3 ms·

We could also just not start wars and we wouldn't need to worry about missile production

by jimbo808 4mo ago

JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
Which is why Ukraine, today, doesn’t have to worry about missile and drone production.
- jimbo808 4mo ago
  America isn't Ukraine, we are a *massive country with a nuclear deterrent,* wedged between two massive oceans and two friendly countries. Nobody is going to attack us unless we go out into the world creating enemies.
  - stackghost 4mo ago
    American security, and indeed the entire pax Americana has been predicated upon your country's network of global military bases and your carrier battle groups. This is what enables the USA to decisively influence any conflict anywhere on the globe. Those bases would need to disappear in order for your comment to be true, and despite two thirds of your electorate who didn't vote against the future dementia ward patient currently in office, I don't think Americans are ready to accept a world where American foreign policy cannot be promulgated more or less at will, which is what isolationism would entail.
    - vkou 4mo ago
      No, America's influence over its globe-spanning empire is predicated on that. That's not the same thing as it's national security. It would do just fine if it weren't the head of a global hegemony, although it might have to start living within its means. Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
      - chrisco255 4mo ago
        The U.S. would do just fine but the rest of the world would descend into chaos and we know this for a fact because it happened twice in just the first 50 years of the 20th century.
        dgoldstein0 4mo ago
        perhaps the US would be mostly safe from violence, but not consequences. We're heavily dependent on international trade and any major war in another part of the world will impact us if it involves any important trading partners or their ability to trade with us. Even in the 19th century the US was sucked into Europe's wars - the war of 1812 was essentially the American theater of the Napoleanic war - US merchants were attacked trying to trade with France/Europe, the US Navy tried to protect them saying "we're neutral let us trade" and Britain said "there's no such thing as neutral" and sent armies. Over time foreign powers got more wary of fighting the US but we still got dragged into European and Pacific wars (WWI, WWII), in large part because we kept trading with our European and Asian partners.
        vkou 4mo ago
        Nearly everyone in the world is heavily dependant on international trade. They all manage to get by without the leverage of 11 carrier fleet groups. You know, trade between equals, and not subjects. WW2 was largely driven by the personalities involved. Roosevelt really, really, really hated fascism, and was doing everything in his power to stick it in their wheel spokes. Had the industrialist coup succeeded, or had Hoover or Landon won, it's quite likely that neither would have done much to oppose either Japan or Germany. WW1 was also driven by principles, as opposed to pragmatism. Wilson found more alignment with the anglosphere than he did with the central powers - and after watching the most destructive war in history go on for four years, was keen on embarking on his League of Nations project. Practically, there was no reason for the US to not maintain neutrality in it.
        dgoldstein0 4mo ago
        well sure not everyone needs a huge military. Especially when their large trading partner has one and is guaranteeing security. I don't entirely buy your personalities argument - it certainly mattered, but in an alternate universe where Hitler still rose to power but e.g. FDR didn't get a 3rd term - a European war would've still caused problems for America and US/Europe trade would've likely come under fire dragging the US towards fighting in the war; in 1939 US GDP was $93.4 billion with $3.2 billion in exports and $2.3 billion in imports... far less important than today (where imports/exports are more than 10% of GDP) but still fairly substantial. But it's hard to say how things would've turned out. With different leaders the politics of it would've mattered a lot; without US support WWII could've still easily been raging in 1944, an election year, and so an anti-war president could've been replaced. Or maybe Britain would've had a hard time holding out against constant assault without American supplies purchased with US government money, the USSR wouldn't have been able to bear the full brunt of Nazis who were less tied up on the western front, and by the time America considered joining the war under a different leader, it would've looked like a go-it-alone job. Still it's hard to imagine a world in which the Axis didn't bite off a bit more than it could chew.
  - lazide 4mo ago
    [flagged]
  - _carbyau_ 4mo ago
    US of A has already created enemies. See 9/11 for an example of "nobody is going to attack us" being false. Could the nation slowly step back and generation-by-generation shed their national reputation such that they have no enemies? Maybe. But that would take a while (generations) without any guarantee and is kind of the opposite of what has happened recently.
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > Could the nation slowly step back and generation-by-generation shed their national reputation such that they have no enemies? Maybe This is basically what the UK did after WWII. We’d have to be honest that a fall in relative living standards would probably accompany such a move. (Counterpoint: the Nordic countries.)
- themafia 4mo ago
  Perhaps Boris Johnson shouldn't have interfered with the peace process at the behest of the United States. Anyways I'm sure the Ukrainian citizens enjoy being used as props to justify inhumane actions.
  - locknitpicker 4mo ago
    > (...) interfered with the peace process (...) Can you elaborate on what you believe to have been this "peace process" you speak of? Even today, when the Kremlin is begging for the Ukraine war to go away, they are bombing civilians and Kiev and threatening Armenia with a war of invasion.
    - themafia 4mo ago
      The same peace they enjoyed for decades before the UN decided to court Ukraine for membership. They had balance of trade agreements, resource use agreements, and generalized peace. Can you elaborate as to why you seem to think this was impossible?
      - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        > before the UN decided to court Ukraine ...NATO? Also, NATO accession talks for Ukraine were dead for years when Russia invaded Crimea. The notion that Russia was forced to invade Ukraine holds up about as much as the claim that America was forced to bomb Iran.
      - locknitpicker 4mo ago
        > The same peace they enjoyed for decades (...) Russia started invading Ukraine in 2014. Who do you think you are fooling? Also, are you conveniently forgetting that Russia invaded Ukraine? Meaning, Russia started this whole mess?

We could also just not start wars and we wouldn't need to worry about missile production

JumpCrisscross 4mo ago

Which is why Ukraine, today, doesn’t have to worry about missile and drone production.

jimbo808 4mo ago
America isn't Ukraine, we are a *massive country with a nuclear deterrent,* wedged between two massive oceans and two friendly countries. Nobody is going to attack us unless we go out into the world creating enemies.
- stackghost 4mo ago
  American security, and indeed the entire pax Americana has been predicated upon your country's network of global military bases and your carrier battle groups. This is what enables the USA to decisively influence any conflict anywhere on the globe. Those bases would need to disappear in order for your comment to be true, and despite two thirds of your electorate who didn't vote against the future dementia ward patient currently in office, I don't think Americans are ready to accept a world where American foreign policy cannot be promulgated more or less at will, which is what isolationism would entail.
  - vkou 4mo ago
    No, America's influence over its globe-spanning empire is predicated on that. That's not the same thing as it's national security. It would do just fine if it weren't the head of a global hegemony, although it might have to start living within its means. Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
    - chrisco255 4mo ago
      The U.S. would do just fine but the rest of the world would descend into chaos and we know this for a fact because it happened twice in just the first 50 years of the 20th century.
      - dgoldstein0 4mo ago
        perhaps the US would be mostly safe from violence, but not consequences. We're heavily dependent on international trade and any major war in another part of the world will impact us if it involves any important trading partners or their ability to trade with us. Even in the 19th century the US was sucked into Europe's wars - the war of 1812 was essentially the American theater of the Napoleanic war - US merchants were attacked trying to trade with France/Europe, the US Navy tried to protect them saying "we're neutral let us trade" and Britain said "there's no such thing as neutral" and sent armies. Over time foreign powers got more wary of fighting the US but we still got dragged into European and Pacific wars (WWI, WWII), in large part because we kept trading with our European and Asian partners.
        vkou 4mo ago
        Nearly everyone in the world is heavily dependant on international trade. They all manage to get by without the leverage of 11 carrier fleet groups. You know, trade between equals, and not subjects. WW2 was largely driven by the personalities involved. Roosevelt really, really, really hated fascism, and was doing everything in his power to stick it in their wheel spokes. Had the industrialist coup succeeded, or had Hoover or Landon won, it's quite likely that neither would have done much to oppose either Japan or Germany. WW1 was also driven by principles, as opposed to pragmatism. Wilson found more alignment with the anglosphere than he did with the central powers - and after watching the most destructive war in history go on for four years, was keen on embarking on his League of Nations project. Practically, there was no reason for the US to not maintain neutrality in it.
        dgoldstein0 4mo ago
        well sure not everyone needs a huge military. Especially when their large trading partner has one and is guaranteeing security. I don't entirely buy your personalities argument - it certainly mattered, but in an alternate universe where Hitler still rose to power but e.g. FDR didn't get a 3rd term - a European war would've still caused problems for America and US/Europe trade would've likely come under fire dragging the US towards fighting in the war; in 1939 US GDP was $93.4 billion with $3.2 billion in exports and $2.3 billion in imports... far less important than today (where imports/exports are more than 10% of GDP) but still fairly substantial. But it's hard to say how things would've turned out. With different leaders the politics of it would've mattered a lot; without US support WWII could've still easily been raging in 1944, an election year, and so an anti-war president could've been replaced. Or maybe Britain would've had a hard time holding out against constant assault without American supplies purchased with US government money, the USSR wouldn't have been able to bear the full brunt of Nazis who were less tied up on the western front, and by the time America considered joining the war under a different leader, it would've looked like a go-it-alone job. Still it's hard to imagine a world in which the Axis didn't bite off a bit more than it could chew.
- lazide 4mo ago
  [flagged]
- _carbyau_ 4mo ago
  US of A has already created enemies. See 9/11 for an example of "nobody is going to attack us" being false. Could the nation slowly step back and generation-by-generation shed their national reputation such that they have no enemies? Maybe. But that would take a while (generations) without any guarantee and is kind of the opposite of what has happened recently.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > Could the nation slowly step back and generation-by-generation shed their national reputation such that they have no enemies? Maybe This is basically what the UK did after WWII. We’d have to be honest that a fall in relative living standards would probably accompany such a move. (Counterpoint: the Nordic countries.)
themafia 4mo ago
Perhaps Boris Johnson shouldn't have interfered with the peace process at the behest of the United States. Anyways I'm sure the Ukrainian citizens enjoy being used as props to justify inhumane actions.
- locknitpicker 4mo ago
  > (...) interfered with the peace process (...) Can you elaborate on what you believe to have been this "peace process" you speak of? Even today, when the Kremlin is begging for the Ukraine war to go away, they are bombing civilians and Kiev and threatening Armenia with a war of invasion.
  - themafia 4mo ago
    The same peace they enjoyed for decades before the UN decided to court Ukraine for membership. They had balance of trade agreements, resource use agreements, and generalized peace. Can you elaborate as to why you seem to think this was impossible?
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > before the UN decided to court Ukraine ...NATO? Also, NATO accession talks for Ukraine were dead for years when Russia invaded Crimea. The notion that Russia was forced to invade Ukraine holds up about as much as the claim that America was forced to bomb Iran.
    - locknitpicker 4mo ago
      > The same peace they enjoyed for decades (...) Russia started invading Ukraine in 2014. Who do you think you are fooling? Also, are you conveniently forgetting that Russia invaded Ukraine? Meaning, Russia started this whole mess?