7 ms·

No Way Out but War

jules-jules 4y ago
It's a sad state of affairs when articles like this are getting flagged by HN almost immediately.
Melting_Harps 4y ago
As a a person who supports the aid to Ukraine, this sums it all really and harks back to General Smedley Butler's assessment on War: Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d'état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of “national security.” The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.
_moof 4y ago
> Liberals are cheerleading the war in Ukraine. At least the inception of the war with Iraq saw them join significant street protests. Ukraine is embraced as the latest crusade for freedom and democracy against the new Hitler. This particular bit is such a weird take. Speaking as someone who marched against the invasion of Iraq and also wants us to support Ukraine, the position isn't "war is good now actually," the position is "hey maybe don't go invading people for fun." I didn't want to see Iraq invaded on false pretenses and I don't want to see Ukraine taken over by a bully either. There's nothing inconsistent about this.
- asdfk-12 4y ago
  This issue I see with your take is the identity of the bully - soft power versus hard power. The United States empire machine has long been deeply involved in the affairs of countries that could literally not be further away from the homeland. Russia or China behaving similarly in the affairs of Mexico or Canada would be treated as an act of war by the Americans
  - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
    > This issue I see with your take is the identity of the bully Sorry, I don't follow. The parent is consistent: they are against the oppressor (the US in the former case, Russia in the latter).
- deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bambax 4y ago
> Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse There's some truth to that; the US current level of debt is only possible because the US effectively controls the world's money supply. But, can it happen? Can the dollar be dethroned? How, and by whom?
- daydream 4y ago
  Japan has a much higher debt to GDP ratio and doesn’t control the worlds money supply. https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-debt.htm https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-debt.htm
  - pydry 4y ago
    Aggregate levels of debt dont matter but US deficits would trigger 100%+ inflation if petrodollar recycling ended and the world started dumping USD assets.
    - gerikson 4y ago
      Dumping them for what, exactly?
      - ragnot 4y ago
        For magic obviously. USD isn't going anywhere anytime soon. You think China holds $1 trillion worth of treasuries because they love propping up the US? Nope. They have no choice...no other country has markets as deep and liquid as the Fed and the fact that global trade requires USD just makes it a self-reinforcing position.
        pydry 4y ago
        China held US treasuries as means of manipulating its currency down in order to maintain a positive trade balance so it could engage in export oriented industrialization. That process is now complete as China has reached the top of the value chain. They can make widebody jets and microprocessors and cars and phones every bit as good if not better than the US can. China didnt buy treasuries for the same reason an american pension fund does. It will continue the process of divestment over the next few years, probably speeding it up after seeing what happened to russias USD reserves.
emptysongglass 4y ago
This article emphasizes the US' militarism to the exclusion of any real critique to the bully in the room, Russia and the failure of a strategy of appeasement which the EU led by Germany has tried for half a century. The alternative to military aid is allowing Russia to continue to act out its fantasies of conquest. This has knock-on effects to any other countries currently deliberating land-grabs. Merkel repeatedly brought the EU to bed with dictatorships and now finds itself unable to rapidly respond to a humanitarian crisis. The US, once again, is pulling the heavy weight of sending materiel, without which it is almost certain Ukraine would fall. What's after Ukraine? Other former Soviet states who are denied agency by Putin. Poland, after 123 years of being conquered and oppressed, 2 world wars and 50 years of communism is one of the few powerful EU states who recognizes the immediate existential crisis at hand. It is disheartening to see authors use the invasion of Ukraine as a hitpiece for the global narrative of US oppression. Undoubtedly the US is no shining paragon of goodness but people forget that it was the US who saved Europe from Nazi Germany and once again it is the US pulling Europe out of another mess. Perhaps if Merkel had done a better job the EU could finally fight for itself.
- pydry 4y ago
  >The alternative to military aid is allowing Russia to continue to act out its fantasies of conquest. That wasnt the alternative. This war was 100% avoidable. The US took Ukraine's hand and led it directly into it. It took six years of NATO slowly bringing Ukraine under its arm (with joint exercises, etc.) where three separate promises that it would join and three months of Putin sitting on the border asking for it not to join. This wasnt like Iraq. This is the defensive alliance destroyed three separate countries in a fit of unprovoked pique. It's an aggressive defensive alliance. Ukraine is the clash of empires that the US military industrial complex has been craving. It gets to spend only Ukrainian lives, stratospherically boost military budgets and create a European dependence on American LNG. For the US it's win/win/win.
  - emptysongglass 4y ago
    > It took six years of NATO slowly bringing Ukraine under its arm (with joint exercises, etc.) where three separate promises that it would join and three months of Putin sitting on the border with one demand. This is propaganda. If you recall, Russia annexed bits of Georgia and Crimea. Russia wanted a warm water port so it took one by force. Former Soviet states flocked to join NATO because of Russian imperialism: they wanted protection from a former master eager to see them rejoined. Sweden and Finland now both make their bids to join NATO because of Russian imperialism, just like every other time a country has begged entry. Putin published [1] a long screed denying Ukrainian agency and statehood. How do you defend that? [1] http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
ragnot 4y ago
I'm sorry, what exactly is the right response to Putin's aggression then? Just let him have Ukraine? Complete non-starter. I'm getting really tired these doomer posts regarding the US. Yeah, the US spends a lot on military power (both hard and soft). Guess what, it's the world's hegemon and I'd rather have the US be there than China or Russia.
rich_sasha 4y ago
To an outsider, a lot of it rings true. Perhaps it's not right, but it feels like the present-day US is a country forged out of a war. WWI brought it to the high-stakes table. Then the Great Depression was, it seems, "saved" by WWII - massive mobilisation of economy, industrialisation and subsequent recovery boom. Had WWII not happened, could the US have collapsed there and then in 1940s?
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  Well, you could say the same about Putin. He had even more economic reasons to invade Ukraine than the USA.
dougmsmith 4y ago

It's a sad state of affairs when articles like this are getting flagged by HN almost immediately.

As a a person who supports the aid to Ukraine, this sums it all really and harks back to General Smedley Butler's assessment on War: Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d'état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of “national security.” The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.

_moof 4y ago

> Liberals are cheerleading the war in Ukraine. At least the inception of the war with Iraq saw them join significant street protests. Ukraine is embraced as the latest crusade for freedom and democracy against the new Hitler. This particular bit is such a weird take. Speaking as someone who marched against the invasion of Iraq and also wants us to support Ukraine, the position isn't "war is good now actually," the position is "hey maybe don't go invading people for fun." I didn't want to see Iraq invaded on false pretenses and I don't want to see Ukraine taken over by a bully either. There's nothing inconsistent about this.

asdfk-12 4y ago
This issue I see with your take is the identity of the bully - soft power versus hard power. The United States empire machine has long been deeply involved in the affairs of countries that could literally not be further away from the homeland. Russia or China behaving similarly in the affairs of Mexico or Canada would be treated as an act of war by the Americans
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  > This issue I see with your take is the identity of the bully Sorry, I don't follow. The parent is consistent: they are against the oppressor (the US in the former case, Russia in the latter).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bambax 4y ago

> Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse There's some truth to that; the US current level of debt is only possible because the US effectively controls the world's money supply. But, can it happen? Can the dollar be dethroned? How, and by whom?

daydream 4y ago
Japan has a much higher debt to GDP ratio and doesn’t control the worlds money supply. https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-debt.htm https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-debt.htm
- pydry 4y ago
  Aggregate levels of debt dont matter but US deficits would trigger 100%+ inflation if petrodollar recycling ended and the world started dumping USD assets.
  - gerikson 4y ago
    Dumping them for what, exactly?
    - ragnot 4y ago
      For magic obviously. USD isn't going anywhere anytime soon. You think China holds $1 trillion worth of treasuries because they love propping up the US? Nope. They have no choice...no other country has markets as deep and liquid as the Fed and the fact that global trade requires USD just makes it a self-reinforcing position.
      - pydry 4y ago
        China held US treasuries as means of manipulating its currency down in order to maintain a positive trade balance so it could engage in export oriented industrialization. That process is now complete as China has reached the top of the value chain. They can make widebody jets and microprocessors and cars and phones every bit as good if not better than the US can. China didnt buy treasuries for the same reason an american pension fund does. It will continue the process of divestment over the next few years, probably speeding it up after seeing what happened to russias USD reserves.

emptysongglass 4y ago

This article emphasizes the US' militarism to the exclusion of any real critique to the bully in the room, Russia and the failure of a strategy of appeasement which the EU led by Germany has tried for half a century. The alternative to military aid is allowing Russia to continue to act out its fantasies of conquest. This has knock-on effects to any other countries currently deliberating land-grabs. Merkel repeatedly brought the EU to bed with dictatorships and now finds itself unable to rapidly respond to a humanitarian crisis. The US, once again, is pulling the heavy weight of sending materiel, without which it is almost certain Ukraine would fall. What's after Ukraine? Other former Soviet states who are denied agency by Putin. Poland, after 123 years of being conquered and oppressed, 2 world wars and 50 years of communism is one of the few powerful EU states who recognizes the immediate existential crisis at hand. It is disheartening to see authors use the invasion of Ukraine as a hitpiece for the global narrative of US oppression. Undoubtedly the US is no shining paragon of goodness but people forget that it was the US who saved Europe from Nazi Germany and once again it is the US pulling Europe out of another mess. Perhaps if Merkel had done a better job the EU could finally fight for itself.

pydry 4y ago
>The alternative to military aid is allowing Russia to continue to act out its fantasies of conquest. That wasnt the alternative. This war was 100% avoidable. The US took Ukraine's hand and led it directly into it. It took six years of NATO slowly bringing Ukraine under its arm (with joint exercises, etc.) where three separate promises that it would join and three months of Putin sitting on the border asking for it not to join. This wasnt like Iraq. This is the defensive alliance destroyed three separate countries in a fit of unprovoked pique. It's an aggressive defensive alliance. Ukraine is the clash of empires that the US military industrial complex has been craving. It gets to spend only Ukrainian lives, stratospherically boost military budgets and create a European dependence on American LNG. For the US it's win/win/win.
- emptysongglass 4y ago
  > It took six years of NATO slowly bringing Ukraine under its arm (with joint exercises, etc.) where three separate promises that it would join and three months of Putin sitting on the border with one demand. This is propaganda. If you recall, Russia annexed bits of Georgia and Crimea. Russia wanted a warm water port so it took one by force. Former Soviet states flocked to join NATO because of Russian imperialism: they wanted protection from a former master eager to see them rejoined. Sweden and Finland now both make their bids to join NATO because of Russian imperialism, just like every other time a country has begged entry. Putin published [1] a long screed denying Ukrainian agency and statehood. How do you defend that? [1] http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181

ragnot 4y ago

I'm sorry, what exactly is the right response to Putin's aggression then? Just let him have Ukraine? Complete non-starter. I'm getting really tired these doomer posts regarding the US. Yeah, the US spends a lot on military power (both hard and soft). Guess what, it's the world's hegemon and I'd rather have the US be there than China or Russia.

rich_sasha 4y ago

To an outsider, a lot of it rings true. Perhaps it's not right, but it feels like the present-day US is a country forged out of a war. WWI brought it to the high-stakes table. Then the Great Depression was, it seems, "saved" by WWII - massive mobilisation of economy, industrialisation and subsequent recovery boom. Had WWII not happened, could the US have collapsed there and then in 1940s?

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
Well, you could say the same about Putin. He had even more economic reasons to invade Ukraine than the USA.

dougmsmith 4y ago