5 ms·

Sometimes you have to let countries duke it out themselves and settle their scores by themselves. I also think post Cold War, we're spending way too much money

by mc32 3y ago

Sometimes you have to let countries duke it out themselves and settle their scores by themselves. I also think post Cold War, we're spending way too much money protecting others at US taxpayer expense. Let those countries defend themselves. Why do we have to be the world police and take all the blowback?

macintux 3y ago
Because we benefit disproportionately from world peace, uninterrupted shipping, and the world economy using the U.S. dollar as its reserve currency.
- mc32 3y ago
  The dollar became the world currency by accident after the OPEC started pricing petroleum in dollars. We're starting to see a slow departure from that. If we did not spend those extra tens of billions per year in projecting power, we could better serve our students, workers, retirees, infrastructure, etc. Instead, they go to ensuring Japan, Korea, Philippines, etc. don't have to spend so much on defense. As China ascends to No. 1, will they take over the spending? (I'd be happy of they were the ones keeping shipping lanes for their own exports open and not us)
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > I'd be happy [if China] were the ones keeping shipping lanes for their own exports open and not us History's not on your side for that one. You're talking about the country that, plagued by pirates disturbing its coastal shipping, went to massive expense to construct an enormous system of inland canals running parallel to the coast that the pirates couldn't reach. If Chinese merchants wanted the sea kept clear, say because they wanted to trade with nearby islands, they had do that in their own private capacity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koxinga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koxinga
    - bagels 3y ago
      Do you think that it is possible that in the last 400 years that the strategy might change in how to deal with piracy?
    - lucasban 3y ago
      I hardly think the situation a few hundred years ago is relevant to their ability to secure their modern shipping lines
      - thaumasiotes 3y ago
        They had the ability then. It just wasn't something they were interested in doing.
    - dirtyid 3y ago
      >history's not on your side for that one Except that's history. Reality today is not on your side. PRC has more ship building capacity than rest of world combined. Annual production of dead weight tons per year is about 6x-8x more than output US emergency ship building program during WW2. Not to mention most new PRC surface combatants do anti piracy tours out to Africa. If PRC/PLAN wanted to take over piracy protection for her SLOCs, they can basically do so already, plenty of small hulls being retired to coast guard that even they have enough capacity to do it.
  - throw47474777j 3y ago
    > If we did not spend those extra tens of billions per year in projecting power, we could better serve our students, workers, retirees, infrastructure, etc. This is laughable. If we didn’t spend billions projecting power, we’d be much poorer because world trade would become much more costly for us, as China reshapes it to its own advantage. China isn’t looking in great shape to do any ‘ascending’ anyway.
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    > The dollar became the world currency by accident after the OPEC started pricing petroleum in dollars. OPEC was formed on September 14, 1960. The definition of "world currency" is somewhat nebulous, but for the purposes of determining when the "dollar became the world currency", perhaps the best date to use is the Bretton Woods conference, which set up the main international financial system, establishing that everyone would peg their currencies to the US dollar, as well as the existence of the IMF and the World Bank. This was done--on purpose, not "by accident"--in June, 1944, 16 years before OPEC ever existed. The Bretton Woods system itself collapses in the 1970s.
outworlder 3y ago
> Why do we have to be the world police and take all the blowback? Because that's what superpowers do if they want to keep their position as superpowers. You can, for example, stop policing shipping lanes. But then can't complain once shipments start disappearing as other countries don't take the slack. There is less justification to keep warships near 'interesting' countries in that scenario too. You get to keep the military machine well oiled. And the list goes on. The US is not doing this out of benevolence.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago
  No. The United States was the world's superpower on December 6, 1941. It did not get to that position by keeping the military machine well oiled. On December 6, 1941, the US vs. rest of world might have been a fair fight. Maybe. That didn't happen by being the world police.
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    > On December 6, 1941, the US vs. rest of world might have been a fair fight. Maybe. No, it wouldn't have. The US would likely have lost the fight, especially if you consider that in such a counterfactual world there probably wouldn't have been a WW2 going on for the past few years. While it is difficult to be more precise about when the US became the top world power than "during WW2", it is pretty clear to most knowledgeable observers that the answer is definitely not before WW2 breaks out (it is at best at parity with Britain). And honestly, I'd be skeptical of putting it before the Guadalcanal Campaign, where the US throws battleships into a cruiser battle because it has run out of cruisers. The point I'd go for is when the Essex carriers start coming online, which is 1943.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - rufus_foreman 3y ago
      You are confusing military power with industrial power. The US had industrial power before 1941, before 1911, starting in the 1890s. The US could turn that into military power any time it wanted to, and in the time period between the world wars, it didn't want to. After 1941, it wanted to. Because of a lot of lies, but that's another discussion entirely.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mcculley 3y ago
An implicit deal we have made with many other states is that in exchange for managing the peace, they will not develop or further develop nuclear capability. To me, that is worth a lot.
- zirgs 3y ago
  Yup - if we didn't accept Finland and Sweden into NATO then their only option to prevent a Russian invasion would be to develop nukes and aim them at St. Petersburg.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    I’m not sure what the joke is. Sweden had an atomic bomb program which was dropped in the 1970s after assurances from the US to extend its “nuclear umbrella” to protect Sweden.
    - zirgs 3y ago
      So if the USSR were to attack Sweden then what would the USA do exactly?
      - mcculley 3y ago
        Do you mean Russia or USSR? It is unclear if you are asking about a hypothetical event in the past or a hypothetical event in the future after ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership.
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        I don’t know. Most of it is still classified, but whatever it was, it was enough to assure Swedish governments of the time. (70s - early 90s)
        zirgs 3y ago
        Interesting that Sweden sees modern Russia as a bigger threat than the USSR. Whatever there was before is not enough now and they want a full NATO membership instead.
speakfreely 3y ago
This entire narrative reads like someone who has not consumed any geopolitical news whatsoever since the mid-2010s.
InTheArena 3y ago
American actions post world war II and post cold war are founded from the experience post-world War I, when USA left Europe to fend for itself, defend itself, and rebuild itself it resulted in a much worse outcome for the world. We tried again after World War II, but after it became clear that Europe would be ripped apart by their internal issues after World War II, and stalin would exploit that to continue to drive the iron curtain west, the USA re-engaged in Europe. The USA and Europe have a role to play in keeping the peace. It's not a accident that China is regularly violating Japanese territorial waters (as they did last week, he 8 mile line here, not exclusive economic zones) and threatening their neighbors over possession of islands that can strangle world trade. When China (and Russia for that manner) show that they can be apart of a international community based on common principles of human rights, there won't be a need... but until then.
- dirtyid 3y ago
  USA keeping "peace" using Japan as example is detached from reality. The entire reason PRC (and TW and both Korea's and RU via USSR) has DISPUTED maritime borders and territorial claims with Japan (read: not Japanese territory / water) is because USA deliberately kept post war East Asian order unresolved post WW2. There's a reason Japan, the loser of the war, has maritime / territorial disputes with EVERY one of her neighbours (no other country has 100% territorial dispute) her post war territory should have been dictated to her via treaty, but due to US posturing, was left messily unresolved specifically because it gave US military more freedom to operate in region. It's absurd to think anyone but US and by connection JP for being the bad actors for fucking up post war resolution for other ALLIES (read: USSR -> RU and ROC -> PRC). East Asian territorial friction is precisly because USA couldn't keep peace by engineering an situtation where peace is impossible because they didn't want a durable peaceful international order and gave literal war criminals preferential geopolitical treatment because it benefited US military interests, and continues to.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    [flagged]
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> we're spending way too much money protecting others at US taxpayer expense. Is US pritectibg Europe, or US interests in Europe? Over the past 40 years the US spending on arms has grown, but fewer and fewer pieces are being produced. Pentagon fails audits. Now it got to the point where USA cannot supply Ukraine with enough artillery rounds, and they are like the aimplest item to produce. Economy of Russia is like 10x smaller, this should not even be a contest in terms of production. Imagine if there is a real conflict, and things like cruise missiles need to be replaced, what happens then - you place an order and wait 2 years for it to be delivered? China has 10 the manufacturing capabilty of Russia. I doubtwe need to spend so much, but why are we not getting our money's worth?
- pyrale 3y ago
  > Now it got to the point where USA cannot supply Ukraine with enough artillery rounds, and they are like the aimplest item to produce. Economy of Russia is like 10x smaller, this should not even be a contest in terms of production. Never in modern history has a country been able to sustain a full-blown war without adapting its production capacity. It's not surprising that an economy dimensioned for peacetime doesn't successfully sustain a war. > Imagine if there is a real conflict, and things like cruise missiles need to be replaced, what happens then - you place an order and wait 2 years for it to be delivered? Basically, yes. Always was. As explained in the Vietnam war example [1]: "D to P stocks are those war reserves of ammunition which are stocked in peace time to provide the necessary reservoir of ammunition to sustain combat operations until such time that the planned production base can be activated" [1]: http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/2005/CMH_2/www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/vietnam/logistic/chapter4.htm http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/2005/CMH_2/www.army.mil/cm...
soligern 3y ago
Because that’s what being a superpower means. A lot of the rights and privileges you enjoy is precisely because the US is a superpower. If you don’t like it, you’re more than welcome to move to some quiet backwater, there are plenty of those around the world.

by mc32 3y ago

macintux 3y ago

Because we benefit disproportionately from world peace, uninterrupted shipping, and the world economy using the U.S. dollar as its reserve currency.

mc32 3y ago
The dollar became the world currency by accident after the OPEC started pricing petroleum in dollars. We're starting to see a slow departure from that. If we did not spend those extra tens of billions per year in projecting power, we could better serve our students, workers, retirees, infrastructure, etc. Instead, they go to ensuring Japan, Korea, Philippines, etc. don't have to spend so much on defense. As China ascends to No. 1, will they take over the spending? (I'd be happy of they were the ones keeping shipping lanes for their own exports open and not us)
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > I'd be happy [if China] were the ones keeping shipping lanes for their own exports open and not us History's not on your side for that one. You're talking about the country that, plagued by pirates disturbing its coastal shipping, went to massive expense to construct an enormous system of inland canals running parallel to the coast that the pirates couldn't reach. If Chinese merchants wanted the sea kept clear, say because they wanted to trade with nearby islands, they had do that in their own private capacity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koxinga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koxinga
  - bagels 3y ago
    Do you think that it is possible that in the last 400 years that the strategy might change in how to deal with piracy?
  - lucasban 3y ago
    I hardly think the situation a few hundred years ago is relevant to their ability to secure their modern shipping lines
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      They had the ability then. It just wasn't something they were interested in doing.
  - dirtyid 3y ago
    >history's not on your side for that one Except that's history. Reality today is not on your side. PRC has more ship building capacity than rest of world combined. Annual production of dead weight tons per year is about 6x-8x more than output US emergency ship building program during WW2. Not to mention most new PRC surface combatants do anti piracy tours out to Africa. If PRC/PLAN wanted to take over piracy protection for her SLOCs, they can basically do so already, plenty of small hulls being retired to coast guard that even they have enough capacity to do it.
- throw47474777j 3y ago
  > If we did not spend those extra tens of billions per year in projecting power, we could better serve our students, workers, retirees, infrastructure, etc. This is laughable. If we didn’t spend billions projecting power, we’d be much poorer because world trade would become much more costly for us, as China reshapes it to its own advantage. China isn’t looking in great shape to do any ‘ascending’ anyway.
- jcranmer 3y ago
  > The dollar became the world currency by accident after the OPEC started pricing petroleum in dollars. OPEC was formed on September 14, 1960. The definition of "world currency" is somewhat nebulous, but for the purposes of determining when the "dollar became the world currency", perhaps the best date to use is the Bretton Woods conference, which set up the main international financial system, establishing that everyone would peg their currencies to the US dollar, as well as the existence of the IMF and the World Bank. This was done--on purpose, not "by accident"--in June, 1944, 16 years before OPEC ever existed. The Bretton Woods system itself collapses in the 1970s.

outworlder 3y ago

> Why do we have to be the world police and take all the blowback? Because that's what superpowers do if they want to keep their position as superpowers. You can, for example, stop policing shipping lanes. But then can't complain once shipments start disappearing as other countries don't take the slack. There is less justification to keep warships near 'interesting' countries in that scenario too. You get to keep the military machine well oiled. And the list goes on. The US is not doing this out of benevolence.

rufus_foreman 3y ago
No. The United States was the world's superpower on December 6, 1941. It did not get to that position by keeping the military machine well oiled. On December 6, 1941, the US vs. rest of world might have been a fair fight. Maybe. That didn't happen by being the world police.
- jcranmer 3y ago
  > On December 6, 1941, the US vs. rest of world might have been a fair fight. Maybe. No, it wouldn't have. The US would likely have lost the fight, especially if you consider that in such a counterfactual world there probably wouldn't have been a WW2 going on for the past few years. While it is difficult to be more precise about when the US became the top world power than "during WW2", it is pretty clear to most knowledgeable observers that the answer is definitely not before WW2 breaks out (it is at best at parity with Britain). And honestly, I'd be skeptical of putting it before the Guadalcanal Campaign, where the US throws battleships into a cruiser battle because it has run out of cruisers. The point I'd go for is when the Essex carriers start coming online, which is 1943.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - rufus_foreman 3y ago
    You are confusing military power with industrial power. The US had industrial power before 1941, before 1911, starting in the 1890s. The US could turn that into military power any time it wanted to, and in the time period between the world wars, it didn't want to. After 1941, it wanted to. Because of a lot of lies, but that's another discussion entirely.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mcculley 3y ago

An implicit deal we have made with many other states is that in exchange for managing the peace, they will not develop or further develop nuclear capability. To me, that is worth a lot.

zirgs 3y ago
Yup - if we didn't accept Finland and Sweden into NATO then their only option to prevent a Russian invasion would be to develop nukes and aim them at St. Petersburg.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  I’m not sure what the joke is. Sweden had an atomic bomb program which was dropped in the 1970s after assurances from the US to extend its “nuclear umbrella” to protect Sweden.
  - zirgs 3y ago
    So if the USSR were to attack Sweden then what would the USA do exactly?
    - mcculley 3y ago
      Do you mean Russia or USSR? It is unclear if you are asking about a hypothetical event in the past or a hypothetical event in the future after ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      I don’t know. Most of it is still classified, but whatever it was, it was enough to assure Swedish governments of the time. (70s - early 90s)
      - zirgs 3y ago
        Interesting that Sweden sees modern Russia as a bigger threat than the USSR. Whatever there was before is not enough now and they want a full NATO membership instead.

speakfreely 3y ago

This entire narrative reads like someone who has not consumed any geopolitical news whatsoever since the mid-2010s.

InTheArena 3y ago

American actions post world war II and post cold war are founded from the experience post-world War I, when USA left Europe to fend for itself, defend itself, and rebuild itself it resulted in a much worse outcome for the world. We tried again after World War II, but after it became clear that Europe would be ripped apart by their internal issues after World War II, and stalin would exploit that to continue to drive the iron curtain west, the USA re-engaged in Europe. The USA and Europe have a role to play in keeping the peace. It's not a accident that China is regularly violating Japanese territorial waters (as they did last week, he 8 mile line here, not exclusive economic zones) and threatening their neighbors over possession of islands that can strangle world trade. When China (and Russia for that manner) show that they can be apart of a international community based on common principles of human rights, there won't be a need... but until then.

dirtyid 3y ago
USA keeping "peace" using Japan as example is detached from reality. The entire reason PRC (and TW and both Korea's and RU via USSR) has DISPUTED maritime borders and territorial claims with Japan (read: not Japanese territory / water) is because USA deliberately kept post war East Asian order unresolved post WW2. There's a reason Japan, the loser of the war, has maritime / territorial disputes with EVERY one of her neighbours (no other country has 100% territorial dispute) her post war territory should have been dictated to her via treaty, but due to US posturing, was left messily unresolved specifically because it gave US military more freedom to operate in region. It's absurd to think anyone but US and by connection JP for being the bad actors for fucking up post war resolution for other ALLIES (read: USSR -> RU and ROC -> PRC). East Asian territorial friction is precisly because USA couldn't keep peace by engineering an situtation where peace is impossible because they didn't want a durable peaceful international order and gave literal war criminals preferential geopolitical treatment because it benefited US military interests, and continues to.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  [flagged]

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> we're spending way too much money protecting others at US taxpayer expense. Is US pritectibg Europe, or US interests in Europe? Over the past 40 years the US spending on arms has grown, but fewer and fewer pieces are being produced. Pentagon fails audits. Now it got to the point where USA cannot supply Ukraine with enough artillery rounds, and they are like the aimplest item to produce. Economy of Russia is like 10x smaller, this should not even be a contest in terms of production. Imagine if there is a real conflict, and things like cruise missiles need to be replaced, what happens then - you place an order and wait 2 years for it to be delivered? China has 10 the manufacturing capabilty of Russia. I doubtwe need to spend so much, but why are we not getting our money's worth?

pyrale 3y ago
> Now it got to the point where USA cannot supply Ukraine with enough artillery rounds, and they are like the aimplest item to produce. Economy of Russia is like 10x smaller, this should not even be a contest in terms of production. Never in modern history has a country been able to sustain a full-blown war without adapting its production capacity. It's not surprising that an economy dimensioned for peacetime doesn't successfully sustain a war. > Imagine if there is a real conflict, and things like cruise missiles need to be replaced, what happens then - you place an order and wait 2 years for it to be delivered? Basically, yes. Always was. As explained in the Vietnam war example [1]: "D to P stocks are those war reserves of ammunition which are stocked in peace time to provide the necessary reservoir of ammunition to sustain combat operations until such time that the planned production base can be activated" [1]: http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/2005/CMH_2/www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/vietnam/logistic/chapter4.htm http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/ebook/p/2005/CMH_2/www.army.mil/cm...

soligern 3y ago

Because that’s what being a superpower means. A lot of the rights and privileges you enjoy is precisely because the US is a superpower. If you don’t like it, you’re more than welcome to move to some quiet backwater, there are plenty of those around the world.