"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_addres...
In my 20+ years in software engineering, I've yet to meet a Chinese or Russian colleague who thinks it would be better if China or Russia had more military/political power. I've even argued in favor of that position in the past (that the world would be better off if there was more multipolarity), and they fervently opposed my position. They are keenly aware of the kind of crimes their ex-governments engage in.
US military dominance is hegemonic, yes, but it would be far worse to have it any other way currently.
>I never understood the good effects of American hegemony until they started breaking down.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a harbinger of what a world without American hegemony looks like. In that world, you're going to have a very bad time.
How would your government react to russians trying to establish military bases in mexico, on your border? Oh, we know ... we can look what you did to Cubans. Are they still in blockade?
I don't endorse what Russians are doing. But somebody was helping them to decide to attack. If it was successfull or not, we'll never know.
So kinda not the same.
Would you go south or not?
And I know I'm a bit out there, but perhaps the people in the disputed territories should get a vote?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_filtration_camps_for...
God forbid we react to the utterly inhumane invasion of Ukraine with the disgust it deserves. Stop trying to make cover for Putin behind a veil of insincere civility.
You mean just like the vote in Crimea in 2014 right? With a gun pointed at their backs under the supervision of the military?.
There’s no way that, any vote like that is in anyway shape or form fair and will result in any outcome other than what the people pointing the guns want.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_border#...
the bigger problem is that Russia is a backwards country with caveman ideology modeled on the strong Mongolian empire who wants to oppress everybody around them because they have narcissistic tendencies
I really don't see an argument for US influence being better than the status quo, except for the US. It didn't stop wars or ethnic cleansings either when it was at its peak.
The 90s was also the decade of American hegemony. The hegemony started breaking down in the aftermath of 9/11, when the US decided that they care more about revenge than soft power.
I would diagnose it differently. If all the US looked for was revenge, we could have been in and out of Afghanistan much more quickly and accomplished the mission. The mistake in Afghanistan was to engage in a poorly conceived twenty year experiment in nation building.
If anything the problem is that Americans are too isolationist to take the duties of hegemony seriously. There’s really no reason we couldn’t occupy Afghanistan in perpetuity if we actually cared to bother, but it became politically unpopular for some reason. Maybe because we were never honest with ourselves about what we were doing.
The invasion of Afghanistan was clearly motivated by revenge, as the US invaded quickly without a proper plan or debate. It wasn't that catastrophic in itself, as the world generally considered the invasion justified. But it made it easier to invade Iraq without a proper plan or debate, which was catastrophic.
Among other things, the invasion of Iraq taught the world that invading other countries with false justifications was perfectly fine. Putin certainly learned that. Then the US went on to alienate its traditional European allies that refused to participate in the charade. To many European politicians at that time, Putin didn't look much worse than Bush. When the US tried to warn Europe against tighter economic integration with Russia, those politicians refused to listen. When Putin turned out to be much worse, there were too many vested interests to reverse the course.
Also, I don’t necessarily think it’s fair to blame the Iraq War for some European countries being all squishy towards Russia; they’d been doing that off and on since the Cold War.
The norms that govern international politics are similar to the ones that young kids develop when left to their own devices. Without shared values and without an authority that can impose theirs, you can't evaluate justifications. The norms that emerge deal with the actions themselves. You can do X for your reasons if I can do X for mine, and so on. The ways the US used their global hegemony taught Putin what he can do for his own reasons.
It's easy to forget how immensely unpopular the Bush administration was among the West European elite. Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize for not being Bush, while Biden didn't get one for not being Trump. When the Bush administration tried to tell Europe not to deal with Russia, they had barely more credibility than the Iraqi propaganda guy.
That loss of soft power was the beginning of the end for the American hegemony.
If American hegemony brings peace, why are you using an example where there this supposed peace effect obviously failed?
American hegemony did not prevent the Russian invasion into Ukraine as we all know. It is not an example of a world without American hegemony, it is clearly and example of the world with American hegemony.
If you want an example of the world with American hegemony, consider that the longest sustained period of peace in Western European history began when Western Europe was first occupied by American troops in 1945.
- X means we don’t have Y.
- But a Y just happened.
- It’s because we didn’t have enough X.
But also you are wrong on you historic counts here. Western Europe hasn’t been entirely peaceful since 1945. First of all, Europe had colonies and colonial warfare well into the 1980s, colonial wars include Angola, Algeria, Kenya, the Falkland Islands and many more. Second many countries were dictatorship in Western Europe, including Spain, Portugal and Italy. There was a war in Cyprus, civil war in Northern Ireland, as well as terrorist insurgencies in Germany and Spain well into the 90s and 2000s.
Neither did USA have hegemony in Western Europe during this period. USSRs influence spread across the continent. There were actually two Germanies until the late 1980s, there still are two Cypruses (despite both Turkey and Greece being NATO members), Communist and Socialist parties remained popular and quite often as part of coalition governments e.g. in Scandinavia, France, Belgium, etc.
Well, you would need to analyze the specific facts of the situation to see if it backed up the argument first, which I did.
> Western Europe hasn’t been entirely peaceful since 1945. First of all, Europe had colonies and colonial warfare well into the 1980s, in places like Angola and Algeria.
Angola and Algeria aren’t in Europe.
> Second many countries were dictatorship in Western Europe, including Spain, Portugal and Italy.
They still didn’t go to war with each other.
> There were civil wars in Northern Ireland as well as terrorist insurgencies in Germany and Spain well into the 90s and 2000s.
I never claimed the US was able to eradicate domestic terrorism, only wars between countries. Western Europe hadn’t had a war between countries since 1945, which is the longest stretch since probably the fall of Rome.
> There were actually two Germanies until the late 1980s
Yes, that’s why I specified “Western Europe”; Eastern Europe was under Soviet hegemony.
I find your specification of "War" and "Western Europe" awfully convenient. For example USA had hegemony over both the UK and Argentina, yet the latter invaded a territory of the former, but you are still correct because the Falkland Island aren’t in Europe.
If history doesn’t fit your narrative, you can simply narrow the scope until it fits. This is the problem with grand historic theories, they always just fit, but only after being hammered to the "correct" shape.
If you want to consider Turkey part of Western Europe that’s up to you.
> UK and Ireland are also two separate countries
The UK was not at war with the Republic of Ireland; it was at war with domestic terrorists inside Northern Ireland.
> I find your specification of "War" and "Western Europe" awfully convenient.
If that’s true, I’m sure it’ll be just as easy for you to find another 78 year period of history in which no two sovereign Western European polities went to war with one another. In fact, the whole reason I pointed it out is because the western half of Europe had been interminably war-torn for centuries. You’re talking about colonial wars in Angola and IRA terrorists; I’m talking about breaking the centuries-long cycle of Anglo-German-French wars that stretches into medieval times.
> For example USA had hegemony over both the UK and Argentina
We did? That’s news to me.
As we see, USA hegemony is not sufficient for peace (even your very convenient definition of peace). However it is still not established that USA hegemony is even a necessary conditions.
First, you can mark any large cross-national territory over any arbitrary decade and find peace. Even territories with a history of war. For example, there hasn’t been large South American countries going to war with each other since 1947 either (see I can conveniently omit the Falklands War too if it fits my narrative). Heck, even the African great lakes has seen peace according to your definition since Tanzania invaded Uganda and disposed of Idi Amin in 1979. I guess Tanzanian hegemony is a thing for good.
Second there are multiple alternative hypothesis you haven’t explored. Don’t you think the UN deceleration of human rights helped with minimizing conflicts, the rise of democracy, the end of imperialism, decolonization, demilitarization, buildup of infrastructure, the European Union, etc. I find these together way more plausible then your supposed USA hegemony.
That doesn't imply that the US had any hegemony or control over Argentina.
> Don’t you think the UN deceleration of human rights helped with minimizing conflicts, the rise of democracy, the end of imperialism, decolonization, demilitarization, buildup of infrastructure, the European Union, etc.
Why did all of these things happen in the first place? American hegemony. You can tell because Europe tried half of the things on that list after WWI but they didn't work.
This is a theory, not a really good one, but lets take it at face value, starting with the end of imperialism. Given that USA continued it’s imperialism after WWII while WWI is the beginning of the end of imperialism for Europe. The British empire stopped existing in 1998, but I’d say the end of British rule over India in 1947 was the peak for the end of European imperialism. This had nothing to do with USA.
Decolonization: This didn’t happen until the 60s and only after fierce resistance from indigenous people withing the colonies. While the USA held a powerful seat the UN that called for decolonization, the fact that USA held its colonies (e.g. Guam and American Samoa), and that it took fierce colonial wars before liberation, I say indigenous resistance had way more weight than any USA influence of the matter. Portugal didn’t actually relinquish their colonies until their dictatorship fell in a socialist revolution in 1974.
Rise of democracies: Again did not follow USA occupations. Staying within Portugal, The Carnation Revolution would certainly be the first time the USA backed left leaning armed forces against a right wing dictator. And we know they didn’t, USA stayed out of that one. Greece on the other hand didn’t became a dictatorship until after it had joined NATO. Now this dictatorship was no friend of the USA, but that only further proves how little USA hegemony had in preventing these dictatorships and in the rise of democracy. I would actually give the EU more credit here. Speaking of which,
the EU: I honestly don’t know how you can give USA hegemony credit for this. It started as a free trade agreement, USA didn’t start doing anything similar until 1994 with NAFTA. Stating USA hegemony here is frankly a little insulting, insinuating that Europeans cannot take autonomous decisions regarding their own affairs.
The only think we can definitely thank the Americans for is demilitarization and the initial buildup of infrastructure.
But I think you get the point here. Attributing all of these to USA hegemony is a very simplistic—and frankly wrong—view of history. Honestly at this point I can’t tell what you consider hegemony, if USA had hegemony over Europe since 1945, how did it not have hegemony over Argentina during the dictatorship?
Decolonization, including the dismantlement of the British Empire, was an explicit policy goals of the US dating all the way back to at least WWII. One of the signature examples of this orientation—and the first clear assertion of American hegemony even over Britain—was the Suez crisis.
> Rise of democracies: Again did not follow USA occupations.
The democratic governments of West Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and Austria were effectively installed by the US and UK at the end of the Second World War. Without American involvement, none of these countries would have become democratic; they would have either remained fascist or become communist.
(This was not the case for e.g. Argentina, Turkey, or Portugal.)
> the EU: I honestly don’t know how you can give USA hegemony credit for this.
The core concept of the EU is the goal of establishing a “United States of Europe”. In other words, it is an attempt to emulate Europe’s hegemon, and it arose almost immediately after Western European democracy was installed by the Allies at the end of WWII.
This is obvious if you answer the following questions:
1) Was Russian influence and power in Ukraine increasing or decreasing prior to the invasion?
2) Was Russian economic and military power increasing or decreasing in Europe prior to the war?
3) Is Russia stronger or weaker relative to NATO than the USSR was?
I dont see how you can claim US and NATO power is in decline and was challenged more by Russia in 2022 than it was in the 20th century.
To the contrary, the war in Ukraine is the result of growing hegemony in Europe, as hegemony expands outward and more Nations fall into the orbit of the US. Russia is fighting to preserve it's sphere of influence and prevent further collapse of its influence.
I'm not saying that makes Russia a 'good guy", but I don't think there is any other way to interpret the shifting power balance leading up to the war.
Putin has been but Russia could have gone a different route rather than keep Putin in power all these years.
Russia really doesn't win keeping itself xenophobic of the West.
Japanese, Korean, & German culture are all very popular here in American entertainment today.
Russia could have continued to preserve, celebrate, and expand her culture around the world through Western entertainment and alliances.
Instead out of fear to preserve it Russia has become isolated from people that otherwise would have happily bought her stuff.
It is possible that Russia could have gone a different way.
Japan, Korea, and Germany all gave up significant autonomy by falling into the US alliance, but also reaped significant rewards.
I think it is debatable if the west would want Russia in alliance.
I think the really interesting question is what a country like Russia or China would have to give up to be on good terms with the US.
For one, I think they would have to give up any ability to militarily defend themselves against the US. They would also probably have to give up any allies that the US doesn't approve of. Last, they would probably have to share control over any countries are territories currently in their sphere of influence with the West.
Edit: nor does any of what you’ve said negate the sentiment Eisenhower was advocating, which relates directly back to the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Having power and wielding it responsibly are not the same.
Why would we not argue that the Korean War was an attempt by Koreans aligned with Japan to maintain their colony?
At no point during the entire Korean War was there a Japanese colony anywhere on the Korean peninsula. Or, for that matter, anywhere on earth.
If you're arguing the South Korean government whose sovereignty the UN went to war to defend, was somehow "aligned" with their former occupier Japan which was itself then occupied by the US after its unconditional surrender to end WW2... sorry, you're just woefully ill informed.
There are dozens of good books on this topic.
Sounds pretty similar to France losing their Vietnamese colony, and the country being split into two, and then a foreign power coming in to defend the southern half of the country.
So it looks like we agree?
I imagine the Koreans welcomed the US, that would be an important factor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...
"In 2016, America dropped at least 26,171 bombs authorized by President Barack Obama. This means that every day in 2016, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day" https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/x332z...
Black sites, extraordinary renditions, torturing people in third countries ... that's deterrence?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili... (Read it all, I dare you)
Imagine foreign power's drones over your own country, over your city. Imagine hearing exploding homes in your town, maybe few homes away. Imagine unmarked millitary men going through your street and home with their rifles scaring your children. Imagine that your children would refuse to play outside when it isn't cloudy, because they're afraid of blue skies. You cannot, can you? Would you feel safe and glad?
Imagine foreign powers overturning your democraticaly elected leaders and instead putting in their puppets, all for profit again, of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CIA_controversies
I'll now let Carl Sagan talk on the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/BYdxFKTYJIQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWPFmdAWRZ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KcoPODwvW4
And Charlie Chaplin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8HdOHrc3OQ
With 5+millions of millitary contractors and many more employees, many of them here, maybe this quote will fit.
"It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It"
Not any more, Japan is. China has been reducing it's dollar holdings at breakneck speed once it saw the US freeze dollars held by Russia.
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/holdings-of-us-treasury-se...
> Over 937,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence, and several times as many due to the reverberating effects of war
> An estimated 3.6-3.7 million people have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.6 million and counting.
Except it hasn't been. Pinker's "long peace" theory with respect to global conflict is bad statistics - 20th-21st century under US military hegemony had a comparable if not higher number of conflicts, see Max Roser’s work documenting global conflicts over the past 600 years. What has changed is that war now is generally shorter and less deadly especially towards combatants, but that's more reflective of the pace of modern war enabled by modern weapons. High intensity wars don't last for 20+ years anymore because you can pretty much destroy nations in 1-5, and belligerents are quicker to exhaust and forced to settle. In aggregate war fatalities is down, but not # of conflicts. US hegemony didn't stop USSR and RU from warring in their periphery, nor PRC border skirmishes pre 90s when US had vast more naval power asymmetry. When countries want to fight for their interests, especially regional, they still do. His conjectures on QoL indicators around the world are improving, and we can credit some of that to US/western innovation, but it’s also a byproduct of technology disseminating as societies develop.
As for the opinion of your colleagues, consider some sort of self-selection bias happening - I've not met many from PRC that don't think China needs better military and regional hegemony to forward her interests the same way US does hers, especially post Belgrade embassy bombing in 99 by US/NATO. And frankly even among PRC diasporas, most people I know except very liberal types are increasingly unabashedly pro PRC military power - they’re just too polite to say so. See how PRC students in the west generally become more pro China the more they’re exposed to western society. Many are smart enough to not voice "objectionable" opinions.I can't speak for RUs.
Ultimately, US military dominance is good for US+LIO interests, but hard to extrapolate anything more. IMO multipolarity will increase the chance of "smaller" conflicts as poles assert their own interests for sure, but it's going to be around the baseline of conflicts that's consistently been simmering throughout history. The fear is increasing large-scale conflict between poles/blocks - ending the cyclic gap between major wars among major powers - but that's what happens when declining hegemon pushes their interests to the exclusion of others too intensely for too long.
lmao the ones who live in america? yeah, of course. they don't want to get deported.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Initiative
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee <-- taiwanese lolol
Are you serious? No US person seriously believes we will deport a Chinese national on a legitimate visa for their political views. Can you point to a single example of this happening?
then why wasn't he convicted of it? LOL why is he walking around free, and with a bunch of money he won from a civil suit filed against the government?
who's incompetent here, the FBI, the DOJ, or the courts? how can we assure that every east asian accused of espionage is convicted?
it's a shame you aren't a federal judge, then no spy would ever get away.
Even then, the US government and economy is organized in ways that make it disturb the trivial-to-maintain peace its position as hegemon affords it(see Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and various covert operations that succeeded before escalating to direct intervention) to secure itself minor advantages or even for entirely domestic reasons.
If you account at all for the inherent advantages of a unipolar world, the US's record is shockingly poor. I'm fine with rolling the dice on multipolarity in hopes of a less irrational hegemon emerging.
The problem is that multipolarity is often meant to mean spheres of influence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_of_influence). Which is just imperialism by another name.
I agree that the power the US can exercise should be checked by other powers (the desired "benefit" of multi polarity), but I also think the idea of promoting "rule of law" needs to be the frame of conversation.
"What pole of power do you belong to" is a very different question than "what is justice?"
> If you account at all for the inherent advantages of a unipolar world, the US's record is shockingly poor.
I think this statement isn't very well thought out or at least not well founded or self evident.
It's also important to understand that peace is not the absence of physical violence, but the presence of justice. Justice sometimes cannot be achieved without a fight.
> disturb the trivial-to-maintain peace
The "peace" between African slaves and American plantation owners was probably fairly easy to maintain. That doesn't make it a good "peace".
China is exercising coercive power over Taiwan. Are they at peace?
Who?
If you look at past hegemons—Rome, the Mongols, Britain—the US has the best record of them all. And, incidentally, if you look at past periods of multipolarity, you get a series of progressively more deadly and destructive wars.
The entire existence of the Roman republic and empire was bookended by China, for example, and Rome was almost continuously at war with almost all of its neighbors. Some of whom repeatedly beat them and eventually definitely outlasted Rome.
The Mongols defeated the vast majority of entities they went to war with, but not all. This is the closest you'll come to your thesis, as it is probably true that no army or civilization existed from the Pacific to Atlantic oceans capable of defeating the Mongol empire at peak. It is alt history to debate what might have happened had they pushed to Paris etc. They didn't bother. They easily could have, in my opinion, but had other priorities in Asia.
However, the Mongols were definitively repulsed in the Middle East and generally speaking were not going to conquer Egypt or Africa. They didn't even try to hold Jerusalem (though interesting quirk of history they took it, once). The Mongols were also arguably repulsed by India, though that's complicated by their own factionalism (they arguably defeated themselves in a civil war at the border of India).
It is probably true that the Mongols occupied any territory they chose to, at the peak of their power. However, they often chose not to, either because they acknowledged the impossibility of doing so, or the complex multipolar reality within and surrounding their empire required their presence elsewhere to maintain power. So that is also not a hegemon, but is probably the most terrifying and powerful empire in history. Certainly the only one to execute all civilians in conquered cities, with knives, in one day. Repeatedly. For sure the Mongols out-murdered anybody ever until Stalin and Mao. But this is not so much unipolar as systemic genocide. The Mongols literally used genocide not as an end but a means, and killed millions to cause their next enemy to surrender without fighting. They called this "division" where all surrending civilian populations were divided by the number of Mongol executioners present that one day. And they did this routinely. Nothing like this ever happened before in recorded history, or ever since. Not at that scale and for that duration (centuries). For perspective, the Mongols leased Russia to the conquered Russians for longer than the US has existed.
Britain, at no point in its entire history from Roman withdrawal to today, has ever been a global hegemon. They were never even dominant or unipolar. Rather continuously struggling with France, Germany, Spain, and at times the Dutch; nevermind England struggling to first conquer and then rule their own immediate neighbors in the British Isles (Ireland, Wales, Scotland etc). Looking globally, it is true that at times Britain had economic superiority but these eras are measured in decades or at best generations and never approach hegemony or unipolarity on any one continent nevermind all. At or near the zenith of their power, they lose repeatedly. Sometimes to mere colonial farmers. If you pick any random decade for the last 500 years, we can find a significant military struggle for Britain ongoing. Many victories yes. But many loses too, and constant struggle. That is not hegemony.
The fact is the species has been at war with itself continuously for millennia. That was surely happening before we had kingdoms and nation states, too, when the violence had other names. But it was still war.
There is no oversimplifiable theory of war. It persists.
Even the USA and other nuclear powers are obviously still today in a persistent state of mutual deterrence. While the many wars since 1945 have been horrible by any definition, the fact is they pale in comparison to the mass lethality of WW1 and WW2 and we should all be thankful for the relative peace dividend created by nuclear deterrence.
We experienced COVID as ghastly and it was, killing perhaps 1% of all humans infected? WW2 killed 6%. That could have kept happening every generation since. The reason it didn't is #1 the US prevented that from happening, globally, at considerable expenses; and #2 restrained itself, generally speaking, from occupying other countries. Fighting, yes. Conquering and keeping, no.
In this regard, agree with you the US has the best record. For all its struggles and imperfections and systemic issues, nobody has ever done better.
But for the US, we would all be slaves of somebody right now. Either the "Third Reich" or Imperial Japan, or Russian and/or Chinese autocracy pretending to be communism. Even the patriots born there were, slaves to obviously wrong ideas and obviously evil governments. This is easily proven by trying to count the tens of millions of corpses they created. Try. The numbers get over 100M just in the last century, and the unknowable "rounding" errors and margin of error of the estimates is itself horrific and evil. When we're not sure whether Russia or China killed 45 million or 62 million of its own citizens by policy, this is when you should just stop and rethink saying nonsense like the "US's record is shockingly poor." Compared to what?
I think I actually agree with you. Of course, according to the standards you’re setting, neither is the US. The British were fighting some sort of war every decade of the height of their empire, but so has the US. The Mongols never managed to dominate Africa; neither did we (not even to the point of preventing the bloody Congo Wars of the 1990’s).
The reason I brought up the other hegemons is that they managed to significantly reduce the amount of war inside their own empires. That’s the closest analogy to what the US has done.
> The reason it didn't is #1 the US prevented that from happening, globally, at considerable expenses; and #2 restrained itself, generally speaking, from occupying other countries. Fighting, yes. Conquering and keeping, no.
We do still have troops in Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea, of course. And we have promised to help defend these countries from attack. If you wanted to be melodramatic about it, you could call it a sort of empire. But I think we might agree that it’s not quite fair to say that.
> When we're not sure whether Russia or China killed 45 million or 62 million of its own citizens by policy
It is funny how these numbers keep inflating, and also how these historical counts always omit King Leopold’s II massacre in Congo (as well as the dozens of millions killed in other horrors of European colonialism). In fact stating that “But for the US, we would all be slaves of somebody right now” is a gross omittance of the millions of humans born as slaves to European colonialism well into the 1960s (and arguably persisting today if you count neo-liberalism and neo-colonies).
> There is no oversimplifiable theory of war. It persists.
> We should all be thankful for the relative peace dividend created by nuclear deterrence.
If there is no oversimplifiable theory of war, why is there an oversimplifiable theory of peace? There is no historical consensus around nuclear deterrence, and there are plenty of alternative theories. Those include rise in democracy, global trade, proliferation of human rights, the United Nations and other global institutes and agreements, and yes, decolonization.
We even have examples of nuclear deterrence failing to prevent conflict. Both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers, yet constantly at conflict with each other. Israel’s nuclear armament hasn’t prevented Palestinian resistance, and many former colonies of Britain and France fought wars for their liberation despite them being nuclear powers. Argentina even invaded Britain’s territory at one point. In fact looking at history, it seems having nuclear weapons only empowers countries to start conflicts outside of their own territory. Case in point, South Africa became a lot more peaceful country after their nuclear disarmament (although there are probably many more reasons for this).
I’m half inclined to believe the US populace would revolt before any meaningful military confrontation because all their stuff is made in China.
No more toilet paper, no more TV, no more phone. No more… everything! Kind of wonder how much military components are sourced/built in China.
The US military industrial complex is incredibly complex and somewhat corrupt - it is a revolving door between industry and government, but the alternative is far worse and leads to genocide on a scale unimaginable since WW2.
But my god, the inefficiency & fleecing being done by corporations is ghastly. It's an absurd detriment that the system is robustly categorically fucked, incapable of getting effective help to aid/drive/support the cause. The US taxpayer pays out the nose, when we could be bettering ourselves greatly, because of this systematic incompetence that we suffer.
I don't see your comment as replying to anything whatsoever topical here. You've paved over concerns with jingoism. We can debate that jingoism, but - at a minimum - I don't feel like America should suffer itself to keep getting fleeced by an ineffective & ghastly expensive defense industry. We could do this without it being such a racket.
Its just how it is.
The Vietnam War began under one Democrat, escalated and spread beyond Vietnam under his Democratic successor, and then under a Republican. It was ended by another Republican.
The Persian Gulf War was entirely a Republican affair.
The Bosnian war and the bombing of Serbia were overseen by a Democrat.
The "war on terror" was started by a Republican who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and continued for nearly 8 more years under a Democrat.
democrats are centrist relative to the left.
Even really smart and educated people I know are surprised to discover most voters in the US do not have a party affiliation.
We poll the hell out of our populace and ask, "What do you identify as?" That's how we know how people identify.
> In other countries, people pay membership dues to their political parties and get membership cards. Here, we just declare our allegiance to these private organizations on twitter.
Some states in the US have state-level party organizations which you join and receive a card. Not all.
I don't think a pollster would be disappointed that you don't have a party affiliation. In fact some of biggest emphasis in election season is on independents or undecided voters.
Exactly. You can look it up on 538 or wherever you like, but all the polls say roughly the same thing: There's more unaffiliated voters than there is voters for either party. Something like 40-45% unaffiliated, with ~25% identifying as Republican and ~30% identifying as Democrat.
No, I refuse to play that game and I'd rather burn the place to the ground and suffer together than walk willingly to my own execution.
When Trump was campaigning for his first presidency everybody was saying he would start a bunch of wars and nuke the whole world. When none of that happened he had to be a traitor since he didn't start any beautiful patriotic wars. Reality is of no consideration to the uneducated and educated masses. War is peace, peace is war.
I will not be mutilated by mortar in a ditch or send my children to die in a trench, no matter who is president. War is a racket, I feel truly sorry for those who suffer and will suffer for following their "leaders".
Find me a quote of someone on the left saying Trump was bad for not starting a war
I am fully aware that most leftist (which means most of HN) think that Trump is an insane war monger, even though he served four years as president without starting any wars. Like I wrote, reality does not matter at all anymore to anyone.
And missiles shot at Syrian air base, where Russian/Syrian planes were luckily moved just in time, very conveniently, almost like it was a good PR stunt.
How is that diplomacy?
lmao
Traditionally the left has been associated with social policies (stemming from socialism/communism vs capitalism)
And there always was a part of the left which was anti-war, and always was a more "totalitarian" version of the left that felt it was morally justified.
But in every society the meaning of left and right has been fluid.
We (Americans) live in a representative democracy (for choosing public officials) and that democracy gives a great deal of influence and power to capitalists/industrialists (the "racket"), which has been absolutely successful in establishing and maintaining the existence and wealth of the country.
If you want to argue there is no democracy, find another person to argue with; my premise begins with the US being a representative democracy.
> Anyone arguing it's not is moving goalposts or arguing No True Scotsman.
With this be considered rhetoric?
And nowhere in these splits - neither in Democrat/Republican, nor in left/right - is there any notion of actually looking at the problem and trying to find an actual, effective, efficient solution, that maximizes the desired impact and minimizes undesired second-order effects.
The prospect of a (Jeb) Bush vs. (Hillary) Clinton race seemed emblematic of a government that was a democracy in form, but not in practice. And then along came Trump who nicely put everyone I know (myself included) in either pro-Trump or anti-Trump camps.
All forms of change that aren't voting are either de jure or de facto illegal. Sure, you can march... on a route cleared with the authorities... with a permit 90 days in advance... as long as absolutely nothing untoward happens within two blocks.
But there is a very real difference in policy between rural Alabama and Chicago. In no small part because of different parties exercising control in those localities.
I believe this difference exist. But I attribute it mostly to "rural" vs. "urban" part - and for far enough places, also to difference in cultures between the two locations. Rural Alabama has a different lifestyle, different market, different pressing problems than urban Chicago, different individual needs - which may result in people in those two locations overall promoting opposite policies.
How well these differences overlap with with Dem/Rep or left/right belief clusters is, I think, mostly incidental.
The parties, to the degree they do differ, do position themselves on opposite sides of the urban vs rural divide.
The 'Democrats' were very popular in the South in the 1950's among people who would now refer to themselves as 'conservative'. (Edit: look at the electoral maps for mid century US - Democrats/Republicans were not Left/Right)
Not that Left/Dem are different things today, they are effectively the same, it's just that policy is constrained by the other side, which has a dampening effect on legislation.
These aren't intellectual positions at all, they're just soap opera stuff. If they've picked up anything about political economy, it was because they were in left-wing spaces during the rise of the Sanders campaign. As far as I can tell, all they took away from it is the slur "tankie," which they think has something to do with Tienanmen Square and should be screamed at anyone anyone to the left of Bill Kristol.
In general, it's obvious that identity politics forms the core of the political class of today's Democratic Party (especially the young), and equally obvious that America is the innovator that other progressive parties follow in this respect. America also has thrown itself into gender politics with particular enthusiasm - gender transitions, even of minors, are a cornerstone of American progressivism today, even as progressive European countries have rolled that back to an extent.
I will concede that Europe leads in the other main aspect of current-day progressivism, the Green movement, although American progressives are avid followers.
From ~FDR-LBJ, the democratic party was pretty pro-war (so was the average american, really, so I guess that's fair for a party called democratic), but that really starts to flip in the late 60s/early 70s.
And ended by a Republican
Regardless, who is there when they withdrew is not the same as who made the plan and started the withdrawal. The Doha Agreement was drafted and signed under Trump. Biden didnt renege on the agreement and executed it.
We have no idea if he would have drafted such an agreement but his track record in that regard isnt good. Obama and Biden increased troops as another commenter noted.
[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/286787-gop-questions-obamas-afg...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-guantanamo/ho...
As you noted, Obama and Biden increased troop count before Trump signed the Doha agreement to end the war.
Ignoring the whole background of Korea, it's occupation by Japan, and split at the end of WW2, the Korean War began when the North invaded the South.
For Vietnam, the war ended when the North Vietnam 'won' and the South collapsed.
It's not necessarily meaningful to call one party more or less hawkish than the other. It often comes down to the leader, era, and coalition behind them. Bush/Cheney were definitely more aggressive than Gore would have been, but HRC was positioning herself to be much more hawkish than Trump ended up ruling as. That's why in the post-2016 era many infamous hawks like Bill Kristol and David Frum have been Democrat-aligned.
Eisenhower continued and increased support for the French till 1954. Then backed Diem, blocked the 1956 elections, and sent in more "advisers", however .. :)
An OSS Dear Team provided training, medical and logistical assistance to Hồ Chí Minh and the Việt Minh in 1945. An OSS doctor is reported to have treated Ho Chi Minh for malaria and dysentery. [0] Then Truman provided troop transport, money and materiel for France to re-conqueror Indochina (Democrat).
Archimedes Patti, from the OSS wrote a book [1] about the experience.
War is multi-party, forget tech stocks, I gotta invest in Lockheed Martin.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSS_Deer_Team [1] "Why Vietnam?: Prelude to America's Albatross
Antiwar sentiments existed for many of these, though it's notable that considerable anti-war sentiment in the US against entry into WWII had a distinctly hard-right flavour to it. Not all anti-war sentiment, as there can be many possible motiviations, but in this specific case, domestic groups sympathetic with (and often orchestrated by) rightest European belligerents had an outsized role.
The anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s became associated with Democrats as that party swung leftward and shed its own long-standing Southern affiliations, and grew our of anti-nuclear and civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, all of which saw Vietnam specifically as an unjustified and unjust war, with considerable merits to that viewpoint.
Painting pro- or anti-war sentiments as distinctly left or right, or aligned with either of the two present major parties is not historically accurate and misses considerable nuance.
You might be mixing up anti-imperialism with antiwar sentiment. In the past, the 2 were typically hand-in-hand due to the geopolitics of the day, but it is not a given - depending on the circumstances[0].
It's interesting how the American right is also taking up an anti-war stance, while maintaining pro-imperialist attitudes[1]
0. Cf. The left's attitude towards the Vietnam war vs. the Apartheid government in South Africa.
1. With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the "peace with North Korea at all costs" under Trump
Republicans are a lot more interested in the militarization of the pacific and southern border.
COVID is similar; Trump fucked it up because everything he touches turns to shit, not a surprise. Biden continues to fuck it up to this day and... crickets from Democrats.
Thankfully, Biden is doing the right thing, very skillfully, with Ukraine. I wish he could get it together on domestic policy. Making his bumblefuck COVID czar his chief of staff was a incredibly bad decision, though.
what is there left to do on COVID? The healthcare system is not collapsing and lockdowns have ended. Remember, the lockdowns where there only to prevent the healthcare system from collapsing. We even have vaccines and a host of other treatments widely available. If you're expecting total eradication of an airborne respiratory virus I don't think you're being realistic.
As an "anti-war leftist", I find myself cheering on the assistance to Ukraine, as that is the first war in my memory that seemed worth fighting.
Still no love for the Military Industrial Complex though...
Afghanistan shows that trying "nation building" on a place where they don't actually want any nation doesn't really work. But it did work for Japan and Germany after WW2, so maybe it was worth trying. I'm sure the women who are now forbidden to learn to read liked the Americans more than they like Taliban, but does that mean extending the war was worth it?
As for Iraq, the WMDs were a complete lie and Bush and Cheney just wanted more war - some say Cheney was the mind behind and Bush was just idiot, some say Bush wanted to finish what his father started - but average Iraqi is now better off than with Saddam. That doesn't help those who died in the war, of the people who could have has better lives for the money the war had cost though.
It was actually Ukraine that changed my opinion on Iraq, because the arguments "Iraq under Saddam's brutal dictatorship wasn't that bad, there was no reason to war" started resonate with "don't help Ukraine, their lives aren't going that bad under Putin's brutal dictatorship, tell the to surrender" little too much. Was Iraq different from Ukraine only because in one the dictator was status quo and in the other it wasn't?
Yeah, complicated.
There was never a plan, more so, never a formal declaration of what the hell victory was supposed to look like.
As far as Ukraine and Iraq, one big difference is that there Iraq under Saddam was not fighting a war on its territory when US invaded in 2003. So you have to consider the number of people who would have likely died due to political repressions vs the number of people who died from the war and the resulting instability - and I don't think that arithmetic is in favor of the war even today.
OTOH in Ukraine it was Russia that invaded and forced the war on them, so from the perspective of outside assistance you have to compare the number of Ukrainians that would die resisting by themselves vs the number that will die resisting with Western aid. I don't think this comparison is a given either way - there's a lot of rhetoric in the West along the lines of, "if we didn't support them they'd fold quickly and then the war would be over", but given the determined resistance that we have seen and the sheer number of people who joined the volunteer territorial defense units and their willingness to engage early in the conflict (e.g. under Kyiv), I think it's more likely that even if Russia managed to occupy the entire country, it would still be dealing with large-scale guerilla warfare, with all the massive civilian casualties that entails.
The other key difference is that Iraqis under Saddam weren't really given a choice whether they preferred to suffer Saddam or an invasion to remove him. Ukrainians, OTOH, are pretty open about their preferences.
But he was still Commander in Chief.
I'm going to guess that he was wary of the political attacks over doing so -- if all it took was french mustard or a tan suit, imagine the outrage of "cutting and running"
In what way? Don't get me wrong, I think Biden sucks. But when wearing a mask became an issue of deepest political ideology before Biden was elected, it's a tough task to change public opinion when you're a politician.
History books will hopefully acknowledge just how terribly the entire world handled it.
The goals, which were never real, started to have political consequences and it became a whole thing.
https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/flattening-curve...
Yes, it could have been worse, maybe we could have had utter collapse. But hospitals did get overrun multiple times and many people died completely unnecessarily because we stopped fighting. I really wouldn't call this a win; covid is now endemic and continuing to evolve inside us. At best this is a bloody stalemate.
And sadly, this is more normal than peace when it comes to Russian border states.
But that’s entirely different than blaming him for not solving the crisis.
Antiwar doesn’t really make any sense because you can’t end wars without fighting in wars. Or surrendering but that proves the “doesnt really make sense” point. It also just encourages more wars in the future. There can be diplomatic solutions but you still have to embrace the war until then.
It requires fiat control of the situation.
That control of sovereign entities can only be attained by threat or actualised violence.
Putting it another way.
That you even consider yourself entitled to tolerate a sovereign nation requires that you believe you are entitled a degree of control it.
Anti-war thinking requires not just that you consider war a last resort. But you consider that you have no option at all. War is not another just lever.
If it is then you do not have anti-war beliefs you just are more adverse to it than some hawks.
Treaties are signed regularly having nothing to do with any kind of threat of violence. Breaking of treaties often even has legal redress mechanisms within international courts of law, all without military threats. Instead economic sanctions are often the recourse.
Re "paradox of tolerance" it's a pretty close analogy so I'm really not sure what you're going on about. An absolute anti-war position puts you in the position of tolerating wars. Thus any group that wants can engage in violence to acquire more resources. At the limit it can even overpower you although that's not so important because your tolerance of the war has a net result in having caused more war and violence. In military circles it would be called appeasement* but it's the same basic philosophy.
* Interesting side note is that there are some historians that suggest that Chamberlain's appeasement strategy wasn't because he thought it would work to pacify Hitler but because he was desperately trying hard to avoid Britain getting sucked into a conflict until they were properly staffed up (Stalin did the same btw). Additionally the appeasement strategy arguably was helpful in also pulling America into the European theater because domestic supporters of Germany couldn't claim that Hitler's expansion was somehow legitimate given that every grievance raised by Germany had a legitimate attempt to redress.
Your comment is the best example of Godwin's law I've seen in a while.
I'll take your sprinting away from the point at hand to mean you're not interested in the original discussion?
To tolerate suggests you could not tolerate it. That requires control.
Actually it does not and I’m not sprinting away from anything. I am concerned about the refusal to engage with analogies though. I thought my analogies were passable but you seem to have gotten quite triggered. What’s going on there?
Let me try again. If someone is robbing you without you doing anything, you tolerate getting robbed because otherwise you might risk bodily harm. So if anything, tolerance is the opposite and implies a lack of control because otherwise if you could not tolerate it and had control, you probably wouldn’t. Indeed, if we look at examples of intolerance, it’s actually the intolerant that have the control which is where the paradox comes from (governments self-limiting their ability to control situations and thus letting intolerant people take that control, Britain appeasing Germany because they’d otherwise lose the war before it started if they didn’t buy themselves time etc).
As for Godwin’s law:
> the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 100%.
I’m not comparing anyone or anything to Nazi’s nor Hitler but instead I’m showing the similarity between appeasement and the paradox of intolerance through the lens of the most famous appeasements of the 20th century. Just saying “Hitler” doesn’t automatically make it an example of Godwin’s law. Ironically:
> Godwin's law itself can be applied mistakenly or abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, when fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparison made by the argument is appropriate
And this is just talking about the link between authoritarians and Hitler / genocides and Nazis.
> Six House Republicans and one Independent joined 126 Democratic members of the House of Representatives in voting NAY. In the Senate, 21 Democrats, one Republic, and one Independent courageously voted their consciences in 2002 against the War in Iraq.
https://www.thoughtco.com/2002-iraq-war-vote-3325446
Worth mentioning among the NAY votes is Barbara Lee representative of California’s 12th congressional district (9th during the vote) who has announced she’ll be running to take Dianne Feinstein’s (who voted YAY) seat in the 2024 senate race, and is a favorite among many progressives (i.e. left wing Democrats).
But for the Iraq war specifically (a part from the racketeering) why many people think it was the wrong decision is in large part based on the lies and deceptions that were used to justify the invasion.
At the time many people believed those lies and thought they were justifiable reasons for the invasion. When it later turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction, that ties of the Ba'ath party to terrorist organizations were none, that the USA imposed government was corrupt and offered little benefits to regular people over Saddam’s dictatorship, etc. etc. When this all became common knowledge, on top of all the war crimes, the torture scandals, the massacres, after Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange went to prison for revealing some of those war crimes, many of these people who previously believed the war was justified, changed their opinion of it.
What does helping Ukraine defend themselves have to do with 'war fervor'?
Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 and Obama/Trump reaction was to ignore it - which directly resulted in a much bigger war.
The US Military Industrial Complex is why there are no wars against rich allied states. If Ukraine were part of the system and had a well managed, functional military - Putin could not have invaded, in fact he never would have tried.
I know it’s not what you’re saying exactly, but it’s what Putin’s actions boil down to.
NATO basis were next to Russia for decades.
Plus, one does not need to commit genocide to achieve safety. Anand Putin just happen to be committing genocide.
But really, it's more about the money, the people and the control over trade routes and resources in my estimation and less about security.
It's astonishing that in the West, so many people see short term things like money or resources, that is often the reality of it, and Crimea does have offshore Oil, but in 50 years he won't be remembered for that - he will be 'Putin the Great' for re-conquoring lost territories and uniting the Russian people and their Empire. Even if there is a stalemate now - it means over a 10 year period he took Crimea and a huge swath of land - that is a big win. It won't feel like a win for a few years, but in the long run of history it'll be viewed as a victory - an expansion of the empire.
For the same reason Westerners talk about China wanting to invade Taiwan for TSMC? Gosh no - they view Taiwan as 'China' - and all the states around them as 'natural vassals to their greater power' - and that's that, they are the 'Middle Kingdom Centre of the World' and Xi is on that mission.
Those guys are using 19th century geopolitics and ethnography, taking very long term view of things.
A victory for Ukraine is important to maintain some very basic and essential things we have come to expect in the world - not fancy ideals - just basic freedoms, democracy, rule of law etc..
The military industrial complex will take a pound of flesh unless we manage them effectively, but they are not driving this war, not even from the Russian side where most of the money is pilfered anyhow.
Thank you for stating that. I hate when smaller countries are just talked about as pawns in a chess game between larger powers with no self determination, or should just take one for the team to prevent rocking the boat.
If Russia doesn't like its smaller neighbours wanting to join NATO, it should've treated them a lot better.
In any case, what does "supposed to be a buffer" even mean? Supposed by whom? Ukraine certainly didn't sign up for that.
For me: the manner in which it is done (the rhetoric in media, etc).
Truman, Johnson, Clinton, Obama, etc.
The only difference between now and the 70s is that the politicians have more control over the left.
The Carter presidency is in the running for the most peaceful modern presidency. He did start arming the rebels in Afghanistan, and ordered what I guess amounts to a brief invasion of Iran, but overall, pretty peaceful. It's either him or Trump.
As left people gain political maturity, they understand that those in power will not give up their power willingly, so force is required.
As a liberal person I am suspicious of any liberal who does not believe in gun rights, and I am even more suspicious of a liberal person who does not believe in unions, which is the 2nd amendment of labor rights. Neither the 2nd amendment nor unions can be used for their purpose within the bounds of the law.
Believing in human rights means believing in defending human rights with force, otherwise what is to stop someone from violating human rights?
If a powerful person uses their power against you, your choices are submit or fight. Leftists are slowly understanding:
1. There are powerful people
2. They will arbitrarily use your power against you
3. Those people use their power to influence law so the law will not protect you
4. You can't solve this problem within the bounds of the law
It also assumes that such disagreements require force to be resolved, and that's just demonstrably not always true. Even if it sometimes is.
Military inventory, while powerful, isn't the end-all. Just ask Afghans about their experiences with two superpowers' machinery.
If you and everyone in a 10-mile radius of where you're sitting right now decided to ignore some federal law, like maybe the one against cannabis, what the heck is an F-35 going to do about it? Blow up a building, is that supposed to help? No, you get some guys with guns and trucks and then you can start going door to door, threatening people, looking around, collecting stuff, whatever. You can set up checkpoints and block off bridges, the whole shebang, because you're trying to establish control, not just blow things up.
Blowing things up has its uses but if you want to intimidate someone to the point where you have power over them, you need to be a little more intimate. You can't just be a fleck in the sky and you can't just show up do to the big stuff. You need to be in their face as a persistent, immediate threat. That's what influences human behavior and that's how power is established. That's exactly why small guns are such a sticking point in the USA, they're a very effective counter to this intimate threat.
I am pro gun rights but not anti regulation.
I think liberals fail to acknowledge that sometimes you can't get out of "might makes right" resolution for disputes, which results in situations of denial around gun rights.
So regulation is seen as a weakening of gun rights because the people most in favor of regulating guns fail to also make arguments in favor of guns or discount the pro-gun argument entirely.
"Who are the 2nd amendment protected guns theoretically meant to be used against? When are they supposed to be used? Can the 2nd amendment ever be used to protect a free state within the bounds of the law?" are pretty major critical thinking questions that it are probably worth meditating on, especially for liberal people.
What would have happened if Trump won is a question every liberal person needs to contemplate.
When the rule of law (the idea that powerful people cannot arbitrarily exercise their power) fails, it becomes might makes right. Would you rather be in a might makes right society where you have a gun or where you don't? I think that answer is obvious.
> Even if it sometimes is.
If you want peace prepare for war.
The most serious threat to an American insurgency isn't the US military, it's the police. And the police don't have F-35s... yet.
So I think that instead of "Afghanistan" we should call it "Lockheed's War" or something like that.
If we must have wars, let them be remembered as a black mark on the names of the people who profited from them. A cautionary tale about how not to weild power.
On the flip side: I have no ill will towards the people of Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, so I feel bad attaching a negative connotation to the name of their country. As if my tax dollars didn't do enough harm to their homes, now my speech is making it harder to let go of. Yuck.
I've been saying things like:
> The justification for Putin's war feels even flimsier than the justification for Cheney's war, but then again I'm not the target audience.
So far people just raise their eyebrows at me, but I like to imagine it'll catch on.
That's why it was so important that it come from someone like a 5 star general and Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War II. No one was going to mistake Eisenhower for a tinfoil-hat wearer, a pacifist, or an appeaser.