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by zdragnar 2732 days ago
We have recent history to demonstrate: WW2 followed by the cold war. Is there a Nazi Germany today? No. Could there be something similar again? Of course.

Hell, there's even a show on Amazon (based on a book) centered around the idea of an alternate history where the Allied forces lost WW2 and the US is occupied territory.
1 comments
orf 2732 days ago
Things where a little bit different back then, don't you think? Do you believe nothing that's happened in the last 70 years (most notably nuclear weapons) changes this scenario at all?

There are also many fictional shows on Amazon, should we use them to guide us?

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landryraccoon 2732 days ago
I don't think philosophically this helps the case that armed forces are unnecessary. All it argues is that a nation needs a nuclear armed force instead of a conventional one to stay independent.

If a nation has no nuclear weapons and cannot compete conventionally, it could be bullied. Take Ukraine for example - would they really be worse off if they kept some nukes? Perhaps Russia would be deterred from aggression if they did.

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aswanson 2732 days ago
I think Ukraine example shows the weakness in the single point of failure NATO model, with the U.S. as the current failure point. Our current leadership is less committed to NATO, and Putin pounces. I think a European alliance, with a strong military force led by England, Germany, & France, needs to think about a more localized force to check Putin's aggression.
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landryraccoon 2732 days ago
I agree, but the key phrase here is strong military force. There's no avoiding the existence of armed forces; we're really debating how those forces should be governed.
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mmirate 2732 days ago
> Things where a little bit different back then, don't you think? Do you believe nothing that's happened in the last 70 years (most notably nuclear weapons) changes this scenario at all?

The majority of the Cold War happened while both sides' superpowers had nukes.

In other words: nukes didn't change this scenario; they helped create it.

> Things where a little bit different back then, don't you think? Do you believe nothing that's happened in the last 70 years (most notably nuclear weapons) changes this scenario at all?

Guide? No. Inspire and/or remind? Why not.

To be fair, however, the PKD book that spawned that show, contained factual errors due to information that was declassified only after the book was written. Turns out, even if the US had been neutral in WW2, it's fairly certain the remaining Allies would have won regardless; and furthermore, in such a case it is possible the Soviets might've been so thoroughly weakened by the Japanese, that the former wouldn't have emerged as a superpower nor as the other side of the Cold War.

(And while we're on the topic of conjectures about counterfactual US neutrality: it is possible that US neutrality in WW1 would have averted the creation of the Nazi empire and WW2 with it.)

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