15 ms·

As someone born behind the Iron Curtain, here’s my reply to Eisenhouer: all those guns made, ships launched and rockets fired contributed to me, and a few hundr

As someone born behind the Iron Curtain, here’s my reply to Eisenhouer: all those guns made, ships launched and rockets fired contributed to me, and a few hundred million people like me, being free now, rather than living in a North Korea-type Gulag. Edit: they also contributed to a few other hundred million ( W Europe, Japan, etc) continuing to be free rather than being occupied by the USSR.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> all those guns made, ships launched and rockets fired contributed to me, and a few hundred million people like me, being free now, rather than living in a North Korea-type Gulag Would add that had Ukraine kept its post-separation guns, millions today wouldn’t be dead or displaced. To say nothing of the millions who will likely face starvation for lack of the grain Russia tramples. There is morality in a life of peace. But peace must be recognised as a luxury bought by the blood of others.
- boplicity 5y ago
  > But peace must be recognised as a luxury bought by the blood of others. Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace. War is certainly one tool in that can cause (eventual) peace, but it is not the only one.
  - lossolo 5y ago
    > Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace. Which ways? Which way all invaded countries in WWII, WWI and other wars before could choose to sustain peace? They wanted peace and they got war because stronger nation invaded them. So which way? International organizations? UN security council? Didn't stop invasion of Ukraine. There is an old saying Si vis pacem, para bellum which means - If you want peace, prepare for war.
    - userulluipeste 5y ago
      Well, technically speaking, war requires opposing sides. If there is no opposition (say, like the bloodless annexations before the start of the WW2, or the relatively recent annexation of Crimea), there is no war, isn't it? Of course, the consequence for the ceding party or parties may be worse than the alternative, but still - no war, i.e. peace preserved!
      - akoncius 5y ago
        so.. you are saying that if you are attacked, don’t resist, and then there will be no conflict/war?
      - imtringued 5y ago
        I hope you noticed that conflicts arise from an inability to form a consensus during peace time. For example, wars are often fought over land or water. If you can come up with an arrangement that makes owning specific plots of land or direct access to water irrelevant, then those shared resources no longer become sources of conflict. One idea is the democratization of land, meaning that everyone owns all land equally. If everyone owns all land, then there is no reason to fight over who owns it. Of course, one must ensure that the benefits that ownership used to grant are broadly shared. The democratization of land does not solve the problem that someone needs to have the right to work the land. It may be highly efficient for thousands of acres land to be worked by a single organization. This means there must be a method to delegate the process of working the land to a third party without giving them complete control over the land. One approach is Georgism with a UBI. The land value tax is paid out as a dividend per person.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    You don't always get a choice.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace. Totally agree. “The blood of others” can still flow in their veins. The point is it has to be staked. There is no evidenced system of peace that doesn’t contain a threat of violence. We’ve tried for decades with sanctions; they fail in everything other than degrading the enemy.
    - mrtnmcc 5y ago
      History became irrelevant after nuclear weapons. Words like 'enemy' are the real problem.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - sofixa 5y ago
    In theory, yes, and it has worked sometimes ( the EU). But as many agressors have shown time and again, you can't count on anything but brute power in the end. Neutrality ( Belgium), UN ( Ukraine), they don't work sufficiently well. As a sibling comment says, Si vis pacem para bellum has withstood the test of time. Of course the US wasting money having 10 aircraft carriers and 10 "mini" aircraft carriers ( the same size as other countries' 1-2 aircraft carriers) doesn't really fit into that and certainly isn't for defence.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Agreed with the thrust of your comment, but I want to pick a particular nit out of curiosity: how do you determine that the EU is the cause of European peace when it has only ever existed under the NATO security umbrella? (no doubt EU has strengthened cooperation within Europe, but how do you attribute peace to it rather than NATO?)
      - tough 5y ago
        Because the EU in itself is a pact of no agression between european countries? Before that it was a fuckfest, name a country in Europe who hasn't been invaded at some point in time by a neighbouring state
        throwaway894345 5y ago
        You missed the point. How do you know that it was membership in the EU and not membership in NATO that deterred aggression? NATO predates the EU by a long time and there hasn't been war between NATO members or military aggression by a non-NATO European country against a NATO European country. A non-aggression pact without NATO enforcement is easily broken.
        akoncius 5y ago
        I’m not OP, but I will offer my point of view: NATO is only defence in military sense from external threats. Internal relationships are much broader: trade, laws, internal politics, multi-country alignment towards same goals, even goal definition etc. there is european parliament where representatives from all member countries gather and discuss a lot of different topics. none of that provides NATO.
  - ThrowawayR2 5y ago
    > "There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace." There are but only if both sides agree to it. Once once side decides to use war, what will you stop them with? QED war will be forever with us.
    - boplicity 5y ago
      My point isn't that war won't happen, but that the actual work of preventing war is valuable (and hard), and often quite successful. It's just, we don't necessarily even notice it, because it does work. The work required to prevent war is often extremely difficult, which should be acknowledged. People tend to give credit just to the warriors, and not to the diplomats, politicians, community leaders, and organizers who work extremely hard to build a stable society. Credit goes to everyone, not just those who fight wars.
    - jesusofnazarath 5y ago
    - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
      You need to stop them by preempting their decision to choose war. Well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy, happy people don't decide to make war. People who don't want to get shot at and killed, nor see their brothers and sons (and sisters and daughters) shot at and killed; people who are aware and educated of the horrors of war (not like Americans of the last 20 years while we made war in the Middle East) won't vote for or follow leaders who decide to make war. People currently living in poverty and squalor, if they're generously lifted out of those conditions rather than left behind and exploited, don't decide to make war. People make war because they believe it will improve their lives; if they don't believe this then they wouldn't. It may be unrealistic, but the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances. The question is whether that cultural advancement will allow us to cut it off before technological advancement dooms us with easily accessible superweapons....
      - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > Well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy, happy people don't decide to make war I have not seen rigorous evidence for this. > the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances Agree with this.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    Blood is the only unilateral way to achieve peace. Your own viewpoint on the best way to move forward is irrelevant if your opponent doesn't want to play ball on your terms.
    - mrtnmcc 5y ago
      This mindset doesn't apply anymore. Nobody to wipe up the blood after total nuclear extinction. Nobody to imagine a future. Nobody to wish we made a different choice. Nobody left.
      - finiteseries 5y ago
        I’m sorry but there is a literal land war in Europe with plenty of Ukrainians imagining a future without Russia, wishing their neighbors had made different choices, still there. Still left. This sort of hysterical nuclear naivety denying the continued existence of conventional war is best left to the 90s frankly.
  - HFguy 5y ago
    Have a strong military and don't use it. It has been shown time and time again, if you are weak, it will be taken advantage of. It is far far far cheaper to spend the money to have a strong military, than to get into an actual shooting war with someone who thinks they can take advantage. 3-5% of GDP vs. all the death, destruction and reduction of GDP (50%?, 75%?, all of it).
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - mrtnmcc 5y ago
      Or use those resources to support all people across the world so they don't feel the need to resort to violence. Use it to investigate and reveal abusers (eg., oligarchs), to strengthen education and mechanisms of peaceful resolution. Each generation must re-remember where we are at now--at the edge of self extinction. Lessons from a pre-nuclear age cannot guide us.
      - srveale 5y ago
        This may be a naive take, but it's something I've thought about a fair bit. What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead") But they've taken that money and waged war against people who you can hardly blame for feeling like maybe the West isn't so great. The harder you fight against "Terror" the stronger it gets. Of course I've vastly oversimplified it, but it just seems like a tragically wasted opportunity.
        k8wk1 5y ago
        jcranmer 5y ago
        > What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead") The easy rebuttal: they're using their schools to indoctrinate our kids into their culture. I mean... this is an argument that is already made today against similar programs instituted by several major global powers (e.g., China). You can also easily make hay of the mere insinuation that much of the world is in a state where it "needs" to be helped by foreign powers--this is essentially one of the main justifications behind colonization.
- eej71 5y ago
  Very much agree. You might find this book clarifying. I know I did. Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7687279-nothing-less-than-victory https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7687279-nothing-less-tha...
- qiskit 5y ago
  > Would add that had Ukraine kept its post-separation guns, millions today wouldn’t be dead or displaced. Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the soviet union. Makes you wonder why sanctioned india when they developed nukes. Makes you wonder why we currently prevent japan, korea, germany, etc from developing nukes. > To say nothing of the millions who will likely face starvation for lack of the grain Russia tramples. Isn't russia the biggest producer of grain? Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world?
  - csomar 5y ago
    Because they could possibly become another Russia or worse? It’s a bad idea to leave mass destruction weapons for unknown hands. The US has strong institutions and yet it’s still a risk.
    - mauvehaus 5y ago
      Anybody who wants a very sobering view of how the Cold War was waged by the US and its NATO allies and their strong institutions should probably read Command and Control. It's a borderline miracle we're all here to discuss this on the internet. If anybody can recommend a similar book about the Soviet side, I'd be extremely interested in reading it.
      - ekianjo 5y ago
        no such book would ever exist on the soviet side.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the Soviet Union We were in the second nuclear age, that of non-proliferation [1]. As the USSR weakened, MAD became unstable. Non-proliferation was the superpowers’ solution. The system sort of worked. It started coming apart between the second Iraq war and Ghadaffi’s toppling (showing the consequences of lacking nukes) and Russia’s invasion of Crimea (showing the power of having them). With the benefit of hindsight, non-proliferation stemmed from the same misplaced optimism that led the U.S. to welcome China into the WTO. > Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world? Nobody is targeting Russian grain, which continues to trade [2]. [1] https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03nuclear https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03nuclear [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/russian-grain-keeps-flowing-even-as-invasion-slows-shipments https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/russian-g...
- mushbino 5y ago
  "War is peace" sounds like classic 1984 doublespeak. For example, we could be working to partner with China on mutually beneficial agreements, but instead we're choosing to promote conflict because we'd rather be the winner that takes all.
  - mrtnmcc 5y ago
    Agree--Humanity loses because of this posturing, well before the bombs are flying.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Mutually beneficial agreements with China exists. But, cooperation is not the same as peace or humanity. When mutually beneficial agreement with China empowers genocide going on in there or provides China surveillance to crack on human right activists, then it is enablement rather then something positive. And vice versa in cases where west does something bad.
    - mushbino 5y ago
      Beneficial for whom? Not American workers, just the business class. It's it's also iteresting that these accusations against China start popping up right about the time we've chosen to take an adversarial stance against them and they're overtaking us in GDP/PPP and influence in the world. The US has killed an estimated 6 million people as a result of the "War on Terror" so hard to say we've a leg to stand on.
  - SkyMarshal 5y ago
    We did partner with China on mutually beneficial agreements, from ~1972 to to ~2015. But that increasingly seems like a mistake.
    - wahern 5y ago
      Not sure either-or is the best way to frame things. Economic ties are clearly having a moderating effect both between the U.S.-China and even, at this very moment, Europe-Russia. Seems the problem is better framed as one of timing, calibration, and optimization. All of this conflict doesn't disprove the thesis that economic ties moderate conflict. It might disprove the thesis that economic ties prevent conflict, but that's a straw man. The only actual thesis of that sort was that democracies don't go to war, and one of the proposed, non-exclusive mechanisms was their tendency toward deep economic interdependencies. AFAIK nobody, not even Bill Clinton, presumed that economic ties were alone sufficient to guarantee peace with China and Russia, nor sufficient to induce comprehensive political democratization. Here's Clinton recently recounting in his own words his reasoning wrt Russia: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/bill-clinton-nato-expansion-ukraine/629499/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/bill-clint...
- jxramos 5y ago
  > ...kept its post-separation guns... What is this a reference to exactly? Did they agree to disarm themselves or what was the history here exactly? Was there some treaty about being neutral and not developing a military like Japan post WWII agreed to? What's going on with Ukraine in this space?
cm2187 5y ago
And the same applies to the American revolution, the English revolution, the French revolution, without which there would probably be no democracy today. Pacifism is free-riding.
- pmyteh 5y ago
  The 'English revolution' is complicated. The military one (the English Civil War) was largely undone by the restoration of Charles II. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 (which replaced one monarch with another, less absolutist one) was peaceful (though with the threat of force if necessary). And the actual democratic aspects of the British constitution were achieved largely through constitutional means and certainly not by force of arms (the Great Reform Act etc.) The American revolution worked out pretty well. I can imagine a much less violent (and consequently more successful) French one.
- adolph 5y ago
  Did the industrial revolution and green revolution require military expenditures? I think the most profound revolutions are orthogonal to the conflict-pacifism axis. When a revolution is seen primarily as conflict, the key ideas of the revolution are clearly not yet ripe.
  - adventured 5y ago
    Increased military R&D spending due to extreme events (great wars) certainly has jumped some technology segments forward, faster than those jumps otherwise would have likely occurred. In exchange for an acceleration the cost comes in the form of greater spending in a shorter amount of time and, typically, inefficiency of spend (government oversight on spending will tend to be particularly lacking at such times).
    - adolph 5y ago
      It is interesting to think about the history of technology in this way. For example, the Wright brothers seemed to make the most progress despite not being military funded, in contrast to the Smithsonian's Langley who failed despite (maybe because) of generous war department funding. Was the tech acceleration of aviation by military funding only to local minima that caused longer slowdowns? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Langley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Langley
qiskit 5y ago
> As someone born behind the Iron Curtain, here’s my reply to Eisenhouer: all those guns made, ships launched and rockets fired contributed to me, and a few hundred million people like me, being free now No it didn't. China switching sides and joining the US is what led to the fall of the soviet union. Just like if china, india, etc abandoned russia today, the russian federation will implode within a generation. > rather than living in a North Korea-type Gulag. North korean style gulag exists because of increased military spending. Because north korea is constantly under threat of an attack from the greatest bully in the world ( who constantly increased military spending ), they have to set aside a significant portion of their budget to defense which leads an unhappy population which leads to suppression of the population. > Edit: they also contributed to a few other hundred million ( W Europe, Japan, etc) continuing to be free rather than being occupied by the USSR. It also led to much of europe being turned into rubble and japan being nuked. Not a single bullet or tank or missile contributed to you being "free". But bullets, tanks, missiles, etc kept you under soviet rule.
- baud147258 5y ago
  As a French, I am thankful for the British and American bullets and tanks (and lives lost by all Allies) so that I'm not living under a German/nazi boot, even if I regret the destruction that was inflicted on my country (a few family members got bombed)
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
    In 1945, 57% of French people owed the defeat of Nazi Germany to USSR – versus 32% to the USA and Great Britain. Then, Hollywood won. [0] https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/3025-1-study_file.pdf https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/3025-1-study... (page 5)
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      Fighting over which pile of dead husbands and fathers was more important seems like a meaningless exercise.
    - 5y ago
verbify 5y ago
Surely all those guns can also put people behind North Korea type gulags, and caused a few hundred million to be occupied by the USSR?
- jesusofnazarath 5y ago
- mrtnmcc 5y ago
  Putin is on the way down. At 70, time will surely sort him out. But the rest of the world needs to support the Russian people in building a more stable and inclusive political system. Change is possible. And we all have a vested interest.
  - akoncius 5y ago
    look at gorbachev, he is still alive. so I don’t have high hopes that putin will be solved in natural ways any time soon.
    - tim333 5y ago
      Putin's health seems quite iffy like he's seen a thyroid cancer doctor 35 times.
  - thesmok 5y ago
    That mistake was already made in the 90s. The West had high hopes of transforming Russia into a civilised member of the world, and they've just used that support to strengthen themselves. Russians are imperialistic, Russians opposing Putin are imperialistic too. They despise other nationalities, especially those of the neighbouring countries.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  Uneven gun and ammo supply did that.
dontlaugh 5y ago
As someone also born and raised in Eastern Europe, I feel entirely the opposite. All of those NATO weapons and aggression destroyed my country's economic independence and increased poverty and wealth inequality. I take no solace in being occupied by NATO troops.
- HFguy 5y ago
  Can you lay out more how you are thinking about this? I don't see it that way, but would appreciate another view point.
  - dontlaugh 5y ago
    Before 89, the working class of my country had control of the state and most of the economy. There were of course many problems, but wealth inequality was far lower, essentials were cheap (rent at 5% of income!) and jobs were guaranteed. NATO waged economic warfare and funded fascists (particularly intensified in the 80s), culminating in a violent coup by the army. Since then, we've seen hyperinflation, privatisations, austerity and deregulation. While technology is much improved, the relative proportion of wages spent on essentials is vastly increased and most well paid jobs are for foreign companies that extract profits outside the country.
    - k8wk1 5y ago
      I think you should also consider tens of millions of people who lived under Russian boot in USSR itself and Warsaw pact countries. It appeared that wealth inequality is lower because there was no free press and thus no way to see it. People who waited years to be able to get a permission to buy a car or an apartment had no way to make their situation known. A significant part of populations lived relatively well just because of their place in the society. The lack of free press caused them to think that everyone lives like them. However this was the exact consequence of the oppression of the rest of society. This spanned countries: USSR extracted production from one set of countries and subsidized others. The populations of the latter group naturally saw the collapse of USSR as a bad thing since their standard of living became lower. The fact that there were certain parts of the world that lived better under USSR does not make suffering of other people a good thing.
goodcanadian 5y ago
Eisenhower was certainly no pacifist[1]. He fully understood the necessity of those weapons. He was simply recognising the very real cost, and lamenting that necessity. No one should want to live in such a world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower
Der_Einzige 5y ago
Sometimes west is best, and US/Western colonialism/imperialism is good when it's preventing worse forms of authoritarianism. People from the eastern bloc who were saved by benevolent US policy would do well to remember this.
d0mine 5y ago
that is the party line NATO would want you to believe.
mushbino 5y ago
A capitalist system that relies on ever expanding growth and profit to survive will always create imperialism and conflict over resources. There is no vision or long-term plan to these systems. A system based on this philosophy cannot and will not solve issues like climate change and poverty. Only a system that relies on cooperation and mutually beneficial agreements can create peace and allow us to tackle big issues such as climate change. Thinking of these issues in terms of winner take all and good vs evil limits our thought on more productive and sustainable alternatives.
- samename 5y ago
  > …will always create imperialism… > Only a system… These are strong statements that aren’t proven but are stated as fact. Such statements limit our thought on solving this issues.
- clairity 5y ago
  i do appreciate your perspective, even if others here don't seem to, yet disagree with it slightly. perhaps not a vision or plan, but capitalism does have an intrinsic goal--or maybe more appropriately, a central value--which is the accumulation of capital (money). it's amoral[0] to be sure, and presents a clear opportunity toward corruption, but it's a driving force nonetheless. even adam smith acknowledged that capitalism cannot exist in isolation, that it must be constrained by political stewardship, to direct it toward productive good, lest it lead to decay. in fact, no economic system can exist outside a political one, hence the term 'political economy'. so to sum up, it isn't capitalism per se that leads to imperialism and conflict over resources, but more simply, greed (which we all possess to some degree) accumulated over a population and effectuated via political and economic means of any sort. capitalism however is more efficient, and therefore reaches its waypoints, good or bad, more quickly. on the topic of the thread, the US probably spends more than half of this $2T, if the hidden budgets and money funneled through other federal departments toward military aims is accounted for. our official military budget is something like $800B but most estimates of the fully-accounted-for budget is well north of $1T. it's shameful, especially considering the opportunity cost, for instance, replacing coal plants with nuclear the world over ($1T ≅ 100 nuclear plants per year). [0]: i.e., without morals, not necessarily immoral
cptaj 5y ago
As someone living in a dictatorship, I fully agree. There is no moral high ground in letting totalitarian regimes imprison MILLIONS of people all over the world. Democracy has the moral obligation to fight for freedom. Either that, or remove all migratory restrictions and let people live where they want.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
But... Without guns, ships, and rockets you wouldnt have been imprisoned in the first place. Right?
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  Enemies of the freedom don't listen to pacifists in any way.
deanCommie 5y ago
Some would point at the USSR occupations of the Warsaw Pact countries and say "See, this is why we need to defend ourselves from Soviet aggression". But the USSR didn't take action to create an immoral buffer to it's borders until they learned about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable And if you want to bring up the USSR invasion of Poland in 1939, take a look at what Poland did to Czechoslovakia in 1938 while Germany was occupying Sudetenland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Olza#Part_of_Poland_(1938%E2%80%931939) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Olza#Part_of_Poland_(193... It can both be true that the USSR was a violent, genocidal, repressive regime that oppressed it's own people AND that the ideological spread of Communism throughout the world was orthogonal to Soviet authoritarian tendencies, and was thus the threat that was described to people in the West was more to capitalist institutions and the richest classes, not to your freedom of prosperity. tl;dr: You were never in danger of living in a North Korea-type Gulag.
- k8wk1 5y ago
- spiralx 5y ago
  The idea that a country would be surprised and shocked to find out that other countries - including allies - had plans in place for military operations against them is ludicrous. Every country's military war-games potential conflicts, even when they're far less likely to ever be used than plans for Britain ending up in conflict with the USSR after the end of WWII. Those plans weren't even approved lol, Churchill was out of office shortly after ordering that plans be drawn up.
AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
That doesn't make it worth it.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> all those guns made, ships launched and rockets fired contributed to me, and a few hundred million people like me, being free now, rather than living in a North Korea-type Gulag Would add that had Ukraine kept its post-separation guns, millions today wouldn’t be dead or displaced. To say nothing of the millions who will likely face starvation for lack of the grain Russia tramples. There is morality in a life of peace. But peace must be recognised as a luxury bought by the blood of others.

boplicity 5y ago
> But peace must be recognised as a luxury bought by the blood of others. Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace. War is certainly one tool in that can cause (eventual) peace, but it is not the only one.
- lossolo 5y ago
  > Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace. Which ways? Which way all invaded countries in WWII, WWI and other wars before could choose to sustain peace? They wanted peace and they got war because stronger nation invaded them. So which way? International organizations? UN security council? Didn't stop invasion of Ukraine. There is an old saying Si vis pacem, para bellum which means - If you want peace, prepare for war.
  - userulluipeste 5y ago
    Well, technically speaking, war requires opposing sides. If there is no opposition (say, like the bloodless annexations before the start of the WW2, or the relatively recent annexation of Crimea), there is no war, isn't it? Of course, the consequence for the ceding party or parties may be worse than the alternative, but still - no war, i.e. peace preserved!
    - akoncius 5y ago
      so.. you are saying that if you are attacked, don’t resist, and then there will be no conflict/war?
    - imtringued 5y ago
      I hope you noticed that conflicts arise from an inability to form a consensus during peace time. For example, wars are often fought over land or water. If you can come up with an arrangement that makes owning specific plots of land or direct access to water irrelevant, then those shared resources no longer become sources of conflict. One idea is the democratization of land, meaning that everyone owns all land equally. If everyone owns all land, then there is no reason to fight over who owns it. Of course, one must ensure that the benefits that ownership used to grant are broadly shared. The democratization of land does not solve the problem that someone needs to have the right to work the land. It may be highly efficient for thousands of acres land to be worked by a single organization. This means there must be a method to delegate the process of working the land to a third party without giving them complete control over the land. One approach is Georgism with a UBI. The land value tax is paid out as a dividend per person.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  You don't always get a choice.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace. Totally agree. “The blood of others” can still flow in their veins. The point is it has to be staked. There is no evidenced system of peace that doesn’t contain a threat of violence. We’ve tried for decades with sanctions; they fail in everything other than degrading the enemy.
  - mrtnmcc 5y ago
    History became irrelevant after nuclear weapons. Words like 'enemy' are the real problem.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sofixa 5y ago
  In theory, yes, and it has worked sometimes ( the EU). But as many agressors have shown time and again, you can't count on anything but brute power in the end. Neutrality ( Belgium), UN ( Ukraine), they don't work sufficiently well. As a sibling comment says, Si vis pacem para bellum has withstood the test of time. Of course the US wasting money having 10 aircraft carriers and 10 "mini" aircraft carriers ( the same size as other countries' 1-2 aircraft carriers) doesn't really fit into that and certainly isn't for defence.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Agreed with the thrust of your comment, but I want to pick a particular nit out of curiosity: how do you determine that the EU is the cause of European peace when it has only ever existed under the NATO security umbrella? (no doubt EU has strengthened cooperation within Europe, but how do you attribute peace to it rather than NATO?)
    - tough 5y ago
      Because the EU in itself is a pact of no agression between european countries? Before that it was a fuckfest, name a country in Europe who hasn't been invaded at some point in time by a neighbouring state
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        You missed the point. How do you know that it was membership in the EU and not membership in NATO that deterred aggression? NATO predates the EU by a long time and there hasn't been war between NATO members or military aggression by a non-NATO European country against a NATO European country. A non-aggression pact without NATO enforcement is easily broken.
        akoncius 5y ago
        I’m not OP, but I will offer my point of view: NATO is only defence in military sense from external threats. Internal relationships are much broader: trade, laws, internal politics, multi-country alignment towards same goals, even goal definition etc. there is european parliament where representatives from all member countries gather and discuss a lot of different topics. none of that provides NATO.
- ThrowawayR2 5y ago
  > "There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace." There are but only if both sides agree to it. Once once side decides to use war, what will you stop them with? QED war will be forever with us.
  - boplicity 5y ago
    My point isn't that war won't happen, but that the actual work of preventing war is valuable (and hard), and often quite successful. It's just, we don't necessarily even notice it, because it does work. The work required to prevent war is often extremely difficult, which should be acknowledged. People tend to give credit just to the warriors, and not to the diplomats, politicians, community leaders, and organizers who work extremely hard to build a stable society. Credit goes to everyone, not just those who fight wars.
  - jesusofnazarath 5y ago
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    You need to stop them by preempting their decision to choose war. Well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy, happy people don't decide to make war. People who don't want to get shot at and killed, nor see their brothers and sons (and sisters and daughters) shot at and killed; people who are aware and educated of the horrors of war (not like Americans of the last 20 years while we made war in the Middle East) won't vote for or follow leaders who decide to make war. People currently living in poverty and squalor, if they're generously lifted out of those conditions rather than left behind and exploited, don't decide to make war. People make war because they believe it will improve their lives; if they don't believe this then they wouldn't. It may be unrealistic, but the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances. The question is whether that cultural advancement will allow us to cut it off before technological advancement dooms us with easily accessible superweapons....
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > Well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy, happy people don't decide to make war I have not seen rigorous evidence for this. > the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances Agree with this.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  Blood is the only unilateral way to achieve peace. Your own viewpoint on the best way to move forward is irrelevant if your opponent doesn't want to play ball on your terms.
  - mrtnmcc 5y ago
    This mindset doesn't apply anymore. Nobody to wipe up the blood after total nuclear extinction. Nobody to imagine a future. Nobody to wish we made a different choice. Nobody left.
    - finiteseries 5y ago
      I’m sorry but there is a literal land war in Europe with plenty of Ukrainians imagining a future without Russia, wishing their neighbors had made different choices, still there. Still left. This sort of hysterical nuclear naivety denying the continued existence of conventional war is best left to the 90s frankly.
- HFguy 5y ago
  Have a strong military and don't use it. It has been shown time and time again, if you are weak, it will be taken advantage of. It is far far far cheaper to spend the money to have a strong military, than to get into an actual shooting war with someone who thinks they can take advantage. 3-5% of GDP vs. all the death, destruction and reduction of GDP (50%?, 75%?, all of it).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mrtnmcc 5y ago
    Or use those resources to support all people across the world so they don't feel the need to resort to violence. Use it to investigate and reveal abusers (eg., oligarchs), to strengthen education and mechanisms of peaceful resolution. Each generation must re-remember where we are at now--at the edge of self extinction. Lessons from a pre-nuclear age cannot guide us.
    - srveale 5y ago
      This may be a naive take, but it's something I've thought about a fair bit. What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead") But they've taken that money and waged war against people who you can hardly blame for feeling like maybe the West isn't so great. The harder you fight against "Terror" the stronger it gets. Of course I've vastly oversimplified it, but it just seems like a tragically wasted opportunity.
      - k8wk1 5y ago
      - jcranmer 5y ago
        > What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead") The easy rebuttal: they're using their schools to indoctrinate our kids into their culture. I mean... this is an argument that is already made today against similar programs instituted by several major global powers (e.g., China). You can also easily make hay of the mere insinuation that much of the world is in a state where it "needs" to be helped by foreign powers--this is essentially one of the main justifications behind colonization.
eej71 5y ago
Very much agree. You might find this book clarifying. I know I did. Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7687279-nothing-less-than-victory https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7687279-nothing-less-tha...
qiskit 5y ago
> Would add that had Ukraine kept its post-separation guns, millions today wouldn’t be dead or displaced. Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the soviet union. Makes you wonder why sanctioned india when they developed nukes. Makes you wonder why we currently prevent japan, korea, germany, etc from developing nukes. > To say nothing of the millions who will likely face starvation for lack of the grain Russia tramples. Isn't russia the biggest producer of grain? Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world?
- csomar 5y ago
  Because they could possibly become another Russia or worse? It’s a bad idea to leave mass destruction weapons for unknown hands. The US has strong institutions and yet it’s still a risk.
  - mauvehaus 5y ago
    Anybody who wants a very sobering view of how the Cold War was waged by the US and its NATO allies and their strong institutions should probably read Command and Control. It's a borderline miracle we're all here to discuss this on the internet. If anybody can recommend a similar book about the Soviet side, I'd be extremely interested in reading it.
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      no such book would ever exist on the soviet side.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the Soviet Union We were in the second nuclear age, that of non-proliferation [1]. As the USSR weakened, MAD became unstable. Non-proliferation was the superpowers’ solution. The system sort of worked. It started coming apart between the second Iraq war and Ghadaffi’s toppling (showing the consequences of lacking nukes) and Russia’s invasion of Crimea (showing the power of having them). With the benefit of hindsight, non-proliferation stemmed from the same misplaced optimism that led the U.S. to welcome China into the WTO. > Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world? Nobody is targeting Russian grain, which continues to trade [2]. [1] https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03nuclear https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03nuclear [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/russian-grain-keeps-flowing-even-as-invasion-slows-shipments https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/russian-g...
mushbino 5y ago
"War is peace" sounds like classic 1984 doublespeak. For example, we could be working to partner with China on mutually beneficial agreements, but instead we're choosing to promote conflict because we'd rather be the winner that takes all.
- mrtnmcc 5y ago
  Agree--Humanity loses because of this posturing, well before the bombs are flying.
- watwut 5y ago
  Mutually beneficial agreements with China exists. But, cooperation is not the same as peace or humanity. When mutually beneficial agreement with China empowers genocide going on in there or provides China surveillance to crack on human right activists, then it is enablement rather then something positive. And vice versa in cases where west does something bad.
  - mushbino 5y ago
    Beneficial for whom? Not American workers, just the business class. It's it's also iteresting that these accusations against China start popping up right about the time we've chosen to take an adversarial stance against them and they're overtaking us in GDP/PPP and influence in the world. The US has killed an estimated 6 million people as a result of the "War on Terror" so hard to say we've a leg to stand on.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  We did partner with China on mutually beneficial agreements, from ~1972 to to ~2015. But that increasingly seems like a mistake.
  - wahern 5y ago
    Not sure either-or is the best way to frame things. Economic ties are clearly having a moderating effect both between the U.S.-China and even, at this very moment, Europe-Russia. Seems the problem is better framed as one of timing, calibration, and optimization. All of this conflict doesn't disprove the thesis that economic ties moderate conflict. It might disprove the thesis that economic ties prevent conflict, but that's a straw man. The only actual thesis of that sort was that democracies don't go to war, and one of the proposed, non-exclusive mechanisms was their tendency toward deep economic interdependencies. AFAIK nobody, not even Bill Clinton, presumed that economic ties were alone sufficient to guarantee peace with China and Russia, nor sufficient to induce comprehensive political democratization. Here's Clinton recently recounting in his own words his reasoning wrt Russia: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/bill-clinton-nato-expansion-ukraine/629499/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/bill-clint...
jxramos 5y ago
> ...kept its post-separation guns... What is this a reference to exactly? Did they agree to disarm themselves or what was the history here exactly? Was there some treaty about being neutral and not developing a military like Japan post WWII agreed to? What's going on with Ukraine in this space?

cm2187 5y ago

And the same applies to the American revolution, the English revolution, the French revolution, without which there would probably be no democracy today. Pacifism is free-riding.

pmyteh 5y ago
The 'English revolution' is complicated. The military one (the English Civil War) was largely undone by the restoration of Charles II. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 (which replaced one monarch with another, less absolutist one) was peaceful (though with the threat of force if necessary). And the actual democratic aspects of the British constitution were achieved largely through constitutional means and certainly not by force of arms (the Great Reform Act etc.) The American revolution worked out pretty well. I can imagine a much less violent (and consequently more successful) French one.
adolph 5y ago
Did the industrial revolution and green revolution require military expenditures? I think the most profound revolutions are orthogonal to the conflict-pacifism axis. When a revolution is seen primarily as conflict, the key ideas of the revolution are clearly not yet ripe.
- adventured 5y ago
  Increased military R&D spending due to extreme events (great wars) certainly has jumped some technology segments forward, faster than those jumps otherwise would have likely occurred. In exchange for an acceleration the cost comes in the form of greater spending in a shorter amount of time and, typically, inefficiency of spend (government oversight on spending will tend to be particularly lacking at such times).
  - adolph 5y ago
    It is interesting to think about the history of technology in this way. For example, the Wright brothers seemed to make the most progress despite not being military funded, in contrast to the Smithsonian's Langley who failed despite (maybe because) of generous war department funding. Was the tech acceleration of aviation by military funding only to local minima that caused longer slowdowns? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Langley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Langley

qiskit 5y ago

> As someone born behind the Iron Curtain, here’s my reply to Eisenhouer: all those guns made, ships launched and rockets fired contributed to me, and a few hundred million people like me, being free now No it didn't. China switching sides and joining the US is what led to the fall of the soviet union. Just like if china, india, etc abandoned russia today, the russian federation will implode within a generation. > rather than living in a North Korea-type Gulag. North korean style gulag exists because of increased military spending. Because north korea is constantly under threat of an attack from the greatest bully in the world ( who constantly increased military spending ), they have to set aside a significant portion of their budget to defense which leads an unhappy population which leads to suppression of the population. > Edit: they also contributed to a few other hundred million ( W Europe, Japan, etc) continuing to be free rather than being occupied by the USSR. It also led to much of europe being turned into rubble and japan being nuked. Not a single bullet or tank or missile contributed to you being "free". But bullets, tanks, missiles, etc kept you under soviet rule.

baud147258 5y ago
As a French, I am thankful for the British and American bullets and tanks (and lives lost by all Allies) so that I'm not living under a German/nazi boot, even if I regret the destruction that was inflicted on my country (a few family members got bombed)
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  In 1945, 57% of French people owed the defeat of Nazi Germany to USSR – versus 32% to the USA and Great Britain. Then, Hollywood won. [0] https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/3025-1-study_file.pdf https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/3025-1-study... (page 5)
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Fighting over which pile of dead husbands and fathers was more important seems like a meaningless exercise.
  - 5y ago

verbify 5y ago

Surely all those guns can also put people behind North Korea type gulags, and caused a few hundred million to be occupied by the USSR?

jesusofnazarath 5y ago
mrtnmcc 5y ago
Putin is on the way down. At 70, time will surely sort him out. But the rest of the world needs to support the Russian people in building a more stable and inclusive political system. Change is possible. And we all have a vested interest.
- akoncius 5y ago
  look at gorbachev, he is still alive. so I don’t have high hopes that putin will be solved in natural ways any time soon.
  - tim333 5y ago
    Putin's health seems quite iffy like he's seen a thyroid cancer doctor 35 times.
- thesmok 5y ago
  That mistake was already made in the 90s. The West had high hopes of transforming Russia into a civilised member of the world, and they've just used that support to strengthen themselves. Russians are imperialistic, Russians opposing Putin are imperialistic too. They despise other nationalities, especially those of the neighbouring countries.
cryptonector 5y ago
Uneven gun and ammo supply did that.

dontlaugh 5y ago

As someone also born and raised in Eastern Europe, I feel entirely the opposite. All of those NATO weapons and aggression destroyed my country's economic independence and increased poverty and wealth inequality. I take no solace in being occupied by NATO troops.

HFguy 5y ago
Can you lay out more how you are thinking about this? I don't see it that way, but would appreciate another view point.
- dontlaugh 5y ago
  Before 89, the working class of my country had control of the state and most of the economy. There were of course many problems, but wealth inequality was far lower, essentials were cheap (rent at 5% of income!) and jobs were guaranteed. NATO waged economic warfare and funded fascists (particularly intensified in the 80s), culminating in a violent coup by the army. Since then, we've seen hyperinflation, privatisations, austerity and deregulation. While technology is much improved, the relative proportion of wages spent on essentials is vastly increased and most well paid jobs are for foreign companies that extract profits outside the country.
  - k8wk1 5y ago
    I think you should also consider tens of millions of people who lived under Russian boot in USSR itself and Warsaw pact countries. It appeared that wealth inequality is lower because there was no free press and thus no way to see it. People who waited years to be able to get a permission to buy a car or an apartment had no way to make their situation known. A significant part of populations lived relatively well just because of their place in the society. The lack of free press caused them to think that everyone lives like them. However this was the exact consequence of the oppression of the rest of society. This spanned countries: USSR extracted production from one set of countries and subsidized others. The populations of the latter group naturally saw the collapse of USSR as a bad thing since their standard of living became lower. The fact that there were certain parts of the world that lived better under USSR does not make suffering of other people a good thing.

goodcanadian 5y ago

Eisenhower was certainly no pacifist[1]. He fully understood the necessity of those weapons. He was simply recognising the very real cost, and lamenting that necessity. No one should want to live in such a world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower

Der_Einzige 5y ago

Sometimes west is best, and US/Western colonialism/imperialism is good when it's preventing worse forms of authoritarianism. People from the eastern bloc who were saved by benevolent US policy would do well to remember this.

d0mine 5y ago

that is the party line NATO would want you to believe.

mushbino 5y ago

A capitalist system that relies on ever expanding growth and profit to survive will always create imperialism and conflict over resources. There is no vision or long-term plan to these systems. A system based on this philosophy cannot and will not solve issues like climate change and poverty. Only a system that relies on cooperation and mutually beneficial agreements can create peace and allow us to tackle big issues such as climate change. Thinking of these issues in terms of winner take all and good vs evil limits our thought on more productive and sustainable alternatives.

samename 5y ago
> …will always create imperialism… > Only a system… These are strong statements that aren’t proven but are stated as fact. Such statements limit our thought on solving this issues.
clairity 5y ago
i do appreciate your perspective, even if others here don't seem to, yet disagree with it slightly. perhaps not a vision or plan, but capitalism does have an intrinsic goal--or maybe more appropriately, a central value--which is the accumulation of capital (money). it's amoral[0] to be sure, and presents a clear opportunity toward corruption, but it's a driving force nonetheless. even adam smith acknowledged that capitalism cannot exist in isolation, that it must be constrained by political stewardship, to direct it toward productive good, lest it lead to decay. in fact, no economic system can exist outside a political one, hence the term 'political economy'. so to sum up, it isn't capitalism per se that leads to imperialism and conflict over resources, but more simply, greed (which we all possess to some degree) accumulated over a population and effectuated via political and economic means of any sort. capitalism however is more efficient, and therefore reaches its waypoints, good or bad, more quickly. on the topic of the thread, the US probably spends more than half of this $2T, if the hidden budgets and money funneled through other federal departments toward military aims is accounted for. our official military budget is something like $800B but most estimates of the fully-accounted-for budget is well north of $1T. it's shameful, especially considering the opportunity cost, for instance, replacing coal plants with nuclear the world over ($1T ≅ 100 nuclear plants per year). [0]: i.e., without morals, not necessarily immoral

cptaj 5y ago

As someone living in a dictatorship, I fully agree. There is no moral high ground in letting totalitarian regimes imprison MILLIONS of people all over the world. Democracy has the moral obligation to fight for freedom. Either that, or remove all migratory restrictions and let people live where they want.

AlwaysRock 5y ago

But... Without guns, ships, and rockets you wouldnt have been imprisoned in the first place. Right?

KptMarchewa 5y ago
Enemies of the freedom don't listen to pacifists in any way.

deanCommie 5y ago

Some would point at the USSR occupations of the Warsaw Pact countries and say "See, this is why we need to defend ourselves from Soviet aggression". But the USSR didn't take action to create an immoral buffer to it's borders until they learned about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable And if you want to bring up the USSR invasion of Poland in 1939, take a look at what Poland did to Czechoslovakia in 1938 while Germany was occupying Sudetenland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Olza#Part_of_Poland_(1938%E2%80%931939) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Olza#Part_of_Poland_(193... It can both be true that the USSR was a violent, genocidal, repressive regime that oppressed it's own people AND that the ideological spread of Communism throughout the world was orthogonal to Soviet authoritarian tendencies, and was thus the threat that was described to people in the West was more to capitalist institutions and the richest classes, not to your freedom of prosperity. tl;dr: You were never in danger of living in a North Korea-type Gulag.

k8wk1 5y ago
spiralx 5y ago
The idea that a country would be surprised and shocked to find out that other countries - including allies - had plans in place for military operations against them is ludicrous. Every country's military war-games potential conflicts, even when they're far less likely to ever be used than plans for Britain ending up in conflict with the USSR after the end of WWII. Those plans weren't even approved lol, Churchill was out of office shortly after ordering that plans be drawn up.

AndrewUnmuted 5y ago

That doesn't make it worth it.