Palantir gets $10B contract from U.S. Army

IMO one of the primary ways the US terrorizes is by bombing with impunity. According to its own record keeping, the US has dropped 337000 bombs in the last 20 years, or 46 bombs per day.

Can you imagine living in one of the countries that the US keeps bombing? Every time you hear an airplane you have to think if you're about to die, or someone you know is about to die, or a school is about to be blown up, or a water treatment facility.

it's naive to think that the wars of the 20th century were caused by lack of trust, or the 21st

So when the police is happy to fine you for any technicality while people are free to do drugs on the streets (due to bad policy) this brings trust down - like in SF

There's your answer right there.

Trust only works locally throughout family and closely knit communities, but globally trust is like fiat currency, on a large global scale it is completely worthless on its own, without any higher form of enforcement through violent means to defend and enforce the relationship where the winner dictates the conditions and everyone else has to follow.

Countries don't trust the US government, but they trust and use the USD because they trust the US will do everything militarily to protect it. That's as far as trust goes.

You are free to give up your arms first in a race for world peace. Lead by example. Now do you think US, China and Russia will then follow you or will they just say thank you while they take your lunch and let you starve?

>This fake fear is the veiled language of conquest.

The fear isn't fake because the conquest isn't fake either. The entire societies, borders and economies we live in today have been agreed upon through violent conquest and you need to be capable of violence to defend or change them. Humans are greedy, tribal creatures, and conquest has been at the core of human behavior since time immemorial, and it's not going away just because you want to be a hippy.

How much of a percentage is those decades of peace out of the 200k year existence of the entire human race that has been defined only by war and conquest? You're cherry-picking the one exception the proves the rule.

Secondly, peace amongst EU countries was due to the US world nuclear power having established occupation of Europe after WW2, and then EU countries have allied together not out of fondness for one another (which doesn't exist even today), but out out necessity of survival, since that was the only way they could stand up to USSR threat. The enemy of my enemy is my friend basically.

Thirdly, conquest is at the core of EU too, except it's bureaucratic, political and economical, not military. Just because you don't see bullets being fired, doesn't mean the spoils of the economic pie doesn't get split up between victors.

Tell that to the Vietnamese, the Afghan, the Cuban, the korean, ... And arguably you might include a lot of eastern european country. Just because the confrontation didn't happen in the country that were "enemy" didn't mean they didn't cause wars.

Why this needs explaining to presumably educated adults is kind of terrifying in itself

So of course the job is outsourced to allies.

This is the logic behind the old-style Jihad. Also the Chinese emperors used the same argument when conquering smaller kingdoms.

Unfortunately, what happens in practice is that even in one Islamic country Sunni vs Shia terrorists attacks happen. And in the case of China, the price you pay for superficial peace are Uighur concentration camps, Tibetan self-immolations and so on.

1 country in the world won't make you safe from wars. There's a reason why military was and is separated from police. Just think what's going to happen when your soldiers start to kill citizens.

1 country in the world tend to degrade to dystopian regime, and it was researched by multiple books authors, and actually a modern day USA is a good example of a regime on the path to dystopia.

To add to the confusion, you can have military intelligence assess your potential target and still fail miserably just like Putin failed in his blitzkrieg. So a little bit of saber-rattling might serve a purpose, I guess.

1. I want peace.

2. a) Therefore I need to be strong enough to deter any attack.

2. b) Therefore I need to be so strong that all my enemies fear me.

2. a) is sound. Nobody attacks if they believe the cost is higher than benefit. ("Believe" is doing heavy lifting here, most wars start when countries belief about cost/value is misaligned)

2. b) is incompatible with 1. Either you believe that a stronger party does not necessarily attack weaker parties, thus peace could also be maintained without supremacy, or you believe supremacy leads to wars, but then your own goal of supremacy cannot be in the name of peace.

Unless, of course, you're a race supremacist, who believes you're so much wiser and more moral than anyone else that only you can be trusted with unchecked power. An idiotic and immoral position to take.

Oh yeah right, because those North African and middle eastern countries are doing so much better off now after the west spend decades and trillions to replace the Taliban with ... a different strain of Taliban. Such an improvement that was.

So then when are you also gonna declare war on North Korea, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Syria, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia to free those people from their dictators? Second time's the lucky charm. Or third, Or fourth. Or 128th, depending when in time you start counting western military interventionism abroad.