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And so the final imperative of the dominant power of North America is to ensure that this never happens - to keep Eurasia divided among as many different (prefe
by danbruc 11y ago
And so the final imperative of the dominant power of North America is to ensure that this never happens - to keep Eurasia divided among as many different (preferably mutually hostile) powers as possible.
What a disturbing view of the world.
- huac 11y agoDisturbing that Stratfor thinks this, or disturbing to you that they might be right?
- danbruc 11y agoPeople thinking this way, people in relevant positions thinking this way, people trying to implement this and people successfully implementing this in order of increasing unease.
- coldtea 11y agoDisturbing that this is what the US foreign policy does for over half a century, Stratfor aside.
- Armisael16 11y agoSurely this isn't the first time you've encountered this idea? Britain explicitly held this policy for hundreds of years with regards to continental Europe (make sure neither France nor Germany could take over the whole continent).
- danbruc 11y agoSo we should go back to slavery because slavery was thought of as a good idea for a couple thousand years?
- SFLemonade 11y agoWoah! Massive logical jump there!
- danbruc 11y agoWhere is the jump? Something was done in the past, why shouldn't we continue doing so? I of course assumed that the initial comment expressed some degree of endorsement and did not just state facts.
- Malician 11y agoI read no form of endorsement in the comment, but rather a sense that this is a very common tactic in realpolitik throughout history and should not be surprising.
- danbruc 11y agoSo because slavery was common in the past I should not be surprised if someone thinks about slavery today? This makes absolutely no sense. My point doesn't really depend on the endorsement.
- cyorir 11y agoArmisael's comment is not optative; he is not saying that we should be doing something because it has been done in the past, but providing an example of when something was done in the past.
- douche 11y agoDivide an conquer is the oldest trick in the book (except maybe knock them on the head with a bigger rock than they can hit you on the head with). Imperial China repeatedly followed the same policy of trying to keep the outlying nomadic peoples fractured and prevented from uniting under a single leader. The results for the Chinese state were not good when Turkish, Mongol, or Manchu leaders were able to unite the disparate clans under a single banner, to give another example.
- chrismaeda 11y agoYou are disturbed by peace and prosperity?
- venomsnake 11y agoRealpolitik 101. Which is the only kind of politik proven to work with a track record.
- danharaj 11y agoConsidering how many millions of people have suffered due to the enforcement and enlargement of interests of hegemonies through realpolitik, I'd think your assertion at face value is abhorrent. The track is littered with bodies in the wake of imperialists. That's the reality of realpolitik: institutions of power crushing as many people as they need to in order to persist.
- chrismaeda 11y agoAn alternate view, which is well supported by history, is that while empires are created by war, they are very good at bringing peace and prosperity for long periods of time. The Roman Empire delivered peace and prosperity to most of the Mediterranean basin for hundreds of years. The British Empire had a similar track record for a much larger area. So now I'm rooting for the American Empire and the Pax Americana. I would most certainly rather be living in the West (or Westernized parts of Asia), under the aegis of the US military, instead of some third world shithole that does not enjoy security treaties with the Americans.
- tremon 11y ago> while empires are created by war, they are very good at bringing peace and prosperity for long periods of time. For the people /within that empire/. As the NSA and general US foreign policy have made abundantly clear, the US does not consider anyone outside of their national borders "part of the empire". Your last paragraph sums it up nicely. Is "enjoying security treaties with the US" really a prerequisite for a prosperous life? Since no treaty with the US is purely military in nature, that sounds a lot like racketeering.
- chrismaeda 11y ago
- fsloth 11y agoUm, how do you precisely think the rational of the american leadership actually goes then? No country as large as USA operates without holding it's own power as the main goal. What else would the main goal of the foreign policy of USA be then?
- redahs 11y agoPower becomes increasingly ambiguous when discussing large social groupings and divide and conquer is only a tactic. The explicit ideal of American foreign policy is the Jeffersonian idea of an Empire of Liberty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Liberty