The world will move on, as it always has. Today's politics and militaries will be as obsolete in a few hundred years as this drone will be in a decade.
You know who misses the old world order? Whoever was in power back then. Even after their entire population has been renewed by death and birth, broken empires are nostalgic. Those they policed, however, mostly enjoy their museums.
If China supplants the U.S. as the world's preeminent superpower only a small percentage of the world's populations will really notice. Ask yourselves this: If the U.S. was such a great brother to the world, why is that world so eager to deal with "the dreaded communist enemy"? China and Russia are both countries with dubious records in many respects, but the U.S. has behaved badly enough that the devil the world knows is no more appealing than the devils they do not know. Russia and China are probably torturing their prisoners, just as the U.S. is, but are they eavesdropping on every single conversation of entire nations? Are they trying to reforge the internet so that their corporations can make a few more bucks? Are they pressuring other nations to enact draconian anti-piracy laws that stifle innovation?
I'm not anti-American. The U.S. has explored more of space than any other nation. The U.S. is the world's longest surviving democracy, even if that democracy has been perverted into a plutocracy. Despite how the country is run and the dubious quality of its own students, the U.S.'s post-secondary academic institutions are still second to none, largely because they attract the world's best and brightest. However, the notion that U.S. control of the world is a fundamentally good thing is ridiculous, and it's past time even americans dropped it. Quite frankly, americans have squandered the gifts of their forefathers and desperately need to earn their place in the world again. The U.S. simply has not been a beacon to the world for a good long time.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari...
For genocide, try looking up the 1954 Guatemala coup, in which case the CIA got involved directly at the behest of Coca-Cola and the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita).
China is, almost certainly. They have legions of hackers, spies, and sniffers in a constant state of attack on almost every communications system in the industrialized world.
The only difference between our program and theirs is that theirs isn't (yet) as effective. But it'll get there. In the meantime, their authoritarian system controls for leaks more effectively than our government does. There are fewer would-be Edward Snowdens in China, and any that do exist are locked up in camps somewhere.
I'm not here to justify any of the charges you're (quite correctly) leveling against the US. But let's not be naive. Any of the things you mentioned we're doing -- surveillance, corporatism, internet protectionism, etc. -- China is doing, and Russia would do if it had the capability.
Nobody's hands are clean here. I think that's your main point, and to a large extent, I agree. But we shouldn't weaken that point by attempting to argue degrees of it. Especially when those degrees are largely a matter of technical capability, not ethical inclination. Any dirty deeds we're doing that Russia and China aren't, Russia and China can't yet do. They would if they could.
The world is not eager to deal with Russia or China on any sort of strategic level. Repressive regimes like Iran, Assad's Syria, and North Korea are the only nations who have strong strategic alliances with China and Russia. Everyone else is happy to trade when them when they get a good deal, but that's it.
This is also why I doubt that the U.S. place in the world is endangered any time soon.
The West, maybe.
Not if you're living in a Middle Eastern country, with oppressive rulers kept in power by US funds, forcing the country to sell its oil resources cheaply.
Not if you're living in Eastern Ukraine, where the US toppled an elected government to install a government that is hostile to your people. http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/03/25/355978/nuke-8-milli... You could pretty much tell her attitude to them by the way she suggested the 8 million ethnic Russians living in Eastern Ukraine should be nuked.
Not if you're living in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw#t=79 All countries where the U.S. has sought to destroy domestic, independent, public institutions if and when they arise.
If you're living in an African country where the U.S. has previously tried to destabilize your government, and where China instead have offered to build infrastructure for your country, you might not be so sad that the US has lost a drone, which it was probably using for spying purposes.
If the world was Panem, then U.S. is the Capitol, and its closest allies are the Capitol's adjacent districts.
Of course, you're probably from the U.S., if not, then probably, U.K or Australia, or N.Z. Of course you'd have something to lose if the US will some day not be able to police the world.
EDIT: What's the downvote for? A lack of citations?
Maybe because of them? The article about Timoshenko is written by a serious antisemitic nutjob.
The Jewish lobby is real enough that they warrant their own wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_Stat...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y0y-JUsPTU#t=448
IMO that is evidence of U.S. interference in Ukraine's political affairs.
It is crazy to suggest U.S. is not involved in encouraging Ukraine's aspirations to join NATO.
On one hand the U.S. supports a government installed via a coup, toppling the previous elected government, and on the other give no comments on the Kiev government sending army units to crack down on Anti-Kiev protesters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariupol_standoff
The U.S. media calls armed men storming Pro-Russia government buildings "protesters", while armed men storming Pro-US government buildings are "separatists", "militants". I'm not for U.S. or Russia, I see the Ukraine situation for what it is, a small country whose people are being manipulated by larger ones.
Russia's move into Crimea isn't even illegal, it was specified clearly in the terms of the treaty leasing the Russia naval base. It was also a defensive one. If Ukraine would join NATO, the lease for the base would terminate, and Russia will lose a naval port. Crimea was also historically Russian, the fact that Ukraine had it after Soviet Union's collapse was pure accident; the Soviet Union 'awarded' the Ukraine state with Crimea in 1954 as a meaningless proclamation, probably for domestic propaganda purposes. It was the people in Crimea who decided to join Russia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UkraineNativeLanguagesCens...) U.S. (and probably all governments if given the chance) favors self-determination when it favors them (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_sovereignty_re...), calls them illegitimate when it doesn't.
($5 billion / 45 million -> $111, I left lots of wiggle room for changes in population)
The days of the US riding in to stop, for example, Serbian genocide of Muslims is over. I for one mourn the loss.
Especially if you diverge from the "party line". Such truths hurt. Cf eg BugBrother's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7795134) (no downvotes there incidentally...)
This would however all be comical if it wasn't so tragic.
"It seems that dictators generally need to make enemies out of the world's democracies."
The US (and Europe) has set out to antagonize not only Iran, but Russia, and China. For what reasons?
"This is so the populations don't start to get ideas about why their junta's steal so much money and they don't have any freedom. "Democracy and freedom are just lies -- the westerners are degenerates which tolerate homosexuality, etc."
Oh yeah, the evil easterners threatening our freedom.... So.. that the population don't get any ideas about the "elected" government's corruption (the military spending, the banks, the rich 1%, etc)?
Any form of government that "we" don't like is lying about everything -- the easterners are degenerate who tolerate nothing and support terrorism!
Don't waste your time. You can't help a person who has decided to hit rock bottom. They'll only bring you down with them. That's the tragedy.
My point was that all undemocratic juntas need to have/create external enemies. That is hardly controversial. Today the democratic West seems to be preferred for the enemy role, so democratic opposition is treason.
>> Any form of government that "we" don't like is lying about everything
Well, you (and the juntas that can't lose elections) must be right, it is just a western conspiracy! Including those lying measurements of human/press/election/etc freedoms from Amnesty, HRW, etc!
It doesn't bother you to have the same opinions as disgusting dictators? But, of course, it is all USAs fault anyway?
I voted you up, for the humor. And for recommending to keep politics off HN.
Edit: Seriously, thanks. Your personal insults and parody of my position (hidden in another place!) was the closest I got to a relevant reply. (If you had a real answer you would have written that, so the insults say more about you than me.)
Edit 2: You even inverted my position, I never claimed "The US (and Europe) has set out to antagonize not only Iran, but Russia, and China."
How exactly did the US topple Ukraine government?
Which African countries did the US destabilize?
Citations please.
The US empire, like any other empire before them will be replaced by something else.
Of course you are American, by the mere fact of being born there your have privileges over people born in the rest of the world.
For example, any time you have problems you print money,money that thanks to petrodollars and US military the rest of the world have to buy by force. You export inflation to the rest of the world.
So instead of you suffering for your own abuses, you make suffer the rest of the world. Every new QE(Quantitative Easing) makes people from Egypt go from 30% of the population not being able to buy the basics to 70% and so on.
The rest of the world is not happy, and of course they plan to replace the petrodollar as soon as they can, to replace the "Exorbitant Privilege".
Of course as an American you believe this is fantastic, but put yourself into someone else in the world skin just for 5 minutes or so. People that work much harder than Americans but live way worse, people that speak at least two languages(most Americans barely speak one), engineers, physics PhDs, whatever, and you will start seeing another picture.
Of course it's simpler to latch on to the phrase "Exorbitant Privilege" and hate the US than it is to try to analyze all the pieces of what's going on.
In the book 1984 -- which has far more similarities to today's reality than I am comfortable with -- the Oceanians are utterly and completely convinced that their side is the good side. Throughout the book there are various hints that this is in fact not the case. But the Oceanian government's control on information, combined with people's cognitive dissonance, prevents the truth from being realized. And the few who do realize it are imprisoned, tortured and converted (or killed).
What would today's world be like if China and/or Russia were the dominant power? The answer is that no one knows. No one can know. It's like asking, "what would the world be like if Hitler had won?" That alternate universe was created so long ago that it is simply not possible to conceive of.
It is silly to look at today's China and Russia and conclude that they would continue their current practices and ideologies after becoming dominant world-powers, since said practices and ideologies are very likely what is preventing that from happening. It is also possible that there will be a reversal of roles, with them becoming "good" and the USA becoming a tyrannical, fascist state. I'd say there is a scary amount of indication that the latter is very likely, actually.
Try to do something similar in China or a similar autocratic state. It might be a problem to write that in Russia today, too. :-(
And hopefully, China will change. I've seen arguments that to get beyond a certain GNP/Capita, countries have to democratize (unless they have lots of oil, of course).
(What scares me, is the possibility with AI and language understanding -- to have a 1984 control state with a working free economy; future history as a foot trampling a face...)
But if you try to distribute it, it'll be deleted off of people's kindles, and they'll be added to the NSA watchlist.
We have a control state with a mostly-working "free" economy.
If not those, which books? "No Logo"? Books by islamists/KKK/Nazis/etc that preach violence? Mein Kampf?
Can you give ten examples of authors? :-)
Seriously, you can't look more like trolling. We are comparing with China -- there are numbers like a million(!) people doing censoring thrown around.
If you really believe what you claim, go find articles written by journalists in China how they were censored while writing news, etc. Or web censoring. Or...
Even despite the angry public reaction, which hurt Amazon?
At least be a competent troll, that was just sad. :-) :-(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motherland_Calls
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Motherland,_Kiev
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin's_Mausoleum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Soviets (not built)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Parliament
Too bad they did not put that much creativity and thought into buildings for ordinary citizens.
But that statue, The Motherland Calls, wow!
There's no good reason to send a drone into Iranian airspace in the first place when you have things like NRO's Keyhole satellites to get imagery for you; even if there was a bigger upside, Iran actually has a good set of military radars so a political situation could easily be expected (not to mention something worse, like this).
You're essentially implying the Iranians can jam local GPS, then capture US drones at will and pilot them to their own territory during the first attempt without the US being able to do much about it.
That's not a realistic picture.
Much more likely that they set up a bunch of jammers/transmitters over their own territory and waited for a drone to get within the trap, then to bring it down while jamming the US control signals and GPS at the same time.
After all, if they could control them that well then the best use they would have of this tech would be to embarrass the United States by sending US drones into high value targets abroad. That would do a lot more damage.
If there are no good reasons to send drones into Iranian airspace because of Keyholes and so on then those reasons apply just as strongly to Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf. Clearly there are reasons to deploy drones and some of those reasons might apply to Iran.
Wait, do you think this is difficult? This is old hat, especially if Iran were able to engage the Chinese. Either way, that's only one possibility, you could also probably simply overpower the UAV's receiver with your own command stream if you could figure out the protocol (and if it was unencrypted).
This isn't to say it's impossible the UAV was over Iran but that would indicate a low opinion of Iranian skill, which is not the opinion held in the U.S. military at this point.
There are LOTS of reasons to send drones to other countries airspace.
Satellites have lots of constraints, they fly at a given time over an specific region, and very high, you cant make them stationary like drones(unless the country is in the equator, or you you use very oblique angles that make you lose resolution). Drones are thousand of times more flexible, and they fly way lower than a satellite.
While I don't think it is necessarily a good thing they have this technology, when has either been threatening to the US (recently)? I get Russia blames everything on America and they aren't exactly friendly to Americans when traveling there (yet there sure are a lot us there) but as actual military threats - I've either completely missed the story or it doesn't exist.
Personally, I'm more worried about the determined Pakistani dad who lost his wife and children in one of our adventures which completely missed the target.
I'm concerned about undereducated radicalised individuals from any country. No country is free of these, even Scandinavian ones.
The question is how many are created, what sort of access to weapons they have and what sort of support system is in place to make sure they don't implement their plans.
I note that the answer to any those three questions is not "more guns".
Drones are a tempting way to "do something" when doing nothing, or doing less, might be wiser.
This is so the populations don't start to get ideas about why their junta's steal so much money and they don't have any freedom. "Democracy and freedom are just lies -- the westerners are degenerates which tolerate homosexuality, etc."
So if Iran couldn't antagonize the West for what you consider "relatively unimportant reasons" (e.g. being one of the world's worst terror supporters), they would just try harder. And still be tight with other juntas which also fear democratic influences of their slav... population.
Not that that will stop the US from trying if they ever feel like it. Look at the mess in Iraq, then multiply by 5 or so (Iran + a new civil war in Iraq). You could very well end up with a much worse situation than there is today, loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and a very large chunk of the world with a strong motivation to hate everything and anything the West stands for.
Very Bad Idea.
(I don't have enough information to have an opinion. E.g. something like the bombing of Serbia's infrastructure would be cheap and really bad for Iran, afaik. For a good answer you probably need to ask the military in "relevant" countries.)
And again, for the third time -- this has nothing to do with my point, so you guys can vote this comment down too now, since you obviously just can't give a relevant counter argument. 1/2 :-)
"Mohammad Mosaddegh or Mosaddeq[a] (Persian: مُحَمَد مُصَدِق; IPA: [mohæmˈmæd(-e) mosædˈdeɣ] ( listen);[b] 16 June 1882 – 5 March 1967), was the democratically elected[1][2][3] Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 until 1953, when his government was overthrown in a coup d'état orchestrated by the British MI6 and the American CIA.[4][5]"
Then...
Uhm, that was 60+ years ago.
The world is a different place now, after the cold war. Before 1989, juntas could say to USA -- "If you don't support us, we'll get support at the other place." Now, mostly Saudi Arabia can say that.
So for informational purposes, since you like to complain about USA, do you have any examples from the last 20 years?
(Please check the Democratic Peace Theory on Wikipedia. Not even USA starts wars with stable democracies.)
Edit: I got a down vote on both my other comments, a few minutes after I wrote this. I guess this one is good? Some other explanation? :-)
I discussed the present situation. History is interesting, I agree, but to only start laying blame for events happening generations ago isn't a counterargument, it is lack of arguments.
(And I did answer meric's "argument" that everything happening is USA's fault by pointing out why the situation is different now. No one seems to have a counter argument?)
And for changing things in Iran et al, check the resource curse on Wikipedia. Countries that weren't democracies when they found oil didn't become democracies. (Norway already was democratic before the oil.) It is just too lucrative for the leaders to oppress the population and steal the money.
The current regime is installed after the 1979 revolution against the US installed Iranian government.
Things would be different if U.S. didn't meddle in Iranian politics back in the 1950's.
You claimed that before. I discussed that, despite that it wasn't relevant to my point, in two comments. Including the GP(!).
So I assume you have nothing to say. Except that you want to drown my original point in a sea of text..?
Here it is. There was a democracy in Iran, but since it's been toppled it's going to be difficult to change the authoritarian government that is in place now. This is the result of U.S.'s work. This thread is getting long, so it's easy to miss points of text... If you feel like continuing we can take it to email. Mine is meric.au AT gmail.
The only ones still keeping the indignation alive from that time period are the Palestinians (because they are refused citizenship by the Arab countries) -- and Iran....? (And some Japanese islands?)
Also see my point about things working very differently, now. Go back and see the extinction of the indians or the Spanish war (I think that is the US name?). The same goes for most every country the further back in history you go; e.g. wimpy Sweden taught the Germans everything they know about atrocities to civilians...
If you have nothing to say in four comments, I doubt you have more in email.
You still haven't touched my original point. I really think you (is there more than one person?) write all this irrelevant text since you are unable to answer -- and a True believer can't change your opinion(s). So you just hide it, by damaging HN with drenching it in text.
How old are you? Are your parents still alive? Are your grandparents?
Surprise surprise, when you overthrow a country's democratically elected government to grab some oil, people tend to remember it for a long time.
What's more is, ordinary Iranians don't particularly like their government. Iran was a moderately religious country, not fundamentalist, before the Revolution, and for the most part, it still is. Iranians are educated and intelligent people.
Iranians know that when they vote, their votes aren't worth much. They know the Council and really, the Supreme Leader call the real shots. But they still vote, and in larger numbers than Americans, primarily to demonstrate that they have faith in their government, and they would rather it exist than not.
Most likely, Iran is going to forget the unspeakable harms the United States has committed against it as its people age and the pain of living under a foreign power's puppet dictator recedes from the national consciousness. And when that happens, Iran will liberalize of its own accord, and all of America's saber-rattling and sanctions will have done nothing.
Iran does not need to make an enemy of the United States. The United States made an enemy out of Iran when it committed acts of war for the sake of corporate profits. Iran just hasn't forgotten.
Everyone but the Palestinians have let go of that period -- the Arab world refuse to give them citizenships, to keep them suffering and hating. (And the Japanese over some islands.)
My point was that juntas must have external enemies, that is hardly controversial. The West is the popular enemy. The juntas which steal countries probably must demonize the working democracies, to motivate oppressing the slaves' demands for human rights.
(But you can join meric and the juntas in demonizing USA instead? :-) Certainly, realpolitik is dirty even for democracies, no country is perfect.)
- Without an Allied landing, the Soviets would probably have "liberated" all territories occupied by the Nazis
- The UK would probably still be free - but an even more important base for operations against the Soviets than it was in reality
- The US would have felt even more threatened by the Soviets than they did
- A nuclear "Sunday Punch" first strike against the Soviets and all of their occupied territories would have become even more likely (and SAC showed no discrimation in who they would bomb until well into the 60s - the original versions of the SIOP involved bombing everyone who was 'socialist' even if they weren't allies of the Soviets and there was only one plan).
- The UK would have been utterly destroyed by Soviet weapons - but that seems to have been a part of pretty much all Cold War scenarios... :-|
[NB The Soviets on the English Channel is part of the scenario for Charlie Stross's novella "Missile Gap"]
The problem with alternate realities is that no matter how intellectually interesting thinking about them might be we'll never know because we only have this one.
So, bratwurst, borscht or nothing, it's all just fantasy.
One thing is for sure, and common to all those scenarios, in that world anything between the UK and mother Russia would have been in for one hell of a ride.
Not to say that that they didn't assist immensely, but the victory over Hitler wasn't decided by US troops.
The war in the Pacific was a completely different (and somewhat sad) story.
What's less clear is whether it was decided by US _trucks_ and the other material aid the US sent to the USSR during the war (e.g. pretty much all of the aviation fuel the USSR ended up using, a large fraction of their munitions, 2-3x the number of trucks the USSR produced during the war, large numbers of locomotives, etc).
As always, it's hard to figure out counterfactuals (e.g. if Russia had to build the 700k trucks they used during the war instead of the 200k they actually built, how many of the ~100k tanks they built would have remained unbuilt)? But the US, and to a lesser extent the UK, was significantly involved in the logistics of the Eastern Front, even though they had no troops there.