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I think the fact that the US is engaged in open warfare around the world has a lot to do with it. Russia has its problems - but it hasn't deployed $Trillions o
by mmjaa 9y ago
I think the fact that the US is engaged in open warfare around the world has a lot to do with it. Russia has its problems - but it hasn't deployed $Trillions of military assets around the world in order to project power, like the USA has.
That has definitely got to count for something.
- taf2 9y agoTrue they just invade their neighboring countries and say the people living in those places wanted them to help
- meri_dian 9y agoWhen was the last time the US invaded a "neighboring" country?
- zimpenfish 9y agoPanama (1989) was an invasion with troops. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Panama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...
- meri_dian 9y agoYes, almost 30 years ago the US invaded Panama to depose a dictator who had turned Panama into an international money laundering and drug smuggling center.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- zimpenfish 9y agoWell, you did ask...
- mmjaa 9y ago.. and more to the point, it didn't work. Panama is still a festering cesspool of money laundering and drug trafficking. Its just that, the USA has its hand in the pie now. And that is the true reason for that heinous war.
- DonHopkins 9y agoOperation Just Cause (we felt like it)
- mmjaa 9y agoThe USA has a policy of not invading local countries, because they're too close to home. So, its mostly power projection "fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them .. here". Really, this is a fundamental issue to understand. USA is not a peace-bringing nation - it is a war-projection nation. In the same way that one can use fire to fight fires, the USA thinks its war-making is actually bringing peace to the world. I know - it doesn't make any sense. But, the military-industrial complex which runs the USA doesn't care if you think it makes sense. It only cares about dropping bombs, clearing the shelves of inventory with short half lives, and replacing it with new inventory. EDIT: the claim that USA's wars are "just, righteous wars" is highly specious and, frankly, risible. The USA has toppled more democratically elected officials than any other nation in the history of mankind. I urge you to consider the hubris of the statement: "the USA only fights good wars", because there is fiction, and there is fact. The fact is, a lot of people in democratic societies around the world feel that the USA hasn't fought a good war since WW2, and in fact that the opposite is true: the USA fights to put its own dictators into power. Even a casual investigation of this fact yields more than enough evidence to support the statement: the USA is up to no good.
- meri_dian 9y agoThe wars the US has involved itself in post-WW2 have almost always been wars with the aim of: 1. Preventing the spread of Soviet backed Authoritarian Communism. 2. Removing brutal dictators from power. Both noble and justifiable goals.
- pyrale 9y agoCan you define "almost" more clearly ? I'm not going to judge the people that did it, bceause it was another time, but I hope the US public opinion has evolved so that some of US antics in that period could not happen now. e.g.: involvement in the fall of Mossadegh, support to the Pinochet regime, support to the Shaddam regime, including the sale of chemical weapons during the Iran-Irak war, support to the contras...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- batushka 9y agoUsually it's a salvation to be occupied by US compared to Russia - they just kill, steal and trash territory making it doomed (Transnistria, Osetia, Ukraine teritories, Kuril islands) - a true Mordor.
- mmjaa 9y agoSo .. where is all that good ol' American-supported living in .. Libya? Syria? Iraq? Afghanistan? Cambodia? Pakistan? Yemen? Nigeria?
- josephjrobison 9y agoJapan Germany South Korea Every Western nation supported by the Marshall plan You're right, but it goes both ways and not 100% one way or the other
- mmjaa 9y agoYeah, the USA did do some good for the world. 80 years ago. But what it is doing today is a terrible, atrocious tragedy, and its far beyond the point where the means justify the ends. I mean that as someone who follows closely the cost of American warfare, and as someone who refuses to ignore the human tragedy it is bringing to current generations of people who really, really do not deserve to have had their infrastructure utterly destroyed, their lives ruined, their children left in rubble, on a daily basis, because some smart American decided it had to be so.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoThe problem is, we wanted to do Iraq and Afghanistan and get out. If we had done a Marshall Plan in Iraq, we would have had maybe 100,000 troops there for a decade, but it would have been stable when we left.
- pyrale 9y ago> we would have had maybe 100,000 troops there for a decade The US has had north of 100k troops in Iraq for 7 years, then about 50k for 3 more years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_troop_surge_of_2007#/media/File:Iraq_Troop_Strength.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_troop_surge_of_2007#/...
- saiya-jin 9y agoLook, if Russia would be the top dog of the Game, then there would be much more focus on them. When Putin says they are good guys in some conflict, only brainwashed russians who only watch state TV take him seriously, rest of the world just smiles and moves on. If US claims constantly they are good guys while supplying arms basically straight to pure evil like ISIS just to play the Game, well that deserves a bit of attention. Plus add other stuff like total internet surveillance and you end up with a feeling that US holds too much power. Without a record of action showing that we should trust them any more than others.
- JRITSRob 9y agoBanana Republic. Cuba. Let's not pretend the world superpowers don't all do this stuff to advance their position. Russia does it to advance it's national position. China does it to advance it's national position. US does it to advance their corporate position (largely tied to national position, just a vaguely alternative setup of the same stuff). Tribalism, to feudalism, and any point in between we see the same situations play out. Look at all the empires over the ages. We're all just incrementally advancing the same playbook each time. I don't have any suggestion as to how this cycle would ever be changed. The only thing that differs is the move makers. The moves all look pretty similar. One nation crumbles, proffers change, wants to avoid repeating/continuing discovered atrocities, another nation/empire is ready to take it's place. We can call out the atrocities globally as we see them. Try to fight each individual fire. There's no pretending that every nation isn't guilty of trying to advance it's position by any means necessary. Offering the humanitarian excuse as a "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" deal is universal. Doing what you can to avoid the aforementioned "calling out".
- mmjaa 9y agoWhereas the USA just invades [wherever] and says "its because you're not democratic/have too many terrorists/whatever".
- lawnchair_larry 9y agoThis is not what happened at all.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoIn eastern Ukraine and Crimea, that is almost exactly what happened.
- Sommersonn 9y agoLooks like our Russian friends strongly disagree with you.
- lawnchair_larry 9y agoIt's honestly not even close. Have you read about the events in detail? I too was under that impression until looking more into it. Are you aware of the unknown sniper agitators?
- meri_dian 9y ago>"In order to project power" You mean in order to safeguard the global peace. Peaceful nations around the world depend on US support to ensure their defense from hostile nations like Russia
- saiya-jin 9y agoI presume you are joking, right? If we call Russia hostile (which is a fair description), then how would you call US? Super-aggressive war-mongering evil overlord empire?
- mmjaa 9y agoThis is very incorrect. The USA is a bully - most of the nations wanting "USA protection" are really just asking to not be bullied.
- jasonmaydie 9y agoThe same power that has kept the world peace for the last 50 years? How is that a bad thing?
- zimpenfish 9y ago> world peace for the last 50 years I think you might have a different definition of "peace" than many people because we haven't had "world peace" for 50 years at all. Just look at how many conflicts are currently ongoing in the world (and how many of those are caused by US meddling...)
- honestoHeminway 9y agoActually.. if you look at the "We-are-not-involved"-strategy obama tryied- im not so sure, the world would be much peacefuller without the US. Those saudi-iran proxi wars - the various religious conflicts- they would all continu, if the US vannished today. Im not so sure if UN Involvement is really helpfull either. I start to see the seperation solution that pakistan and india drove as quite a good solution for the meddle-east.
- Allower 9y agoone mans peace is another mans tyranny. why are you ignoring the dozens of brutal dictatorships the US has instituted and kept in power over the past century +?
- wiz21c 9y agoRemember peace is most probably a byproduct of total US hegemony. Russia and China have been very peaceful last 30 years and they were not dominated. So I wouldn't attribute the peace of the world to the "invisible US hand"...
- raprp 9y ago> world peace for the last 50 years By 'world' you mean Mars, right?
- breitling 9y agoAsk the orphans of Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria how peaceful the U.S.is
- throwaway5752 9y agoSyria, Ukraine/Crimea, Georgia/Ossetia, Chechnya/Dagestan... they brutally (not used lightly, Google it) put down N. Caucus uprisings and they've flat out stolen land from Western border countries. That's not counting their own cyberwarfare efforts, which is presumably where they are investing heavily out of a recognition of the asymmetries. They sell weapons all over the world and are 2nd worst in that respect to the US. I have no idea why people need to set up good/bad dualities. Whatever bad things the US has done, none of them make Russian any better.
- mmjaa 9y agoRussia is not invading and destroying foreign sovereign nations around the world. It is protecting its borders and its local territory. The USA has invaded, and destroyed, far, far more territory, resulting in 100x more human suffering and misery. Its not a duality - but if you want to be honest about the hostile intentions of nations, you have to look at the most hostile state there is: the USA. The stats are not pretty.
- Sommersonn 9y agoNice twisted rhetoric, really. For a split second I did believed you, that Russia haven't invaded Ukraine, it merely 'protected it's local territory'.
- mmjaa 9y agoWhat part of "Russia needs the Black Sea to protect its sovereignty" do you not understand? What part of "Iraq is essential to the sovereign protection of the borders of the USA" do you .. not understand? I'm not trying to justify Russia's military action in Ukraine - living quite close to this action, it horrified me. But, on the other hand, I'm not ever going to be compelled to agree with someone who says that the mass destruction of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen .. and so on .. is vital to the defence of the USA. Because, I know where those places are on a map, and they are nowhere near the USA ...
- 9y ago
- notfromhere 9y agoDid you forget about the Cold War?
- mmjaa 9y agoYes, I did. Because its over. The West won, in 1991. Its only the USA still fighting it.
- notfromhere 9y ago"Russia did nothing wrong!" (If you forget everything before 1991 and Georgia/Crimea/Donbass/Syria,etc).
- mmjaa 9y agoNice straw man. Russia has done plenty, wrong. But the USA has erred by a factor of 500x the sins of Russia, yo. If you can't understand that, I've got 1000 kilometres worth of walking refugee children to show you ..
- notfromhere 9y agoThe death toll from soviet communism was pretty steep: they killed millions and committed genocide and ethnic cleansing on many opinions. stop spreading this stupid whataboutism
- mmjaa 9y agoCommunism died decades ago. The one doing all the killing and murdering of innocent civilians, now, is America and its allies, the so-called "Coalition", who have decided that only they have the right to start world war three. And, so they did. "Whataboutism" = we are talking about the situation where America has invaded and destroyed countless sovereign nations over the last 4 decades, willingly and with utter contempt for international law. Russia defended its territorial integrity, and thus sovereignty, during the Crimea crisis - and little else. America, however, has done nothing in defence of its sovereignty, and everything in attack of other sovereigns. It is a wholesale exporter of death, destruction, and injustice in the world, and .. once again .. I must remind my American readers that the facts on the ground are not pretty. America's statistics are not great. It is a dire, evil situation, and the continued 'whataboutism' from Americans (coz: "Soviet Russia") is precisely one of the ways this evil persists. American citizens - Australian, Canadian, British and Kiwi too - MUST start accepting responsibility for the crimes of their states. The war is coming to you, whether you like it or not, eventually.
- dgudkov 9y ago>but it hasn't deployed $Trillions of military assets around the world in order to project power They would definitely have done this, if they could. At the expense of social programs, schools and healthcare, like they always do [1]. They just don't have $Trillions, only $Billions. A big chunk of which goes into botnets, orchestrated propaganda and cyber-sabotage. [1] https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russia-to-increase-military-spending-whilst-slashing-budget-55583 https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russia-to-increase-military-...