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Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

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Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#281

Post by Latteland »

elboru wrote: post #261
ekianjo wrote: post #247

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.

Well they've done it, remember when they took half Mexico?

Yeah, the us invaded mexico in the 1800s and 1900s, and murdered millions of native americans, and uncountable lynching against black people.

Mexico came a long time ago, we aren't doing stuff like that anymore. Except when we invade small countries like panama, that we still do.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#282

Post by Latteland »

tomohawk wrote: post #198
wpietri wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'd add that it need only be a solution to the person who can start the war. Authoritarian leaders find fights with external enemies extremely useful to quash dissent. Given the global drift toward authoritarianism and nationalism, and especially given how the world's largest military is in the hands of an authoritarian, I think the risk for war is disturbingly high.

Was Obama an authoritarian? What about Bush? What about Clinton (Bill)? The previous few presidents got the US involved in lots of stupid wars. This president has expressly said he doesn't want to do that and has avoided it.

Obama was not an authoritarian. Bush 2 was maybe a little bit (remember after 9/11 and the spokesman said don't question the president). But trump is far far past all recent presidents in being an authoritarian. He lives for that, and sucks up to leaders like that in other countries. He says he doesn't want to get us in a war, but he seems willing to do anything to divert public attention (like his recent completely racist tv commercial he was pushing before the election).

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#283

Post by VonGuard »

raprp wrote: post #196
tomohawk wrote: post #148

The thing about war is that at some point, the conditions line up where it becomes seen as a solution (if not the only solution), and its not easy to see the point at which that will occur ahead of time. Will China's big sea grab start a war? So far, they've been able to smother any of their neighbor's push back, and have just ignored any international rulings against them. What about when they invade Taiwan, which t…

USA's bombing list for the last 20 years alone speaks for itself: Sudan 1998 Afghanistan 1998 Yugoslavia 1999 Yemen 2002 Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis) Iraq 2003-2015 Afghanistan 2001-2015 Pakistan 2007-2015 Somalia 2007-8, 2011 Yemen 2009, 2011 Libya 2011, 2015 Syria 2014-2016

Go back further and the US has been involved in overseas conflicts every year save for one year in the 1800's when we had a major steel strike, here.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#284

Post by api »

The reason I've been concerned about this for a while is our degree of economic imbalance. War is historically the solution when things get like this. It's a way of selling Keynesianism to conservatives as well as a way to redistribute wealth through high taxes to fund war production.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#285

Post by factsaresacred »

raprp wrote: post #196
tomohawk wrote: post #148

The thing about war is that at some point, the conditions line up where it becomes seen as a solution (if not the only solution), and its not easy to see the point at which that will occur ahead of time. Will China's big sea grab start a war? So far, they've been able to smother any of their neighbor's push back, and have just ignored any international rulings against them. What about when they invade Taiwan, which t…

USA's bombing list for the last 20 years alone speaks for itself: Sudan 1998 Afghanistan 1998 Yugoslavia 1999 Yemen 2002 Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis) Iraq 2003-2015 Afghanistan 2001-2015 Pakistan 2007-2015 Somalia 2007-8, 2011 Yemen 2009, 2011 Libya 2011, 2015 Syria 2014-2016

Tell us, what territory was the US annexing in these attacks?

And while they were saving Muslims from genocide in the Balkans, what islands did they steal?

Not all acts of war are the same.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#286

Post by factsaresacred »

dvtrn wrote: post #252
ekianjo wrote: post #247

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.

Gratitude, I hope.

Without the US, the world would be a sh*tshow. The tripwire bases prevent the likes of Russia putting its paws on Eastern Europe or China snatching more islands they claim as there own.

Back when the Serbs were genociding their Muslim citizens, Europe was inept while the US saved the day, as usual.

The US enjoys the status quo - most military interventions are to maintain it.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#287

Post by tareqak »

mistermann wrote: post #243
tareqak wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how nationalism includes international cooperation. At best, it seems to me that international cooperation is a choice a nationalist might consider amongst protectionism, isolationism, imperialism/colonialism, and outright xenophobia.

Do nationalists not engage in mutually beneficial trade out of spite or something? Is there historical evidence of this?

You can see the Wikipedia page for isolationism or any of the other *isms I listed above [0]. To say that there was no beneficial mutual trade in at least some of the cases is probably a stretch.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolationism

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#288

Post by ebullientocelot »

geggam wrote: post #126
us-throw1 wrote: post #19

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…

As a note the #1 complaint I hear in veterans groups is the frustration of not having a clear enemy. Turn the military loose and Afghanistan will resemble a parking lot full of very submissive people. Soldiers in combat have tighter rules of engagement with the enemy than US Police force have to follow when interacting with citizens. Let that sink in.

Amen. Overseas positive identification and rules of engagement were drilled into our heads constantly, driven home by threats of prosecution for murder/war crimes if you got it wrong. Despite the fact that Tommy Taliban loved to fire at us from crowds in markets and the windows of school buildings, US forces did a remarkable job of restraint. This is not to say that mistakes weren't made, or that certain groups didn't do things that they most certainly should not have, but by and large I would much rather trust US infantry to not shoot me than the Pittsburgh Police in a confusing situation.

That said, during those rare moments of clarity on the Afghan battlefield, there was zero doubt with respect to the outcome.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#289

Post by puranjay »

ekianjo wrote: post #247
qsdevacc wrote: post #206

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.

> nobody would oppose them

Except the local militias that would inevitably form, and would cause considerable losses on the US side, leading to poor public appetite for war

See: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#290

Post by goatsi »

AlanSE wrote: post #255
AcerbicZero wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Due to morbid curiosity or whatever, I can't get enough of these arguments. 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 indi…

Carriers are not invincible, submarines have gotten clear views of them before in military exercises, let alone missile swarms. The strongest defense a US carrier group has is the fact that there are 10 other carrier groups distributed around the world.

I think anyone who thinks that inflicting a sharp defeat on the US in the pacific would crush public morale and push it into a negotiated peace would have to be a very poor student of history.

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