6 ms·
This is a farce. The United States is done fighting Great Power wars. No one talks about it publicly at all because doing so would shatter America's self-image
by zipwitch 6y ago
This is a farce.
The United States is done fighting Great Power wars. No one talks about it publicly at all because doing so would shatter America's self-image as the Lone Superpower. The military the United States has now is quite capable of wrecking any nation that is not another Great Power. I say wrecking and not defeating, because as should be obvious from the last three decades, the United States has zero interest in winning wars. It really doesn't even bother trying - too expensive, and too hard. Instead the United States has made it very clear that if you displease it too much, and aren't another Great Power, it will trash your nation, and then either walk away or hang around stomping on you every so often.
The unspoken assumption is that there never will be a "real" war with China or Russia or any other 'near peer'. Whether that ultimately turns out to have been a foolish approach remains to be seen. But, it does leave a lot of money floating around to be siphoned off by various parts of the military-security industry, because Americans think they're paying for a Cold War military, when what they're actually getting is a military good for knocking down weaker opponents and then kicking them, but that barely even tries to pretend it can do anything else. (Except via propaganda, which is really cheap compared to manpower and materiel.)
- SEJeff 6y agoAs we used to say when I was in Iraq (with the US Army), "Don't mess with America, or we'll bring freedom to you too!" Look how well it worked out in Libya, Iran, Iraq, etc.
- stormdennis 6y agoI think it was the British and the French who brought freedom to Libya. Foreign intervention seems to nearly always make things worse. Just the other day there was an appalling attack on a maternity hospital in Afghanistan. People are saying that the West needs to do something...
- zaphirplane 6y agoThe amount of deaths and horror that freedom has brought to Libya is soul crushing. I would wager that a good percentage of Libyans would Trade that freedom for the dictatorship with all that it entails, obviously not those that suffered injustice of a dictatorship but the majority ... work home life ...
- SEJeff 6y agoAs an American, who is also a veteran of OIF II, it really dismayed me to watch what happened in Libya. Granted, I did watch the liveleak of the end of Gadaffi and I'm not sad a truly horrible human being is no longer in charge of a country. That said, I'm very sad for the people who have to endure so much upheaval. The reality is that you can't go from a strongman authoritarian to a magical well functioning democracy overnight (or maybe even ever) without a a few generations of change. It is really heart breaking to see it.
- zipwitch 6y agoThe military intervention in Libya was initially led by the United States and then handed off to NATO. The US contribution to direct attacks consisted mostly of cruise missile strikes. The British, French and Canadian air forces also played a major roles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...
- buckminstrix 6y agoI guess "freedom" can't just be the dismantling of a government. Since "freedom" as our societies value it only emerges in the context of some ordered society and government that protects those things. The problem in those places seems to not have been, how hard is it to get rid of the established order, but rather, how hard is it to create a new order which preserves people's freedoms.
- justinator 6y agoI guess, but ISIS still seems to be a thing. Or in geek-speak. We have the Death Star, as we are the Empire. The Empire still lost.
- austinheap 6y agoFiction v non-fiction.
- eecc 6y agoYup, and it’s so ironic that the Rebel heroes are a ragtag collection of desert-dwellers led by warrior priests of a religious sect.
- tim333 6y agoISIS got fairly wrecked though.
- deathgrips 6y ago>The unspoken assumption is that there never will be a "real" war with China or Russia or any other 'near peer'. Yes, because despite Wikipedia saying that the Cold War ended in the 20th century, we still have thousands of nukes ready to launch at each other in five minutes. There may someday be unconventional war, proxy war, or cyber war, but there will not be a great war unless it begins and ends with a nuclear holocaust.
- buckminstrix 6y agoMaybe the money is going to the secret space program. And one of the duties of the regular public military and security industry is to be a front.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoWouldn't that be nice. Like in StarGate SG-1, where a lot of things in the military budget fronted for the US pax-americaning our galactic neighbourhood and bringing useful tech back. Alas, I worry that the secret space program is merely the rare not-totally-worthless exception to the overall rule.
- buckminstrix 6y agoI don't understand, what do you mean by overall rule, and what is the exception?
- TeMPOraL 6y agoThe overall rule: most US military spending is utterly wasted to line the pockets of politicians and the military-industrial complex. It's not useful even for defending the country. The exception: there will most likely be something useful coming out of a space program. May or may not be useful enough to offset the costs, but it's not going to be a complete waste.
- buckminstrix 6y agoAh, cool. Makes sense. ツ Thank you, I'm grateful for your answer.
- jp555 6y agoIf America goes home China's rise is quickly OVER, without anyone providing global trade security on the open oceans. This would drive unrest internally, and over the last 1500 years when China's central control has been threatened, they have turned inward and become shut ins. The Belt and Road is partially an attempt to deal with the risk of the US pulling out of providing global security, but they need a LOT more time, and somewhat ironically because of COVID-19 they may have run out. While the US is spending trillions to move away from global trade very very quickly.