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Comment by jqm | Hacker News Reader

Europe's management has it's own set of problems.

I might add, Europe has also been at war for most of the time it has been inhabited. Just because parts of Europe have taken a break for the last 60 years doesn't negate this.

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I expect that it'd be difficult to find any major region in the entire history of the world with 60 years without war.

Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if that was even built in to humans on a sociological level. The recurring need for sword/spear/arrow/cannon fodder has been a socially acceptable way to prevent accumulation of an excess of (male) population. As soon as there are too many disgruntled people, those in power start to worry. Sending this cumbersome segment of population off to be killed has been, historically, a perfectly valid way to deal with the problem. (It has also provided a very convenient way to direct attention away from domestic problems.)

Nature shows the same tendency. When a local population of a species grows too great, lack of resources forces some of them to migrate outside their "normal" region. The inhabitants of the regions under invasion fight back, and eventually things return to an equilibrium.

I'm pretty sure a bunch of old realms having long time land disputes and family feuds and ethnic disavowals for over a thousand years is different from an industrial military complex that keeps conjuring up wars for oil and to keep itself well-oiled, and worse yet stirs its fat finger in the world's cup in the name of self-righteous capitalism.

I wouldn't call the hundred years war, Napoleon, WWI and II family feuds or minor family/ethnic land disputes.

Europe also has a long and bloody history. Sadly it seems violence and tribalism are intrinsic to the human condition. Hopefully we fix this at some point.

(I'm not trying to justify the actions of the US incidentally. I don't approve of war for profit. But it is hardly the first time an empire has engaged in wars of profit.)

I think the u.s. Has been at war for all but 21 years of its existence. I could be wrong - it was a stat from a website with an agenda.

That's nonsense. The US was not involved in armed conflict from 1920 (end of involvement in the Russian Civil War) to 1941 (start of <edit: American involvement in> WWII). That's 21 years right there. Maybe they're saying that 21 years was the longest period between military conflicts.

> The US was not involved in armed conflict from 1920 (end of involvement in the Russian Civil War) to 1941

Except (among others):

1) The US intervention in the insurgency in Cuba (the "Sugar Intervention") which ran from 1917-1922.

2) The US intervention in China from about 1922-1927.

3) The use of the US military to clear the protesting "Bonus Army" of US veterans in Washington D.C. in 1932.

There may be 21 years without armed conflict by the US in its history, but they aren't 21 years in a row.

I think you're stretching the term "armed conflict" beyond any reasonable usage. Would you consider Indonesia to be engaged in "armed conflict" in Lebanon because they contribute troops to UN peacekeeping there (UNIFIL)?

The original commenter is trying to compare the number of years the US was involved in military conflicts vs. Europe. If you're going to include events as obscure as the sugar intervention (of which I found very little mention in books about Cuban history and US/Caribbean relations) then I doubt the comparison would be very meaningful.

UNIFIL isn't an intervention as (like in China where the intervention was to protect US, etc., imperial interest in Shanghai from groups directly targeting them) or on behalf of (as in Cuba, where the intervention was directly on behalf of the government against rebels) a principal belligerent, so I think the attempted analogy fails.

It was a relatively quiet patch in the warring , but a quick look at Wikipedia shows a fair few conflicts during that period including fighting internally against native Americans. Civil unrest with military action, landing troops to protect foreign interests which included shelling and shooting. It all depends how you define armed conflict. I'd say soldiers and guns = armed conflict. Others would say that a declaration of war was required. Have a look at this Wikipedia list of military actions - it may not be outright war, but it wasn't peace. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mil...

1941 was not the start of WWII. It started in 1939.

Not if you're Chinese, or Abyssinian.

The conflicts that became WWII started at different times in different places.

Yes, but the question is how many years has the United States not been at war. The US did not enter WWII until 1941.

What problems, btw? Surely nothing even close to the scope of the u.s.

Riots is Spain and France. Civil war in Ukraine. Faltering Euro...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/08/spain-one-bn-on...

Problems are all over the world. Europe has them too and more may be coming. Going to Europe won't remove a person from problems. It will simply switch one set of problems for another.

I might add... the US is a big and diverse country. Things that might be a problem in one area are not a problem in another. Don't agree with the international military actions of the US? Well... I agree. The US is too quick to use violence usually and doesn't take a long term view. But this is often done (as of late) with the secret approval of the managers of Europe who generally also benefit from this aggressive stance.

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