There is an easy trick to it: pretend it’s impossible to no go to war and any action that improves the life of a foreigner is reason to spend! Otherwise a gap might develop, and we can’t have that!

China and Russia are building and deploying disruptive space technologies, thus we must do the same, lest we cede the high ground to our enemies. I wish that wasn't the case, but as long as there exist major powers that challenge the United States and our allies the all-domain arms race will never end.

The US Space Force just released its capstone warfighting doctrine: https://www.spaceforce.mil/Portals/1/Space%20Capstone%20Publ...

> Not only are space operations global, they are also multi-domain. A successful attack against any one segment (or combination of segments), whether terrestrial, link, or space, of the space architecture ca neutralize a space capability; therefore, space domain access, maneuver, and exploitation require deliberate and synchronized defensive operations across all three segments.

>China and Russia are building and deploying disruptive space technologies, thus we must do the same,

Diplomacy would be much cheaper, but this would mean US would also stop doing this kind of shit and that would mean less money into the pockets of the military industry. Diplomacy seems also something that most leaders are missing.

It’s entirely possible to do both, and indeed, most do.

War & force are simply continuations of policy with additional means.

TBH I can't remember any serious diplomacy happening. I was hopping that the Internet will make the regular people get past eh national barriers but as we see with BLM in US things did not got better.

Diplomacy in general, or specifically re: space arms control? I don’t think there have been any significant modern examples yet.

Important to remember we’re in the infancy of this stuff as well, NPT for reference hadn’t even started being negotiated til the 1960s.

Obviously, that doesn’t exactly support my point though considering the chicken definitely came first there...

"I wish that wasn't the case, but as long as there exist major powers that challenge the United States and our allies the all-domain arms race will never end."

LOL there we go again. The US is the center of the universe. I mean there are actual reasons why you don't want China or Russia dominate the world (well, in times of Trump that is actually questionable what is the bigger evil here), but you have to bring the most ridiculous one: We are the US, and someone is challenging us, can't have that.

Isn't that default mode of every government? As long as there exist powers that challenge country's position, the country will work against that.

There is no value judgement if country's position is deserved or justified here.

Some of our governments are officially neutral, which means that instead of playing massive multiplayer monkey dance, they get to concentrate on improving quality of life for their own citizens.

Someone has to lead, and unfortunately authoritarianism is closer to the natural state of human social equilibrium.

That's not true. We don't need the US to lead. The natural state of human social equilibrium in anarchy, and was indeed the mode of social equilibrium in most of human history until the "tragedy" of agriculture.

And indeed, if you take any half decent IR class they will teach you that the state of international relations is anarchy.

How comforting.

Killing lots of innocent people in lots of places for no discernible reason would only be "leadership" if one thereby inspired others to do the same thing. Fortunately that hasn't happened yet...

It's not ridiculous if they're Sith: "One to embody power..."