Nuclear weapons were developed by the Soviets before the end of the 40's, so it was a very narrow window where the US was the sole holder of all nuclear arms (about five years).
Five years is an eternity though. The major factor was more likely we didn't have the capacity to produce a large number of nuclear weapons to tip the balance
It's definitely a land of fantasy today, I agree but one can always hope that maybe one day instead of killing each other we'd learn to live together and work together. Imagine how much more productive we'd be. To be honest I nearly didn't post this message because it's a bit off topic and definitely divisive. I definitely support all the brave people fighting for me to be safe because I sure as hell wouldn't feel comfortable killing someone else myself to protect my "country".
Looking at human history, that will never happen. As long as there is scarcity in the world, and as long as sovereign states exist, geopolitics and thus the looming threat of war will always exist.
Perhaps with that attitude. There's a lot of amazing things humans have accomplished that were once thought impossible. We are likely very, very early on in the anthropocene. Thousands of years from now I'm optimistic that the world will be a better place and that they'll look back on us as barbaric environment destroyers.
judging by recent political events in the UK and the US combined with the level of obesity and overconsumption in these nations I'd say we're already there
I don't buy that history is a good guide for the future here. All but the most recent history was in an era where we couldn't talk to eachother without physically travelling for weeks/months. The nature of diplomacy, politics, countries, and war have all fundamentally changed. The world has not "settled into" a new steady-state since those changes have been made (partially because significant changes are still happening).
You could reasonably extrapolate from bodies like the EU and think there is a chance we end up with a single global order that doesn't include war in the future.
That said I think you can look at the current and say with some confidence that there are at least a few wars left - there are too many current armed conflicts, and too many threats of armed conflict, to seriously believe otherwise.
> You could reasonably extrapolate from bodies like the EU and think there is a chance we end up with a single global order that doesn't include war in the future.
How, precisely, does one extrapolate from the EU (of all places) to a one world government? The variation across the world in everything from cultural and religious norms to even technical approaches to solving problems is extreme, and it has been like this since forever. The genesis of the EU seems, in my view, an evolution of American dominance of the continent after WWII. Is that what you mean? Further American influence tends to encourage (or coerce) countries into further integration?
I’d put the odds of any of that happening on a global scale at approximately zero, because there actually have been globe spanning empires in the past (multiple iterations, in point of fact), and they all collapsed or shed their empires when it became clear ruling it was no longer in the interest of the Sovereign or the Subjects.
Who said anything about an empire?
That is obviously not going to work and is not what the EU is.
The EU is far from perfect but is an early iteration of a workable model. I can’t see this happening even in somewhere with a pretty similar societal model as the US currently as the political siuation is so polarised.
This makes no sense. Using this logic, why don’t more countries attack, say Costa Rica, which doesn’t even have a military?
I think the OP probably doesn’t have a problem with actual defense projects, but if you’ve been paying any attention over the last 70 years, you will know that the US has attacked many countries under the guise of “defense”.
> Using this logic, why don’t more countries attack, say Costa Rica, which doesn’t even have a military?
You might want to read up on the "Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance". Essentially, "the rest of the Americas".
That mostly works because the set of potential aggressors is small. (Nicaragua and Panama). OK, fine, the US might want to, but they're close enough partners that they don't need to.
> they're close enough partners that they don't need to
I think that might be the crux of what GP was getting at. There's more to it than the ability to win (and in a hopeful dreamy world, I'd wish we can all get to the state where collaboration is always the obvious better choice, but that's obviously at least a few hundred years off... something to strive for, though)
To the US, "winning" is basically defined as having access to local resources (including workers) at market rates without the responsibility of governing.
AKA -- free trade. Global free trade exists because the US wants it to. In that sense, it's currently winning/won. The size of the US military and economy (and it's close allies) are largely what enforces that world order.
Personally, I think it's better than the old model of imperialism (it's certainly way less violent and has rapidly increased living standards across the globe). But it's still a case of the big powerful countries enforcing their will on smaller countries.
Free trade lives on the back of enormous military spending. Particularly commercial shipping lanes are protected by the power of the US Navy.
The past few years have seem drastically reduced US Naval spending, particularly on the protection of commercial shipping (the shipping and military news sites are almost ready to agree that the US Navy has abandoned this part of the mission entirely). Under Obama's administration we balked at protecting the commercial fishing rights of our allies in the Philippines and it's expected that this kind of policy in reaction to Chinese aggression in SEA will continue.
Then COVID hit us and we might actually see a real unravelling or the last 60 years of global economic policy.
This means that we should probably expect more conflict rather than less.
This is a hippie ideology that seems to only be held by people who live in secure circumstances that they take for granted and are oblivious to what it costs other people to create.
Hippies were the children of WW2 vets and were an entire generation who seemingly failed to understand that the world they lived in was forged at great personal cost by the previous generation and the anvil upon which it was forged was The Great Depression and WW2. The Hippie antiwar stance was like the collective voice of the subconscious of the previous generation that was deeply scarred by WW2 and wanted to just fight no more forever.
My country was actually raped, pillaged and involuntarily ruled by the British for a very long time. I am no child of a WW2 vet. There is a world outside of the United States of America. Please take your derogatory chat elsewhere. In another comment in this thread I pay respect to those that have fought in wars. You are reading too much (or perhaps too little) into my original comment and combining that with small minded pessimism.
I wasn't suggesting you were the child of a WW2 vet. Just disagreeing with the idea posited and doing my best to explain my reasons why, which is always a risky exercise on the internet.
Perhaps my reply was a bit too defensive - I’ll use the excuse that it’s uncharacteristically hot where I am and I can’t sleep. I do feel like you were being derogatory in your labelling of this as a Hippie ideology which I still think isn’t quite fair since you go on to generalise this negatively. I’m definitely aware that there have been many sacrifices made by older generations for the younger generations to live better lives - yet I do think that we can all do better at trying to build a world where we wouldn’t need as much conflict to make the world a better place for future generations.
FWIW, I am the child of a WW2 vet and also a former military wife. People who know me well have described me as a pro military hippie tree hugger.
It is my understanding that Shaolin priests believe "A man of peace must be strong" and both willing and able to defend his views in a fight to the death.
It's a shame you feel so dismissive toward people who prefer peace. The world would be a much better place if people didn't feel like it was ok to take what they want from others by force, or if people didn't follow ideologies that make them want to attack other people.
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I feel like you've put many words into their mouth that may not have been there. It's perfectly reasonable to acknowledge that the current world order was built on the back of centuries (millennia, really) of aggression and violence, while still wishing it did not have to be that way -- or at least hoping the future could hold something better. I don't think that's naive, as long as we continue to make choices that recognize the actual state of the world, while still holding our hopes dear.
I, too, would not feel ok starting a company whose sole or primary purpose was to build for the military. Fortunately we live in a world where many, many people can choose not to fuel the military industrial complex without damaging our countries' preparedness for the wars they might need to fight, as there will always be others who ok with this line of work.
As a US citizen in a place that's more or less evenly red/blue split, and given the trajectory of US politics lately, I'm worried that if I help improve US military technology, it will later be used against me or my neighbors.
Even if the current posture for whatever nation is predominately that of defense, you have no idea what is going to happen in the next few years geopolitically, or even just when your country has new leadership. The defensive capabilities you help build today could easily be used for offense tomorrow.
I wonder, of the many hundreds of billions of dollars the US spends on defense every year, how much goes to those military operations to which you linked.
> hmm facilitating war, even if it means defence just doesn't sit quite right with me. shame we live in a world where this is even a thing
I don't know what this is supposed to even mean. Do you mean "it's a shame to live in a world where defence is necessary" or "it's a shame to live in a world where aggressors face defence"?
Everywhere you look around the world right now there is a money making machine. Imo more and more companies start choosing non ethical ways to earn currency. There hasn't been many sacred things in world nor lately nor ever..
We live in dangerous times, with multiple situations that can devolve into all-out wars very VERY quickly, and as Ukraine has shown it is extremely wise to prepare:
- obviously, everyone with a border to Russia has to fear invading orcs. Moldavia and the Baltic nations are at particular threat, given the speeches by Russian officials and think-tank representatives that suggest Russia wants to build back its Russian Empire glory days. Additionally, everyone is at threat from Russian cyber actors and Russian-backed separatist and far-right organizations.
- China has not only the Taiwan question, but also ongoing border skirmishes with India and resource-grabbing operations in the entire Pacific - hell they have been caught illegally fishing in waters as far away as Africa [1]. The risk of Chinese cyber attacks is just as high as Russia, although China seems to focus more on industrial espionage for now.
- The entire situation around Israel and Iran is highly volatile. Israel routinely strikes against targets both in Iran and Syria, and at least for the latter Putin has pretty much clarified that they won't keep looking away for much longer. And everyone in the region is worried about Iran, to the tune that it's likely that the idea of a "middle Eastern NATO" is already reality in secret.
- Almost all of Africa is under threat from internal conflict, both ongoing and future. Dictatorships of various kinds, border fights, civil wars, religious wars - name your idea of conflict cause and you will find it in Africa somewhere. Add to that economic insecurity and pressure from the effects of climate change, and the entire continent is an explosion just waiting to happen. The US doesn't have to take care much, but Europe will have to deal with a lot of refugees sooner or later (and to make it worse, we still haven't decided on how to deal with refugees in a way that doesn't threaten to destabilize our interior politics and complies with the ideals laid down in various international treaties).
- Half of South America is a similar bomb waiting to explode. Failed states (Venezuela), narco states (Mexico), states collapsing to gang warfare (Haiti), and the open possibility that it might need world-wide military intervention to stop Brazil from burning down the Amazon rainforest.
Yeah agreed. It's a shame though isn't it. Imagine a world where hundreds of billions of US defense spending could go into public services like free healthcare.
The problem isn't defense spending, the problem is resource misallocation, fraud and waste. The US is at the top of the healthcare expenditure per capita comparison by far [1] - there is enough money "in the system", it just ends up at the completely wrong places.
The US spends almost double as much money per citizen as countries as Germany, and yet, the quality of healthcare and accessibility are so much better here than the horror stories that regularly pop up here or on Reddit. Not to say our system is perfect - it's far from what I would consider to be decent - but the objective measurements of how the US' health care system performs are speaking clear and loud [2].
Sure, but just consider how many billions (trillions when we consider global spending?) of dollars are spent on either ways to kill other humans, or ways to defend from other people killing humans. What an amazing civilization we might be able to be, hundreds of years beyond our current level, if we could put that money toward literally anything else.
Yes, the grandparent mentioned health care, but there's a lot more that's possible. And hell, even if no one fixed the health care system in the US such that spending could go down to reasonable levels, I'd still imagine we could have free -- if expensive -- health care for all if we didn't have to allocate so much money to the military.
But that's not the world we live in; military preparedness is an absolute necessity.
Indeed, I agree with you on this and also read this report recently. But I think we're going down a bit of a rabbit hole here. My initial post was merely a comment on the unfortunate human condition currently, with the undertone of my desire that it shouldn't be this way.
If you stop spending in the US and assume that Russia and China will sit idly by without invading our allies, you are living in a land of fantasy.