Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

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> ll due to one orange man being voted by >50% americans to do exactly this. Why I don't get and probably never will...

Not agreeing is one thing, but it is a remarkably easy decision to understand - people go to WWII because every single war since then has been a disaster for US interests and outcomes (I think every single, certainly most). The last time the US had an unambiguous win by fighting was 70 years ago when they got involved in a fight very late. Since then all the warmongering has made America poorer, they don't achieve anything good and generally make the US worse off.

They made a call that they don't trust the military industrial propaganda and they want to see some peace happening for once. Pretty solid decision too; if we can all have normalised relations with the US after Iraq then we can stomach Russia misbehaving in Ukraine. Escalating a land war in Europe is stupid and its been a mistake every other time the Europeans tried it; even in WWII where they claim to be justified. The blood-lust left everyone closely involved broken and it'd have been better if they found a more peaceful route to ending the violence. The fact that they failed to negotiate something doesn't mean it was impossible.

  The last time the US had an unambiguous win by fighting was 70 years ago when they got involved in a fight very late.

No, it was in 1999. A short aerial bombing campaign that lasted less than 3 months and cost less than 600 lives ended a decade of wars in former Yugoslavia that had killed 140 000 people and made millions refugees. What an incredibly small price to pay for peace.

Ukraine needs the same kind of support, but instead, they got misguided "de-escalation" that only boxed Ukraine in and gave the initiative to Russia. By knowing that the US would force Ukraine to throttle back every time the Russians made a large misstep, Russia was encouraged to keep escalating without the fear of triggering an overwhelming response.

Actually it ended only the Kosovo war, which started few years after the wars with the victims you mention ended.

Can't argue with NATO forces effectiveness in that operation though.

That war was a huge win for the US, much more so than for the reasons you mention there. It was the first time they managed to convince other NATO pact countries to execute a unilateral offensive campaign, until then a defensive alliance. The PR campaign had to be extensive and effective to justify violating the UN charter, and it was - for the first time successfully positioning a US-led NATO-run offensive war as altruistically motivated in the public eye, paving the way for the numerous wars that followed.

The campaign was valuable to everyone involved. The US got to assert itself as a global moral authority, also finally getting to build Camp Bondsteel[0] after decades of trying to build a base in the region (the largest US base on foreign soil since Vietnam, and it was built and managed by KBR meaning Dick Cheney and his shareholders also profited considerably; they've since lost interest so nowadays it's just a mini Gitmo). For the allies that backed them and helped justify the war, they received carte blanche permission to do what they like and settle their own scores. Their Dutch friends, for example, got to brazenly violate international law from the start by dumping their out-of-date depleted uranium cluster bombs on my densely populated home town[1], choosing to target the main building of our university, the main building of our city hospital, and the biggest civilian central steam heating plant that kept half the city warm.

The campaign did have some negative effects though. In the east it was interpreted as a deliberate provocation toward Russia at a time of particular weakness (their president getting hammered and falling out of planes etc), and Putin used this extensively as an example of Russian embarrassment at the hands of the US, helping him rise to power as PM in August '99, acting President in December '99, and President in March '00.

I'm not particularly emotional about any of this btw - I just thought you'd appreciate the geopolitical perspective and the ripple effect that war had on Russian politics & subsequent opinion towards the West.

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

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni%C5%A1_cluster_bombing

The Russian-leaning world remembers this event differently, they think of it as the US unilaterally bombing Yugoslavia, taking out a Chinese installation full of Chinese nationals, and facing absolutely no consequences or ill effects.

This was one of the factors that guided Putin's thinking when he took Crimea.

If you think a short aerial bombing of Russia would have swiftly ended this war, I have a bridge to sell you.

At the very least, protecting Ukraine's skies when Russia started targeting its cities with missiles would have been exactly the right move, an appropriate international response to warfare against the civilian population. A huge missed opportunity.

"Protecting the skies" is an act of war. Literally. That would mean declaring war on Russia.

Shooting down incoming missiles is not considered an act of war under international law. It falls under self defense. Japan has shot down a number of North Korean missiles and nobody has accused them of declaring war on North Korea.

Shooting down planes is, and that's covered by the no fly zone you're talking about.

Planes stopped flying over Ukrainian-held territory only a few weeks into the invasion. Since then, they've mainly launched glide bombs from far away, due to the high risk of being shot down if they penetrated Ukrainian airspace.

There's nothing preventing Ukraine's allies from setting up air defenses and fighter patrols to shoot down drones and missiles. A number of countries did just that when Iran launched a missile attack on Israel last year.

> Since then, they've mainly launched glide bombs from far away, due to the high risk of being shot down if they penetrated Ukrainian airspace.

And Russia would go back to planes if other countries were shooting down their missiles, because they know that other countries would hesitate to declare war by shooting down one of their planes. Other countries taking over this responsibility neutralizes the air defense against planes.

Ukraine can shoot down planes on its own, that needs no foreign assistance. Feels like you're just looking for excuses to sit idle and give the initiative to the aggressor.

This is simply not the case. There US has very successfully used it’s military to enjoy the position of absolute top dog in the world, but a major part of why they could do that was that the US has made very strong allies in the whole rest of the western world who have never, until now, seen any reason to try to compete with the US in this regard.

A well placed network of foreign aid has also generated influence in other parts of the world.

The United States has now irrevocably destroyed this position.

There will be enough time for the Trump Family and Elon to make out like the bandits they are, but the US position long term is diminished.

Can any of those things be traced back to a specific positive outcome for anyone outside the US weapons industry? Like, say the US hadn't invaded Afghanistan back in '01 and the trillion dollars in budget had been put towards handing out how dinners for the poor instead - what would the negative part of that trade off have been?

> Can any of those things be traced back to a specific positive outcome for anyone outside the US weapons industry

Yes, you have a ton of money to buy stuff that is much cheaper for you than for anyone else in the world because of the global reserve currency being in dollars, not to mention smooth trade guaranteed by the existence of the US navy.

Every thing you do is positively benefited by America's ability to project its military might across the globe.

American hegemony happened by chance, and the dollar just won the reserve currency lottery?

Granted, not every war was a net win but that war machine is uniquely expensive and it may be sacrifice the public is willing to pay. But it probably wouldn't hurt to see how contemporary books on history differs from propaganda.

Even in WW2? You would rather have seen Hitler win?

Wouldn't have happened. A series of impressive military victories early in WWII looms large in peoples heads, but there's no getting away from the raw numbers of how outclassed Germany was wrt material and manpower against the USSR. Barbarossa was launched on very limited, low quality intelligence, and even when more accurate numbers came in regarding Soviet division numbers in 1942, the top brass refused to believe it.

Who can tell what would have happened? It sure would not have been easy without US support:

"... Lend-Lease, including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars. Trucks were also vital; by 1945, nearly a third of the trucks used by the Red Army were US-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3⁄4-ton and Studebaker 2+1⁄2-ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical."

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