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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

The attitude is a dangerously rose-tinted view of war, the US was operating internment camps for US citizens of Japanese descent you know. In a war, dissent is quashed. That doesn't mean that it isn't there, just that there is a high tolerance for sub-optimal decisions because there isn't time to ruminate.

The US isn't getting poor outcomes from their manufacturing sector because people are divided, but because the US has policies tending towards deindustrialisation and there is a broad political consensus to keep them. Ban the smokestacks, ban the smokestack economy and enjoy the clean air.

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> the US was operating internment camps for US citizens of Japanese descent you know

That is non-responsive to the point raised by OP. That had little effect on Americans unless they were the small minority of Japanese. The point OP raised is much more salient. If we end up in another World War, what lessons do you want to have from the past? “Don’t put racial minorities in internment camps” is well and good, but it won’t help you build a giant navy and win a war.

I learned con law from a social studies PhD who had little interest in the constitution, and focused the entire class on this or that minoritized or oppressed group. It’s a terrible way to learn constitutional law—or anything else—because you over-focus on the 20% of the story while missing the big picture about how the country was actually designed to work.

I think you missed their point. Everyone was pulling in the same direction because not doing so could land you in prison. During a war (a real declared one) you have little to no right to free speech. More than one person was jailed due to dissent.

That’s a good lesson. What the U.S. did in war time isn’t dissimilar to what China and Singapore did in peacetime to lift themselves out of poverty in a generation.

The quashing of dissent isn't what is propelling them forward though - it is probably holding them back more than anything else. Allowing dissent and maybe even adjusting to it generally leads to better results in the long term.

I was mulling on my commute today as I dodged several homeless people. I can't speak to the US experience, but in Australia if I'd offered those people jobs at the wages and conditions of Chinese workers in the 90s, with the expectation of achieving the same civilisation progress as China ... I would expect to be fined and told off. If I persisted in running a business that way, eventually I'd probably be arrested.

Quashing dissent is illegal in the West, but that isn't the thing that needs to be changed to get industrial results. We need to legalise the industry part. Pollution has to be acceptable, mistakes decriminalised and it needs to be easy to employ people productively. All these Western countries are going a good way to banning mining, restricting cheap energy, blocking industrial processes as environmentally unsound and over-regulating how business is done. All on purpose and largely due to consensus opinions that too much industrial progress is bad for people. The result is much to most of the capital investment for the last few decades seeming to have happened in Asia where they were happy to let the world improve around them. It has nothing to do with division. If anything we don't have enough division, the people who want progress are hamstrung because they are forced to conform to the whims of timid environmentalists.

(and I endorse bcrosby95's reading of my comment).

> The quashing of dissent isn't what is propelling them forward though - it is probably holding them back more than anything else.

OP’s reading above was that quashing of dissent was what helped everyone pull in the same direction in world war ii.

And my counter-reading is that that cannot be all that important. If pulling together was what mattered in a clash between industrial powers, most societies would win most wars [0] because it isn't that hard to squash dissent if the generals want to.

The hammer gets bought down on dissenters, true enough. Happens in every big war, I count myself lucky that HN is remote and anonymous from some of the people I've talked to or I'm sure I'd have some nasty injuries from my views on the Ukraine war. But industrial production never has and never will be determined by how hard people wish for things and hold hands. Industrial production is a function of resource availability and capital investment. There is no strong need to get many people on side for either of those things and the people who handle capital investments tend to be a class that thinks alike so if a few are convinced then all of them will go along happily.

The pulling together is important insofar as bodies are required for the meat grinder and if you want to deploy literally everything in a war effort then work will be found for idle hands. But if we're talking about wartime manufacturing; it really isn't the major factor. The US is not industrially limited by its cohesion, it is limited by legislation written by people who are in the majority and enjoy a societal consensus which they are using to diminish industry.

[0] Which is logically impossible given that minimum of half the sides in wars must lose.

But Beijing doesn't suppresses dissent for economic reasons. Beijing suppresses dissent because social harmony is a core tenet of Chinese culture.

Also, the kind of centralized control the US imposed during WWII is not particularly useful for encouraging economic growth. China's economic growth was caused by Nixon's decision to bring China into the US-led maritime trading system plus Mao's dying and eventually being replaced by someone who was not completely incompetent at economic policy.

The reason China or Russia or Bangladesh cannot afford to adopt a British- or American-style culture that emphasizes liberty or heroic levels of individualism is that they have too many militarily-powerful neighbors: the combination of a culture that encourages free expression and experimentation with technologies that cause profound social changes with the geography of a China, Bangladesh or Russia will tend to lead to deadly civil wars, rebellions and invasions. If their geographical situation were like the US or the UK (i.e., secure in their respective islands, i.e., not in danger of invasion by land) then they would have the option of switching to a culture that emphasizes freedom of expression and free economic activity, and if they did that they would tend to reap considerable economic benefits over the decades.

Not putting thousands workers into camps for no good reason will help you build a giant navy and win a war. It’s small compared to the whole country but it does help.

But the main lesson I'd want to take is to shut down strong aggressors early, then you don’t need to run a massive war production program in the first place.

Judging by Ukraine, we seem to have learned this lesson but not very well.

Preemptively getting involved in wars that don’t concern us isn’t a takeaway from world war ii. The circumstances that caused that were the result of 300 years of the Westphalian system, and are quite unique.

It might not be your takeaway but it sure is mine. All that stuff with Austria and Czechoslovakia didn’t concern us, until it did. Putting a stop to those shenanigans would have been a million times easier if done early.

You'd be involved in a million times more war. There are too many conflicts for that sort of thinking to work.

The lessons from WW1/2 were (1) don't be involved in the first few years of a World War, they are empire wreckers and (2) after a war, winners should invest in the economic success of the losers and (3) more Bismarck. Being even more aggressive would hardly have helped, the Europeans were all aggressive. Turns out aggression as a strategy led to ... more and bigger wars. Who'd a thunk it.

I was careful to say “strong aggressors.” You don’t need to go after every tinpot dictator who decides to pull something stupid. But something like Russia conquering bits of their neighbors should have been stopped early.

Europeans didn’t get aggressive with Germany until they invaded France, at which point it was too late to bring things to a conclusion without years of fighting and tens of millions killed. A stronger response to anything up to and including the invasion of Poland could have averted the catastrophe.

> But something like Russia conquering bits of their neighbors should have been stopped early.

So would it be fair to say that your WWII lesson is leading you to suggest escalating a war with a major nuclear power as the proper path forward? Because that should be setting off alarm bells that you learned the wrong lesson.

You can see in the world's reaction to the 2003 Iraq invasion; the correct response is no escalation and let the government of the defending country get pancaked. The damage is kept to a reasonable minimum and then some attempt can be made to put civilisation back together again. A China or a Russia going in to escalate the conflict or trying to stop the aggressors would have been a disaster for everyone. We could have had something as bad or worse than the Ukraine war 20 years earlier.

If we had put the kibosh on Russia’s adventures in 2014 then we wouldn’t need to fret about escalating to nukes today.

The world had no choice in 2003, the US couldn’t have been stopped regardless. Fortunately the US didn’t aim for conquest.

The US has been pouring military aid into Ukraine since 2014 and the net result is that the Russian army mobilised and despite terrible losses is marching across Ukraine. If the US had poured more resources in, the mobilisation would only have happened faster.

The chain of events you seem to be suggesting is something like Russia has good relations with their neighbour, then that neighbour's government collapses in a highly suspicious coup and then, presumably, the US military starts to overtly move in and set up military bases. If you think that is the path to peace I'm not sure what lessons to even try to draw from WWII, it doesn't look comparable to me apart from a common thread of strategic lunacy. But it is remarkably aggressive and would just have accelerated the timeline for Russia's invasion. I don't know what you expect Russia would do, but given their actual response to NATO's involvement in Ukraine it would be aggressive and undiplomatic if NATO had been more visibly involved.

I suppose we wouldn't have to worry about escalating to nukes today, since we'd have answered that question some time in the 2010s and the rivers of blood shed would be congealing by now.

> highly suspicious coup

Ah, well. You should just lead with “I support the Russian invasion,” it would save time.

I'm sticking to theme here, if you feel a highly suspicious coup justifies invading a country then you're definitely not working at a level where you're drawing the right lessons from WWII. How did you make the leap from that to supporting an invasion?

There's a huge difference between wanting the Russian invasion to succeed and judging that the US's opposing it is not worth the cost (in Ukrainian lives and US money) or the risks (of the Kremlin doing something desperate or vengeful if the invasion turns ugly on them, like helping the Iranians and North Koreans obtain ICBMs capable of hitting US cities).

Note the phrase I quoted.

I’m not saying this because they argue against intervention. I say this because they’re parroting the exact nonsense talking points that Russia uses to justify the invasion.

Just because the Russian leadership says it does not automatically make it false.

I'm saddened that I need to explain that to anybody.

Just because I think it’s a load of horseshit doesn’t mean I reached that conclusion solely on the basis of believing the opposite of what Russia says.

Sure, but you are dismissing someone just because he noticed and spoke about one of the things that spokespersons for the Russian regime noticed and spoke about.

> The chain of events you seem to be suggesting is something like Russia has good relations with their neighbour, then that neighbour's government collapses in a highly suspicious coup and then, presumably, the US military starts to overtly move in and set up military bases.

1. Russia and Ukraine did not have good relations. Ever since the USSR collapsed, Russia has been harassing Ukraine with everything from territorial enroachments to poisoning their presidents:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Tuzla_Island_conflict

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-43611547

Andrey Illarionov, who was Putin's senior advisor at the time of the Tuzla island conflict, credits that as the pivot point where Putin first articulated territorial claims over Ukraine, far wider than only the island. He recalls a specific meeting with top Russian military leadership on 17th September 2003 as the moment when Putin first presented the long-term strategy to undermine Ukraine's sovereignty with the same pseudohistoric mumbojumbo we've come to know.

2. There's nothing "highly suspicious" about the Maidan. Ukraine's government torpedoed a trade agreement with the EU at intense Russian pressure (which included economic embargo), people came to the street to voice their protest, the pro-Russian government responded with increasing violence, which ultimately led to them fleeing the country after the police snipers killed over a hundred people. Ukraine's parliament voted to hold snap elections and a new government was voted into office. The events are extremely well documented, known by the hour, and any insinuations of "CIA-backed coup" are purge garbage, an insult to intelligence, and a sign that the person spreading them has not bothered to learn about the topic at all. Since when are general elections a coup?

3. Nobody was building any military bases in Ukraine before Russia invaded, and even then it took years before Ukraine got any serious backing. The whole narrative of the US enroaching on Russia is again a total garbage, completely detached from facts. Until the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US government was in the process of dismantling and removing Cold War era assets from Europe. For example, they deactivated all heavy armour brigades and removed all tanks from Europe by 2013.

Since you keep posting the same debunked narratives and obviously have an interest in this topic, why not spend some time to learn about the actual history of relations? Why keep reposting the same propaganda talking points that have no substance?

> Since you keep posting the same debunked narratives and obviously have an interest in this topic, why not spend some time to learn about the actual history of relations? Why keep reposting the same propaganda talking points that have no substance?

I don't know if I ever mentioned it to you so I will talk to this because clear communication is important - I can tell you're very passionate about this topic but your posts are long rambling tangents that don't address the points I'm making. They're not persuasive to me, and they look a bit desperate if I'm being frank. I don't mind you posting because it does seem genuine and if it makes you feel better who am I to complain just because I disagree? But if you actually expect me to change my opinions tangents and random trivia aren't likely to work.

Eg, in this case (1) is a non issue. Russia has disputes like that with pretty much all their neighbours as far as I know. Things like that don't stop countries having good relations. India and China have similar disputes and they still manage a reasonably productive working relationship. If that was where Ukraine-Russia relations were right now that'd be a fantastic improvement over the status quo and I'm sure in such a hypothetical the Russians would be overjoyed to have such a tolerant government running Ukraine.

(2) is a wild claim that a coup over international relations is normal where I really don't see why you feel that is a justified position or how you expect to persuade anyone. There is a photo floating around of Victoria Nuland handing out food to protesters in Ukraine; that there was US involvement at some level is beyond question.

(3) Military bases are a reasonable hypothesis. There was talk about bringing Ukraine into NATO and even without that it has been established that there were CIA bases [0]. It isn't a big step to go from that to a proper military installation. And you can see on the map that NATO is indeed encroaching on Russia's borders [1]. That is just a matter of fact; no matter how you feel about Russia's response.

[0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/cia-maintains-12-secret-bases-212...

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

I am not desperate, but astonished why you remain stuck reposting the same garbage-tier propaganda narratives instead of actually learning about the events from high quality sources.

(1) Relations between Ukraine and Russia have been very poor for a very long time. For example, throughout the early 2000s, Russia tried to extort Ukraine through gas supply cutoffs. The poisoning of Ukrainian president by Russian agents in 2004 marked an especially sharp deterioration of relations. At least by European standards, this is very far from anything described as normal.

(2) There was no coup in Ukraine. The pro-Russian president Yanukovych got 108 people killed when he mismanaged his response to protests, lost all support he had in Ukraine overnight (even his own party turned on him), and ran away into hiding in Russia as he was about to get criminally charged and jailed. Ukrainian parliament assembled, voted unanimously to hold snap elections, which were held a few months later and recognized as legitimate by everyone, including Russia.

(3/1) NATO is not some expanding organism that keeps swallowing countries. Rather, Russia's western neighbours have joined the military alliance to bolster their national security as a reaction to Russian democracy deteriorating into a hostile totalitarian dictatorship. Sweden, for instance, abandoned 200 years of neutrality because military experts assessed that Russia can attack without a reason, and that Sweden would not be able to withstand alone the kind of attack that Russia has launched on Ukraine, and therefore needs to have access to the pooled resources of the entire NATO, which are especially vital to protect cities from missile attacks.

(3/2) Central and Eastern Europe has not seen any foreign military bases in the 20-30 years that they have been in NATO. Russian trolls love to talk about missile bases being built on Russian borders, but not a single such site exists. Until Russia attacked Ukraine, European military preparedness was at record lows, and Cold War era infrastructure was in the process of being dismantled. The present difficulties of the European NATO members in assembling a combined force of 25 000 soldiers for a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine is an excellent illustration of this. Prior to the invasion, the military balance in Europe was slowly tipping in favor of Russia, not against. It's undeniable if you look at the numbers. Europe was on the last stretch of disarming itself, with Germany being the best example: of the ~5000 tanks in 1980s, only ~200 remained. All while Russia was running a massive army modernization program and pumping out that many tanks each year.

That makes no sense. If we had escalated in 2014 we would’ve risked nukes then too. Russia has been a nuclear power the whole time.

It’s a lot easier to back down when you haven’t committed anything yet.

> That had little effect on Americans unless they were the small minority of Japanese.

Or the people killed in the Port Chicago disaster, and when enlisted men later refused to work due to unsafe conditions, they were court-martialed. ("Widespread publicity surrounding the case turned it into a cause célèbre among Americans opposing discrimination targeting African Americans; it and other race-related Navy protests of 1944–45 led the Navy to change its practices and initiate the desegregation of its forces beginning in February 1946.", quoting Wikipedia.)

Or the infamous Zoot Suit riots, where newly arrived white American servicemen thought Hispanic culture, including wearing zoot suits, was anti-American and unpatriotic - L.A. was one of several cities during the war with race riots (eg, the Beaumont race riot of 1943 caused by relocated white defense workers who attacked local black residents).

I only learned recently that several Japanese Americans were killed in those camps.

[1]: https://www.history.com/articles/japanese-american-relocatio...

[2]: https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Homicide_in_camp/

Do you know about the Niihau Incident?

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

You don't think people with victory gardens, and buying warbonds, scraping together spare silk and aluminum and other metals to donate to the war effort, manufacturing of vehicles and other factories converted to output munitions and tanks and other materials is impressive?

You can be amazed at the output and the point of the article without turning this into yet another guilt post about how bad America is. What we did was wrong. But also, we stopped the nazis and the japanese and the italians. the war in the pacific killed 15-20 million chinese civilians, and I won't even go into the other theaters or the war crimes of the japanese or the axis powers (nothing to do with the internment). But maybe whatever the opposite of rose tinted glasses is the way you're viewing the wars.

And no, no amount of good by US forces justifies or absolves us of the sin of the japanese internment but maybe some credit is due at least.

FWIW, what stopped the Nazis, for the most part, was the bodies of Soviet conscripts.

Yup, but they needed arms to do that and a huge amount of Soviet arms came from the US.

The US supplied a little over half of all ammo, shells, mines, and explosives the Soviet Union used during the war. The US also supplied something like 400k trucks, 13k combat vehicles, 14k aircraft, and 13k tanks along with petroleum and food that the Soviet army needed to sustain operations.

"British intelligence, US material, and Soviet blood"

Which is STILL a ridiculous oversimplification that does not accurately capture the level of death and sheer effort expended because Germany and Japan decided that reality wasn't important and Fascism was neat.

The us is getting great manufacturing results - but because of automation only a few people labor and so it is invisible

We can't build ships.

We could but divison of labor is a good thing in general.

We do build some ships, though.

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