One example: in 2000-2001, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela all publicly stated that they would also sell oil in non-US currency (in addition to, of course, selling in dollars).
Instantly all three countries were labeled “axis of evil” status, and our government became very threatening to all three countries (most obviously Venezuela where we did what we could to destabilize their government and parked our navy right off their shore).
I used to think that it was worth our tax payers’ money to enforce US hegemony, but now I don’t think it makes sense anymore for the benefit of the US tax payer. It does benefit the pro-war industries, and if you work in the “defense” industry then I don’t blame you at all if you support our current system.
Anyway, my perspective is that times change, and we should now push back against the continuous war lobby in Washington, and come up for a new plan going into the future that optimizes for prosperity and security. I believe we achieve security by have the best trained and supplied military on the planet, but keep them at home unless Congress agrees to formally declare war, and going to war has some form of public consensus. I want to go back to being a representative democracy.
"For example, consider a country that, wanting to inspire regime change in another country, funds and provides weapons to a group of “moderate rebels.” Only it turns out that those moderate rebels will become powerful and then go to war with the sponsoring country for decades. Whoops."
Unless you want to make it look like a beneficial regime change but your actual wish is long term destabilization of a region ;)
Yeah I suppose to detect a situation like this you'd need to do some sort of meta analysis on changes in how historical narratives are framed versus government policy. Like, maybe some country goes from ally to non ally and then historical narratives around that country shift to a slightly more negative tone. I dunno.
I understand your position but I respectfully think it's unreasonable given that the world isn't aligned on your views, and as such there is competitive struggle between countries. In prior wars, these secretive and competitive advantages were decisive in determining the outcome.
As a US tax payer, would I rather the US use my tax money to keep a competitive edge against would-be competitors? I sure do. Particularly in a world where competitors are authoritarian dictators. If all the other world powers were pacifists and merely had gentlemen's disagreements over minor stuff, perhaps I'd share your views.
Europe tried this with Russia (fossil gas) and still ended up in a bad spot. Trade is important and can be beneficial, but one should still prepare for war if peace is desired. The mental models of some nation state leaders deviates from what one would consider logical. They won’t hesitate to burn what has been built for their goals.
- Japan and Korea were historically enemies. But they've been at peace since WWII, mainly because both have US troops stationed there. Any time tensions flare up, the US does a little diplomacy and they make nice. That will probably continue for a while, even without US troops because both countries value the alliance with the US and don't want to be dominated by China.
- With the US withdrawing from the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is arming its self and allying with Israel (!) to deal with the threat from Iran. Iran, meanwhile is emboldened to attack Saudi oil fields and threaten shipping through the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile Yemen has destabilized, leaving Saudi Arabi to worry about whether it will be able to get access to the Arabian Sea. Hard to predict how this shakes out, but I can't see it being peaceful and stable.
- As soon as the US showed signs of disinterest in Europe, Russia annexed Crimea. With that experiment having been successful, they'll be looking for more opportunities to take back bits of the USSR. Now Europe is arming up to protect themselves from that threat. The catch is that Europe needs oil and natural gas, and that's mainly coming from Russia right now. We may see internal conflict in Europe over whether to be friendlier to Russia to secure that supply, and perhaps increased European presence in the Middle East. Either way, stability in that part of the world has decreased without US willingness to commit troops and money to maintaining it.
I look at it differently (and I admit I could be wrong). I don't view these conglomerates as weapons but rather as baggage holding us back. I think by freeing ourselves from them we'll have a better chance at dominating competing nations. While they do have a lot of resources, it's not often good comes from it. They stifle innovation and lack imagination.
I think as human consciousness, morality, and our understanding of history have evolved, the question we now ask is “Stability for whom?” Certainly not for Latin America during the Cold War, for example.
Those who oppose collaborating with the military do so because “America military hegemony” has been used for all kinds of horrors, including recent events like the Iraq War. There’s nothing naive about not wanting to be party to at least half a million civilian casualties and the destabilization of the Middle East.
You can make some Real Politik argument about the ends justifying the means, if that’s what you truly believe, but you’ll have to do so more explicitly and account for things like Vietnam and the Iraq War. The reductive abstraction of “stability” you pose know longer holds the same kind of sway it once did among most people.
I've got to disagree with a couple of your examples:
* MAD has proven an extremely effective tool for maintaining (relative) peace. It's almost certainly the only reason for the Russian Federation remaining an ongoing concern, and it's been the primary motivator for the continued existence of NATO, which is itself a stabilizing force. If you're a state that wishes to maintain independence, super weapons are a proven approach.
* In the US, we're currently watching a backslide of all sorts of gains made over the last century. History is far from monotonic, and taking progress for granted is a surefire recipe for losing it. In the case of a full-blown regime change, it would not at all be a given that basic things like labor rights were upheld.
I do agree with the first idea. The second one is not always the best line of thought, especially when it's about sovereignty or defense.
Suppose you buy fighter jets from China, but tensions rise and you somehow cut diplomatic ties. How are you going to get maintenance parts. Very inaccurate example but just to illustrate that yes, economically, your idea makes sense. Geopolitically, it depends.
I think your example of SAP is spot on. People see all these news about war, US vs. the world, etc and they take sides, become angry, etc while not questioning the obvious: who is going to have a material gain from this all?
I've become quite a cinic about these things and I think economic power / money will usually be behind most of it. Unfortunately I don't believe in countries helping poor people in remote lands, government worried about killings, pride in being the beacon of democracy, etc. It's all about power and money.
You wrote some jingoist 19th-century bullshit. You're ready to fight in World War 1.
The idea that we need to protect strategic resources is outdated. We continue to do so, at our own detriment. Our sugar costs something like 5x what it costs in the rest of the world, because we place tariffs to keep it from coming in from the Caribbean. We are DESTROYING WEALTH CREATION with this market engineering. It is a tax that we see no benefit from and that is paid to no one.
Increased trade between countries increases stability. Some of my college classmates thought that we were due for a war with China just b/c they're the other huge power. What horseshit--- our mutual trade requires our politicians to play nice and not take any Crassian steps towards war.
If the US actually needed to make sure that we produced all of our strategic resources by ourselves then our economy would be tanked because we wouldn't be taking advantage of factories in BRIC. Do you think we make all the hard drives we would need to sustain a war against the rest of the world?
Good point, and I can’t disagree. I have for a long time largely felt the same way about Europe and Japan re-militarizing on the theory that while it is good to have allies, it is better to have allies armed to the teeth and prepared to defend themselves too if our politics ever took a turn for the stupid and we indulged our isolationist tendencies again.
It is quite hard to think about things knowing that countries can hold multiple contradicting ideas simultaneously. Nothing is entirely correct or incorrect.
for example, true or false: The US started a war against Europe and Russia by blowing up the pipeline. If we look at it like that it is a great success?
Those positions are not mutually exclusive. Rather, it's more of an ultimatum. "Spend more on our collective defense and reduce your dependence on our adversaries, or we'll no longer be allies."
No, the advent of or call for protectionist policies and increased xenophobia in not just Europe with large-scale international wars being fought all around the war is a sign of something changing.
It used to be that these wars were more of a concern and on the news and would spark attention from more than just the countries involved especially given the areas they are in such as Ukraine, Syria, etc.
Instantly all three countries were labeled “axis of evil” status, and our government became very threatening to all three countries (most obviously Venezuela where we did what we could to destabilize their government and parked our navy right off their shore).
I used to think that it was worth our tax payers’ money to enforce US hegemony, but now I don’t think it makes sense anymore for the benefit of the US tax payer. It does benefit the pro-war industries, and if you work in the “defense” industry then I don’t blame you at all if you support our current system.
Anyway, my perspective is that times change, and we should now push back against the continuous war lobby in Washington, and come up for a new plan going into the future that optimizes for prosperity and security. I believe we achieve security by have the best trained and supplied military on the planet, but keep them at home unless Congress agrees to formally declare war, and going to war has some form of public consensus. I want to go back to being a representative democracy.
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