Who said I'm trying to justify anything? I don't think it is justifiable to do during peacetime.
But obviously an existential crisis is not the time that many governments stand on their principles, which is why 'war powers' tend to be justified under extenuating circumstances when countries end up at war.
There is no question, if there is another major war between world powers, they will invoke the authority to compel their industries to cooperate with the effort. If they don't, they'll quickly cease to exist.
To drill into a point of my quoted assertion: "You don't go to war without support from your trading partners." A world war is an exceptional case. I meant to point at national conflicts, specifically between equals. I think having to defend your ally is a separate problem.
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.
I'm not sure I understand your argument. Are you claiming that countries don't go to war because to do so is irrational? Because that clearly contradicts reality, countries do go to war.
I have no issue with the existence of a military cooperation agreement to defend each other in the event of war breaking out, and fail to see how it would be a bad idea.
I'm sure people do, but they're wrong. There are always situations in which the use of force is rationally self interested. As such, as long as those situations exist, a rational people will maintain and use war capability. Asking people not to go to war is asking them to put emotion (empathy) above rationality. You can do it to a degree, but only to an extent.
Indeed, US hegemony is good for peace. You can eliminate the rational self interest in going to war by imposing an external cost to going to war (like any negative externality). That's the role the US serves. Its military machine implicitly backs things like international sanctions that are punishment for anti-social behavior.
Besides the points made already, it's IMO misleading to think about what's rational for a country as a whole. A war can be rational for the coalition in power in one of the countries without it being expected-positive-sum even for that country. (Never mind pure mistakes.) This is historically common, I'd guess more common than not.
It bugs me that thinking of states as rational actors is called "foreign policy realism".
> Country A does not fight random country B for no reason.
No, they usually don't. But countries, nations, and people often have very long lasting disagreements. Instrumentalizing those, for another "bigger" cause isn't really that hard of a task for the far more influential and powerful countries C and D.
C and D end up supplying A and B with money, weapons, training and sometimes even direct manpower.
The result is usually a conflict that escalates much more quickly in scope and severity than it would have without the involvement of C and D.
Your rationale makes sense in a paradise world where there are no wars and no countries vying for hegemony. There is an immense national security aspect and domestic economic situation you are ignoring which could not be anymore relevant today.
I was seeing it as a conflict primarily because the world does not provide us with an infinite supply of resources or human capital. This pumping can therefore only work to the extent that it can generate some medium-long term real ROI. Otherwise you get an eventual deflationary collapse when waves of debt defaults occur because nothing anywhere is generating a return sufficient to maintain payments on your also-inflating asset prices. (See also: house prices vs. median income in major cities.)
The conflict, therefore, is being fought by major powers via their ability to generate real ROI. It's a game of chicken. The loser is the one who deflates first and gets purchased by the winners.
Cooperative behavior is not mutually exclusive with this hypothesis. It's in the best interest of individuals within all of these major super-states to hedge by investing in the others. Whether or not this overcomes the game of chicken aspect and leads to a win/win/win outcome depends on whether we can all -- collectively -- scale and grow or whether limits to growth are reached.
The real answer is that this isn't about morality.
It's a pretext to roll back globalization, which the Powers that Be were on track to implement since the before Covid times. War is just convenient as a pretext.
Why must war be against countries? The types of activities being carried out in Yemen, Pakistan, etc, if state sanctioned, would be justification for war. Does the fact that Yemen and Pakistan can't police themselves internally enough to stop these activities make military retaliation unjustified? Would you feel better if we just declared war on Yemen and Pakistan?
Noble intentions and I agree with you it should be avoided, but again I’m confused that you’re suggesting that morality is the major driver for the actions or inactions of nations around the world when it comes to war. It probably is the major driver for most people as you say, but geopolitics simply don’t work that way.
Why would you conflate hostile foreign power and being at war? There is a difference here between necessary and sufficient conditions. The presence of hostile foreign powers with whom we are not at war is evidence enough.
yeah, I agree in this case. But maybe with a more rational actor this would prove effective. Or maybe I'm deluding myself because rational actors don't launch wars to begin with.
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.
I support Mearsheimer's reasoning because there is a logic behind it. There are no scientists that would provide an opposite reasoning as logical as the Mearsheimer's one.
> CATO Institute is fucking dumb :)
¯\_(?)_/¯
> Do you believe it's right for a country to invade a neighbouring country in the 21st century?
I do not support wars. But you can't ask a question like that. It doesn't make sense.
War is a mechanism for dispute resolution. Yes, we, people, don't like such mechanisms. But such is the life. These mechanisms are used by the US all the time. The US shows the world that this mechanism can be used. So, the US can, but Russia can't? It doesn't even matter whether it's Russia or any other country.
In the case of Russian-Ukrainian war, the dispute that the war is trying to resolve comes from the expansion of NATO and military bases next to the Russian borders. No expansion -> no war.
> Do you believe it's right for a country to invade a neighbouring country in the 21st century?
It doesn't matter which century we are in. The society hasn't reached a state in which a fairly complex dispute can be resolved without a war. Right now there is no state in which war is an impossible option. To make it more clear, for example, we are in a state in which the humanity cannot travel with the speed of light. We are simply not there yet. When it comes to wars, we are in state in which a war is a possibility.
When Putin asked the US (early 2000s) why NATO is expanding, they just mumbled some bullshit in response. How can military bases across the world create peace? You can't create peace by throwing weapon around the world. There will always be someone who won't like it.
The US should've take Putin more seriously in the first place, but they kept belittling his requests to stop the expansion for 15+ years.
But obviously an existential crisis is not the time that many governments stand on their principles, which is why 'war powers' tend to be justified under extenuating circumstances when countries end up at war.
There is no question, if there is another major war between world powers, they will invoke the authority to compel their industries to cooperate with the effort. If they don't, they'll quickly cease to exist.
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