It's about time to finally grok that all world's military is only there to wage wars at the whim of the 0.001% under the guise of being defence-only, and that constitutions worth less than toilet paper these days.
Kill the royal couples, no problem. There is an argument to be made that those that start wars should be sentenced to death for doing so. Particularly frivolous ones of aggression.
If the civilian populous has access to arms and armories they can make it a worthless proposition to invade them. Its not like the world is entirely composed of large countries with strong militaries already. An insurgency can last decades under fire from a superior force, an organized military won't. So if you can't match the organized military might of potential enemies, its probably mostly a waste to try.
Defense doesn't mean not to start a war. Think about how Vietnam justified their invasion of Cambodia in 1978, or how China started the war with Vietnam the following year, or how Turkey entered Syria, how Pakistan fought the Taliban recently, and of course what Russia did in Ukraine, 2014 and 2022.
Wars are messy and have always been. Military actions are to be decided by the governments. Those who have resources are more willingly to use it, west or east.
Rather: the "victorious" countries of the Second World war were afraid of a re-militarization of Germany. On the other hand, they wanted to re-militarize the Western part of Germany just a little bit so that West Germany could become part of the NATO.
Quite the contrary; up until the end of the Cold War both German states were highly militarized. They were quite happy to be able to roll back a lot of it after the reunification though.
That is basically redefining the word defense, though.
I can’t be like “it was self defense” if I beat somebody up because they are getting too big at the gym and they could beat me up later if I don’t beat them up first.
That doesn’t mean such a thing is never ever justified, in international relations, it just ain’t “defense”.
So while many of the reasons are questionable (understatement of the year), let’s focus on the last one. After America lost the war in Vietnam, what happened to those neighboring nations? Did they suffer from Vietnamese communists? The only Vietnamese intervention was in Cambodia, and hardly anyone thinks that wasn’t the right thing to do.
The OP probably thought of defense in the narrow sense as "the action of defending against or resisting an attack", and not in the broader sense defined as "we’re going to travel halfway around the world to kill a million people because that’s who we are". A common mistake.
Not because “that’s who we are.” That’s a ret*rded retort. You go halfway around the world because you want to protect your friends and your nation’s interest.
Wouldn’t you do that to protect your family and your home, now and into generations? I think I know the answer.
That depends greatly on which interests you allow to be defined as "American". The vast majority of American people would have preferred not to be involved in most of our foreign adventures. The rich and powerful thought differently. Is our citizenship determined by the size of our bank accounts?
This is factually incorrect. Here are the estimates for the rates of support for each conflict at the beginning of the conflict:
- Iraq (Gulf War): 75-80%
- Iraq (2003): 65-76%
- Syria: 35-50%
- Vietnam: 65-75%
- Iran: 42%
Alexander Hamilton wrote that governance should involve people with “wisdom to discern” and “virtue to pursue the common good”. The US is not a direct democracy; it is a constitutional republic. The definition of what constitutes American interests is literally whatever the United States federal government says it is.
I'm probably going to get flagged for this, but here goes anyway.
Russia absolutely has reason to not want Ukraine to join NATO. I'm not condoning the invasion, but I say it absolutely makes sense for Russia to carry it out. Not a reason to commit war crimes, or to cause any more suffering than necessary, but from a national security perspective it makes sense to want to disrupt the process of Ukraine joining NATO.
Only if you accept the hidden assumption that Russia is an antagonist toward the rest of Europe. Otherwise the common "national security" justifications make no sense, because Russia benefits immensely from other NATO members investing resources into the development of institutions in newer member states.
A former Russian foreign minister has labeled NATO "free-of-charge security" for Russia, because NATO membership requirements turn a country into a stable and predictable place. The best neighbors Russia has are in NATO, and much of that stability is directly attributable to their membership.
Yeah, by such definitions any country is justified to wage a war and always find a way to claim it’s for self-defense (which is indeed how most causus belli have worked throughout the history – they always claim to have the moral high ground when launching the war). This is also how essentially in every country it’s called the Department of Defense (unless you’re Trump) but that means nothing as they start wars all the same. Not a trace of any rules, accountability or restraints still remains under such a framing.
Germany participated in the NATO military campaign/occupation of Afghanistan, including ground forces, naval activities and special operations units. Its seems a total of 150,000 German soldiers (and police officers?) were deployed overall (not at the same time of course); of them, 62 were killed and 249 wounded: