It's not just peace in America. It's peace in Europe and Asia too. What do you think the political situation would be vis-a-vis U.K. versus Germany versus France or Japan versus China if the U.S. military didn't have supremacy over everyone? History suggests it would be a lot less peaceful than it is now.
> It's peace in Europe and Asia too. What do you think the political situation would be vis-a-vis U.K. versus Germany versus France or Japan versus China
Hmmm, no, this is flat-out wrong.
You've clearly never been in UK, Germany, or France, and yet, you think you have precise insight of the politics of those countries and the world.
The most terrible thing is the inesorable logic of how people develop this sort of thoughts, through growing up in cultural closeness, put together with exposure to militaristic propaganda (note that it's a general remark, not referred specifically to US).
I'm European and completely agree with him. I grew up in Ireland (a constitutionally neutral country) and have lived and worked in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, and Spain as well as visiting several other European countries.
You would have to be living under a rock to ignore the long history of European internal wars, and equally to ignore the fact that European countries have been able to maintain a minimalist approach to defense spending because of the US security umbrella.
You're mixing a couple of things here; we're not talking about defense in general, but specifically to the thesis that without US military presence, France/UK/Germany could/would go into conflict; this is just ridiculous, as much as thinking that US countries would go into a conflict as well, because they had a civil war in the past.
History suggests the U.S. generally does whatever it wants in order to get richer, ever since WW2. Selling weapons to both sides of the war(e.g. both nazi germany and USSR) and helping out whichever side is winning.
So, no, history doesn't suggest that. Neither does recent history with 20+ regime changes.
edit: I feel like it needs reminding - I realize that in terms of geopolitics there needs to be a superpower. Every century has had a superpower that in all likelihood abused the weaker countries. My issue is with the way OP describes the issue: US being benevolent and great, bringing in fruits to US economy, completely ignoring repercussions worldwide.
In the grand scheme of things, knocking over a dictatorship and trying to build a democracy friendly to us, even if self-serving and ill-advised, is quite a different thing than just cynically conquering a country and harvesting its resources, the way the European countries used to before America came along. People use the phrase "American Empire" as a metaphor. They use "British Empire" literally.
> knocking over a dictatorship and trying to build a democracy friendly to us
If I remember well, Afghanistan, Irak and Iran are the last places where US overthrew a Shah or a dictator. I don't remember them being a working democracy recently.
By the way, why was there a dictatorship in the first place? Most often because of a colonial past (we're all guilty here, I am French myself). I just want to remind that I see nothing good in a country just overthrowing a dictatorship: What we need is to build economic growth, like the Plan Marshall.
But you still sleep well at night, right? Continuing to ignore the people dying everyday because of geopolitical aspirations.
Eh fine. I'm starting to sound self-righteous. My issue with your statement is how absolutely peaceful you are about contributing to war machine. You're implicitly helping the armed forces kill people.
Not really sure that argument holds upon closer inspection. For example, I agree with the idea of rule of law without agreeing with all laws that get implemented. By your rules, I would have to agree with all laws if I agreed with any.
It's completely related, but you've got your 'feathers ruffled', so to speak. One can agree with (and support) a system in place for many reasons and still 'sleep well at night' when that system doesn't work out exactly as you'd like because of the other benefits. I (willingly) pay police salaries without considering myself morally culpable when they do something out of line.
Except when you pay police salaries, you're expecting them to maintain order within a society. The end goal of advanced military equipment[0] is to kill people as efficiently as possible. It's the goal, not something out of line.
[0] Doesn't even have to be equipment. Maintaining databases which are required for a functioning military complex means you're still serving their vision. Their visions as of late are often amoral.
At the risk of further deviating this thread from the original topic and getting into extremely useless discussion territory, I would disagree that killing people in and of itself is an amoral goal, and even ordinarily peaceful people will often find there are circumstances that will cause them to agree with this assessment.
The large system designed to kill targeted groups of people efficiently, when it works as designed, doesn't actually spend much time (if any) actually doing that job. The mere existence of such a force should prevent that from happening (as it absolutely has for the most part). Having said that, there are circumstances when I absolutely expect them to do just that - if an aggressive foreign army were to roll into your hometown tomorrow, you would likely agree.
I realize that to the rest of the world right now we (i.e., the U.S.) are that aggressive foreign army, which is why I say the system is out of line - certain unilateral actions were a misuse of the system. This is why many people see no hypocrisy in 'supporting the troops', but being 'against the war'.
Anyway, not trying to say you are completely wrong and you should feel bad WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA, just trying to provide some explanation of another viewpoint. As you said, it's about perception and morality - not surprising we end up with different stances.
> The end goal of advanced military equipment[0] is to kill people as efficiently as possible.
I can't speak for other militaries, but for the U.S. military the goal is peace, without abject surrender (which is no "peace" at all), and with the "American way of life" and international law.
The means to achieving that goal is the credible deterrent threat that comes from having ways to blow the right things up. Do not conflate the two, right now you are confusing ends with means.
Perhaps I am confusing the ends with the means. But international law? Several ex US presidents can't even fly to certain countries in Europe because they'd be jailed right away.
International law - indefinite detention, torture; or killing with drones without due process? Doesn't seem like international law is held in high esteem in the US.
Neither indefinite detention nor drones are contrary to international law per se. German combatants were detained indefinitely during WWII, and a drone is no different from any other aircraft as far as international law is concerned.
Torture is against international law. Even if you want to quibble about whether Geneva Conventions apply to "unlawful combatants" I think that even non-treaty customary international law would forbid torture.
So I suppose that's why the U.S. abrogated Bush's policies on torture as soon as Obama took office in 2009.
> Even if you want to quibble about whether Geneva Conventions apply to "unlawful combatants" I think that even non-treaty customary international law would forbid torture.
More importantly, it would be against treaty-based international law even if you ignored the Geneva Conventions completely, since it is prohibited by the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
But are we sure it's not just nuclear peace we're seeing here? Sure, the US can make a lot of countries back off each other, but I would argue it's superfluous when MAD's already there.
> But are we sure it's not just nuclear peace we're seeing here?
If it is nuclear peace, it's because of the Americans as well.
NATO doesn't have nukes, its member nations do. And a nation can't use nukes without being nuked in return (which is why the American extension of their nuclear shield over western Europe is so notable).
Even with that, France and the U.K. both didn't trust the U.S. to actually nuke the U.S.S.R. if push came to shove... would the U.S. really put itself in a position where it might be mutually destroyed just to save France and the U.K.?
Well, that's the same question all the non-nuclear members of NATO would be asking, if "nuclear peace" were the only answer. So apparently it's more than that.
That's somewhat fair (there are still conditions under which war might occur), but my point was that we are seeing a deeper peace than simply "peace between great powers".
One problem is that, especially since 9/11, it isn't a pax Americana. We started the wars. And the problem with that is that the US pissed away $TRILLIONS on misguided and outright aggressive wars that drained resources just as the US was further weakened by the derivatives crash.
Strength comes from the economy. The ability to defend against tyranny is a product of a strong economy. But American military and banking policy has been ruinously bad for US economic power, and for the long-lead-time things like education that would rebuild the economy's ability to grow at a strong rate.
