8 ms·
I have mixed feelings about this. The problem is that if you are being attacked, you will gladly allow people to make big profit if they save lives. You can t
by jmartrican 3y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. The problem is that if you are being attacked, you will gladly allow people to make big profit if they save lives. You can try to fight the war without profit but you might not like the results. Ultimately, wars are started by governments. They cajole the resources of the nation to fight the enemy. Each country has the things they are good at it and they will use those things to their advantage. In the US we are a free market society and happily give out big rewards (aka profits) to those that can make a difference and build things that the nation wants.
So the reason I say I have mixed feelings is because I can imagine a world where the entities that make profit off of war can use their influence to prod the nation into war. And this should be prevented. I suspect this has happened in the past.
- micromacrofoot 3y agoIt's called the military industrial complex and it happens all the time.
- VWWHFSfQ 3y agoI'm often very conflicted about USA's history of military use in the last 100+ years. Imperialistic? I don't know. But what I do know is that I would rather be a South Korean than a North Korean. And post-defeat Japan has been one of the preeminent countries in the entire world.
- waffleiron 3y agoSouth Korea was a brutal dictatorship for quite some time, just because they aren't now doesn't mean the US's military intervention is to thank for that.
- VWWHFSfQ 3y ago> just because they aren't now doesn't mean the US's military intervention is to thank for that. The alternative was that the entire peninsula would be "North Korea". And then there would never be any chance of formulating a functional democratic society.
- waffleiron 3y agoYou don't know what the alternative would be. US intervention and the massive amounts of civilian deaths caused in Korea are a major reason why North Korea is so anti-West.
- boeingUH60 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mrguyorama 3y agoThere is no good north korea timeline. The entire revolution that created it was for the express purpose of putting an idiot dictator in charge, one who immediately went to work on forcing the population to consider him a god king and putting his equally selfish, stupid, paranoid, and vile progeny in charge. Unless you believe a unified korea without US intervention but still with USSR support would suddenly overthrow that repressive regime, that was never going to produce a free society.
- throwuwu 3y agoWhy would they be less authoritarian if they weren’t anti West? This sounds a lot like the argument that the only reason communist countries terrorize, murder and starve their own people is because of the evil capitalist in other countries who aren’t doing that to their people. If only we could execute all of the kulaks together there’d be no need for the NKVD, comrade!
- int_19h 3y agoLest we forget, the North was propped up by the Soviets under Stalin. Do you think it is likely that they would have allowed a non-Stalinist, non-totalitarian faction to remain in charge there even if there was one with strong positions? Just look at Soviet-run purges of "improper" leftists during the Spanish Civil War.
- l3mure 3y agoMultiple brutal dictatorships, which were a direct continuation of Japanese colonial control, and which massacred their own people with US support and approval. > In the fall of 1946, the US military authorized elections to an interim legislature for southern Korea, but the results were clearly fraudulent. Even General Hodge privately wrote that right-wing "strong-arm" methods had been used to control the vote. The winners were almost all rightists, including [Syngman] Rhee supporters, even though a survey by the American military government that summer had found that 70 percent of 8,453 southern Koreans polled said they supported socialism, 7 percent communism, and only 14 percent capitalism. [...] > Chung Koo-Hun, the observant young student of the late 1940s, said of the villagers' attitude: "The Americans simply re-employed the pro-Japanese Koreans whom the people hated." [...] > Seventy of the 115 top Korean officials in the Seoul administration in 1947 had held office during the Japanese occupation. > In the southern city of Taegu, people verged on starvation. When 10,000 demonstrators rallied on October 1, 1946, police opened fire, killing many. Vengeful crowds then seized and killed policeman, and the US military declared martial law. The violence spread across the provinces, peasants murdering government officials, landlords, and especially police, detested as holdovers from Japanese days. American troops joined the police in suppressing the uprisings. Together they killed uncounted hundreds of Koreans. > American anthropologist Cornelius Osgood, spending much of 1947 in a village west of Seoul, watched as police carried young men off to jail by the truckload. A "mantle of fear" had fallen over once peaceful valleys, he wrote. The word "communist," he said, "seemed to mean 'just any young man of a village.'" On August 7, 1947, the US military government outlawed the southern communists, the Korean Worker's Party. Denied a peaceful political route, more and more leftist militants chose an armed struggle for power. quotes from The Bridge at No Gun Ri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising
- 0xbadcafebee 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism
- anticodon 3y agoWithout USA there would be no division of Korea. Also, before US sanctions, North Korea was more successful than South Korea. How people seriously can blame North Korea for poverty if it is deliberately being suffocated by USA for decades?
- pfdietz 3y agoWithout reservation, I can.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- threeseed 3y agoNorth Korea could simply abandon their nuclear weapons program, stop antagonising their neighbours and then the sanctions would be lifted. Also having actually been to the country the issue isn't sanctions. It's the lack of foreign investment and restrictions on business. Many China businesses for example would love to have broader access to the North Korean market not just for exports but as a source of cheap labour. But this is not happening because North Korea is fearful of their population being 'indoctrinated'.
- pastacacioepepe 3y ago> North Korea could simply abandon their nuclear weapons program, stop antagonising their neighbours and then the sanctions would be lifted. Stop resisting and I'll stop choking you.
- threeseed 3y agoMore like stop trying to attack your neighbours and I'll stop choking you. And nobody in this world including the US wants North Korea to continue to be a relic from the 1970s. Prosperity lifts us all.
- pastacacioepepe 3y ago
- ThorsBane 3y ago[dead]
- threeseed 3y agoAlso look at what is happening in Europe and the Ukraine war. After the weak and inept leadership shown by France and Germany in their response to Russia's aggression the hopes for a EU defense capability is all but finished. Eastern European countries would rather have the US to defend them [1]. And I think more appreciation needs to be given to the US for supporting Ukraine in those early days because if Russia over-ran Kyiv it's quite possible that Belarus, Moldova, Estonia etc could have been next. US military leadership can credibly be argued to have saved Europe. [1] https://twitter.com/ulrichspeck/status/1661710156944535554 https://twitter.com/ulrichspeck/status/1661710156944535554
- pphysch 3y ago> Belarus Why on earth would Russia invade its closest ally? It is alarming that we see such confident justifications of US foreign policy from people who don't know the basic facts of IR and world history. "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography"
- threeseed 3y agoBecause Lukashenko is dying. And countries like Poland are seeing a unique opportunity to fill the power vacuum in order to change the government to one that isn't interested in being part of Russia's sphere of influence. If Putin was successful in Ukraine it's not inconceivable he would have rather have invaded rather than risk it becoming pro-EU, joining NATO etc.
- timschmidt 3y agohttps://news.yahoo.com/russia-belarus-strategy-document-230035184.html https://news.yahoo.com/russia-belarus-strategy-document-2300... A leaked internal strategy document from Vladimir Putin’s executive office and obtained by Yahoo News lays out a detailed plan on how Russia plans to take full control over neighboring Belarus in the next decade under the pretext of a merger between the two countries. The document outlines in granular detail a creeping annexation by political, economic and military means of an independent but illiberal European nation by Russia, which is an active state of war in its bid to conquer Ukraine through overwhelming force. “Russia’s goals with regards to Belarus are the same as with Ukraine,” Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told Yahoo News. “Only in Belarus, it relies on coercion rather than war. Its end goal is still wholesale incorporation.” According to the document, issued in fall 2021, the end goal is the formation of a so-called Union State of Russia and Belarus by no later than 2030. Everything involved in the merger of the two countries has been considered, including the “harmonization” of Belarusian laws with those of the Russian Federation; a “coordinated foreign and defense policy” and “trade and economic cooperation … on the basis of the priority” of Russian interests; and “ensuring the predominant influence of the Russian Federation in the socio-political, trade-economic, scientific-educational and cultural-information spheres.”
- carlosjobim 3y ago> And post-defeat Japan has been one of the preeminent countries in the entire world. Imagine if they weren't defeated. Because they where one of the most preeminent countries in the world before defeat as well.
- all2 3y agoAnd brutal. As empires go, the Japanese had no regard for the lives of humans who weren't ethnically Japanese. This old-world way of doing war saw some 250,000 [0] Chinese killed for aiding American pilots after their bombings of targets in Japan. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhejiang-Jiangxi_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhejiang-Jiangxi_campaign [1] https://www.historynet.com/jimmy-doolittle-and-the-tokyo-raiders-strike-japan-during-world-war-ii/?f https://www.historynet.com/jimmy-doolittle-and-the-tokyo-rai...
- makeitdouble 3y agoPost-defeat Japan is an interesting beast. Before attacking the US, they had Korea and Manchury invaded, and Russia in check. The extent of their dominance relative to their country size was really impressive, and they went for the US because they needed to feel unstoppable. Then of coure, they were stopped. But none of the base roots of the war were removed, the emperor was allowed to stay, they made token trial of random generals who committed atrocities. But no one was allowed to officialy question: - the US carpet bombing entire Tokyo (for comparison we questionned Germany carpet bombing EU towns) and dropping the bombs on civilians - the Japan's spiritual leader and basic phyolosophy. Really, imagine Hitler being excused as a mere puppet and staying as a philosophical leader after the war. In that respect, The compromise the US took looks to me like the critical difference from Germany, where they could move on and jointly create the EU. Instead, Japan and Korea are still barking at each other over the war almost a century later.
- fomine3 3y agoMost roots of the war cause were removed. Entire military was destroyed so some bad systems are also destroyed: Old constitution that defines emperor as top of mils formally (rather than prime minister) so mils did some thing without cabinet's order. Gunbu Daijin Geneki Bukan sei system so mil had control for cabinet. People think the existence of emperor (thousand years long) itself wasn't the root cause (or at least think it's better than changing everything), unlike Hitler.
- makeitdouble 3y agoYou are right, in that most of the international community saw the deal as a decent one, and see Japan as a fundamentally different entity pot-war. I'd argue it's a different story looking from inside Japan. A sizeable part of the population aren't questioning going to war in the first place, and only put the blame on the military for having attacked the US. Basically they blame the country for having been too greedy, and see the current jp/usa relationship in that light ("why do we need to import so much US beef ?" "Because we lost" is something you'd hear with only half sarcasm) That is to me a fundamental problem that was one of the root cause of the war, and stil causes issues to this day. The lasting conclusion should have been "don't invade your neighboors", not "don't attack the US". To be clear, I don't think Japan will ever invade Korea or China again, but their diplomatic relations are still somewhere stuck in that age on both side. And if Japan had a venue where the international community wouldn't beat the shit out of them, they'd still go for full domination.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y agoWars are fought by governments, but often started by individuals with massive leverage over the war-fighting apparatus of governments. Industry veterans hired to patronage positions in high office, who then push the government into a war that will benefit the industry or company. Or media companies, headed by executives seeking to push their own political will on nations, that harangue the public with fear and anger to instill a desire for war. Governments have basically no agency or will of their own. They're like a mecha suit from an anime. Lots of infrastructure, but where they go and what they do is up to whomever's at the controls at the time.
- isk517 3y agoProbably more appropriate to compare it to the type of mecha Power Rangers use, except unlikely to be piloted by a group of people that both A) want to work together and B) want to work towards the common good.
- jasmer 3y ago"who then push the government into a war that will benefit the industry or company." Where is the evidence for this ? Wars are generally not started by the arms makers, rather, the profiteer off of the situation. Obviously there might be influence but I don't think that industrial complex is in charge of anything really.
- mrburkins 3y ago“Industry veterans hired to patronage positions in high office, who then push the government into a war that will benefit the industry or company.” Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney seem to fit this mold squarely
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoTo take some artistic license with a well-known aphorism: If all you've ever used is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
- hammock 3y ago>The problem is that if you are being attacked, you will gladly allow people to make big profit if they save lives. Reminds me of the covid pandemic. Pfizer made $100 billion last year
- mrguyorama 3y agoThe agreement was $20 a vaccine, which IMO is perfectly fine. Making a profit from doing a necessary thing is very capitalism. Remember that shareholders were very upset they didn't make MORE profit.
- ipaddr 3y agoCanada paid $175 per dose. https://www.oxfam.ca/news/vaccine-monopolies-make-cost-of-vaccinating-the-world-against-covid-at-least-5-times-more-expensive-than-it-could-be/ https://www.oxfam.ca/news/vaccine-monopolies-make-cost-of-va...
- mrguyorama 3y agoThat's likely the price executives and shareholders would have wanted for the US. I wonder what leverage Trump held over Pfizer to get the $20 price. It's a genuine negotiating win from someone who considers just not paying your contractors to be good business and negotiating.
- hammock 3y agoPfizer also got billions of dollars in free and taxpayer-funded advertising
- ertian 3y agoTaxpayers got billions in life-saving government information, too. It wasn't for the benefit of Pfizer that the government ran those campaigns.
- glogla 3y agoThey also saved millions of lives.
- einpoklum 3y ago[flagged]
- 3192029941 3y agoI'm genuinely asking--what's the alternative to appeasement in this situation, aside from fighting?
- einpoklum 3y agoI can't believe I have to explain that joke, but ok. There is no "appease or defend" choice - neither of these alternatives are real. The US is not being attacked at all, or attacked in the way the empire in Star Wars is attacked: While it attacks/oppresses everywhere and all the time, occasionally it meets violent resistance.
- 3192029941 3y agoSorry if I'm being thick here, but I'm still confused. Why is neither alternative real? I get that the US isn't being attacked. However, appeasement in the 1930s wasn't a policy enacted by countries that were being actively attacked yet. It was a policy enacted by other countries. I guess, in my head (and I'd love to hear your take on this), the US doing nothing _is_ appeasement.
- einpoklum 3y agoWe were talking about the US. Other world states are in a different situation - which depends on the country. As for the US - there is no such thing as it "doing nothing". It has been attacking, occupying, repressing, subverting - all the time, in many places around the world, essentially since it was founded. As have other military empires in history.