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"No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

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Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#151

Post by nostrademons »

AdamH12113 wrote: post #104
nostrademons wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all depends on victory conditions. The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back into the stone age and the existing governments fell. But WW2 was fought as the U.S. was an ascendant (but not dominant) power among a number of peer rivals, and the U.S. was not the aggressor. It felt like a victory, because we emerged as the dominant p…

The government of North Korea did not fall or surrender. You can argue that it was a political win if the goal was defending South Korea, but militarily, it was a stalemate. North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam after we withdrew. It was in no way a victory for the United States. Afghanistan was arguably pretty similar, although we did install a new government while we were there. Germany and Japan, on the other hand…

The government of North & South Korea that I'm speaking of was Japan.

The government of North & South Vietnam that I'm speaking of was France.

Acknowledged on the undercount of U.S. casualties in Iraq. It doesn't change my conclusion, though.

There's a sibling comment by delecti that's making the point that I'm driving at: what is the goal of war? Is it regime change? Is it to sell arms? Is it to kill people? If it's regime change, war in general is a remarkably ineffective way of doing that - it's pretty rare that the victorious powers get the government they actually want, otherwise we would never have had to fight WW2. If it's killing people or feeding the military-industrial complex, the U.S. was pretty good at that in all the wars listed.

Incidentally, Vietnam is currently one of the most capitalist countries on Earth. So politically, the communists were defeated. All we had to do was let them govern the country for 15 years and everybody realized they didn't want communism.

Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#152

Post by herval »

michaelt wrote: post #143
nostrademons wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all depends on victory conditions. The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back into the stone age and the existing governments fell. But WW2 was fought as the U.S. was an ascendant (but not dominant) power among a number of peer rivals, and the U.S. was not the aggressor. It felt like a victory, because we emerged as the dominant p…

> The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back into the stone age and the existing governments fell. I feel you're overlooking the critical fact that after the allies won WW2, Nazis didn't control Germany. Whereas the Taliban remains in control of Afghanistan. To describe that as a US win doesn't really seem accurate. The US did print a…

WW2 is an exceptional case in that it’s one of extremely few wars where the winners and losers are universally acknowledged

Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#153

Post by herval »

scotty79 wrote: post #91
nostrademons wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all depends on victory conditions. The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back into the stone age and the existing governments fell. But WW2 was fought as the U.S. was an ascendant (but not dominant) power among a number of peer rivals, and the U.S. was not the aggressor. It felt like a victory, because we emerged as the dominant p…

I don't think any other country considers any of those cases to be wins ... Perhaps maybe wars in Iraq or Jugoslavia. I think eventual loss in Ukraine will be last nail in the coffin of US military reputation.

Tangent to all that - whether the US reputation will change or not, it’s becoming clear the russian military reputation is way, way overestimated. I’m curious what effect this will have

Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#154

Post by nostrademons »

dmurray wrote: post #100
nostrademons wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all depends on victory conditions. The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back into the stone age and the existing governments fell. But WW2 was fought as the U.S. was an ascendant (but not dominant) power among a number of peer rivals, and the U.S. was not the aggressor. It felt like a victory, because we emerged as the dominant p…

> The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back into the stone age and the existing governments fell. This might be taught in US schools, but outside the US we have a rather different take on how the Vietnam war ended - the US-backed government fell and the North Vietnamese government took over the rest of the country. And we learned that…

Sure, I agree with all of that.

I'm arguing that this is the wrong litmus test for judging the winners of war, because war is an ineffective way of achieving regime change in the first place. Even in cases where it looks like a country "wins" a war by "defeating" their opponents, they usually collapse from the inside and then the true winners are those that either take advantage of the chaos to seize power, or stay out of the war entirely. The allies were victorious in WW1 - yet the government they wanted stayed in power for barely 10 years, and then we got Hitler and WW2. Russia was part of the victorious allies in WW1, but the country collapsed and the communists took over. The communists were the official victors of the Vietnam war, but Vietnam is now one of the most capitalist countries on earth, and so politically they were defeated by economics and not war.

Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#155

Post by mikeyouse »

hef19898 wrote: post #133
scotty79 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US isn’t fighting in Ukraine Same way that russia is not fighting a war but commencing special military operation. US is doing it with both hands tied behind their back but it will make defeat no less devastating. In reality US is fighting their penultimate war right now if it ends in a loss. > what was considered to be the 2nd or 3rd strongest army on the planet.. That was summarily debunked about two weeks in…

How much active fighting troops do NATO countries have in Ukraine, exactly? You need those to be counted a belligerent in a conflict.

It’s utterly bizarre that people keep insisting the US is fighting a war given we have zero troops and zero military hardware committed there.. Ukraine has destroyed hundreds of armored units and multiple $billion naval ships with literal 25-yr old weapons… all the fear of WWIII is premised on the US actually engaging since the Russians would suffer immediate and massive losses and the only way to save face would be to go nuclear.

Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#156

Post by mr_toad »

kriro wrote: post #102
nostrademons wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all depends on victory conditions. The U.S. "won" Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan in the same sense that they "won" WW2 - those countries were bombed back into the stone age and the existing governments fell. But WW2 was fought as the U.S. was an ascendant (but not dominant) power among a number of peer rivals, and the U.S. was not the aggressor. It felt like a victory, because we emerged as the dominant p…

In my opinion, this is a misrepresentation of the Vietnam war. The country was not "bombed back into the stone age". The U.S. merely used extremely despicable tactics like Agent Orange, My Lai etc. I'm also not aware of the existing Vietnamese government falling (depends on which one you consider the existing one but it was not the government the U.S. wanted to fall that fell). The country resisted a superior invader…

If it was simply the case of a country resisting an invader then why did the winning side engage in a bit of ethnic cleansing of their ‘own’ people after the invaders had left?

Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#157

Post by black_13 »

KMag wrote: post #50
pomian wrote: post #30

One of the ideas that seems to be missed from the study of history and economy, was the effect on the total destruction of the Japanese and German industrial base - during WWII. Britain and USA, were left with their archaic industrial systems. After WWII, the Japanese and the German steel industry had to be completely reborn. (At the cost of primarily USA financing.) Those two countries had no more relics of the past…

See the movie "The Mouse That Roared". Having seen the results of Germany and Japan being bombed and rebuilt by the US, a small fictional country comes up with the brilliant development plan of intentionally starting and losing a war with the US. Spoiler alert: they end up having to deal with the tragedy of accidentally winning the war. As I recall, part of it was they just assumed their generals would lose, so the g…

[dead]

Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#158

Post by ponector »

voidfunc wrote: post #148
fosk wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe someone can clarify this to me: wasn’t US help essentially given as a loan that would carry interest and repayments? Or was it given for free with the agreement that they would follow a US-inspired democratic system and be allies (and in exchange of trade agreements)? Were military bases in those countries given as a repayment, perhaps in addition to repaying the loans? But even then, isn’t the US paying rent f…

The repayment is that we took over the defense of Europe and basically eliminated the pre-war European powers as global competitors. This gives us tremendous leverage to do whatever the fuck we want either unilaterally or by coercing our European client-states to act on our behalf. Europe deciding to light itself on fire twice in the last century is the best thing that ever happened to America.

There were reparations payed to the USA and then there were repayment of the loans provided as aid within Marshall plan.

Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#159

Post by specialist »

nostrademons wrote: post #151
AdamH12113 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government of North Korea did not fall or surrender. You can argue that it was a political win if the goal was defending South Korea, but militarily, it was a stalemate. North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam after we withdrew. It was in no way a victory for the United States. Afghanistan was arguably pretty similar, although we did install a new government while we were there. Germany and Japan, on the other hand…

The government of North & South Korea that I'm speaking of was Japan. The government of North & South Vietnam that I'm speaking of was France. Acknowledged on the undercount of U.S. casualties in Iraq. It doesn't change my conclusion, though. There's a sibling comment by delecti that's making the point that I'm driving at: what is the goal of war? Is it regime change? Is it to sell arms? Is it to kill people? If it's…

Yes and: maintaining an Empire (Hegemony) requires Forever War. Were USA to achieve a Von Clauswitz style victory, Pax Americana would quickly implode.

Re: "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel

#160

Post by yreg »

aslgbb wrote: post #125

Ticker symbol is "X". I wonder who gets that when US Steel is no longer traded . . .

I jokingly discussed with friends that we have to buy some when Elon renamed Twitter with the idea that people are going to invest thinking it's Elon's X.

Not sure if that happened but the stock went up quite a bit since then.

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