251–260 of 400 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what it is speaking to me is It seems there is a war against Radical religious terrorists which is stateless and more regional, and stopping dictators.
As long as Saudi Arabia is one of Americas "greatest" allies there is no leg to stand on arguing any aspect of US foreign policy involves a moral war against totalitarianism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it laughable that you completely disregarded USA as one of the other "aggressive, belligerent" countries out there...
Actually this is debatable. The USA has the first military power in the whole world and could go and invade a bunch of countries if they wanted to and nobody would oppose them. Since they are not doing so, its hard to call them belligerent. The British Empire was way worse than the USA all things considered.
I wonder what kinds of things history will be saying about the United States in 200 years, a nation who probably didn't take the brutish British approach to invasion, but has tripwire forces-I mean "installations" dotted all over everyone else's back yards instead.
This article does appear to conclude many points on the premise of nationalism and it’s varied outcomes. Nationalism has only existed for not much more than 200 years which is not very long at all compared to all of human history. In the USA we are given this notion that these ideas are a solid foundation but I tend to think that America is very young and most national concepts are still very experimental. It will ta…
I can't read Greek or Latin so I don't have access to the primary sources, but it is my understanding that nationalism was a prevalent part of political life in antiquity, particularly from the death of Alexander through to the end of the Roman empire, and reemerged in Europe around the same time as absolutism. In many ways, the United States, and to a larger extent the West, has significantly more in common with the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forgot to mention Israel's aggression on adjacent countries Lebanon and Palestine. Would Israel's constant belligerence start a war?
I'm not aware of Israel making it a matter of national policy to annihilate Iran or any other country. However, that is Iran's stated policy, and what they've said they'll do when they get nukes. https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2018/04/21/Iranian-g... Iran is training proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine to attack Israel. And that's what they're doing. They just launched a missile barrage, the largest eve…
>Iran is training proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine to attack Israel.
while Israel helps ISIS in Syria to destroy the country, bombed Lebanon, annexed the Golans and areas in the West Bank... you really shouldn't be digging up that dead high horse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you really sure that the US is undisputed in those 4 categories? A list of obvious weaknesses: * The US economy and industrial power is dependent on IT and brittle supply chains. Nobody knows how much the cyber infrastructure holding this up is already compromised. * Russian S-400s can already deny air superiority to Israeli planes, which are not far behind US planes. * How does the US have space superiority when…
I can happily go point by point here, but my original comment wasn't intended to suggest I agreed with the current state of world military balance and shouldn't be taken as implicit support of US policy. That said - * The S-400 is an impressive system. The Russians have so built ~300 of them, and like any system, the soft factors are more important than the paper facts suggest. Training, deployment, doctrine, and str…
Yes, the initial superiority of one military is greater by a large margin and will remain that way for some time to come. But I think it's misleading wording to say it "has room to improve its lead", simply due to the fact that emerging powers are improving a greater rate, and it's economically unreasonable to believe otherwise.
Plus, no individual actor made the decision to plunge their mighty military power into the conflagration that became WWI.
I keep reading articles on the argument that carriers CAN be sunk. One article argued that only a nuclear attack could do it, but its argument was unsubstantiated. Swarm tactics and drone warfare are emerging game-changers in conventional warfare. More than anything, initial phases of WWIII would be missile warfare. Carrier groups can defend against hypersonic, but cannot do so reliably.
Combine this with a risky false impression - that war could be contained regionally. Would the symbolism of sinking a carrier be enough to have the U.S. back out of the contested East Asian theaters?
I can't answer that question, and it worries me that I can't. If the answer was certain either way, war would be less likely. As it stands, I could see certain gambles being both plausible, and terrifyingly dangerous.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it laughable that you completely disregarded USA as one of the other "aggressive, belligerent" countries out there...
Actually this is debatable. The USA has the first military power in the whole world and could go and invade a bunch of countries if they wanted to and nobody would oppose them. Since they are not doing so, its hard to call them belligerent. The British Empire was way worse than the USA all things considered.
What?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not aware of Israel making it a matter of national policy to annihilate Iran You jest. That's the centerpiece of their foreign policy.
Asking the world to dethrone and delegitimize a country - even without the context of Iran's posture towards them - is different from genocide, which is Iran's posture, yes.
Nationalism. This has been rising up like a plague in recent years and it isn't going away any time soon. When ego and emotion come into play, the question of what is the point because a matter of pride and the point is just to win regardless of the costs.
I feel this is too reductive in some senses. WWI was a war directed by imperialists sacrificing other people's children to profitier and try to grab power and influence for the elites in each country. Yes some elites did demonstrate egoism and inflame predjudice but that's the show for the rubes to get them to sacrifice their children and labor for the imperial project. Egoist leaders can only get their way if theirp…
Or to make this concrete, the prime minister of the UK in 1914 (and through 1916) was H. H. Asquith. Looking at the wikipedia articles about his sons:
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Asquith -- killed in action in 1916.
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Asquith_(poet) -- served in the artillery in the British Army.
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Asquith -- wounded four times, lost a leg.
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Asquith,_Baron_Asquith_o... -- was in the army, but not on the Western Front.
5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Asquith -- was 12 years old when the war started, 16 when it ended: too young to serve.
I have a hard time seeing Asquith here as "sacrificing other people's children", or at least any more so than sacrificing his own.
That said, I agree that there's way more war-making going on recently than there should be and that it's no longer in style for the upper class to actually put their own skins on the line. But WWI is just not a good example of that tendency.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually this is debatable. The USA has the first military power in the whole world and could go and invade a bunch of countries if they wanted to and nobody would oppose them. Since they are not doing so, its hard to call them belligerent. The British Empire was way worse than the USA all things considered.
Since they are not doing so, its hard to call them belligerent I wonder what kinds of things history will be saying about the United States in 200 years, a nation who probably didn't take the brutish British approach to invasion, but has tripwire forces-I mean "installations" dotted all over everyone else's back yards instead.