3 ms·

The point i was making is that the US, for all of its abundant faults, is not exceptional. Sitting on top of the pile does not make the pile disappear.

zanny 11y ago
If the US withdrew as global police, I would hope the UN would step up the peacekeepers to fill that role. Thats what they are supposed to do at least. Yes, I know they suck and are incompetent. They only get away with it because they have big brother US to back them up. If they actually had to do their job they might get their act together. Or maybe not? I still don't see, in the absence of grotesque military spending, anyone going batshit insane with conquest. We still have the nuclear threat to keep people in line. Russia, for example, almost certainly does not fear a ground incursion from any European power or the US for aggressively annexing Ukraine / Georgia. Why would you waste money on that? You can economically cripple them. If they went insane and attacked a first world power they would see the immediate return of the nuclear threat. And really, total annihilation and mutually assured destruction should be deterrents enough to stop anything radical, while our globalized economic system has bound everyone so much together that you do not need the threat of soldiers to wreck a country. Consider how China is being kept out of all these secret trade agreements because they have "overstepped their bounds" of those with the money and power to influence these negotiations. That doesn't mean you don't have any military, but you don't need to spend the GDP of Turkey or Saudi Arabia every year on it, or try spreading ideology through imperialism, or have military bases in almost every country on Earth.
zanny 11y ago
If the US withdrew as global police, I would hope the UN would step up the peacekeepers to fill that role. Thats what they are supposed to do at least. Yes, I know they suck and are incompetent. They only get away with it because they have big brother US to back them up. If they actually had to do their job they might get their act together. Or maybe not? I still don't see, in the absence of grotesque military spending, anyone going batshit insane with conquest. We still have the nuclear threat to keep people in line. Russia, for example, almost certainly does not fear a ground incursion from any European power or the US for aggressively annexing Ukraine / Georgia. Why would you waste money on that? You can economically cripple them. If they went insane and attacked a first world power they would see the immediate return of the nuclear threat. And really, total annihilation and mutually assured destruction should be deterrents enough to stop anything radical, while our globalized economic system has bound everyone so much together that you do not need the threat of soldiers to wreck a country. Consider how China is being kept out of all these secret trade agreements because they have "overstepped their bounds" of those with the money and power to influence these negotiations. That doesn't mean you don't have any military, but you don't need to spend the GDP of Turkey or Saudi Arabia every year on it, or try spreading ideology through imperialism, or have military bases in almost every country on Earth.

zanny 11y ago

If the US withdrew as global police, I would hope the UN would step up the peacekeepers to fill that role. Thats what they are supposed to do at least. Yes, I know they suck and are incompetent. They only get away with it because they have big brother US to back them up. If they actually had to do their job they might get their act together. Or maybe not? I still don't see, in the absence of grotesque military spending, anyone going batshit insane with conquest. We still have the nuclear threat to keep people in line. Russia, for example, almost certainly does not fear a ground incursion from any European power or the US for aggressively annexing Ukraine / Georgia. Why would you waste money on that? You can economically cripple them. If they went insane and attacked a first world power they would see the immediate return of the nuclear threat. And really, total annihilation and mutually assured destruction should be deterrents enough to stop anything radical, while our globalized economic system has bound everyone so much together that you do not need the threat of soldiers to wreck a country. Consider how China is being kept out of all these secret trade agreements because they have "overstepped their bounds" of those with the money and power to influence these negotiations. That doesn't mean you don't have any military, but you don't need to spend the GDP of Turkey or Saudi Arabia every year on it, or try spreading ideology through imperialism, or have military bases in almost every country on Earth.

zanny 11y ago