[jka]

Transparent de-escalation is the solution, not the age-old rhetoric of 'staying ahead in the arms-race'.

_Most_ people regardless of country of residence or origin want a peaceful and fulfilled, free life. You can never please everyone but arguing from basis of 'fear of the other' is a bit disingenuous and leads to these literal arms races.

That's not to say defense spending isn't important, but it has to be stressed with the word 'defense' and with an inherent bias towards security and safety. (I don't believe technology products are inherently neutral; as a result of design they are better or worse suited towards particular usages, and that needs focus too)

[slededit]

The big fish is always going to have challengers from somewhere. You may be right about the average case but the world is quite large.

[jka]

(also, fwiw - maybe we're not collectively ready for this yet, and sure, waiting until 'the other' is in fact ready to de-escalate themselves too is important in that kind of scenario)

[_ptgt]

> _Most_ people regardless of country of residence or origin want a peaceful and fulfilled, free life. You can never please everyone but arguing from basis of 'fear of the other' is a bit disingenuous and leads to these literal arms races.

This is all fine and dandy, but some of the most powerful militaries in the world are run by authoritarians who optimize for their own interests rather than what's good for their population. Russia's people generally gain nothing from Putin's belligerence, yet the belligerence happens. The CCP rolled the tanks on its own people; do you really think they'll hesitate to roll them on foreigners if it suits their interests?

I don't worry about the aggregate opinion of Russians or Chinese; I worry about Putin and the CCP.

[jka]

You're potentially a bit unfair to militaries here; good standing forces have separation from their governance, their own chains of command, and ideally ways to ignore and report inappropriate orders (especially ones which violate terms of engagement and the rules of war).

Yes individual cases will always overstep those, often due to extreme power dynamics, but those should be taken as lessons to learn from rather than taught as the normal order of things.