No, the world has become a safer place for us because we live in nations with nuclear weapons, and they're a pretty good deterrent for attacks by other nations. The world is still a very unsafe place for many people, partly because of this self-proclaimed 'cop'. If you think the US has this military might for any other reason than ensuring it's own political and economical wellbeing, I'd like to know what it is. It sure isn't to "keep the peace" - they're selling a bit too many weapons to questionable figures for that.
it's become safer for everyone:
https://assets.weforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ourwor...
which obviously isn't to say that nobody dies in wars anymore.
Or maybe the US just had a problematic idea of what police should be doing, which explains a lot of our other problems.
More directly, the US has directly toppled many democratically elected governments, undermined sovereign political processes via propaganda and support for anti-democratic political groups and targeted economic pressure, supported American and multinational corporations in their unethical and often criminal behavior around the world, given money and weapons and training to armed opponents of various democratic governments (who then used those for slaughtering civilians) ...
Not to mention being one of the world’s foremost producers and distributors of small arms (that end up in the hands of local gangsters, child soldiers, ...).
As a particularly tragic example, look to the case of Guatemala. The democratically elected president of Guatemala demanded that the United Fruit Company – who owned an incredibly high proportion of all arable land in the (starving) country – sell back some portion of the land which they were not currently using at the price it had been assessed to be worth for tax purposes. Unfortunately for Guatemala, the Dulles brothers (CIA director and Secretary of State), as well as various other members of the Eisenhower administration, had a direct business interest in United Fruit. The US toppled the government, installed a friendly dictator, and kicked off 2 generations of civil war in which a shockingly high proportion (5% or something?) of all Guatemalans were killed, including the mass-murder of many villages by thugs with machetes.
It is true that the presence of nuclear weapons has prevented for the past ~70 years the break-out of another “hot” war directly between nuclear-armed states. On the other hand, if someone slips up when nuclear weapons are involved, we’ll all be screwed.
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27éta...
<https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/05/19/what-guilt-...
The US should not be out droning people in other countries except in explicit self defense ("they might have been going to attack us" doesn't count). That is my opinion, you are free to disagree with it. If "the goal is to kill fewer people," the best way to do that is to... not kill people.
Also, the fact that representatives I voted for voted in favor of extrajudicial killings of people in other countries is not something I'm happy about. I wish every day that the US could abolish its first past the post election system so that I could vote for candidates I actually agree with rather than being forced to vote for someone I sort of agree with.
Are you talking about UN? If not when was the last time the US took the initiative of a peace-keeping mission?
Arguably it would be more than 25 years ago, in the Balkans and even there, it can be argued that this was under the auspices of the UN.
In the 70 years you mention, US has often been the lesser evil, but especially since USSR's fall, it is not clear at all that it is a force for good. Its last strong engagement, in Iraq, was a totally evil and misguided operation that made the world less stable.
Its refusal to help in Syria before ISIS took hold there is another blow. The crass incompetence of the Bush administration on both Iran and North Korea, and the apathy of the Obama administration on NK, led to a less safe world.
US' recent interventions are sources of instability and now US' policies seem to be guided from Moscow and align more often with the views of dictatorships than that of democracies.
In such a context, wondering about the ethics of improving US army's capabilities makes a lot of sense.
Clearly they're talking about Team America: World Police.
war vs. war profiteering
the notion of voting as a proxy for consent
anything is worth it
bad people in the world, and they aren't here. they're there.
kinetic energy? targets? condescendence?
https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...
>There are a lot of bad people in the world, and quite a fraction of countries are ruled by them. Thugs respond to power.
The US is still a good country, with a good government, but it's ridiculous to assume it immune to the same threats of tyranny as every other nation.
Ignoring whether or not the world actually does, or how vehemently they might disagree, the rightness of a thing isn't measured at all by how many people think the thing is right.
Your superficial statements about ‚bad guys‘ and ‚thugs‘ that only respond to ‚power‘ led me to believe you‘ve watcht one to many movies. Destabilizing countries doesn‘t bring peace to the world.
Edit: adding stuff.
IMO, most anti-progressive views spawn from anti-USA views.
Isn't the US responsible for a lot of the instability in the middle-east and South America?
As I type this I have this vaguely plausible fear that someone in the NSA is flagging my general sentiment and incorrectly labeling me for something or the other even though I'm mostly a pacifist.
People can think what they want I guess. It just has more of an effect on the world than I thought it used to so I feel a little saddened watching this new dark age come about.
for god's sake. there are really people thinking this way.