No surprise that a secretary of defense wants more military spending. I think his hypothesis, that the US is necessary for world peace and the preservation of democracy, is false. From my...
No surprise that a secretary of defense wants more military spending. I think his hypothesis, that the US is necessary for world peace and the preservation of democracy, is false. From my perspective the US and it's world ambitions is no different than Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc.
I understand your use (and the US's use) of "liberal democracy" to mean imperialistic capitalism purposefully maintained by oligarchs that exploits people and the environment for profit while...
I understand your use (and the US's use) of "liberal democracy" to mean imperialistic capitalism purposefully maintained by oligarchs that exploits people and the environment for profit while destroying those lives and the biosphere. Are we on the same page?
I very strongly resist the idea that the US' hyperpower status wasn't "broke". They overthrew probably dozens of Latin American social democratic leaders and installed brutal, torturous right-wing...
I very strongly resist the idea that the US' hyperpower status wasn't "broke". They overthrew probably dozens of Latin American social democratic leaders and installed brutal, torturous right-wing dictators that absolutely levelled and maimed their respective societies and people.
As a brief note, there are ~20 countries in Latin America (depending on how you define it), so unless you're suggesting that the US overthrew the government in every one of these countries and...
They overthrew probably dozens of Latin American leaders
As a brief note, there are ~20 countries in Latin America (depending on how you define it), so unless you're suggesting that the US overthrew the government in every one of these countries and then came back and did it again a few times...
America has done bad things. Terrible things, even. But hyperbole on this scale is dangerous.
Well, it's incorrect, but I'm not sure the offhand "dozens" is... dangerous. That seems a bit of an overreaction. Dangerous to who? Wikipedia has it at 9, but it's not not counting Puerto Rico...
Well, it's incorrect, but I'm not sure the offhand "dozens" is... dangerous. That seems a bit of an overreaction. Dangerous to who?
Wikipedia has it at 9, but it's not not counting Puerto Rico (outright annexed), Mexico (half the country annexed), the Philippines (not Latin, but from the same war as Cuba and Puerto Rico). And if we go beyond the Latin world but stay in the area, you get things like the Kingdom of Hawaii (annexed), one of the more naked examples of American imperialism.
Please steelman my point, if you can. My argument is that the foreign policy of the United States ruined millions of lives. Not just because of the installed American puppets, but because good social democratic leaders were purged and killed.
I know dangerous is a bit of a goofy term... I think it's dangerous because exaggerations like that promote a sort of moral relativism or moral ambivalence that I strongly disagree with. There are...
I know dangerous is a bit of a goofy term... I think it's dangerous because exaggerations like that promote a sort of moral relativism or moral ambivalence that I strongly disagree with. There are a lot of people in this thread saying things like the US is morally equivalent to north Korea.
North Korea, where "three generations of a political offender's family can be summarily imprisoned or executed." Just to be clear, that means that if you offend the regime, your children, your parents, and your siblings could all be executed.
Similarly, people are comparing the invasion of Iraq - a multinational coalition to overthrow a murderous dictator - to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The two are not equivalent.
I think that people draw those conclusions because of beliefs like the one we're discussing - that the US casually overthrows dozens of regimes. The US has done bad things, especially in the past, but I genuinely believe that the US is generally guided by positive ideals.
I get where you were coming from and I'm not upset. I'm responding because while it's important not to underestimate what the US has done, I think it's important not to oversell it either.
Well then, let's be specific. Interfering with at least 9 independent regimes in Latin America, the wholesale annexation of an entire Latin American country, the annexation of half of another one....
Well then, let's be specific. Interfering with at least 9 independent regimes in Latin America, the wholesale annexation of an entire Latin American country, the annexation of half of another one. Out of Latin America, the genocide and containment of its own natives, the open annexation of a Polynesian kingdom, and the occupation of several other Pacific countries. And this is just its neighbourhood, this isn't even dealing with overseas interventions. This is all classical imperial expansion.
I probably shouldn't have said that, as I think it derailed the conversation. But, since we're here... I'm not sure it makes much sense to blame america for the annexation of Puerto Rico. It was...
I probably shouldn't have said that, as I think it derailed the conversation. But, since we're here...
I'm not sure it makes much sense to blame america for the annexation of Puerto Rico. It was colonized by the Spanish. America took control of it after the Spanish-American war. 18 years later, all Puerto Ricans were granted citizenship.
And all of this happened over 100 years ago.
Anyway. What I'm trying to express is my belief that it's just as important not to overestimate America's evils as it is to not underestimate them.
This is exactly the sort of thing that I'm talking about, how Americans see their imperial projects as different. In Puerto Rico, after the granting of the Carta Autonómica, Puerto Ricans were...
This is exactly the sort of thing that I'm talking about, how Americans see their imperial projects as different. In Puerto Rico, after the granting of the Carta Autonómica, Puerto Ricans were granted representation in the Cortes and autonomy. For about six months, Puerto Rico began charting its own destiny. Until the US invaded and annexed it after the war. A war that Puerto Rico didn't start. Hell, a war that Spain didn't start.
You talk about "taking control" as if it's a game of EU4. It's not a thing that just happened. The United States invaded and conquered the country, and installed a military regime, run by Americans to govern Puerto Ricans.
If it doesn't make sense to blame America for the conquest and annexation of Puerto Rico, please tell me who's to blame.
Wait, are you talking about the Royal Decree of Graces of 1815? I don't know anything about this portion of Puerto Rican history but I'm very confused by this timeline of 1815>6 months>Annexed in...
Wait, are you talking about the Royal Decree of Graces of 1815? I don't know anything about this portion of Puerto Rican history but I'm very confused by this timeline of 1815>6 months>Annexed in 1898.
Certainly, I would rather live in the us than in north korea, but the biggest differences are wealth and optics. We are talking about a country that pervasively propagandises and surveils its own...
Certainly, I would rather live in the us than in north korea, but the biggest differences are wealth and optics. We are talking about a country that pervasively propagandises and surveils its own citizens, one that denies them due process when it feels like it and kidnaps and tortures them for no reason at all.
E:
I genuinely believe that the US is generally guided by positive ideals
I genuinely believe that the CIA believes it is doing the right thing when it use its own citizens to research torture techniques. But I cannot fathom what that has to do with anything.
We see things so differently here that I'm not sure we're going to be able to reconcile things. It'd be handy if a north Korean could weigh in to let us know if they feel the biggest difference...
Certainly, I would rather live in the us than in north korea, but the biggest differences are wealth and optics.
We see things so differently here that I'm not sure we're going to be able to reconcile things.
It'd be handy if a north Korean could weigh in to let us know if they feel the biggest difference between their country and america is optics, but they aren't allowed to access the internet, so... ;)
I didn't say optics. I said wealth and optics, and I put them in that order deliberately. Nor did I mean to minimise the magnitude of the differences—because they are very great—but rather to...
the biggest difference between their country and america is optics
I didn't say optics. I said wealth and optics, and I put them in that order deliberately. Nor did I mean to minimise the magnitude of the differences—because they are very great—but rather to limit their scope.
The US's prisons are an abomination, but I get the sense you're equivocating between them and forced labor camps where people are refused food. If you aren't, I'd appreciate an expansion on what...
The US's prisons are an abomination, but I get the sense you're equivocating between them and forced labor camps where people are refused food. If you aren't, I'd appreciate an expansion on what exactly you are saying. North Koreans are not allowed to leave their country, and if they do, their families are often punished in their lieu, neither of which practice has an analog in the US. In what ways are these distinctions immaterial, or, how do they boil down to wealth and optics?
I didn't say anything about prisons. North korea guards its citizens jealously because 1) it is very poor and needs the fruits of their labour, and 2) it is very poor and so its citizens want to...
I didn't say anything about prisons.
North korea guards its citizens jealously because 1) it is very poor and needs the fruits of their labour, and 2) it is very poor and so its citizens want to escape to richer countries. Because north korea is so poor, it cannot afford to spend the resources to appear to be a nice destination for outsiders, so it sees no point in trying.
The us's interest in optics means the atrocities it commits tend to be more targeted and subtle, especially of late. But that does not mean its sentiment towards its own citizens is any better than north korea's.
No, but you did handwave everything except for "money and optics". People are allowed to disagree with that. I don't see how your apologism of the DPRK's restrictions of their citizens' freedoms...
I didn't say anything about prisons.
No, but you did handwave everything except for "money and optics". People are allowed to disagree with that.
I don't see how your apologism of the DPRK's restrictions of their citizens' freedoms of movement supports your previous statements. Nor did I say "North Korea doesnt look like a fun spring break vaycay, and that's a problem." You're basically lumping every difference into optics, as though there isn't a difference between state-condoned and organized executions and torture as retaliation for leaving, and, this is the best analogy I can come up with, applying taxation to emigrants.
PS: I get the sense you think I'm somehow defending the USA against charges of crimes against humanity, or saying that its government is somehow exceptionally decent. That is not true. I'm just arguing that there are aberrantly terrible places, of which North Korea is a party to, and the US doesn't really qualify for.
I don't understand what that has to do with the prisons. I did give some very specific examples of other things the us does or has done which seem very similar to what is representative of north...
you did handwave everything except for "money and optics"
I don't understand what that has to do with the prisons. I did give some very specific examples of other things the us does or has done which seem very similar to what is representative of north korea; it may be more fruitful to address those.
I'm just arguing that there are aberrantly terrible places, of which North Korea is a party to, and the US doesn't really qualify for.
I don't know exactly what you mean by 'terrible place'. I do think that the us is a much nicer place to live than north korea for nearly everybody, and have maintained as much from the start.
R3qn65 indicated they thought a comparison between the us and north korea is not only nonsensical but incoherent, and that the us has a far, far stronger moral character than north korea. I disagreed: a comparison between the two, I think, is completely justified, and the differences, such as they are, come down mostly (if not entirely) not to moral character, but to two other factors.
What do you define as rational justifications? I don't think occupying and/or meddling with democracy in foreign nations can ever really be justified. Sure you can say it was for the betterment of...
What do you define as rational justifications? I don't think occupying and/or meddling with democracy in foreign nations can ever really be justified. Sure you can say it was for the betterment of the elite, or for America's role in international politics, or for many more reasons, but are the lives in a foreign country worth less than the lives of Americans that it can ever be justified? Especially when the effects are still felt on a national scale to this day.
Chile, then. From Wikipedia: And let me tell you, Pinochet was a fucking monster.
Chile, then. From Wikipedia:
After the democratic election of President Salvador Allende in 1970, an economic war ordered by President Richard Nixon,[15] among other things, caused the 1973 Chilean coup d'état with the involvement of the CIA[16] due to Allende's democratic socialist leanings. What followed was the decades-long US-backed military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.[17] In 1988 a presidential referendum was held in order to confirm Pinochet's ruling for 8 more years. The oppositional Concertation of Parties for Democracy endorsed the "No" option, winning the referendum and ending Pinochet's rule democratically. After that, free elections were held in 1989 with Concertation winning again.[18][19][20]
And let me tell you, Pinochet was a fucking monster.
The all-purpose justification at the time (from the outset of the Korean War onwards to the collapse of the USSR) was opposition to the spread of globalized authoritarian communism. Look up...
The all-purpose justification at the time (from the outset of the Korean War onwards to the collapse of the USSR) was opposition to the spread of globalized authoritarian communism. Look up "Domino Theory" and the like.
This was presented as an existential struggle on the order of Orwell's "imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever". The thesis that the U.S. was a pure democracy beset by evil Communists was undermined by civil rights protests in the 1960's, and in the 1970's by the revelations of U.S. carpet bombing in Vietnam and Cambodia, as well as other human rights atrocities.
But the point stands that all nations change their propensities for war and covert action (a/k/a violent international relations) over time, both positively and negatively.
Ideologically, democracy, respect for human rights, and the rule of law are greatly preferable to authoritarianism. The U.S. hasn't always practiced what it preaches as well as could be hoped, especially in the context of military hegemony. However, there isn't a nation on Earth without a sorry history, and the U.S., at least recently, is a better example than many.
But again, I have to push against your conclusion. The people the US installed and supported in Latin America weren't just run of the mill free market capitalists. They were some of the worst scum...
But again, I have to push against your conclusion. The people the US installed and supported in Latin America weren't just run of the mill free market capitalists. They were some of the worst scum on our planet. I struggle to think of who would China or Russia support that is worse.
So the US is a better example than who? In Argentina and Chile, the US is the country that has done the most damage in history.
Agreed that the U.S. did terrible damage in those countries. I don't want to both-sides this, but if we're looking at the same period of history, the USSR had invaded and conquered the entirety of...
Agreed that the U.S. did terrible damage in those countries. I don't want to both-sides this, but if we're looking at the same period of history, the USSR had invaded and conquered the entirety of Eastern Europe including part of Germany, attempted and failed to conquer Finland, and occupied Afghanistan.
China's direct military interventions in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Tibet, Nepal, India, and Thailand (formerly Burma) are in most cases still ongoing.
All of this is written in blood, and I don't think either of us wants to play the game of who has the highest body count and most instances of torture, repression, and overthrow of legitimate governments.
All I know is, if we have a chance to opt for a better version of history, we should, and a democratic nation provides better opportunities for doing so than ones run by the same old emperor wannabes.
I think you're under the impression that I'm defending or excusing Soviet atrocities then, or Russian and Chinese atrocities today. I'm not. I'm saying that Americans (and Europeans) are still...
I think you're under the impression that I'm defending or excusing Soviet atrocities then, or Russian and Chinese atrocities today. I'm not. I'm saying that Americans (and Europeans) are still under the collective delusion that they were different or better. They weren't. They conquered, annexed, killed, tortured with the best of them.
Yes, they were a force of good for the world, if you were a capitalist market economy that aligned yourself with them. If you were a social democratic country that wanted to give healthcare its citizens though, careful, the Americans might install a guy that throws students off of helicopters after drugging them for giggles.
I think this is a pretty naive take on geopolitics and how various countries run their nation and treat other nations. I understand that the US is not some sunshine and rainbows country where...
From my perspective the US and it's world ambitions is no different than Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc.
I think this is a pretty naive take on geopolitics and how various countries run their nation and treat other nations. I understand that the US is not some sunshine and rainbows country where everything is perfect and that is just trying to play nice.
Still, I know plenty of women who refuse to visit the middle east because it's just not safe for them, and while that's a "local culture" thing, it stops being local when say, Russia (with some of the worst domestic violence rates in the world) invades another country.
If you want to have a different culture you need to be able to defend that culture. The US military machine is FULL of corrupt bullshit overspending nonsense, but it just vanishing overnight probably doesn't end well either.
I disagree with the view that USA imperialism has some special privilege that makes it any better or more justifiable than other countries' ambitions. As I see it, the USA just has the better PR...
I disagree with the view that USA imperialism has some special privilege that makes it any better or more justifiable than other countries' ambitions. As I see it, the USA just has the better PR machine.
If you want to have a different culture you need to be able to defend that culture.
I don't want to misinterpret what you've said, and I hope you've just used some poor wording in your comment. However, is this meant to be a justification for American interventionism and cultural genocide?
No. It's just how things work. Doesn't matter who's doing it or who's getting wiped out. If you cannot defend your country, and by extension it's culture, it can very easily be overwritten. And...
I don't want to misinterpret what you've said, and I hope you've just used some poor wording in your comment. However, is this meant to be a justification for American interventionism and cultural genocide?
No. It's just how things work.
Doesn't matter who's doing it or who's getting wiped out. If you cannot defend your country, and by extension it's culture, it can very easily be overwritten. And this includes internal threats.
Hong Kong had a very defined culture and norms alone with politics, trade, society, etc. Now it's all gone because they couldn't defend that. This story repeats over and over and over throughout history.
Now if you get into the moral side of it, regardless of your stance, whatever culture you think should be allowed (say rights for women and minorities) is not going to last unless you can defend it.
Bluntly, I find it silly that people treat American politics/military history/etc as if it's some binary switch. There is no nation on this planet that is perfect because they all have people and statistically people tend to eventually do horrible things. Is the US perfect? Absolutely not. Is the US comparable to Iran? That honestly reeks of a privileged position that has never actually seen what's happened in Iran. I sure as shit haven't seen it first hand either, but I have spoken to people who have fled the country at various points in its history, and to just hand wave these things into the same pile is, to those i've met, insulting to them.
I will not pretend to be intimately familiar with the current situation in Iran. I also don't think there is much value in comparing atrocities. I just don't see the benefit to elevating US...
I will not pretend to be intimately familiar with the current situation in Iran. I also don't think there is much value in comparing atrocities.
I just don't see the benefit to elevating US imperialism above other terrible events. To say that after all the coups, the wars, the genocide and slavery that the US stands morally above any another country? I can't understand that point of view. They're all at the bottom of the same pit, metaphorically speaking.
I am down for it if you want to argue that the US has done bad things or that the war in Iraq was a mistake. But I really struggle to understand the view that the US is equivalent to Russia in...
I disagree with the view that USA imperialism has some special privilege that makes it any better or more justifiable than other countries' ambitions
I am down for it if you want to argue that the US has done bad things or that the war in Iraq was a mistake. But I really struggle to understand the view that the US is equivalent to Russia in that way.
The US tried to spare civilian infrastructure and the Russians deliberately targeted it. I mean, in every way, the conduct of war is completely different. And that doesn't even touch on how much money the US spent on rebuilding...
I see where you're coming from, but I respectfully disagree. I'm not sure if intentionally sparing some civilian infrastructure makes the US any better than Russia, especially when it leads to...
I see where you're coming from, but I respectfully disagree. I'm not sure if intentionally sparing some civilian infrastructure makes the US any better than Russia, especially when it leads to civilians dying anyway.
I was reading this paper the other day, and the death toll as indirect consequences for the USA's invasions are horrific.
How does it not? I'm sure we can agree that logically it's better to try to spare civilian infrastructure than to just destroy it indiscriminately. So, if the one is trying to spare lives and the...
I'm not sure if intentionally sparing some civilian infrastructure makes the US any better than Russia
How does it not? I'm sure we can agree that logically it's better to try to spare civilian infrastructure than to just destroy it indiscriminately. So, if the one is trying to spare lives and the other is launching rockets indiscriminately into cities...
I'm not the guy you replied to but thanks for the paper, looks really in-depth and informative. I think it's a topic that people who never actually saw war before, whether during or the aftermath,...
I'm not the guy you replied to but thanks for the paper, looks really in-depth and informative. I think it's a topic that people who never actually saw war before, whether during or the aftermath, don't think about.
I don't think it makes the US better in the sense that I don't believe the motive, intentionality, or directness of killings relieves the severity of the act. If one country killed a million...
I don't think it makes the US better in the sense that I don't believe the motive, intentionality, or directness of killings relieves the severity of the act.
If one country killed a million people directly via gunfire, or if another country killed a million people indirectly by destroying infrastructure, then at the end of the day, they've both killed a million people. I wouldn't call one of them better than the other.
I don't think it's realistic to dispense entirely with these kinds of shades of grey. Mao Zedong, by direct decisionmaking, killed millions of people. As did Stalin. However, one of these sets of...
I don't think it's realistic to dispense entirely with these kinds of shades of grey. Mao Zedong, by direct decisionmaking, killed millions of people. As did Stalin. However, one of these sets of acts includes strong evidence of intent and motive for genocide, and targeted specific regions which had active political dissent, while the other set seemed to be motivated by narcissism and groupthink supporting said narcissism, and the famine was more distributed across geography.
At the very least, it seems disingenuous to act like you are not an extreme outlier in terms of how you use moral labels.
I'm not sure I understand your comment. I think you're mixing politics and culture together when they should be more or less separated. Russia didn't invade Ukraine because they're "culturally...
I'm not sure I understand your comment. I think you're mixing politics and culture together when they should be more or less separated. Russia didn't invade Ukraine because they're "culturally violent" people.
If you want to have a different culture you need to be able to defend that culture.
All cultures are different cultures. I also don't think you should ever need to defend your culture, neither should you attack other cultures. I know many people too afraid to live in the US because of safety, safety is relative, so do Americans then need to defend their livelihood too?
I never said domestic abuse is ok because it's a part of their culture. It's one thing to criticise toxic parts of culture, and another to say that a country deserves to be occupied because of...
I never said domestic abuse is ok because it's a part of their culture. It's one thing to criticise toxic parts of culture, and another to say that a country deserves to be occupied because of toxic culture.
US culture is not the standard bearer of women's rights. Further, its not as if the US ceased to exist, human rights worldwide would decline. That is the BS idea of American exceptionalism....
US culture is not the standard bearer of women's rights. Further, its not as if the US ceased to exist, human rights worldwide would decline. That is the BS idea of American exceptionalism.
Defending human rights is not why the US is interventionist, rather defending and creating opportunities for wealth and power.
I agree completely, I think spreading the narrative that the US was, is, or should be the world peace keepers can be very harmful. The US government has always been and will always be after the...
I agree completely, I think spreading the narrative that the US was, is, or should be the world peace keepers can be very harmful. The US government has always been and will always be after the same thing every other large power is after, and that's control, power, and resources. Nothing inherently wrong with that per se, that's politics, but it's important that we talk about the real reasons behind government decisions, and not the sugarcoated reasons.
In realpolitik terms, the US would very much prefer peace relative to other powers. For one, the status quo, as the sole hegemonic pole, is very favorable to the US, whereas other countries like...
In realpolitik terms, the US would very much prefer peace relative to other powers. For one, the status quo, as the sole hegemonic pole, is very favorable to the US, whereas other countries like China want to recreate a multipolar system, and secondly, the US economy has done very well for itself and is still poised to do well for itself (as, unlike many countries, it is comparatively less hampered by the oncoming retirement crisis), so it has a vested interest in continuing mostly unfettered international trade. The US still has much more land to develop, and resources to exploit, in its own borders.
Does the US prefer democracy? Well, I'd say so. In that vein, while not always the case, dictatorships, oligarchies, and the such have way more potential to be volatile. For one, dictators are often of a military background, not exactly Harvard economics graduates, so more often toss economic development aside for other goals, or just do stupid things. They also have more potential for sudden, or unexpected wars, against neighbors. It's not like none of those things happen in a democracy, but having a economist advising an elected official is a better position, for the US.
Additionally, even under a stable autocracy, succession always blows shit up in uncomfortable ways, if what you want is for countries to stay where they are and sell their things.
I'm not sure I agree with you from the first sentence. I think saying the US would prefer peace is a very vague statement, because history shows that when the conditions are "right" the US...
I'm not sure I agree with you from the first sentence. I think saying the US would prefer peace is a very vague statement, because history shows that when the conditions are "right" the US definitely doesn't prefer peace. The US, as many super powers and imperial powers, really prefers it when other nations stay on their side, especially when they have resources the US needs. When countries/leaders start to sway away from being full economic and political allies the US will usually use force to sway them back. This can be something seen as necessary when the lives of Americans are at stake, but it's evident that the lives of Americans don't need to be at stake, just money or power.
The American government has backed rebels in dozens of countries in the last few decades for their own personal gain while leaving the local communities destroyed and vulnerable. Most of these rebels simply served their American made purpose of destabilising regions, getting rid of leaders that oppose American politics, as well as ensuring new leaders are in place that do not oppose American politics. The US prefers peace until they don't.
This sentence stood out to me
so it has a vested interest in continuing mostly unfettered international trade.
Because that's a large reason for their international violence. When leaders want to decrease exports of a necessary commodity to the US, suddenly those countries become a "safety concern" to the US and peace isn't the first option. Its up to you whether it's justified or not, after all the US government is (mostly) trying to do the best for it's citizens, but I don't agree that the US prefers peace.
In dozens of countries? I think you could definitely argue that the US has applied pressure in one form or another to dozens of countries, but I don't think there's any evidence to suggest the US...
The American government has backed rebels in dozens of countries in the last few decades
In dozens of countries? I think you could definitely argue that the US has applied pressure in one form or another to dozens of countries, but I don't think there's any evidence to suggest the US has backed rebels in dozens of countries.
There are far too many of these to go through individually, but this doesn't support the notion that the US backed rebels in dozens of countries in the past few decades. In the 50s there were a...
There are far too many of these to go through individually, but this doesn't support the notion that the US backed rebels in dozens of countries in the past few decades. In the 50s there were a bunch of examples of that, of course, but here's the listing for the US involvement in "regime change" in Kyrgyzstan.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the US government provided aid to opposition protesters via the State Department, USAID, Radio Liberty and Freedom House by funding the only print-media outlet in the country not controlled by the government. When the state cut off electricity to the outlet, the U.S. embassy provided emergency generators
Many of the items on that list are a lot closer to what I cited above than they are to the Bay of Pigs.
Yeah, I'll grant that's true by a fairly literal interpretation of the phrase. I think you'll agree, though, that if you told someone "oh X country supported rebels" and they said "oh snap what...
Yeah, I'll grant that's true by a fairly literal interpretation of the phrase.
I think you'll agree, though, that if you told someone "oh X country supported rebels" and they said "oh snap what did they do" and you responded "oh the arm of their government charged with supporting democratic processes funded the only newspaper not controlled by the government..." they'd probably be a little nonplussed. :)
He also makes a great deal of hay about the propensity of Putin and Xi to make dangerous strategic miscalculations. As someone who came of age when the US intelligence community was systematically...
He also makes a great deal of hay about the propensity of Putin and Xi to make dangerous strategic miscalculations. As someone who came of age when the US intelligence community was systematically lying to the world about the threat of Iraq, and also as a veteran of ground combat in Afghanistan, I have absolutely no faith that US military leadership is prone to more responsible decision-making than our rivals.
iirc the threat of WMDs in Iraq was unilaterally declared without consulting the US intelligence community, and it pissed a lot of CIA agents off. A cursory summary of the events was Cheyney told...
iirc the threat of WMDs in Iraq was unilaterally declared without consulting the US intelligence community, and it pissed a lot of CIA agents off. A cursory summary of the events was Cheyney told the brass "it's unfortunate that we found WMDs in Iraq" and they went "yep, damn shame".
Fair enough clarification. I don't think it substantially changes the point that our leaders also have a record of being "insulated by yesmen" (which I think was Mr. Gates' phrase; I'm too lazy to...
Fair enough clarification. I don't think it substantially changes the point that our leaders also have a record of being "insulated by yesmen" (which I think was Mr. Gates' phrase; I'm too lazy to read the article a second time).
Due to the poor intelligence sharing prior to 9/11, afterward one of the things VP Cheney ordered was that raw intelligence go straight to the White House, instead of being vetted by multiple...
Due to the poor intelligence sharing prior to 9/11, afterward one of the things VP Cheney ordered was that raw intelligence go straight to the White House, instead of being vetted by multiple layers of CIA officers and analysts.
On top of that, Iraq had previously worked to acquire nuclear weapons and possessed chemical weapons (and used them in the Iran-Iraq war). So it wasn’t entirely unprecedented to think at the time that Saddam was trying to clandestinely (re)acquire WMDs. He even implied it in public propaganda (mostly because he didn’t think the U.S. would actually invade, and because he was concerned about another war with Iran).
As far as Cheney, he may have deliberately lied. But it very well could’ve been a case of him seeing patterns everywhere that supported his (wrong) gut feeling. Once someone gets in that cycle, it’s very hard to get them out of it.
I want to make sure I understand you and aren't putting words in your mouth before I discuss this. Do you mean that the execution is morally identical or that all of these countries have similar...
From my perspective the US and it's world ambitions is no different than Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc.
I want to make sure I understand you and aren't putting words in your mouth before I discuss this. Do you mean that the execution is morally identical or that all of these countries have similar ambitions from a realpolitik standpoint or something else?
Definitely the latter. The US has no moral superiority, they are imperialistic just like China and Russia. The US is guilty of genocide, wars of aggression, discrimination, causing climate change,...
Definitely the latter. The US has no moral superiority, they are imperialistic just like China and Russia. The US is guilty of genocide, wars of aggression, discrimination, causing climate change, etc. The US pretends to be a democracy but is instead an oligarchy.
They like to see China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea vilified but those countries are just playing the game of civilization too.
Russia - Wagner group used to destabilize parts of Africa China - regularly redrawing borders to steal parts of land from the Phillipines and Japanese. Not to mention the crackdown in Hong Kong...
From my perspective the US and it's world ambitions is no different than Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc.
Russia - Wagner group used to destabilize parts of Africa
China - regularly redrawing borders to steal parts of land from the Phillipines and Japanese. Not to mention the crackdown in Hong Kong and eventual crisis that Taiwan will bring.
Iran - I sure hope you arent female, lgbtq, or non Muslim.
I think what sets the US apart is the accountability, and steady change toward liberalism and more accepting society. Think of how things have changed culturally over the last 30 years?
I recommend a read of Peter Zeihan's The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America About this topic specially (And his other books for that matter) TBH America doesn't...
TBH America doesn't necessarily need to be the World's peace keeper anymore because it is quickly losing reasons to be interested in global affairs. I'm just going to highlight the declining positions of America's Enemies/Rivals
China:
Everyone says China is America's main Rival, counterpoint: China is in full-scale demographic collapse Some analysists are doubting if China will still be on the international stage by 2030. Also China is the country most depended on foreign imports/exports. They get almost all their oil from the Middle East or India so an simple blockade will likely be fatal. I could continue, but nevertheless, China's future isn't very bright.
I would be very hesitant to cite Zeihan, he’s known for being excessively geopolitics-centric, and isn’t particularly respected by other geopolitical strategists. Regarding China, they still have...
I would be very hesitant to cite Zeihan, he’s known for being excessively geopolitics-centric, and isn’t particularly respected by other geopolitical strategists.
Regarding China, they still have something like 700 million people who are in poverty, and ripe to become consumers/knowledge workers in the coming decades. Even if their population declines overall, they can still use those folks to support their economy.
China is weird. The top 10% of their ~1.4B pop is ~140 million people, and the bottom 1% is another 140 million, and they're a world apart. But both groups are roughly the size of Germany and...
Regarding China, they still have something like 700 million people who are in poverty, and ripe to become consumers/knowledge workers in the coming decades. Even if their population declines overall, they can still use those folks to support their economy.
China is weird. The top 10% of their ~1.4B pop is ~140 million people, and the bottom 1% is another 140 million, and they're a world apart. But both groups are roughly the size of Germany and France combined, and they share the same (federal) laws and geopolitical bargaining.
Everything depends on your threat model, which is exactly the point that Robert Gates is making in the article. Russia and China are both heavily nuclear-armed powers, and both have been doing...
Everything depends on your threat model, which is exactly the point that Robert Gates is making in the article.
Russia and China are both heavily nuclear-armed powers, and both have been doing some not-so-subtle saber rattling. [And yes, the U.S. did the same thing under Trump's insane tenure, which is one more reason why we should fight like hell to see he's nowhere near power ever again.]
Nobody needed hypersonic rocket nukes for any plausible purposes of border defense. China's tacit support of North Korea's rocket development, and Russian involvement in Iran, just stirs the pot.
It's also arguable that some of the U.S.'s (and European, and African, and...) political disunity and inclination towards authoritarians has been fostered by Russian and Chinese exploitation of the open Internet.
I'm not going to be naïve and say that all this activity is morally equivalent, or that we should just pretend the people doing it are really too weak to matter. The fundamental psychotic insecurity of authoritarian leaders is exactly what makes them so dangerous.
I write a lot of letters to my Republican congressman whose district is possibly at risk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Molinaro he can usually be counted to be part of any coalition to...
I write a lot of letters to my Republican congressman whose district is possibly at risk
he can usually be counted to be part of any coalition to prevent a government shutdown but I'm going to attribute that to people me showering his office with letters and phone calls. I always harp on the theme of "How can we show the strength to counter Russia and China if we're always screwing up like this?" which he might be responsive to more than "this is bad for poor people", "this is bad for ordinary people", "this is bad for the space program", etc.
No surprise that a secretary of defense wants more military spending. I think his hypothesis, that the US is necessary for world peace and the preservation of democracy, is false. From my perspective the US and it's world ambitions is no different than Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc.
I understand your use (and the US's use) of "liberal democracy" to mean imperialistic capitalism purposefully maintained by oligarchs that exploits people and the environment for profit while destroying those lives and the biosphere. Are we on the same page?
I very strongly resist the idea that the US' hyperpower status wasn't "broke". They overthrew probably dozens of Latin American social democratic leaders and installed brutal, torturous right-wing dictators that absolutely levelled and maimed their respective societies and people.
As a brief note, there are ~20 countries in Latin America (depending on how you define it), so unless you're suggesting that the US overthrew the government in every one of these countries and then came back and did it again a few times...
America has done bad things. Terrible things, even. But hyperbole on this scale is dangerous.
Well, it's incorrect, but I'm not sure the offhand "dozens" is... dangerous. That seems a bit of an overreaction. Dangerous to who?
Wikipedia has it at 9, but it's not not counting Puerto Rico (outright annexed), Mexico (half the country annexed), the Philippines (not Latin, but from the same war as Cuba and Puerto Rico). And if we go beyond the Latin world but stay in the area, you get things like the Kingdom of Hawaii (annexed), one of the more naked examples of American imperialism.
Please steelman my point, if you can. My argument is that the foreign policy of the United States ruined millions of lives. Not just because of the installed American puppets, but because good social democratic leaders were purged and killed.
I know dangerous is a bit of a goofy term... I think it's dangerous because exaggerations like that promote a sort of moral relativism or moral ambivalence that I strongly disagree with. There are a lot of people in this thread saying things like the US is morally equivalent to north Korea.
North Korea, where "three generations of a political offender's family can be summarily imprisoned or executed." Just to be clear, that means that if you offend the regime, your children, your parents, and your siblings could all be executed.
Similarly, people are comparing the invasion of Iraq - a multinational coalition to overthrow a murderous dictator - to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The two are not equivalent.
I think that people draw those conclusions because of beliefs like the one we're discussing - that the US casually overthrows dozens of regimes. The US has done bad things, especially in the past, but I genuinely believe that the US is generally guided by positive ideals.
I get where you were coming from and I'm not upset. I'm responding because while it's important not to underestimate what the US has done, I think it's important not to oversell it either.
Well then, let's be specific. Interfering with at least 9 independent regimes in Latin America, the wholesale annexation of an entire Latin American country, the annexation of half of another one. Out of Latin America, the genocide and containment of its own natives, the open annexation of a Polynesian kingdom, and the occupation of several other Pacific countries. And this is just its neighbourhood, this isn't even dealing with overseas interventions. This is all classical imperial expansion.
I'm sorry, where were the positive ideals here?
I probably shouldn't have said that, as I think it derailed the conversation. But, since we're here...
I'm not sure it makes much sense to blame america for the annexation of Puerto Rico. It was colonized by the Spanish. America took control of it after the Spanish-American war. 18 years later, all Puerto Ricans were granted citizenship.
And all of this happened over 100 years ago.
Anyway. What I'm trying to express is my belief that it's just as important not to overestimate America's evils as it is to not underestimate them.
This is exactly the sort of thing that I'm talking about, how Americans see their imperial projects as different. In Puerto Rico, after the granting of the Carta Autonómica, Puerto Ricans were granted representation in the Cortes and autonomy. For about six months, Puerto Rico began charting its own destiny. Until the US invaded and annexed it after the war. A war that Puerto Rico didn't start. Hell, a war that Spain didn't start.
You talk about "taking control" as if it's a game of EU4. It's not a thing that just happened. The United States invaded and conquered the country, and installed a military regime, run by Americans to govern Puerto Ricans.
If it doesn't make sense to blame America for the conquest and annexation of Puerto Rico, please tell me who's to blame.
Edit: Carta Autonómica, not Cédula de Gracias
Wait, are you talking about the Royal Decree of Graces of 1815? I don't know anything about this portion of Puerto Rican history but I'm very confused by this timeline of 1815>6 months>Annexed in 1898.
Certainly, I would rather live in the us than in north korea, but the biggest differences are wealth and optics. We are talking about a country that pervasively propagandises and surveils its own citizens, one that denies them due process when it feels like it and kidnaps and tortures them for no reason at all.
E:
I genuinely believe that the CIA believes it is doing the right thing when it use its own citizens to research torture techniques. But I cannot fathom what that has to do with anything.
We see things so differently here that I'm not sure we're going to be able to reconcile things.
It'd be handy if a north Korean could weigh in to let us know if they feel the biggest difference between their country and america is optics, but they aren't allowed to access the internet, so... ;)
I didn't say optics. I said wealth and optics, and I put them in that order deliberately. Nor did I mean to minimise the magnitude of the differences—because they are very great—but rather to limit their scope.
The US's prisons are an abomination, but I get the sense you're equivocating between them and forced labor camps where people are refused food. If you aren't, I'd appreciate an expansion on what exactly you are saying. North Koreans are not allowed to leave their country, and if they do, their families are often punished in their lieu, neither of which practice has an analog in the US. In what ways are these distinctions immaterial, or, how do they boil down to wealth and optics?
I didn't say anything about prisons.
North korea guards its citizens jealously because 1) it is very poor and needs the fruits of their labour, and 2) it is very poor and so its citizens want to escape to richer countries. Because north korea is so poor, it cannot afford to spend the resources to appear to be a nice destination for outsiders, so it sees no point in trying.
The us's interest in optics means the atrocities it commits tend to be more targeted and subtle, especially of late. But that does not mean its sentiment towards its own citizens is any better than north korea's.
No, but you did handwave everything except for "money and optics". People are allowed to disagree with that.
I don't see how your apologism of the DPRK's restrictions of their citizens' freedoms of movement supports your previous statements. Nor did I say "North Korea doesnt look like a fun spring break vaycay, and that's a problem." You're basically lumping every difference into optics, as though there isn't a difference between state-condoned and organized executions and torture as retaliation for leaving, and, this is the best analogy I can come up with, applying taxation to emigrants.
PS: I get the sense you think I'm somehow defending the USA against charges of crimes against humanity, or saying that its government is somehow exceptionally decent. That is not true. I'm just arguing that there are aberrantly terrible places, of which North Korea is a party to, and the US doesn't really qualify for.
I don't understand what that has to do with the prisons. I did give some very specific examples of other things the us does or has done which seem very similar to what is representative of north korea; it may be more fruitful to address those.
I don't know exactly what you mean by 'terrible place'. I do think that the us is a much nicer place to live than north korea for nearly everybody, and have maintained as much from the start.
R3qn65 indicated they thought a comparison between the us and north korea is not only nonsensical but incoherent, and that the us has a far, far stronger moral character than north korea. I disagreed: a comparison between the two, I think, is completely justified, and the differences, such as they are, come down mostly (if not entirely) not to moral character, but to two other factors.
And don’t forget the original inhabitants of what is now the US
God, I did. It's not really a surprise the US conquered and annexed everything around it. Manifest Destiny is so nakedly an imperial project.
What do you define as rational justifications? I don't think occupying and/or meddling with democracy in foreign nations can ever really be justified. Sure you can say it was for the betterment of the elite, or for America's role in international politics, or for many more reasons, but are the lives in a foreign country worth less than the lives of Americans that it can ever be justified? Especially when the effects are still felt on a national scale to this day.
Here is Wikipedia's list:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America
You can decide for yourself.
Chile, then. From Wikipedia:
And let me tell you, Pinochet was a fucking monster.
I gotta be honest, I'm curious as to how you're going to defend Pinochet in any way that isn't offensive to Chile.
The all-purpose justification at the time (from the outset of the Korean War onwards to the collapse of the USSR) was opposition to the spread of globalized authoritarian communism. Look up "Domino Theory" and the like.
This was presented as an existential struggle on the order of Orwell's "imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever". The thesis that the U.S. was a pure democracy beset by evil Communists was undermined by civil rights protests in the 1960's, and in the 1970's by the revelations of U.S. carpet bombing in Vietnam and Cambodia, as well as other human rights atrocities.
But the point stands that all nations change their propensities for war and covert action (a/k/a violent international relations) over time, both positively and negatively.
Ideologically, democracy, respect for human rights, and the rule of law are greatly preferable to authoritarianism. The U.S. hasn't always practiced what it preaches as well as could be hoped, especially in the context of military hegemony. However, there isn't a nation on Earth without a sorry history, and the U.S., at least recently, is a better example than many.
But again, I have to push against your conclusion. The people the US installed and supported in Latin America weren't just run of the mill free market capitalists. They were some of the worst scum on our planet. I struggle to think of who would China or Russia support that is worse.
So the US is a better example than who? In Argentina and Chile, the US is the country that has done the most damage in history.
Agreed that the U.S. did terrible damage in those countries. I don't want to both-sides this, but if we're looking at the same period of history, the USSR had invaded and conquered the entirety of Eastern Europe including part of Germany, attempted and failed to conquer Finland, and occupied Afghanistan.
China's direct military interventions in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Tibet, Nepal, India, and Thailand (formerly Burma) are in most cases still ongoing.
All of this is written in blood, and I don't think either of us wants to play the game of who has the highest body count and most instances of torture, repression, and overthrow of legitimate governments.
All I know is, if we have a chance to opt for a better version of history, we should, and a democratic nation provides better opportunities for doing so than ones run by the same old emperor wannabes.
I think you're under the impression that I'm defending or excusing Soviet atrocities then, or Russian and Chinese atrocities today. I'm not. I'm saying that Americans (and Europeans) are still under the collective delusion that they were different or better. They weren't. They conquered, annexed, killed, tortured with the best of them.
Yes, they were a force of good for the world, if you were a capitalist market economy that aligned yourself with them. If you were a social democratic country that wanted to give healthcare its citizens though, careful, the Americans might install a guy that throws students off of helicopters after drugging them for giggles.
I think this is a pretty naive take on geopolitics and how various countries run their nation and treat other nations. I understand that the US is not some sunshine and rainbows country where everything is perfect and that is just trying to play nice.
Still, I know plenty of women who refuse to visit the middle east because it's just not safe for them, and while that's a "local culture" thing, it stops being local when say, Russia (with some of the worst domestic violence rates in the world) invades another country.
If you want to have a different culture you need to be able to defend that culture. The US military machine is FULL of corrupt bullshit overspending nonsense, but it just vanishing overnight probably doesn't end well either.
I disagree with the view that USA imperialism has some special privilege that makes it any better or more justifiable than other countries' ambitions. As I see it, the USA just has the better PR machine.
I don't want to misinterpret what you've said, and I hope you've just used some poor wording in your comment. However, is this meant to be a justification for American interventionism and cultural genocide?
No. It's just how things work.
Doesn't matter who's doing it or who's getting wiped out. If you cannot defend your country, and by extension it's culture, it can very easily be overwritten. And this includes internal threats.
Hong Kong had a very defined culture and norms alone with politics, trade, society, etc. Now it's all gone because they couldn't defend that. This story repeats over and over and over throughout history.
Now if you get into the moral side of it, regardless of your stance, whatever culture you think should be allowed (say rights for women and minorities) is not going to last unless you can defend it.
Bluntly, I find it silly that people treat American politics/military history/etc as if it's some binary switch. There is no nation on this planet that is perfect because they all have people and statistically people tend to eventually do horrible things. Is the US perfect? Absolutely not. Is the US comparable to Iran? That honestly reeks of a privileged position that has never actually seen what's happened in Iran. I sure as shit haven't seen it first hand either, but I have spoken to people who have fled the country at various points in its history, and to just hand wave these things into the same pile is, to those i've met, insulting to them.
I will not pretend to be intimately familiar with the current situation in Iran. I also don't think there is much value in comparing atrocities.
I just don't see the benefit to elevating US imperialism above other terrible events. To say that after all the coups, the wars, the genocide and slavery that the US stands morally above any another country? I can't understand that point of view. They're all at the bottom of the same pit, metaphorically speaking.
I am down for it if you want to argue that the US has done bad things or that the war in Iraq was a mistake. But I really struggle to understand the view that the US is equivalent to Russia in that way.
The US tried to spare civilian infrastructure and the Russians deliberately targeted it. I mean, in every way, the conduct of war is completely different. And that doesn't even touch on how much money the US spent on rebuilding...
I see where you're coming from, but I respectfully disagree. I'm not sure if intentionally sparing some civilian infrastructure makes the US any better than Russia, especially when it leads to civilians dying anyway.
I was reading this paper the other day, and the death toll as indirect consequences for the USA's invasions are horrific.
How does it not? I'm sure we can agree that logically it's better to try to spare civilian infrastructure than to just destroy it indiscriminately. So, if the one is trying to spare lives and the other is launching rockets indiscriminately into cities...
I'm not the guy you replied to but thanks for the paper, looks really in-depth and informative. I think it's a topic that people who never actually saw war before, whether during or the aftermath, don't think about.
Could you explain why you don't think it makes the US better?
I don't think it makes the US better in the sense that I don't believe the motive, intentionality, or directness of killings relieves the severity of the act.
If one country killed a million people directly via gunfire, or if another country killed a million people indirectly by destroying infrastructure, then at the end of the day, they've both killed a million people. I wouldn't call one of them better than the other.
I don't think it's realistic to dispense entirely with these kinds of shades of grey. Mao Zedong, by direct decisionmaking, killed millions of people. As did Stalin. However, one of these sets of acts includes strong evidence of intent and motive for genocide, and targeted specific regions which had active political dissent, while the other set seemed to be motivated by narcissism and groupthink supporting said narcissism, and the famine was more distributed across geography.
At the very least, it seems disingenuous to act like you are not an extreme outlier in terms of how you use moral labels.
I'm not sure I understand your comment. I think you're mixing politics and culture together when they should be more or less separated. Russia didn't invade Ukraine because they're "culturally violent" people.
All cultures are different cultures. I also don't think you should ever need to defend your culture, neither should you attack other cultures. I know many people too afraid to live in the US because of safety, safety is relative, so do Americans then need to defend their livelihood too?
I never said domestic abuse is ok because it's a part of their culture. It's one thing to criticise toxic parts of culture, and another to say that a country deserves to be occupied because of toxic culture.
US culture is not the standard bearer of women's rights. Further, its not as if the US ceased to exist, human rights worldwide would decline. That is the BS idea of American exceptionalism.
Defending human rights is not why the US is interventionist, rather defending and creating opportunities for wealth and power.
I agree completely, I think spreading the narrative that the US was, is, or should be the world peace keepers can be very harmful. The US government has always been and will always be after the same thing every other large power is after, and that's control, power, and resources. Nothing inherently wrong with that per se, that's politics, but it's important that we talk about the real reasons behind government decisions, and not the sugarcoated reasons.
In realpolitik terms, the US would very much prefer peace relative to other powers. For one, the status quo, as the sole hegemonic pole, is very favorable to the US, whereas other countries like China want to recreate a multipolar system, and secondly, the US economy has done very well for itself and is still poised to do well for itself (as, unlike many countries, it is comparatively less hampered by the oncoming retirement crisis), so it has a vested interest in continuing mostly unfettered international trade. The US still has much more land to develop, and resources to exploit, in its own borders.
Does the US prefer democracy? Well, I'd say so. In that vein, while not always the case, dictatorships, oligarchies, and the such have way more potential to be volatile. For one, dictators are often of a military background, not exactly Harvard economics graduates, so more often toss economic development aside for other goals, or just do stupid things. They also have more potential for sudden, or unexpected wars, against neighbors. It's not like none of those things happen in a democracy, but having a economist advising an elected official is a better position, for the US.
Additionally, even under a stable autocracy, succession always blows shit up in uncomfortable ways, if what you want is for countries to stay where they are and sell their things.
I'm not sure I agree with you from the first sentence. I think saying the US would prefer peace is a very vague statement, because history shows that when the conditions are "right" the US definitely doesn't prefer peace. The US, as many super powers and imperial powers, really prefers it when other nations stay on their side, especially when they have resources the US needs. When countries/leaders start to sway away from being full economic and political allies the US will usually use force to sway them back. This can be something seen as necessary when the lives of Americans are at stake, but it's evident that the lives of Americans don't need to be at stake, just money or power.
The American government has backed rebels in dozens of countries in the last few decades for their own personal gain while leaving the local communities destroyed and vulnerable. Most of these rebels simply served their American made purpose of destabilising regions, getting rid of leaders that oppose American politics, as well as ensuring new leaders are in place that do not oppose American politics. The US prefers peace until they don't.
This sentence stood out to me
Because that's a large reason for their international violence. When leaders want to decrease exports of a necessary commodity to the US, suddenly those countries become a "safety concern" to the US and peace isn't the first option. Its up to you whether it's justified or not, after all the US government is (mostly) trying to do the best for it's citizens, but I don't agree that the US prefers peace.
In dozens of countries? I think you could definitely argue that the US has applied pressure in one form or another to dozens of countries, but I don't think there's any evidence to suggest the US has backed rebels in dozens of countries.
There are far too many of these to go through individually, but this doesn't support the notion that the US backed rebels in dozens of countries in the past few decades. In the 50s there were a bunch of examples of that, of course, but here's the listing for the US involvement in "regime change" in Kyrgyzstan.
Many of the items on that list are a lot closer to what I cited above than they are to the Bay of Pigs.
By definition, that is supporting rebels though no?
Yeah, I'll grant that's true by a fairly literal interpretation of the phrase.
I think you'll agree, though, that if you told someone "oh X country supported rebels" and they said "oh snap what did they do" and you responded "oh the arm of their government charged with supporting democratic processes funded the only newspaper not controlled by the government..." they'd probably be a little nonplussed. :)
He also makes a great deal of hay about the propensity of Putin and Xi to make dangerous strategic miscalculations. As someone who came of age when the US intelligence community was systematically lying to the world about the threat of Iraq, and also as a veteran of ground combat in Afghanistan, I have absolutely no faith that US military leadership is prone to more responsible decision-making than our rivals.
iirc the threat of WMDs in Iraq was unilaterally declared without consulting the US intelligence community, and it pissed a lot of CIA agents off. A cursory summary of the events was Cheyney told the brass "it's unfortunate that we found WMDs in Iraq" and they went "yep, damn shame".
Fair enough clarification. I don't think it substantially changes the point that our leaders also have a record of being "insulated by yesmen" (which I think was Mr. Gates' phrase; I'm too lazy to read the article a second time).
Due to the poor intelligence sharing prior to 9/11, afterward one of the things VP Cheney ordered was that raw intelligence go straight to the White House, instead of being vetted by multiple layers of CIA officers and analysts.
On top of that, Iraq had previously worked to acquire nuclear weapons and possessed chemical weapons (and used them in the Iran-Iraq war). So it wasn’t entirely unprecedented to think at the time that Saddam was trying to clandestinely (re)acquire WMDs. He even implied it in public propaganda (mostly because he didn’t think the U.S. would actually invade, and because he was concerned about another war with Iran).
As far as Cheney, he may have deliberately lied. But it very well could’ve been a case of him seeing patterns everywhere that supported his (wrong) gut feeling. Once someone gets in that cycle, it’s very hard to get them out of it.
I want to make sure I understand you and aren't putting words in your mouth before I discuss this. Do you mean that the execution is morally identical or that all of these countries have similar ambitions from a realpolitik standpoint or something else?
Definitely the latter. The US has no moral superiority, they are imperialistic just like China and Russia. The US is guilty of genocide, wars of aggression, discrimination, causing climate change, etc. The US pretends to be a democracy but is instead an oligarchy.
They like to see China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea vilified but those countries are just playing the game of civilization too.
Russia - Wagner group used to destabilize parts of Africa
China - regularly redrawing borders to steal parts of land from the Phillipines and Japanese. Not to mention the crackdown in Hong Kong and eventual crisis that Taiwan will bring.
Iran - I sure hope you arent female, lgbtq, or non Muslim.
I think what sets the US apart is the accountability, and steady change toward liberalism and more accepting society. Think of how things have changed culturally over the last 30 years?
I recommend a read of Peter Zeihan's The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America About this topic specially (And his other books for that matter)
TBH America doesn't necessarily need to be the World's peace keeper anymore because it is quickly losing reasons to be interested in global affairs. I'm just going to highlight the declining positions of America's Enemies/Rivals
Russia:
They are the reason why America is so power projected. American united the European nations to deter Russian Expansion at the end of WW2 The main driving factor behind American Security policy for over 70 years is to keep the Russians at arms length.
But then the USSR collapsed in '91. Although Russia formed from its ashes, we are seeing its cracks with the Ukraine War. Russia is no longer the Empire it once was. It is like a cornered Tiger. With the Russia's recent arms trade with North Korea, we can conclude that Soviet-Era Weapons Plants can't be brought online either within a timeframe to be usable or at all America's main enemy is in a death spiral.
China:
Everyone says China is America's main Rival, counterpoint: China is in full-scale demographic collapse Some analysists are doubting if China will still be on the international stage by 2030. Also China is the country most depended on foreign imports/exports. They get almost all their oil from the Middle East or India so an simple blockade will likely be fatal. I could continue, but nevertheless, China's future isn't very bright.
Iran and the Middle East:
America is now a net oil exporter as of 2022 so as long as none one builds a nuke (And there is interest in working out a new Iran Deal), there isn't a reason to stay interested in maintaining balance anymore.
I would be very hesitant to cite Zeihan, he’s known for being excessively geopolitics-centric, and isn’t particularly respected by other geopolitical strategists.
Regarding China, they still have something like 700 million people who are in poverty, and ripe to become consumers/knowledge workers in the coming decades. Even if their population declines overall, they can still use those folks to support their economy.
China is weird. The top 10% of their ~1.4B pop is ~140 million people, and the bottom 1% is another 140 million, and they're a world apart. But both groups are roughly the size of Germany and France combined, and they share the same (federal) laws and geopolitical bargaining.
Everything depends on your threat model, which is exactly the point that Robert Gates is making in the article.
Russia and China are both heavily nuclear-armed powers, and both have been doing some not-so-subtle saber rattling. [And yes, the U.S. did the same thing under Trump's insane tenure, which is one more reason why we should fight like hell to see he's nowhere near power ever again.]
Nobody needed hypersonic rocket nukes for any plausible purposes of border defense. China's tacit support of North Korea's rocket development, and Russian involvement in Iran, just stirs the pot.
It's also arguable that some of the U.S.'s (and European, and African, and...) political disunity and inclination towards authoritarians has been fostered by Russian and Chinese exploitation of the open Internet.
I'm not going to be naïve and say that all this activity is morally equivalent, or that we should just pretend the people doing it are really too weak to matter. The fundamental psychotic insecurity of authoritarian leaders is exactly what makes them so dangerous.
I write a lot of letters to my Republican congressman whose district is possibly at risk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Molinaro
he can usually be counted to be part of any coalition to prevent a government shutdown but I'm going to attribute that to people me showering his office with letters and phone calls. I always harp on the theme of "How can we show the strength to counter Russia and China if we're always screwing up like this?" which he might be responsive to more than "this is bad for poor people", "this is bad for ordinary people", "this is bad for the space program", etc.