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Comment by esperent | Hacker News Reader

Can you be more specific? I'm from a country that people would consider part of "The West". However we've never attacked anyone except invaders in entire country's history.

I'm sure you could dredge up some connection to the US and get angry with us about it, if you were an Islamic extremist or something. More realistically though, you could find fault with any country with that attitude.

Speaking of current geopolitics instead of historical, the recent blame for causing a rise in aggression lies firmly with Russia and China. The US is not blameless but neither are they starting any new wars in almost two decades.

So, tell me again about why everything is the fault of "The West", including all the western countries who have never attacked anyone, in your mind?

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The Iraq War of 2003 [1] began with an invasion almost two decades ago (anniv will be in March 2003 iirc) with participation of a coalition of Western governments. That "almost" is doing heavy lifting given that this war officially lasted until ~2011 and led to further interventions as recently as 2014[2]. Notably, a non-trivial rationale for this war were lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction - which unsurprisingly, were never found. I am curious if your government participated in this war.

Ignoring the ongoing interventions in foreign conflicts [3][4], US Foreign Policy has been absolutely _disastrous_ for a number of countries around the world. From the perspective of the US Govt, this may be fine though I would argue that the real effects from destabilization and strained bilateral relations are simply accumulating. Happy to provide citations for multiple blunders in the last 3 decades. It is not surprising that many countries in the global south now see China|Russia|India as better bilateral partners.

Devolving critique to simply originating from "if you were an Islamic extremist of something" is very reductive and I would implore you to read more about global politics from different national perspectives.

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-led_intervention_in_I...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-led_intervention_in_t...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_intervention_in_Libya...

This would have to be addressed knowing the details of the country. It's hand-waving to say that a country has never attacked. For instance, Ireland lets attacking aircraft use their facilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_neutrality

Right and all of the EU benefits and invests in the World Bank which is one of the major forces used to keep the third world always in a state of "developing" through structural adjustment policies that keep them from ever actually developing

I can’t tell if you think the World Bank should do more/different or stop meddling entirely and allow the countries to develop on their own.

I think at this point the World Bank owes a lot of these countries but every time they market something as "debt forgiveness" it just turns into more of the same thing we've seen with structural readjustment. I'd recommend Ha-Joon Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder if you wanna see a deep dive into the topic

> So, tell me again about why everything is the fault of "The West", including all the western countries who have never attacked anyone, in your mind?

Not the person you're responding to, but I think it is important to recognize that the US is practically the military of The West (and some more like Japan and Korea), or rather those on the side of democracy in the cold war. Lots of this is because after a bunch of very big wars in Europe (Napoleonic Wars, WWI, WWII) -- and a bunch of smaller wars -- the countries essentially decided that it was best to have smaller militaries and out source it to somewhere that didn't have a long history of border disputes. Helped that the US already had a strong military, were an ocean away, and their bordering neighbors aren't major competitors. On the flip side, the USSR was essentially this same thing but for the communist side (till China started to rise in power). Some military historians suggest that the rise of super powers was a big component for the long peace. There's a lot to this history that's way more complicated than can be put in a singular comment and involves much more of the globe than just Europe (even the US's, Mexico's, and Canada's independences rely and exacerbated on these conflicts). People use this history to write a wide variety of narratives.

Long Peace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Peace

Borders in Europe from 1000AD to now: https://youtu.be/UY9P0QSxlnI?t=409

I found that line of thought, peace through war or rather weapons, very weak when I first encountered it in a school's classroom in the 80s.

I find it untrue. Real peace can only be without weapons. I don't want to go back to this same old rhetoric I grew up with and which I was happy to have ended, until 9/11 and the US making a 180° turn, because now they had no one to counter their ambitions to dominate the world, which doesn't validate the rhetoric, because obviously only 1 side laid down their weapons. The US saw this as "we won, now we can act unrestricted". But Russia didn't lose. They willingly stopped the cold war. That is very important in understanding the current aggression and narrative.

I found the argument weak as well when I first encountered it. But as I got older I realized something important into the game theory. If all but one power had no weapons then this means that if that singular power decides to be aggressive, then they will have the ability to take from the rest. I then realized that weapons are fairly ubiquitous in that neither can you have defensive systems that can't be used offensively nor can you have a lot of engineering without also having weapons related technologies. This to me doesn't mean we need a military industrial complex, but it does mean, to me, that we need some minimal military. It does also mean that as citizens we should protest needless violence by our countries. (And if the US is going to act as world police regardless, we need to ensure that situations we engage in are moral. E.g. you could support Ukraine's fight for freedom but not the war in Iraq). The real world is extremely complex.

I'd love to live in a world without weapons, but I don't see how such a thing is even possible, from multiple angles. If that's not possible, then it is about how to minimize fighting and lives lost. After all, that is why we'd want no weapons. That solution space is rather complex and likely non-convex.

The reason there is peace is that the European nations formed an economic union with a high degree of interdependence and the obvious restriction on a certain ww2 losing country to no longer have a functioning army and go full pacifism as its geographic location allows it to attack all of Europe simultaneously.

The German Bundeswehr is a joke to the point where it is even unable to defend its own country and no German politician in charge of the military has ever felt like that is a problem worthy of attention for more than half a century.

There is no singular factor for the long peace in Europe. I don't claim superpowers are the reason either, just that the argument is made. The situation is far too complicated for me -- one who is neither a historical, economist, nor military strategist -- to make strong conclusions. There's too many coupled variables and causal variables.

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