounting for 62 per cent of expenditure, according to new data on global military spending published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

7. Germany—the third largest spender in Central and Western Europe—spent $56.0 billion on its military in 2021, or 1.3 per cent of its GDP

8. United States focuses on military research and development US military spending amounted to $801 billion in 2021, a drop of 1.4 per cent from 2020

9. US funding for military research and development (R&D) rose by 24 per cent between 2012 and 2021, while arms procurement funding fell by 6.4 per cent over the same period

> Russia increases military budget in run-up to war Russia increased its military expenditure by 2.9 per cent in 2021, to $65.9 billion, at a time when it was building up its forces along the Ukrainian border

Kind of funny to think about how the Russian military budget is roughly 1.5 Twitters.

And despite this still being so embarrassingly pathetic in real fighting

> As a result of a sharp economic recovery in 2021, the global military burden—world military expenditure as a share of world gross domestic product (GDP)—fell by 0.1 percentage points, from 2.3 per cent in 2020 to 2.2 per cent in 2021.

Indeed, this is continuing a long general trend of decreased military spending by both the US and the world since the end of WW2:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-as-a...

Major buildups like Vietnam and the Cold War were in fact only mild bumps:

https://media.defense.gov/2019/Mar/12/2002099941/-1/-1/0/190...

2.2% seems like a very bearable price, especially in light of ~3% annual real GDP growth. Wanting/expecting military spending to be much less than a percentage point of GDP doesn't make any more sense to me than wanting/expecting similar for other expenditures on law and order like police and courts.

The better criticism of our current military order is that peace largely relies on the threat of nuclear annihilation, and each year we incur a small chance of this horrific outcome, which is not reflected in spending. Naively, I'd like to see more spending on conventional weaponry insofar as it is allows us to reduce strategic nuclear weapon counts and cut down the long tail of truly terrible scenarios.

Interesting. I draw the opposite conclusion. Seeing that nuclear weapons are the only realistic threat against the United States, I believe a majority of our military budget should be dedicated to the development and deployment of anti-missile defense systems, be they based on kinetic interception, lasers, or even nuclear interceptors.

Greater US investment in strategic nuclear weapons defense is compatible with everything I said above. Whether thats a good idea depends on what equilibrium it drives the world military order to. If you propose adjustments to US policy, you can't pretend that the world response is fixed.

There are strong but not irrefutable arguments that strategic nuke defense spending by the US just induces the same by Russia/China, but puts us in a new nuke equilibrium with less stability than the current MAD situation. The relative stability of those two scenarios can not be figured out by you or me thinking in our armchairs. It depends sensitively on the technological and economic details.

SIPRI's top ten military spenders 2021, with help from Wikipedia [0]

  1. USA: $801 billion
  2. China: $293 billion
  3. India: $76.6 billion
  4. UK: $68.4 billion
  5. Russia: $65.9 billion
  6. France:  $56.6 billion
  7. Germany: $56.0 billion
  8. Saudia Arabia: $55.6 billion
  9. Japan: $54.1 billion
  10. S. Korea: $50.2 billion

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

I think the real issue is an issue of priorities. You don't even have to compare the US to other countries but compare the US to ourselves. Approximately half of our total spending goes to our military budget[1], and we complain about spending on social programs and college funding, having people "pull themselves up by their bootstraps".

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2021/04/09/biden-202...

Who is us?

Whoops... forgot caps. Was supposed to be the US. I'll fix it. I'm doing this while I get my caffeine ready =[

We're #1

Half of Discretionary spending which does not include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Oh, to be honest I'm not sure how that works. Discretionary spending makes it sound like it's just pocket money. 1.5 trillion dollars doesn't sound like pocket money, and this is the budget that all of the news outlets seem to discuss as "the budget"... what's the other budget that social security, medicare and medicaid come out of so that I can look up that spending and what comes out of that and how much that is? - this seems purposefully complicated, tbh. I've heard this referred to as "the federal budget" for so long (and yes, I'm referring to the US federal budget), I thought they were referring to the complete budget (state budgets aside). That being said, I do understand my naivete =/

EDIT... I meant to say thank you in that post. that chart is awesome, btw

> Discretionary spending makes it sound like it's just pocket money.

It doesn't, really. "Discretionary spending" has a specific meaning, it's not just a casual choice of words.

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

That’s just discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is less than half of total US federal spending. The biggest single expense budgets by far are welfare or welfare related.

https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spend...

I find the per-capita military spending very interesting.

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

1 USA 3806.4 2020 Estimate[3]

2 Israel 2507.6 2020 Precise

3 UAE 2020.4 2020 Estimate[2]

4 Singapore 1855.5 2020 Precise

5 Saudi Arabia 1652.2 2020 Estimate

6 Kuwait 1625.3 2020 Precise

7 Oman 1317.8 2020 Estimate

8 Norway 1312.0 2020 Precise

9 Australia 1079.9 2020 Precise

10 Qatar 1011.0 2010 Precise

I can understand Singapore needing to protect itself against aggressive neighbours and all the Middle Eastern countries (including Israel). But Australia, who are they planning to fight? Timor? Papua?

Australia plans to fight China.

Australia plans to defend itself in case one of the Chinas attacks. The one that's neither people's nor a republic, despite calling itself so.

> Australia plans to defend itself in case one of the Chinas attacks.

I'm not sure I find that very plausible. Especially when I find out about stuff like this where Australia has been extracting resources from its smaller powerless neighbors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93East_Timor_s...

The Australia–East Timor spying scandal began in 2004 when the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) clandestinely planted covert listening devices in a room adjacent to the East Timor (Timor-Leste) Prime Minister's Office at Dili, to obtain information in order to ensure Australia held the upper hand in negotiations with East Timor over the rich oil and gas fields in the Timor Gap.[1] Even though the East Timor government was unaware of the espionage operation undertaken by Australia, negotiations were hostile. The first Prime Minister of East Timor, Mari Alkatiri, bluntly accused the Howard Government of plundering the oil and gas in the Timor Sea, stating:

    "Timor-Leste loses $1 million a day due to Australia's unlawful exploitation of resources in the disputed area. Timor-Leste cannot be deprived of its rights or territory because of a crime."[2]

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/25/989546260/i-remember-them-scr...

'I Remember Them Screaming': Afghans Detail Alleged Killings By Australian Military

Not sure how a minor oil fields dispute ought to modify in any way my original belief that Australia plans to defend itself against the PRC.

It appears to me that Australia is using its "defense" budget to fund offensive actions against weaker neighbors like Timor in order to steal billions of dollars worth of petro-resources. That's not a "minor" thing. Bugging a Prime Ministers Office in another country can't have been cheap. That's probably a couple of million dollars just on that operation.

The scale of this problem, and this offence, seems so vastly different from the potential catastrophe that the PRC would wreak on all these countries and their neighbours if they're allowed to operate unchallenged in the South Pacific that, again, it just seems like a footnote to the real story.

Australia is in a very tight spot with China. And China is now in a security pact with the Solomon Islands which will give China the ability to blockade Australia (and New Zealand) from the United States in the event of war.

* edit * the reason this is significant is because: When China goes to take back Taiwan, the United States will need to be able to use Australia as a major logistics hub. Any inability to do so will significantly hamper, delay, or prevent aid to Taiwan.

China doesn't have a blue water navy and won't have the ability to reasonably attempt to blockade the US for at least another decade.

>>>China doesn't have a blue water navy

It's got the ships, it just doesn't have the overseas bases. It is entirely based in semi-constrained waters. The issue with the Solomons is so concerning because, much like their plans for Gwadar Port in Pakistan, it would enable the PLAN to base significant forces outside the First and Second Island Chains.

https://www.dw.com/en/china-navy-vs-us-navy/a-55347120

https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/Koda_BWN.p...

So rough math shows that the US spends more on military than the next 10 countries put together. Or put another way, spends 40% of all world military spending.

While I get that military R&D occasionally produces tangible benefits to society, I suspect that if we poured 5% of the military budget into the state department and actually tried diplomacy more often, the rest of the military budget could get cut at least in half.

Because of the level of corruption and the amount of money to be made by military contractor grifters, this isn't going to change. Better to build better ways to kill people than to solve things like poverty, mass mental illness and so on. 'merica fuck yeah and all that.

Interesting. Can you describe a scenario where western diplomacy would have prevented the current situation in Ukraine? We can assume that the State Department's budget was any number you like in our example.

Linear thinking .. like let us spend the money from military to diplomatic and civilian aid, sounds great, until you see and understand how the fiefdoms of State department and USAID are built and operated.

We have State department and CIA full of people who cannot speak a second language, let alone the native language of country where they are stationed. End up living in a bubble that feels like a Western enclave -- too far from realities of the people of those countries.

I would rather have corrupt hard power instead of feel good fake soft power.

Same colonial empire building, new branding

US offers defense guarantees, weapons and munitions to many nations in exchange for soft power. Approx $120B/year in sales alone.

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

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

This is a fallacy. A strong army can also create peace and stability, which in turn feed many more mouths than the opposite.

At some point you’d have to agree that we also need to invest in creating order, or would you vote to remove the police, court, and the rule of the law (which is done by force).

I think the point is to spend the least necessary to achieve the stability required for the base of Maslow’s hierarchy.

That is certainly a reasonable goal, but it is not found in a straightforward reading of the Eisenhower quote. The words clearly suggest a 1-to-1 trade-off between military spending and intrinsically valuable things.

Lots of military action in modern times is worse than 1-to-1. Huge expense to destroy stability-enabling infrastructure, leaving the world a more dangerous place.

You have to consider at least the minimal context of the Eisenhower quote, i.e. that it's _Eisenhower_'s quote, who in no uncertain terms could be considered anything close to a pacifist or idealist, he understands that military means are necessary.

I mean I basically agree, but I think that just makes it a confusing/misleading thing to say. Would be better to quote people saying things that conform with their actions and beliefs, rather than things that don't where we have to try to infer what they actually meant.

I wonder what a Ukranian thinks about this right now?

The quote implies that the spending is harmful. However, if Ukraine had spent less on defense over the last 5 years, it’s people would be worse off today, clothed worse, less well fed, under Russian (possibly genocidal) occupation. If they had tripled their spending, perhaps Russia would not have even tried

Eisenhower's point was also about arms races. If Ukraine and Russia had spent less on defence over the last five years, both would be better off and there still wouldn't be an occupation. As it was, his administration still spent an astronomical amount of money on defence (albeit less than Truman's Korean War expenditure) because he recognised that the Soviet Union wouldn't disarm if the US did.

Would the world have been better off if the South American dreadnought race had carried on? Doesn't seem very likely. Even the UK/German naval race at the same time cost a preposterous amount of money on both sides for an inconclusive result, even while we were fighting a hot war.

Or maybe if they spent less Russia would have defeated them sooner, the war would be over, people could return home, and there would be no more casualties. Or maybe if they spend(really received from US) less then Russia would not have felt threatened and invaded at all. Perhaps if their military spending had ramped up faster then Putin would have decided to invade sooner.

Russia is public ally talking about re-education, and they are shipping thousands of Ukrainians into Russia. Mass graves all over and public statements for years about how the country and its people are illegitimate. Russia never once felt threatened, putin has invaded a new country every 5-10 years his entire reign. Stop justifying it

> The quote implies that the spending is harmful.

I don't think it does. It implies that overspending is harmful, while implicitly acknowledging that some level is spending is necessary for law and order.

For those in this thread critical of military spending in general, please keep in mind that the following were/are directly or indirectly military projects

1. Global trade as we know it is possible because since WWII the US Navy has, by policy, secured the ocean for all participants in the global economy. Merchant ships generally don't need to run armed or with escorts because of this. Now we did it to produce an economic engine/alliance to fight the Soviets, but the effects on uplifting entire nations out of poverty and increasing global economic development cannot be denied.

2. The US Interstate highway system was a Cold War measure so we could move troops from coast to coast quickly if needed. Eisenhower himself was on the first coast-to-coast US Army expedition in 1919, which took 56 days and laid bare America's lacking infrastructure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Motor_Transport_Corps_con...

3. European welfare states are indirectly subsidized by US security obligations and global trade (see point 1). If Europe had to secure their own shipping/take on Russia on their own, their military spending would have to increase an order of magnitude.

4. GPS

5. The moon landings

6. The early internet

7. Many early microprocessor designs

7. The Hubble space telescope was basically an inverted spy satellite

8. Satellite communications in general

9. Modern ship propulsion

And the list goes on. Now granted there's TONS of wasted money in the military, and tons of corruption and death from needless wars, but let's just keep in mind that if the pacifists got their way we likely wouldn't have had any of the above. I know HN is pretty Silicon-Valley centric, and from everything I've heard about the valley people who work for defense contractors can still get called baby killers there in the right company, (what are we in 1973?). So I figured I'd put the alternate perspective out there: War is an ugly truth of human existence and will remain so as long as there is some combination of resource scarcity and assholes. Pacifism historically does not work long term unless the pacifists are defended by non-pacifists or have nothing of value worth taking. The world would be far less developed without modern military spending. In fact we wouldn't even be having this conversation without it. So let's take the pros with the cons.

> if the pacifists got their way we likely wouldn't have had any of the above

This is a huge logical fallacy.

The US keeps playing a trick where socially useful R&D is budgeted under "military expenditure" because it's easier to justify and to privatize the benefits.

Do you think in a more peaceful world people would be forced to dump research money into the ocean?

If anything, the less money are spent for military projects the more can be spent on research.

> Do you think in a more peaceful world people would be forced to dump research money into the ocean?

Why do you assume that decreasing military spend (US or non-US, even) would result in a "more peaceful world"?

Many books have been written on the topic by world-class geopolitical analysts but this is not the place to list them all. This is proof enough: https://brilliantmaps.com/threat-to-peace/

You can browse a bookshop for more.

> Many books have been written on the topic by world-class geopolitical analysts

Appeal to authority

> This is proof enough: https://brilliantmaps.com/threat-to-peace/

From the link:

> The map shows the results of a 2013 (pre-Trump) WIN/Gallup International survey asking people which country they felt was the greatest threat to world peace.

The wisdom of the masses is hardly "proof enough".

> You can browse a bookshop for more.

That's a cheap answer and also a fallacy -- you're not providing any arguments, just saying "I know this to be true". And for what it's worth, I happen to have a degree in International Relations so don't need to really go to a bookshop for references...

>> Many books have been written on the topic by world-class geopolitical analysts

> Appeal to authority

We are discussing a subjective topic based on expert opinion. Authoritative opinion is exactly what we need.

What did you expect, a theorem with proof?

>> The map shows the results of a 2013 (pre-Trump) WIN/Gallup International survey asking people which country they felt was the greatest threat to world peace.

> The wisdom of the masses is hardly "proof enough".

On the contrary, we are measuring public opinion on a topic. A poll measures exactly that.

> I happen to have a degree in International Relations so don't need to really go to a bookshop for references...

Perhaps you should see the irony in talking about "Appeal to authority" fallacy" when you just brought up you degree.

Anyhow, go ahead and prove me wrong with a method that is entirely objective and not based on any expert opinion.

> Global trade as we know it is possible because since WWII the US Navy has, by policy, secured the ocean for all participants in the global economy.

Was international trade that hard before Pax Americana started ruling the waves after WW2 ? Did trade ships had to "run armed or with escorts" outside of time of war ?

I think piracy was a real problem for international shipping in the past.

Now there are some areas with disputed territory where the US Navy does Freedom of Navigation Ops to keep trade running smoothly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_navigation#FONOPs_i...

Piracy was one of the drivers of the European empires. Said empires had largely solved the issue by sheer sea power in the early 20th century, but after WWII those empires were shattered financially (the Brits) or physically (everyone else). The US took up the mantle after WWII and drastically upped the scale of the protection/globalization offered/mandated. On the economic side Pax Americana also forced alliance participants to open their economies to greater international trade in exchange for that protection. The various power blocks that preceded the modern global order were far more economically insular, a world we seem to be reverting to, for better or worse.

Also wars were more common the further back you go. As we're discovering today global supply chains are way more vulnerable to conflict. In a globalized economy, if Iran goes to war with Saudi Arabia the first thing to get sunk is all the oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, and the primary global energy source goes out. So for a globalized economy to work those tankers have to be sacrosanct. That's one reason the US kept an Aircraft carrier parked in the Persian Gulf for decades and made nice with the Saudis, it secured the global energy supply and thus the anti-Soviet alliance. But with the US being de-facto energy independent thanks to shale and the Soviets long gone, we no longer have any reason to stick around. It'll be interesting to see if the French or British restore some neo-version of their old middle eastern or North African empires as a result in the coming decades.

Good list, and I also want to add that I meet and see a lot of people who have been educated by the military in cybersecurity and put on a path of personal success. They also bring tremendous value to the companies they work for.

I don't buy the premise that we wouldn't have these inventions were it not for military spending. Our current military budget is 700B / yr. That's a lot of cash to throw at basic research, space exploration, etc. I think we would have been much better served.

This isn't about weapons, it's about jobs.

Keep in mind that a countries military is typically the largest employment organization in an entire country. More so than any private company.

The US alone has an annual military budget of $801B [0] (for planes, tanks, etc AND salaries) but also employes 2.2M [1] people. If you assumed that all of the military spend went to salaries (and didn't go to tanks, planes, buildings, etc) that would be an avg salary of ~$350k/person.

[0] this article

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces

>but also employes 2.2M [1] people

And how is this beneficial to society, other than preparing/justifying wars, spending money on expensive weapons and equipment, and collecting salaries?

If creating jobs is good enough, we'd better pay armies of environmentalists to finally bifurcate from our current catastrophic course.

Your comments are very politically charged and I'd rather avoid participating in such discourse.

But I'll just say that I'm sure Ukraine right now is very appreciative of the help they have (and continue) to receive from the same parties you're dismissing.

Military expenditure is nothing but political.

It would be really interesting to see a breakdown of military spending per employee.

For the US, 2.2M employees equates to ~1.38% of the employed population [1].

For the UK, the military isn't the largest employer, the NHS is, which isn't surprising. The British Armed Forces employ 148K [2] people which is ~0.46% of the employed population [2].

Would be interesting to see the worldwide trends.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/579773/number-of-personn...

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/281998/employment-figure...

Looks like out of the Top 10 Worlds Largest Employers, 3 are government militaries (US, China, India). UK/NHS is also on that top 10 list.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-military-is-the-largest...

To also play devils advocate here, it is one of the few things keeping many kinds of manufacturing alive in the US itself, such as metalworking and ship building.

To lose all the knowledge that comes with that would be a disaster, as we would have to rely on other, possible hostile, countries to provide those goods. At least by having some of this expertise and machinery inside the country we could ramp up training and production if needed.

The only thing that supports current rule of law around the world is might of US military. If you cut spending of US military to 0 then tomorrow we would be living in a different world. Because structure of the whole world is anarchistic, there is no police that would enforce rule of law, there is no one you can call if other country invade you. Of course because of USD hegemony as world currency, supported by its military power US gets unfair advantage but I'd rather live peacefully in the so called west under US influence than under Russian or Chinese.

Thinking that we can live in beautiful world in peace without wars and military is delusional and unrealistic. There was hope in 90s that we can bring liberal democracy to all countries around the world and there would be no more wars. We all see how it went on middle east. People thought that war is unrealistic before WWI then they were super optimistic and thought the same thing before WWII. Unfortunately history proves that world is running in cycles, latest cycle is coming to the end and as it was with Dutch empire and then British empire and before with other empires, new challenger emerges that is challenging status quo, this time it's China and US is on decline as world power. Unfortunately it's only a matter of time until the clash happens.

As a US citizen, I often wonder how much value we are getting back from our military spending and what amount are we being bilked by the defense industry.

I've heard all kinds of stories about the vast amounts of wasteful spending the contractors get away with in order to make their company a buck.

I don't know if things changed now but I was reading an article about when the the military funded the development of GPS and it was run on quite a tight budget with fierce competitions among competing groups. And it still funded some of the most brilliant engineers and scientists to work critical problems like how make a tiny atomic clock with low power to win in a satellite.

And let's not forget there's a lot of defense spending hidden in other categories. For instance Veteran affairs has it's own category that isn't included under defense. dept of homeland security, dept of energy is mostly a front for defense, etc, the list goes on and on.

My theory - similar with guns, the more we have the higher chances of it being used (guns and military).

We need to have less of both, not more. But I know it won't happen. Not for a long time.

To put this into perspective, the US spent $4.7T on social programs in 2021.

https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spend...

Other categories were defense + veterans benefits (about $1T), general government (about $.25T) and interest on the debt (about $.35T)

Just to note that a lot of this is not actually weapons. A lot of robotic limbs and medical R&D is commissioned by the DoD and specifically DARPA. Maxar may sell imagery to the military to track Russia troop movements and the US Forest Service to monitor wildfires. DoD spends a lot of direct healthcare too

That’s almost half of what the United States spends on health expenditures.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-healthcare-spending-slowed-...

Is this adjusted to inflation? I think the world was spending a lot of dough WWI to WWII.

It's in constant 2020 (US) Dollars

Graph only goes back to 1990.

Agree with OP, even during the Vietnam War spending was higher.

Actually not, absolute spending is at an all time high: : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-tota...

Probably because the equipment is more expensive these days and soldiers get better benefits.

Does this include the Afghanistan/Iraq wars for the US? I thought it would be bigger spike in the spending.

Spending money on new or better ways to kill each other instead of help each other is so sad. It's nationalism and egos that drive our planet apart instead of together.

But what can the average person do?

Apparently there was a slowdown in terms of real growth rate (which is to say, military budgets are still increasing but the rate of increase went down in real terms) (inflation).

How much of this increase is due to inflation?

No prosperity without security.

So it goes.

This is just inflation

Great news! We're all so much safer now, don't you feel it! /s

This would be news if there was a constant money supply. Too bad it grows 5-20% per year.

And you can count on one hand the guys responsible for this right now. It's crazy to think that some guy with mental issues, just within a month or two, triggered a massive militarization.

On intellectually interesting thing about the current NATO-Russia conflict is it suggests that the overarching strategy is to figure out whether the stove is hot by touching it. Obviously neither Russia nor the US see a diplomatic solution, but it is happening on Russia's border so at some point someone will escalate too far. And everyone is on edge and tetchy after the the COVID response. The current world superpower is run by people who are pretty sure that the answer to economic problems involves printing money. Obviously this'll end well.

Energy use is also approaching a critical point. The experiments in Europe indicate that the closing of the fossil fuel age will be unpleasant. The electricity production figures out of the UK are jaw dropping, last I saw they seem to have regressed to 1970s levels.

In this environment, it is easy to see why people are ramping up military training. If it wasn't for the fact that a serious war will be apocalyptic regardless of spending I imagine they'd be ramping up faster and more enthusiastically.

> NATO-Russia conflict

Can you explain your framing?

I believe that is what it looks like from a Russian perspective.

To be fair, without the several billion USD in free high-tech weapons from the Western countries (mostly though not exclusively NATO members) Ukraine would probably have lost the war by now. It's an open secret that NATO has been passing on intelligence from AWACS and spy satellites to the Ukrainian forces as well.

There might be no NATO troops on the ground but it's a bit of a stretch to say that it is purely Ukraine vs Russia.

> without the several billion USD in free high-tech weapons from the Western countries (mostly though not exclusively NATO members) Ukraine would probably have lost the war by now

And without the navy Russia annexed [1], or it’s Soviet military kit, much of which was designed and built in Ukraine, Russia wouldn’t have much of a start.

Ukraine repelled Putin’s forces on its own in the early days of the war, when Western intelligence was predicting another Kabul. That it later attracted sympathy is further testament to its diplomatic strength (and the Kremlin’s isolation).

[1] https://tass.com/russia/724901

Out of curiosity, where did you read that? I assumed Wiki had been trolled, but even they add the rather important follow up you seem to be unaware of [1]. Just quoting Wiki as it is accurate on this note (you can also search anywhere to confirm):

"On 8 April 2014 an agreement was reached between Russia and Ukraine to return Ukrainian Navy materials to Ukraine proper. The greater portion of the Ukrainian naval ships and vessels were then returned to Ukraine but Russia suspended this process after Ukraine did not renew its unilaterally declared ceasefire on 1 July 2014 in the conflict in the Donbas."

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_Fleet#Russian_annexa...

It's still only Ukraine vs Russia, even if Ukraine is using weapons acquired from elsewhere and getting intelligence information from other countries.

That's a pretty basic idea in international politics, having been developed over decades of similar proxy wars. Same reason the US didn't consider itself at war with the USSR in Korea or Vietnam.

>>>getting intelligence information from other countries.

Don't underestimate the massive value (and massive expense, for NATO) associated with providing that intelligence. Ukraine is basically playing Starcraft with a "disable fog of war" cheatcode activated.

While that sort of assistance is undoubtedly useful, it doesn't rise to the level of military action that justifies retaliatory strikes.

It's also something that has established precedent in the proxy conflicts I mentioned before, with the USSR and US both in turn providing strategic and in some cases tactical intelligence to the other side. As long as the aircraft gathering the intelligence aren't flying inside the battle zone.

Russian military spending: $66 billion

Ukrainian military spending: $5.4 billion

I have serious doubts the outside world dumped more than $5 billion on Ukraine's side. Russian made a serious error in how much territory they tried to hold as opposed to the re-positioning / fighting over Donbas that's happening now.

If the US ($801 billion) tried to conquer Canada ($26 billion), I would expect a similarly poor outcome based on Canada's size. If the US tried to annex specific oil rich areas under the guise of "protecting" oil pipelines, it's be reprehensible, but so was Crimea.

The total spending does not say as much as you'd think, since a large percentage of the Russian military budget goes to the Strategic Nuke forces (which are not very useful for the war in Ukraine) and another sizable chunk goes to the navy (most of which is not even present in the Black sea atm). There are also sizable inland forces for "maintaining political stability" that take up money from the budget but can't be deployed abroad.

This means a large portion of Russian military spending can't be used in the current war. OTOH, almost every Ukrainian military asset they have was acquired with an eventual defense against Russia in mind so they have a much better rate of available fighting power per dollar spent.

> I have serious doubts the outside world dumped more than $5 billion on Ukraine's side.

They did send about $5 billion worth of equipment. It is probably a factor why Russia isn't currently sieging Kiev.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/22/ukraine-weapons-mil...

In the US alone the most recent spending bill allocated another $13.6 billion to Ukraine. [1] I've no idea what the worldwide total is, to say nothing of how much is coming from unreported black budget operations, but Ukraine is getting vastly more than $5 billion, they're getting it in less than 2 months, and they're able to dedicate 100% of it to this war.

[1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/15/politics/biden-ukraine-ai...

It's totally a NATO proxy war. We're doing everything we can short of sending in our own troops with the intent of defending Ukraine and weakening Russia. It's also totally a Russian war of aggression. The two are not in any way incompatible.

Not OP, but there are - to a first approximation - two explanations for the Russian aggression. The more popular one in the West is that Putin is nostalgic about past Soviet powers and wants to restore those. The other and rather unpopular explanation is that Putin is afraid of NATO and wants a buffer between Russia and NATO members, hence Ukraine moving towards a NATO membership is considered a threat, diplomatic solutions were not reached - I am not going to assign blame here - so war it is. This is of course a much less popular opinion because it might imply that NATO actions might have contributed to the escalation, but all things considered I also think that this is the more probable explanation or at least the dominant contributing factor. This in turn makes Ukraine the victim of a conflict between Russia and NATO.

If Putin is afraid of NATO, then why did he create the scenario where Sweden and Finland are now joining NATO? Do you think he's stupid?

Why would he be afraid of a NATO offense on Russia when NATO won't do defense to protect an invasion against Ukraine?

The early 1960s, the United States are afraid of Soviet influence spreading from Cuba. They support the Bay of Pigs Invasion [1] in hope to get rid of the pro-Soviet government but this fails. So the CIA starts Operation Mongoose [2] hoping to achieve the goal with terrorist attacks, assassinations, sabotage, and so on. In order to deter the United States from further interference, Cuba asks the Soviet Union to station missiles in Cuba which results in the Cuban Missile Crisis [3] bringing the world closer to nuclear war than ever before or since.

What were they thinking? Were they stupid? Why would they risk worsening the situation by messing with Cuba?

And while we are at it, why do the United States have any say in whether or not the Soviet Union stations missiles in Cuba? Cuba is a sovereign state, if they want Soviet missiles, they should be allowed to have them, right?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mongoose

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

Classic whataboutism entirely deflecting the question. Yes, US did not handle Cuba correctly 60 (!!) years ago. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are dying today and could be stopped by Russia immediately, but they don’t. I guess if every country can be overly paranoid about their neighbors, when Russia built up troops on its border, it’s within Finland’s, Estonia’s, Lithuania’s, Latvia’s, and Ukraine’s right to just start shelling Russia right? Because the Russian buildup “could” be a threat?

I start to hate the term whataboutism - this is none. I am not justifying one situation with another, I am just demanding consistent judgment of similar situations. This is also why it does not really matter that it was 60 years ago.

You say the United States handled Cuba incorrectly, I do not know what exactly that means, but this is also not too important as long as you are consistent. We will probably disagree at least somewhat in our judgment. In my opinion it was not unreasonable for the United States to demand no missiles on Cuba given the tensions and mutual distrust in order to not increase tensions further. I could maybe also understand if Cuba or the Soviet Union had rejected that demand as reasonable in principle but not justifiable in this specific situation because of the aggression by the United States. In the end the Soviet Union did the right thing and deescalated. And they still got somewhat screwed by the United States because the concessions by the United States were no real concessions - removing the missiles from Turkey was already planned before the crisis because they were obsolete.

In consequence I also think that it is not a totally unreasonable demand from Russia to not want NATO at all its borders. With that said, is still do not think that attacking Ukraine is an acceptable way to achieve this, for example sabotaging or destroying NATO military installations once they pop up in Ukraine would seem much more justifiable. But then again, once Ukraine is a NATO member, Russia would have to deal with article 5. In the end I think this should never have escalated this far to begin with, Ukraine and NATO should maybe have aimed for a limited membership like Norway or no NATO membership at all.

This is of course only reasonable if you think that sovereign states sometimes have to accept limits to their sovereignty because of the interest of other states. You can of course disagree with this, but then I would ask you, for example, for your opinion on the destruction of Iranian centrifuges by Stuxnet. Justified or an act of war? I also want you to consider that it is easy from today's perspective to argue that the United States should just have accepted Soviet missiles in Cuba, therefore it might be better to consider how the United States would act today if China and Mexico reached a deal to station Chinese military assets in Mexico in exchange for economic support, maybe not even missiles but say a lot of ground forces. Would the United States be fine with that?

And you can of course completely reject the idea that NATO expansion is an important factor for the Russian aggression, then the discussion has to shift completely to evidence for different explanations.

I hope it is clear anyway but I forgot to spell it out explicitly - that I consider the United States preventing the Soviet Union from putting missiles on Cuba a reasonable or at least acceptable course of action does in no way imply that I am siding with the United States on all matters concerning Cuba. I consider especially all attempts and actions to overthrow the Cuban government as unjustifiable.

> Classic whataboutism entirely deflecting the question.

Pointing out that in the same circumstances someone did the same thing is a strong argument that they think it is morally justified, or at least acceptable.

The argument here is that the escalations in Ukraine are geopolitically unwise and that NATO doesn't have a moral reason to be involved after the shenanigans they pull. So why are they funnelling in weapons and working so hard in support if not to provoke a NATO-Russia conflict? We can rule out the idea that they are good people by looking at the organisation's past actions.

Note: I am from Brazil, and live nowhere near Russia.

That said... I believe Russia see the invasion on Ukraine as a necessity to block Ukraine from joining NATO.

A lot of people thinking Russia wants to just conquer Ukraine risk a massive escalation.

Ukraine did a lot of things that pissed Russia off after it started to get closer ties to USA...

Among them:

1. Ban on Russian Language

2. Threatening to close Sevastapol base (before Russia claimed Crimea back)

3. Accepting Azov battalion as part of the official army.

4. Allowing army members use SS symbols on their uniform (to be more specific, Galizen)

and so on.

But the most important one was: Adding in the constitution that they will join NATO, and accepting billions in military aid from USA (yes, USA was pumping a ton of weapons in Ukraine BEFORE the war, USA itself said so!)

Ukraine joining NATO is a risk Russia can't take, yes NATO is defensive but Russia has beef with NATO members already, if Ukraine joins NATO for example it becomes way riskier for Russia to defend Armenia as ally if Turkey attacks them for example, and there is the fact NATO members been actually on the offensive a couple times now, and the whole NATO bombed the shit out of Serbia officially in the past (Russia was helping Serbia in that conflict)

So why I said this risk massive escalation?

Well, if you understand your enemy wrong you will make wrong decisions.

Russia doesn't want to conquer Ukraine, they want to keep NATO away from that border, and there are two ways of doing that:

1. Convince Ukraine to not join NATO (what they are trying to do now).

2. Just bomb Ukraine until there is nothing left to join NATO in first place.

A lot of people are thinking Russia won't try the second option because they want to conquer Ukraine, they are wrong about this, Russia knows very well they don't have right now the capability to conquer Ukraine, the only rational decision to go about this is try a "diplomatic" victory, and if that fails, then the real "War" comes (I suspect this is why Russia don't call this a war yet), where Russia will finally use all their equipment, including a large amount of strategic bombers and intermediate range missiles to utterly destroy everything in Ukraine, this way they don't have to bother with occupation and will still win regardless of how much NATO weapons are inside Ukraine (in fact the more NATO fills Ukraine with weapons, the bigger target it becomes for indiscriminate destruction, when else Russia will have opportunity to wipe out all the equipment of enemies like that?)

EDIT: I hope all downvotes aren't because people are believing I am wrong in claiming Russia WILL flatten Ukraine if they feel the need to do so and support more war...

> Russia doesn't want to conquer Ukraine, they want to keep NATO away from that border

If Russia wants to keep NATO away from their border (which already exists in the Baltics), then why did they create the scenario where Sweden and Finland are now joining NATO? Do you think Putin is stupid?

Why would they be afraid of a NATO offense on Russia when NATO won't do defense to protect an invasion against Ukraine?

>>>Why would they be afraid of a NATO offense on Russia

Watch this: https://youtu.be/MkrLUFAcjH0

and this: https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw

I’ve literally seen both of those already. They are well researched and accurate. But just because Putin could be irrationally paranoid it doesn’t mean NATO has done anything other than just defend the territorial sovereignty of Eastern Europe here.

I think the key comment on Russian psychology was that "anything that can go wrong, will, eventually". They are basically the opposite of HN's guideline of "interpret posts with the other party's best/most good faith argument". So in 2007 when we decided to put ABM missiles in Poland, Russia interpreted that in the worst way possible ("This is a prelude to an eventual preemptive strike.") and no amount of declarations that we are just defending Eastern European sovereignty will ever change their minds. To them, that's not "irrationally paranoid" given their history.

If we did NOT anticipate that this would provoke a hard-power response, then we are incompetent for failing to understand the decision-making process of our adversary.

If we DID anticipate this kind of response from Russia, and we did what we did anyway, then we are malicious, for precipitating a chain of events that are getting innocent civilians killed. Geniuses for getting the Russians to shatter their hard AND soft power without it costing a single NATO military life, but definitely malicious sociopaths nonetheless.

Downvotes are because you lie. There was no ban on Russian Language.

Azov battalion would never exist if Russia did not invaded in the first place.And funny enough, fascists split there - some of them went to fight for Russia others for Ukraine. Not even speaking about fact that Russia neo-nazi problem is much larger then Ukrainian one, except Russia does not see it as problem and welcomes those guys. Also funny enough, Ukraine did then worked on pushing these guys out of the army, modifying and reforming that batalion in years in between.

Going back to politics, Ukraine joining NATO is not a risk for Russia, the issue there is that Russia then cant invade as it pleases.

1. There's no ban on the Russian language.

2. Yes? Maybe Russia shouldn't have been engaged in heavy-handed meddling in the country before that and the population wouldn't be pissed off at them and want the military base to go away.

3. Most indications are that Ukraine also reigned it in significantly.

---------

> and accepting billions in military aid from USA (yes, USA was pumping a ton of weapons in Ukraine BEFORE the war, USA itself said so!)

The war has been ongoing since 2014, with Russia arming the other side in the occupied areas.

Again, if Russia didn't want Ukraine to be desperately trying to leap into bed with the West....it shouldn't have invaded it in 2014 and should have respected it's sovereignty. Quite frankly, they probably could have kept it neutral or pulled it back in orbit in the long run with disinformation campaigns like have worked elsewhere.

--------

Beyond that, in your last paragraph, I think you are vastly, vastly, overstating the capacity of the Russian military.

Which many did before the war - people believed Russia's claims of reforming and rearming their military, but is clearly off the mark now.

Russia has committed pretty much the entirety of it's active ground forces to the campaign beyond the bare minimum to not leave the rest of the country totally undefended. It is watching massive quantities of it's men and equipment being destroyed, including many of it's best units and equipment.

Much of what Russia is losing right now in every area of equipment is likely irreplaceable given the impact of sanctions and their inability to produce crucial parts in country.

The premise that Russia is somehow "holding back" as some master strategy to look like complete idiots on the world stage and watch all their stuff get blown up first, is absurd.

If they had larger stocks of intermediate-range missiles, they'd be using them and things would look like the US "shock & awe" of the Iraq War. They aren't because they can't.

Not to mention that the Ukrainian Air Force still has a majority of it's aircraft flying and still has significant long-range anti-aircraft weapons active. Again, there is zero reason for Russia to not have destroyed all of this immediately....if they could. The obvious conclusion for the inability to do so is that they can't, not that they're waiting for some mysterious future time when they'll show their true power.

It is not happening on Russia's border, it is happening in Ukraine. And "someone" already escalated too far when they invaded Ukraine.

Ah yes, NATO-Russian conflict. Russia can't possibly be losing to "insignificant Ukraine", which only exists because of the grace of Lenin or whatever. No, clearly Russia is having trouble because it's NATO fighting them.

Yeah, yeah. It's OK, after this is over and Russians learn more of the truth, Ukrainians will be just as respected by them as the Chechens and Germans.

What NATO-Russia conflict? Russia invaded Ukraine which isn't a NATO country. As far as I'm aware there's no open conflict between NATO and Russia; tension, sure, but that's because Russia decided to invade another country both this year and in 2014. They're showing aggression, and instead of seeking better relationships with the rest of the world via e.g. trade deals they decided to try and flex, and look pretty shoddy in the process.

In Ukraine Russia is fighting people armed with NATO arms (appearing to be largely donated), guided by NATO military advisers and aided by a sanctions program and rhetoric from NATO countries.

Hence the hot stove comment. The US is planning to figure out where Russia's red line is between for being at war with NATO by stepping slightly over it. If the US military were actually worried about how this is turning out they wouldn't have let the situation evolve like this.

> The electricity production figures out of the UK are jaw dropping, last I saw they seem to have regressed to 1970s levels.

UK energy production/usage figures have been decreasing since about 2005[1]. It's not a sign of energy poverty (aside for the past year I suppose).

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/322874/electricity-consu...

I don't follow why you think that argument is enough. Surely a persistent, long term trend of worsening energy availability would be exactly the sign of energy poverty? There are only two possible signs of energy poverty - a trend of stable low numbers and a trend of dropping numbers!

You might disagree for great reasons, I'm just stumped by what you wrote.

A fairly significant portion of Europe's GDP is dedicated to the healthcare and welfare for non-productive groups: the Retired, and non-Western migrants.

Pensions in Italy are 17% of GDP, for example.

Europe will need to cut those two groups loose and unleash massive tax reforms if it wishes to craft a better future.

"Non-Western migrants" are net contributors to the state budget essentially everywhere. They're disproportionately young and employed.

In any case, 'non-productive' people like retirees still need income. They could be living off rents and investment returns, or off state pensions. Both are unearned and don't reflect productivity.

If by the end of fossil fuels you mean tripling down on coal instead of oil then surr

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