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I could make literally the opposite argument. Other countries antagonize the US because of its military interventionism. If the US had lower military spending,

I could make literally the opposite argument. Other countries antagonize the US because of its military interventionism. If the US had lower military spending, other countries wouldn't feel the need to be aggressive. It's childish to be pro military. It shows you think arbitrary lines on a map determine who's good or bad.

scottLobster 3y ago
Yeah, I'm sure Russia and China would be far less aggressive if the US had lower military spending. What you're suggesting is the geopolitical equivalent of "ignore the bully and they'll get bored and go away". And you call others childish?
- amrocha 3y ago
  No, we just have a different perspective. USA is the bully, not the rest of the world. Any country that grows powerful enough to get in the eye of the USA needs a strong military, because the USA has a military and a record of interventionism that can't be ignored.
  - mopsi 3y ago
    > No, we just have a different perspective. USA is the bully, not the rest of the world. There is no question that the US has acted like a bully in Southern America, but you ignore that other countries have acted the same way in other parts of the world[1], and with far more disastrous results[2]. If you want to dig into records, then the ground under my feet has seen a Russian invasion roughly every 50 years for as long as written records go, that is, every generation has had to resist a Russian attack and suffer the consequences. The war in Ukraine is like a replay of so many wars before, from its artificial justifications to the incredible violence against victims. When kids study history in school, one of the sources they have to analyze and put into context is a letter from a Russian nobleman to the czar after another successful conquest. In the letter, he boasts that when he was travelling from one city to another on the way back to Russia, he didn't see a single living person left. They had successfully burned everything down and killed everyone. Centuries have passed, but nothing has changed. Russians use the same tactic in Ukraine, massive artillery walls slowly crawling forward, reducing entire cities to total rubble as if they had been hit with a nuclear bomb[3]. Pax Americana is currently the only thing preventing me and hundreds of millions of other Europeans from sharing the same fate. Russians do not dare to invade as long as they don't know if Americans would press the nuclear button or not. My freedom to live in peace and unharmed, speak my language and practice my culture, directly depends on the missile silos tucked away somewhere between the cornfields of Iowa. How about that for a perspective? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide [3] https://www.rferl.org/a/maryinka-aerial-shattered-landscape/32408454.html https://www.rferl.org/a/maryinka-aerial-shattered-landscape/...
    - lmm 3y ago
      > There is no question that the US has acted like a bully in Southern America, but you ignore that other countries have acted the same way in other parts of the world[1], and with far more disastrous results[2]. No. The argument is not that having some other country as hegemon would be better than the US. The argument is that any single country being overly powerful is a negative, and a more multipolar would would be healthier. "The US should maintain enough military capacity to prevent/repel an invasion of the continental US" is not particularly controversial. But the US "defending" countries halfway around the world is not healthy for either. > Pax Americana is currently the only thing preventing me and hundreds of millions of other Europeans from sharing the same fate. Russians do not dare to invade as long as they don't know if Americans would press the nuclear button or not. My freedom to live in peace and unharmed, speak my language and practice my culture, directly depends on the missile silos tucked away somewhere between the cornfields of Iowa. How about that for a perspective? Russia has spent the past year failing to conquer a country of 40 million, without any involvement from those missile silos. If they tried to invade Poland or Finland they would crumble even quicker. The only countries with a legitimate fear of a Russian invasion are the same countries who have shown zero willingness to protect other people's "freedom to speak their language and practice their culture" when it comes to Russian people living within their (present) borders.
      - Paradigma11 3y ago
        "The argument is that any single country being overly powerful is a negative, and a more multipolar would would be healthier." That would be a first, wouldnt it? We are currently seeing the consequences of the waning of the US unipolar Superpower. Venezuela had a referendum to annex large parts of its neighbor. Iran attacked nuclear Pakistan and has its proxies disrupt international shipping lanes and wage war against Israel. Turkey has its fingers in tons of conflicts and supported its ally Azerbaijan in the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh. China asserts its military dominance in the south China and is depriving other nations thousands of km away of their rights and resources. Never mind that it is also preparing to invade and subjugate Taiwan. .... Turns out if given power people are jerks, who would have guessed.
andrewstuart 3y ago
That's the world view that my family came from - very leftist and peace loving. "If only everyone put down their guns there would be no need etc etc". But it's not the world we live in - we live in a military world - that's real and not a hope/fantasy about a different civilisation without war or weapons. We have to have a society suited to the world we live in. And by the way I remain very much left wing and at the same time extremely pragmatic about the need for a nation to defend itself.
- amrocha 3y ago
  You talk about a country defending itself as if that's what militaries do. The US military has been intervening in the world stage for 80 years at this point. Take any country below the equator and chances are the US has probably used its military against it. That's not defence. You don't collaborate with that actor if you think defence is the goal.
  - eep_social 3y ago
    Not Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa!
    - andrewstuart 3y ago
      Well England did nuke Australia. But we’re friends so thats OK. If we set that aside as an aberration, then yes your right.
      - eep_social 3y ago
        No harm in a little nuclear explosion between friends.
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    So pushing Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991 wasn't defense? Fascinating worldview you got there.
jonnybgood 3y ago
I don’t think that opposite argument works given the current geopolitical situation which has nothing to do with the US being aggressive. Russia would have very likely completed its conquest of Ukraine by now and moved on to the Baltic states (NATO relies on US military spending to compensate for lack of spending of other NATO members). Taiwan would belong to China yesterday, along with the rest of the Indo-Pacific.
- amrocha 3y ago
  It's disingenuous to ignore the effect the aggression of the cold war and its aftermath had on the current Russian situation. With Taiwan, it's a delicate situation and I'm not familiar enough with it to comment on it. But I notice you conveniently left out all the times the US just did interventionism because it was convenient. Iraq? Most recently Venezuela? If we go back long enough, how about literally all of South America?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    What military interventionism in Venezuela? The US applied sanctions when Maduro started suppressing democracy, sure, but that's not the same thing as airstrikes or invading. This sounds like goalpost moving, since we were talking specifically about military force. The US has a shit history of intervening in Latin America from the 20th century, no argument there, but it's been several decades now at least since the US overthrow a democracy in that region.
    - thiagoharry 3y ago
      > but it's been several decades now at least since the US overthrow a democracy in that region. Isn't because it takes several decades for the secret documents being declassified? Of course the official discourse of USA is that they did nothing. However, we have several accusations of interference in Latin America in a lot of soft coups and more direct attacks like in Bolivia (2019) and Venezuela (a coup in 2002 and a mercenary attack in 2020).
TulliusCicero 3y ago
> If the US had lower military spending, other countries wouldn't feel the need to be aggressive. Ah, just like Ukraine thwarted Russian ambitions with its low defense spending pre-2014. Why bother invading a defenseless country, after all? And those poor sods in the Baltics got invaded by Russia and overthrown after joining NATO, of course, since that needlessly antagonized Putin.
- SEJeff 3y ago
  Let’s not forget Chechnya, who’s former capital of Grozny was legit turned into a level parking lot.
TulliusCicero 3y ago
> Other countries antagonize the US because of its military interventionism. If the US had lower military spending, other countries wouldn't feel the need to be aggressive. You've conflated two different things here: 1. Military interventionism. Presumably the unjustified sort, like invading Iraq (and not the first time, when the US was pushing Iraq out of Kuwait). 2. Military spending. These are totally different things. You can spend a lot on your military and not go on military adventures.
- amrocha 3y ago
  If all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. If you spend billions on your military, you're gonna be looking for ways to solve problems with it.
ethbr1 3y ago
> If the US had lower military spending, other countries wouldn't feel the need to be aggressive. Russia and China and North Korea would like to subscribe to your newsletter. I think it's fair to say there are two types of countries: those with territorial ambitions and those without. Military power in the hands of the former is terrifying.
farhanhubble 3y ago
That's not how humans and nations behave. If you are nice you'll be eaten alive.
- amrocha 3y ago
  Society literally only exists because of collaboration between "nice" people

scottLobster 3y ago

Yeah, I'm sure Russia and China would be far less aggressive if the US had lower military spending. What you're suggesting is the geopolitical equivalent of "ignore the bully and they'll get bored and go away". And you call others childish?

amrocha 3y ago
No, we just have a different perspective. USA is the bully, not the rest of the world. Any country that grows powerful enough to get in the eye of the USA needs a strong military, because the USA has a military and a record of interventionism that can't be ignored.
- mopsi 3y ago
  > No, we just have a different perspective. USA is the bully, not the rest of the world. There is no question that the US has acted like a bully in Southern America, but you ignore that other countries have acted the same way in other parts of the world[1], and with far more disastrous results[2]. If you want to dig into records, then the ground under my feet has seen a Russian invasion roughly every 50 years for as long as written records go, that is, every generation has had to resist a Russian attack and suffer the consequences. The war in Ukraine is like a replay of so many wars before, from its artificial justifications to the incredible violence against victims. When kids study history in school, one of the sources they have to analyze and put into context is a letter from a Russian nobleman to the czar after another successful conquest. In the letter, he boasts that when he was travelling from one city to another on the way back to Russia, he didn't see a single living person left. They had successfully burned everything down and killed everyone. Centuries have passed, but nothing has changed. Russians use the same tactic in Ukraine, massive artillery walls slowly crawling forward, reducing entire cities to total rubble as if they had been hit with a nuclear bomb[3]. Pax Americana is currently the only thing preventing me and hundreds of millions of other Europeans from sharing the same fate. Russians do not dare to invade as long as they don't know if Americans would press the nuclear button or not. My freedom to live in peace and unharmed, speak my language and practice my culture, directly depends on the missile silos tucked away somewhere between the cornfields of Iowa. How about that for a perspective? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide [3] https://www.rferl.org/a/maryinka-aerial-shattered-landscape/32408454.html https://www.rferl.org/a/maryinka-aerial-shattered-landscape/...
  - lmm 3y ago
    > There is no question that the US has acted like a bully in Southern America, but you ignore that other countries have acted the same way in other parts of the world[1], and with far more disastrous results[2]. No. The argument is not that having some other country as hegemon would be better than the US. The argument is that any single country being overly powerful is a negative, and a more multipolar would would be healthier. "The US should maintain enough military capacity to prevent/repel an invasion of the continental US" is not particularly controversial. But the US "defending" countries halfway around the world is not healthy for either. > Pax Americana is currently the only thing preventing me and hundreds of millions of other Europeans from sharing the same fate. Russians do not dare to invade as long as they don't know if Americans would press the nuclear button or not. My freedom to live in peace and unharmed, speak my language and practice my culture, directly depends on the missile silos tucked away somewhere between the cornfields of Iowa. How about that for a perspective? Russia has spent the past year failing to conquer a country of 40 million, without any involvement from those missile silos. If they tried to invade Poland or Finland they would crumble even quicker. The only countries with a legitimate fear of a Russian invasion are the same countries who have shown zero willingness to protect other people's "freedom to speak their language and practice their culture" when it comes to Russian people living within their (present) borders.
    - Paradigma11 3y ago
      "The argument is that any single country being overly powerful is a negative, and a more multipolar would would be healthier." That would be a first, wouldnt it? We are currently seeing the consequences of the waning of the US unipolar Superpower. Venezuela had a referendum to annex large parts of its neighbor. Iran attacked nuclear Pakistan and has its proxies disrupt international shipping lanes and wage war against Israel. Turkey has its fingers in tons of conflicts and supported its ally Azerbaijan in the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh. China asserts its military dominance in the south China and is depriving other nations thousands of km away of their rights and resources. Never mind that it is also preparing to invade and subjugate Taiwan. .... Turns out if given power people are jerks, who would have guessed.

andrewstuart 3y ago

That's the world view that my family came from - very leftist and peace loving. "If only everyone put down their guns there would be no need etc etc". But it's not the world we live in - we live in a military world - that's real and not a hope/fantasy about a different civilisation without war or weapons. We have to have a society suited to the world we live in. And by the way I remain very much left wing and at the same time extremely pragmatic about the need for a nation to defend itself.

amrocha 3y ago
You talk about a country defending itself as if that's what militaries do. The US military has been intervening in the world stage for 80 years at this point. Take any country below the equator and chances are the US has probably used its military against it. That's not defence. You don't collaborate with that actor if you think defence is the goal.
- eep_social 3y ago
  Not Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa!
  - andrewstuart 3y ago
    Well England did nuke Australia. But we’re friends so thats OK. If we set that aside as an aberration, then yes your right.
    - eep_social 3y ago
      No harm in a little nuclear explosion between friends.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  So pushing Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991 wasn't defense? Fascinating worldview you got there.

jonnybgood 3y ago

I don’t think that opposite argument works given the current geopolitical situation which has nothing to do with the US being aggressive. Russia would have very likely completed its conquest of Ukraine by now and moved on to the Baltic states (NATO relies on US military spending to compensate for lack of spending of other NATO members). Taiwan would belong to China yesterday, along with the rest of the Indo-Pacific.

amrocha 3y ago
It's disingenuous to ignore the effect the aggression of the cold war and its aftermath had on the current Russian situation. With Taiwan, it's a delicate situation and I'm not familiar enough with it to comment on it. But I notice you conveniently left out all the times the US just did interventionism because it was convenient. Iraq? Most recently Venezuela? If we go back long enough, how about literally all of South America?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  What military interventionism in Venezuela? The US applied sanctions when Maduro started suppressing democracy, sure, but that's not the same thing as airstrikes or invading. This sounds like goalpost moving, since we were talking specifically about military force. The US has a shit history of intervening in Latin America from the 20th century, no argument there, but it's been several decades now at least since the US overthrow a democracy in that region.
  - thiagoharry 3y ago
    > but it's been several decades now at least since the US overthrow a democracy in that region. Isn't because it takes several decades for the secret documents being declassified? Of course the official discourse of USA is that they did nothing. However, we have several accusations of interference in Latin America in a lot of soft coups and more direct attacks like in Bolivia (2019) and Venezuela (a coup in 2002 and a mercenary attack in 2020).

TulliusCicero 3y ago

> If the US had lower military spending, other countries wouldn't feel the need to be aggressive. Ah, just like Ukraine thwarted Russian ambitions with its low defense spending pre-2014. Why bother invading a defenseless country, after all? And those poor sods in the Baltics got invaded by Russia and overthrown after joining NATO, of course, since that needlessly antagonized Putin.

SEJeff 3y ago
Let’s not forget Chechnya, who’s former capital of Grozny was legit turned into a level parking lot.

TulliusCicero 3y ago

> Other countries antagonize the US because of its military interventionism. If the US had lower military spending, other countries wouldn't feel the need to be aggressive. You've conflated two different things here: 1. Military interventionism. Presumably the unjustified sort, like invading Iraq (and not the first time, when the US was pushing Iraq out of Kuwait). 2. Military spending. These are totally different things. You can spend a lot on your military and not go on military adventures.

amrocha 3y ago
If all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. If you spend billions on your military, you're gonna be looking for ways to solve problems with it.

ethbr1 3y ago

> If the US had lower military spending, other countries wouldn't feel the need to be aggressive. Russia and China and North Korea would like to subscribe to your newsletter. I think it's fair to say there are two types of countries: those with territorial ambitions and those without. Military power in the hands of the former is terrifying.

farhanhubble 3y ago

That's not how humans and nations behave. If you are nice you'll be eaten alive.

amrocha 3y ago
Society literally only exists because of collaboration between "nice" people