271–280 of 400 posts
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…
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Because politics and circumstance.
Which implies that they do not care about "dictatorships".
The hypocrisy is clear, but hypocrisy is not sufficient to prove that one does not care at all.
What is pretty clear is that the USA takes a strategic and occasionally very partisan view when making their choices of alliances as well as their use of power and force. I'm not sure they are very unique in this respect though.
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Which implies that they do not care about "dictatorships".
I think that there are strong tendencies and actions towards democracies where convienent and possible. Unfortunately the world is a messy place — ideological purity gets you no where.
While I also disagree with the parent, these facts are not in evidence.
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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.
But no-one (for other than ideological purposes) ever mistook the US for a fundamentally peaceable nation (internally or externally).
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>As of now the US have the greatest army, but if let’s say China were to prepare for it for enough time in a somewhat stealthy way, couldn’t it bring the USA into a long and dirty foght ? Well, this is one of the reasons a Great War is unlikely - how are you going to do this? Even if you build things up slowly, you still have to store them somewhere. You have to train people. There is no way to create a military forc…
And it's not going to get very far before the nuclear option gets trotted out. What good is an invasion force if the other side feels threatened enough to start nuclear retaliation?
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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.
Trump has an extraordinary ability to do and say whatever is to his momentary perceived advantage. He's excellent at creating scary distractions; note how the sinister migrant caravan, so dangerous as to require thousands of US troops on the border, became a non-issue as soon as the election was over.
There are many who have made the case that Trump is a clear authoritarian. Today there's a great thread from David Neiwart on the topic: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1062018162500153344.html
And authoritarians definitely love external threats, creating them as necessary, just as Trump did with the migrant caravan.
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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…
Hamas is bombing Israel, not the Syrian Army. Hamas chose Saudi Arabia's and Qatar's side on the Syrian conflict and that lead to Assad breaking relations with them. Syria took it as a betrayal so I doubt they would do anything to help Hamas. Israel is not bombing Syria to defend itself. Syria never had and nor will have the capability to do anything to Israel. The reason Israel have been bombing Syria is the same re…
You're forgetting about the Six-Day War [1] and the Yom Kippur War [2]. Yes, there are controversies around those too, and Israel came out on top in the end - but let's not pretend that Israel the modern nation-state hasn't been on guard against being obliterated by its neighbors since Day 1.
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Another great war could mean at least one country preparing for it and building weapons in advance. As of now the US have the greatest army, but if let’s say China were to prepare for it for enough time in a somewhat stealthy way, couldn’t it bring the USA into a long and dirty foght ?
>As of now the US have the greatest army, but if let’s say China were to prepare for it for enough time in a somewhat stealthy way, couldn’t it bring the USA into a long and dirty foght ? Well, this is one of the reasons a Great War is unlikely - how are you going to do this? Even if you build things up slowly, you still have to store them somewhere. You have to train people. There is no way to create a military forc…
Trained via software updates and built under the guise of something innocent like 'gardener bots'
>authoritarian revisionist powers such as China and Russia "Revisionist" in what sense?
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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.
You're setting a high bar for belligerence. The US is diplomatically & militarily sophisticated enough that it frequently exercises rational restraint. It also is an admirably open society, undergoing strategic policy shifts as internal arguments get won and lost. But no-one (for other than ideological purposes) ever mistook the US for a fundamentally peaceable nation (internally or externally).