5 ms·

Austria, for one.

inglor_cz 3y ago
Austria strongly relies on the fact that it is located in a "safe" region, where none of its neighbours is likely to ever attack it. Austrian military expenses are very meager.
- pastacacioepepe 3y ago
  Aren't the US in a safe region as well? They choose to spend a lot in military to project their force globally, not because they need to protect themselves.
  - devilbunny 3y ago
    Withdraw the US Navy and watch how fast that evaporates. Someone has to, or you get piracy. A lot of it. And I don’t mean movies. We have the most to lose from impaired trade, so we pay for it. We have floating airbases all over the world. As Madeleine Albright said to the president of China, “Jiang Zemin, one of my favorite men, but when you’re not so sweet, I send the Seventh Fleet.” Nukes mean that no nation-state will attack us openly. The Navy means that fucking with the US is a personal death sentence.
    - pastacacioepepe 3y ago
      I wonder why do you have the perception that half the world would attack the US if they didn't have the largest military force. Why doesn't that happen to Austria, for example, or China? Perhaps "fucking" with the world is what caused the US to be considered an enemy by so many countries. Almost like the more they impose their force globally, the more other countries feel the need to resist it.
      - inglor_cz 3y ago
        Not the OP, but I don't understand how you parsed his argument into "I wonder why do you have the perception that half the world would attack the US if they didn't have the largest military force" There is absolutely nothing insinuating this perception in his comment. He says that without the US Navy, there would be a lot more piracy on the high seas, and he is likely right. The historical experience from all corners of the world confirms that weakening naval control leads to increase in opportunistic piracy all around. Piracy is one of the oldest organized criminal activities in the world and most civilizations, including the really old ones (like Ancient Egypt) had to deal with it this way or another.
        pastacacioepepe 3y ago
        > There is absolutely nothing insinuating this perception in his comment. From OP: > Nukes mean that no nation-state will attack us openly. The Navy means that fucking with the US is a personal death sentence.
        devilbunny 3y ago
        Right. But I’m not saying people are dying to attack the US. They largely don’t care about us. I’m saying that you can play games with, say, Austria, that you can’t with the US. And yes, we will hunt you down. Does that make us bad people? No, it’s the consequence of power. If you don’t use it, someone else will. And the US has done a lot of bad things - but name what other country capable of doing it you would prefer to be in charge. Monaco isn’t an option.
        pastacacioepepe 3y ago
        I get your point of view, but I believe in a multipolar world where no single country can set the rules unilaterally. China has shown us that you can modernize a country and make it a global actor without imposing yourself as a hegemon, and I choose that as a role model.
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      - devilbunny 3y ago
        The US is not the nicest country in the world. It is, however, the global hegemon. China is a major world power, as the home of the oldest semi-continuous civilization in the world. Austria is a bunch of ski slopes and lakes. My ancestry is Irish and British. We were apes painting ourselves blue when China was building a world. Austria is beautiful. But it hasn’t been a power for 100 years. Being in control means making enemies of everyone else who wants to be in control. The US is not an innocent bystander, but you could have worse. Don’t forget that.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    While the US can always decide to turn inward and stop caring about safety of anything else but their own territory, the resulting harm for the US economy and diplomatic relations would be enormous. The US took over from the British as the power that protects global trade networks, which means patrolling the seas. The capability and willingness to do so attracted a lot of other developed nations into the US-led political coalition, and contributed to enormous growth of international trade (something like 5-fold since the 1970s?) Without enough of a Navy, this network will disintegrate, or will be taken over by someone else, much like in the UK-to-US case around the time of WWII. Realistically, the only nation capable of doing so is China and I am not even certain if they wanted to, as their international projects like Belt-and-road are being abandoned.
    - pastacacioepepe 3y ago
      So how could China develop so much without that huge network of navy imposing their power globally? Why does China invest in peaceful commercial agreements (like Belt and road, which is still active btw) while the US invests in global military control?
      - inglor_cz 3y ago
        Belt and Road isn't shuttered down yet, but the volume of new projects under its aegis has gone to approximately zero. China was able to export its goods to the rest of the world using ships. Those ships sailed mostly safe seas (yeah there are exceptions like the Malacca Straits, where pirates still lurk) without any Chinese navy protection, because those seas were made safe by someone else. That is not hard to understand. If the global trade as a whole is protected by the US Navy, Chinese trade, a subset thereof, is protected as well. BTW The US does not have global military control. They do have quite a lot of control of the seas, but dry land is a different story. They had to withdraw from Afghanistan after trying to impose their will for 20 years. They didn't succeed in remaking Iraq to their ally either. And, in the steppes of Ukraine, a war has been raging for almost two years by now, with no end in sight - obviously not "in control" of the US, not least because one of the combatants is a major nuclear power and you cannot have any meaningful military control over a major nuclear power.

Austria, for one.

Austria strongly relies on the fact that it is located in a "safe" region, where none of its neighbours is likely to ever attack it. Austrian military expenses are very meager.

pastacacioepepe 3y ago
Aren't the US in a safe region as well? They choose to spend a lot in military to project their force globally, not because they need to protect themselves.
- devilbunny 3y ago
  Withdraw the US Navy and watch how fast that evaporates. Someone has to, or you get piracy. A lot of it. And I don’t mean movies. We have the most to lose from impaired trade, so we pay for it. We have floating airbases all over the world. As Madeleine Albright said to the president of China, “Jiang Zemin, one of my favorite men, but when you’re not so sweet, I send the Seventh Fleet.” Nukes mean that no nation-state will attack us openly. The Navy means that fucking with the US is a personal death sentence.
  - pastacacioepepe 3y ago
    I wonder why do you have the perception that half the world would attack the US if they didn't have the largest military force. Why doesn't that happen to Austria, for example, or China? Perhaps "fucking" with the world is what caused the US to be considered an enemy by so many countries. Almost like the more they impose their force globally, the more other countries feel the need to resist it.
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
      Not the OP, but I don't understand how you parsed his argument into "I wonder why do you have the perception that half the world would attack the US if they didn't have the largest military force" There is absolutely nothing insinuating this perception in his comment. He says that without the US Navy, there would be a lot more piracy on the high seas, and he is likely right. The historical experience from all corners of the world confirms that weakening naval control leads to increase in opportunistic piracy all around. Piracy is one of the oldest organized criminal activities in the world and most civilizations, including the really old ones (like Ancient Egypt) had to deal with it this way or another.
      - pastacacioepepe 3y ago
        > There is absolutely nothing insinuating this perception in his comment. From OP: > Nukes mean that no nation-state will attack us openly. The Navy means that fucking with the US is a personal death sentence.
        devilbunny 3y ago
        Right. But I’m not saying people are dying to attack the US. They largely don’t care about us. I’m saying that you can play games with, say, Austria, that you can’t with the US. And yes, we will hunt you down. Does that make us bad people? No, it’s the consequence of power. If you don’t use it, someone else will. And the US has done a lot of bad things - but name what other country capable of doing it you would prefer to be in charge. Monaco isn’t an option.
        pastacacioepepe 3y ago
        I get your point of view, but I believe in a multipolar world where no single country can set the rules unilaterally. China has shown us that you can modernize a country and make it a global actor without imposing yourself as a hegemon, and I choose that as a role model.
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    - devilbunny 3y ago
      The US is not the nicest country in the world. It is, however, the global hegemon. China is a major world power, as the home of the oldest semi-continuous civilization in the world. Austria is a bunch of ski slopes and lakes. My ancestry is Irish and British. We were apes painting ourselves blue when China was building a world. Austria is beautiful. But it hasn’t been a power for 100 years. Being in control means making enemies of everyone else who wants to be in control. The US is not an innocent bystander, but you could have worse. Don’t forget that.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  While the US can always decide to turn inward and stop caring about safety of anything else but their own territory, the resulting harm for the US economy and diplomatic relations would be enormous. The US took over from the British as the power that protects global trade networks, which means patrolling the seas. The capability and willingness to do so attracted a lot of other developed nations into the US-led political coalition, and contributed to enormous growth of international trade (something like 5-fold since the 1970s?) Without enough of a Navy, this network will disintegrate, or will be taken over by someone else, much like in the UK-to-US case around the time of WWII. Realistically, the only nation capable of doing so is China and I am not even certain if they wanted to, as their international projects like Belt-and-road are being abandoned.
  - pastacacioepepe 3y ago
    So how could China develop so much without that huge network of navy imposing their power globally? Why does China invest in peaceful commercial agreements (like Belt and road, which is still active btw) while the US invests in global military control?
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
      Belt and Road isn't shuttered down yet, but the volume of new projects under its aegis has gone to approximately zero. China was able to export its goods to the rest of the world using ships. Those ships sailed mostly safe seas (yeah there are exceptions like the Malacca Straits, where pirates still lurk) without any Chinese navy protection, because those seas were made safe by someone else. That is not hard to understand. If the global trade as a whole is protected by the US Navy, Chinese trade, a subset thereof, is protected as well. BTW The US does not have global military control. They do have quite a lot of control of the seas, but dry land is a different story. They had to withdraw from Afghanistan after trying to impose their will for 20 years. They didn't succeed in remaking Iraq to their ally either. And, in the steppes of Ukraine, a war has been raging for almost two years by now, with no end in sight - obviously not "in control" of the US, not least because one of the combatants is a major nuclear power and you cannot have any meaningful military control over a major nuclear power.