As someone born behind the Iron Curtain, here’s my reply to Eisenhouer: all those guns made, ships launched and rockets fired contributed to me, and a few hundred million people like me, being free now, rather than living in a North Korea-type Gulag.

Edit: they also contributed to a few other hundred million ( W Europe, Japan, etc) continuing to be free rather than being occupied by the USSR.

Eisenhower was certainly no pacifist[1]. He fully understood the necessity of those weapons. He was simply recognising the very real cost, and lamenting that necessity. No one should want to live in such a world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower

> all those guns made, ships launched and rockets fired contributed to me, and a few hundred million people like me, being free now, rather than living in a North Korea-type Gulag

Would add that had Ukraine kept its post-separation guns, millions today wouldn’t be dead or displaced. To say nothing of the millions who will likely face starvation for lack of the grain Russia tramples.

There is morality in a life of peace. But peace must be recognised as a luxury bought by the blood of others.

> Would add that had Ukraine kept its post-separation guns, millions today wouldn’t be dead or displaced.

Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the soviet union. Makes you wonder why sanctioned india when they developed nukes. Makes you wonder why we currently prevent japan, korea, germany, etc from developing nukes.

> To say nothing of the millions who will likely face starvation for lack of the grain Russia tramples.

Isn't russia the biggest producer of grain? Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world?

> Makes you wonder why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes after the fall of the Soviet Union

We were in the second nuclear age, that of non-proliferation [1]. As the USSR weakened, MAD became unstable. Non-proliferation was the superpowers’ solution. The system sort of worked. It started coming apart between the second Iraq war and Ghadaffi’s toppling (showing the consequences of lacking nukes) and Russia’s invasion of Crimea (showing the power of having them).

With the benefit of hindsight, non-proliferation stemmed from the same misplaced optimism that led the U.S. to welcome China into the WTO.

> Who is sanctioning or trying to sanction russia to prevent russia from trading their products around the world?

Nobody is targeting Russian grain, which continues to trade [2].

[1] https://mondediplo.com/2022/04/03nuclear

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-17/russian-g...

> With the benefit of hindsight, non-proliferation stemmed from the same misplaced optimism that led the U.S. to welcome China into the WTO.

Totally correct. It's impossible to talk of global peace when you know that 2 most malevolent political entities on the planet were not only let to live, but empowered by yesterday's victor, all knowing that internal elites of USSR, and PRC were burning with "Never forget USA!" It was totally the West repeating the folly of king Helu.

Yet, I believe the humanity was close to achieving real global peace after the USSR's collapse if more effort was made.

We already seen that UN based security can work in nineties, when Russia, and China were made to lay cathartic.

If we can defeat the USSR 2.0, and PRC, we would have a very real shot at working global security system as was imagined by UN's forefathers.

>Yet, I believe the humanity was close to achieving real global peace after the USSR's collapse if more effort was made.

Does global here mean "the US, Europe, Australia and Japan"? I followed this a bit, but it's concerning that you don't consider the US a malevolent entity. By numbers alone, the in the last 30 years the US has done the most harm to innocent civilians worldwide.

I read the GP a lot more differently, in that non-proliferation was a mistake and if you are a nation-state it's likely of utmost importance that you begin to build nukes in order to prevent Russia (if you are Ukraine), China (if you are Taiwan) or the US (if you are Iran, Palestine, Libya), for fucking your shit up.

It might make sense to integrate the effect.

Are aspects of US power malevolent? Absolutely.

Did US protected trade routes also bring billions out of poverty by letting the spice flow? Absolutely.

Are all countries flawed? Absolutely.

I'm interested what numbers you're pulling that tell the story of the US doing more harm (define harm?) to innocent civilians versus, just the first example that comes to mind, the uyghur genocide.

>"were not only let to live"

At that point Russia was choke full of nukes. How can you possibly not "let them live" without being annihilated in return.

>"UN based security can work"

Remind me when did UN security ever stop the US doing whatever they've decided to do.

> why we demanded ukraine disarm and give up its nukes

Partly because Ukraine never had nukes. They had Russian nukes on their soil, but no ability to use them. Letting Russia take them back was the only reasonable answer.

Also, it was hardly a guarantee that Ukraine was going to end up with a democratic government, could just as easily have been a string of dictators. We don't need yet more dictators-with-nukes.

Your arguing is a bit odd. You say that Ukraine had no abilities to use Russian nukes, but then in the 2nd paragraph you say -- hypothetically assuming that Ukraine would end up in a dictatorship -- that "we" (probably the western portion of the world?) "do not need yet more dictators-with-nukes".

But Ukrainians could not use these Russian nukes in the first place, so it would probably be better to let them keep these because they would end up not being able to use them anyway. I guess there is something missing :)

I think the GP is implying an "even if" between their two lines of argument.

On a side note, given enough time, they presumably could reverse-engineer plenty of bomb design secrets even if the permissive action links couldn't be circumvented. Permissive action links are insurance against maniac generals, rogue commanders, wealthy terrorists, etc., not against a decade or two of nation-state-funded reverse-engineering.

My understanding is that some of the PALs for two-point nuclear weapons will result in the wrong timing of the two initiations if the wrong code is used... resulting in a small dirty bomb instead of a thermonuclear blast. I presume reverse-engineering the correct timings for the two detonators is significantly easier than designing the weapon in the first place.

I would rather a hundred, a thousand, a million people die in conventional warfare repressed by brutal dictatorships than a single nuclear weapon get detonated in anger. When that starts, the death of billions is not far behind. Nuclear weapons are the first of the real short term man-made existential threats, and as long as anyone has them we have to try anything and everything to make sure they don't proliferate.

I would advocate for the existing ones being destroyed as well, but I think that cat is not going back in the bag. It does make one consider the other short term (and longer term) man-made existential threats and why we aren't frantically trying to keep those cats from emerging from their respective bags.

Because they could possibly become another Russia or worse? It’s a bad idea to leave mass destruction weapons for unknown hands.

The US has strong institutions and yet it’s still a risk.

Anybody who wants a very sobering view of how the Cold War was waged by the US and its NATO allies and their strong institutions should probably read Command and Control. It's a borderline miracle we're all here to discuss this on the internet.

If anybody can recommend a similar book about the Soviet side, I'd be extremely interested in reading it.

no such book would ever exist on the soviet side.

The reason is the very legitimate fear of a rogue nation with an unstable or autocratic government trying to use nuclear weapons as an element of international blackmail or to deter retaliation for its own military adventurism. Which is more or less exactly what we see happening with Russia right now, so the fear wasn't unfounded. I mean, if we could have gotten Russia to give up their bombs too, we would have preferred that.

As it happened, Ukraine turned out to be less of a risk than Russia. Which is unfortunate. But the logical calculus is pretty clear.

What about a mafia nation selling those assets to the highest bidder? I think that is what worried the US the most because it was more plausible.

I guess there was a fear that all those former-Soviet republics would turn into rogue states or end up selling them to terrorists or something. But surely Russia itself would be responsible enough? That was a bit of a misjudgement.

Most of the world would much rather no Russian nukes but didn't have the power to get that.

Ukraine found out they basically could afford to maintain the nukes. So the next best thing was getting an agreement that the worlds major powers would not respect its sovereignty and territory. Even Russia signed on to this agreement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...

They were Russian nukes. Yes, they were sited on Ukraine land, but Russia had the keys and controlled them. Ensuring they were disposed of was a decent option.

Later on, not deterring Putin, and actually encouraging him by showing massive weakness/ineptitude - that is inexcusable.

> Later on, not deterring Putin, and actually encouraging him by showing massive weakness/ineptitude - that is inexcusable.

You keep forgeting that Ukraine was basically a Russian puppet state like Belarus until the first Orange Revolution took place. Saakashvili tried it and lost because Russia would not allow a former militarised satellite which they do not control in its proximity. That's part of the reason for the Ukraine invasion: they would rather start a war or several wars than lose control over these countries. Kazahstan's Tokayev is playing the right card while Russia is being busy in Ukraine: diversifying, sharing and reforming power rather than militarising. I'd really like to see one or several trans Caspian gas pipelines to Azerbaidjan, Georgia and Turkey or through the Black Sea, allowing Kazahstan to sell gas to the EU. Militarising is an option when Russia grows weaker and Western money flows in your former Soviet satellite. It was also an option after '91, until the early 2000s, but the US was being busy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Central Asia and the Caucaz to a lesser extent is the key to further weakening Russia.

> But peace must be recognised as a luxury bought by the blood of others.

Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace. War is certainly one tool in that can cause (eventual) peace, but it is not the only one.

Have a strong military and don't use it.

It has been shown time and time again, if you are weak, it will be taken advantage of.

It is far far far cheaper to spend the money to have a strong military, than to get into an actual shooting war with someone who thinks they can take advantage.

3-5% of GDP vs. all the death, destruction and reduction of GDP (50%?, 75%?, all of it).

"Have a strong military and don't use it."

Is that possible?

Part of the reason the U.S. military is effective is because we are constantly involved in some conflict somewhere.

Russia's military is an embarassment right now and it's obvious they are out of practice.

There is a common conspiracy theory that roughly every decade or so, the US needs to get into a conflict as a means of flexing it's military. Whether it's to showcase the military-industrial complex or keep others in line by sending a warning is up for debate (as it the idea itself).

1983 - Grenada

1991 - Gulf War

2001 - Operation Enduring Freedom

2009 - Troop surge in Afghanistan

They are not out of practice, they were just/are in Syria etc.

They are out-gunned, because Ukraine is being helped by NATO.

Russia was robbed by Putin, and the military was casualty of this corruption.

Did they have a convoy of tanks in Syria? My understanding is that it was primarily air assault. That would seem to support the idea that practice is necessary for an effective military.

This isn't a good argument. The US has friendly neighbors on its northern and southern borders. It has thousands of miles of ocean separating it from Russia or China (neither of which have any major military blue water transport capacity). We could defend the US homeland with a tiny fraction of our current bloated 700+B / yr budget. That money could be going to fix problems that affect the common citizen rather than enriching the shareholders of defense contractors. I don't buy this at all.

Or use those resources to support all people across the world so they don't feel the need to resort to violence. Use it to investigate and reveal abusers (eg., oligarchs), to strengthen education and mechanisms of peaceful resolution.

Each generation must re-remember where we are at now--at the edge of self extinction. Lessons from a pre-nuclear age cannot guide us.

This may be a naive take, but it's something I've thought about a fair bit.

What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead")

But they've taken that money and waged war against people who you can hardly blame for feeling like maybe the West isn't so great. The harder you fight against "Terror" the stronger it gets.

Of course I've vastly oversimplified it, but it just seems like a tragically wasted opportunity.

> What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead")

The easy rebuttal: they're using their schools to indoctrinate our kids into their culture. I mean... this is an argument that is already made today against similar programs instituted by several major global powers (e.g., China).

You can also easily make hay of the mere insinuation that much of the world is in a state where it "needs" to be helped by foreign powers--this is essentially one of the main justifications behind colonization.

you forget / ignore another aspect of conflict: territorial disagreements or historical arguments. some countries or politicians may feel that area of other country supposed to belong to their country based on history or something but that other country is happy with how it is right now. and no amount of charity money or help will solve this.

as we have right now with Russia.

another aspect: EU is doing great job improving new member’s economy and standard of living but after 10 years or so people forget why their country is in better shape and take it for granted. or worse - some politicians might claim that without EU country would be even in better situation.

so.. I don’t think that spending money on random people will make them like you.

No good deed goes unpunished. So it probably wouldn’t work. America already helped Africa with so much aide, but didn’t market the help nearly as much as China did, so it is already forgotten.

It would have been better for the US and the world as a whole if it adopted Keynes' Bancor proposal. What the world economy needs is balanced trade between nations.

In theory, yes, and it has worked sometimes ( the EU). But as many agressors have shown time and again, you can't count on anything but brute power in the end. Neutrality ( Belgium), UN ( Ukraine), they don't work sufficiently well.

As a sibling comment says, Si vis pacem para bellum has withstood the test of time.

Of course the US wasting money having 10 aircraft carriers and 10 "mini" aircraft carriers ( the same size as other countries' 1-2 aircraft carriers) doesn't really fit into that and certainly isn't for defence.

Agreed with the thrust of your comment, but I want to pick a particular nit out of curiosity: how do you determine that the EU is the cause of European peace when it has only ever existed under the NATO security umbrella? (no doubt EU has strengthened cooperation within Europe, but how do you attribute peace to it rather than NATO?)

Because the EU in itself is a pact of no agression between european countries?

Before that it was a fuckfest, name a country in Europe who hasn't been invaded at some point in time by a neighbouring state

You missed the point. How do you know that it was membership in the EU and not membership in NATO that deterred aggression? NATO predates the EU by a long time and there hasn't been war between NATO members or military aggression by a non-NATO European country against a NATO European country. A non-aggression pact without NATO enforcement is easily broken.

I’m not OP, but I will offer my point of view:

NATO is only defence in military sense from external threats.

Internal relationships are much broader: trade, laws, internal politics, multi-country alignment towards same goals, even goal definition etc. there is european parliament where representatives from all member countries gather and discuss a lot of different topics. none of that provides NATO.

> Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace.

Totally agree. “The blood of others” can still flow in their veins. The point is it has to be staked. There is no evidenced system of peace that doesn’t contain a threat of violence. We’ve tried for decades with sanctions; they fail in everything other than degrading the enemy.

History became irrelevant after nuclear weapons. Words like 'enemy' are the real problem.

> "There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace."

There are but only if both sides agree to it. Once once side decides to use war, what will you stop them with?

QED war will be forever with us.

My point isn't that war won't happen, but that the actual work of preventing war is valuable (and hard), and often quite successful. It's just, we don't necessarily even notice it, because it does work. The work required to prevent war is often extremely difficult, which should be acknowledged. People tend to give credit just to the warriors, and not to the diplomats, politicians, community leaders, and organizers who work extremely hard to build a stable society. Credit goes to everyone, not just those who fight wars.

You need to stop them by preempting their decision to choose war. Well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy, happy people don't decide to make war. People who don't want to get shot at and killed, nor see their brothers and sons (and sisters and daughters) shot at and killed; people who are aware and educated of the horrors of war (not like Americans of the last 20 years while we made war in the Middle East) won't vote for or follow leaders who decide to make war. People currently living in poverty and squalor, if they're generously lifted out of those conditions rather than left behind and exploited, don't decide to make war. People make war because they believe it will improve their lives; if they don't believe this then they wouldn't.

It may be unrealistic, but the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances. The question is whether that cultural advancement will allow us to cut it off before technological advancement dooms us with easily accessible superweapons....

> Well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy, happy people don't decide to make war

I have not seen rigorous evidence for this.

> the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances

Agree with this.

I suppose I have not seen evidence of it either, only evidence of the converse: People lacking the basics on Maslow's hierarchy of needs have repeatedly made war in an attempt to get them. I suppose I could have been more careful in my choice of characteristics, I'm just suggesting that because we know about this incentive for violence, it seems prudent to attempt to remove it if your goal is peace.

and in some sense we right now observe failure of this proposal.

Russia was included in majority of international organizations; trade was increasing with Russia with hopes that they will start prospering and become less agressive than before. I think it was such sentiment especially from Germany and France, there were multiple cases of “we need to be friends with Russia, trade with it and everything will be great”.

what actually happened was that government of Russia took all those trade benefits, neglected their citizens and intentionally made them poor so they would be more depending on the government. everything was intentionally oppressive, abusive. how do you solve that?

It wanes as people advance in age :)

Seems like there have been a lot of well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy organized crime gangs throughout history. "Happy" is anyone's guess.

I'm not convinced you've found the cure for violence.

Wealthy people with everything in the world still stomp on those around them chasing more power. Once you get rid of this thread of human behavior, then there can be peace.

What is your explanation for Russia invading Ukraine?

As far as I can tell, it's a war for glory or destiny or power or something. Not food or shelter or school.

Russia wants access to some of the best farmland in the former USSR, mineral resources and the strategic benefit of unfettered access to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean? It's a war for resources Russia doesn't have and Putin thinks it needs, and a target for the Russian population to distract them from how shit things are.

Populists and authoritarians are supported by those at the bottom of the pile with little to lose. Russia's actions are very much related to food and housing and education and jobs.

> Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace.

Which ways? Which way all invaded countries in WWII, WWI and other wars before could choose to sustain peace? They wanted peace and they got war because stronger nation invaded them. So which way? International organizations? UN security council? Didn't stop invasion of Ukraine.

There is an old saying Si vis pacem, para bellum which means - If you want peace, prepare for war.

Well, technically speaking, war requires opposing sides. If there is no opposition (say, like the bloodless annexations before the start of the WW2, or the relatively recent annexation of Crimea), there is no war, isn't it? Of course, the consequence for the ceding party or parties may be worse than the alternative, but still - no war, i.e. peace preserved!

I hope you noticed that conflicts arise from an inability to form a consensus during peace time. For example, wars are often fought over land or water. If you can come up with an arrangement that makes owning specific plots of land or direct access to water irrelevant, then those shared resources no longer become sources of conflict.

One idea is the democratization of land, meaning that everyone owns all land equally. If everyone owns all land, then there is no reason to fight over who owns it. Of course, one must ensure that the benefits that ownership used to grant are broadly shared.

The democratization of land does not solve the problem that someone needs to have the right to work the land. It may be highly efficient for thousands of acres land to be worked by a single organization. This means there must be a method to delegate the process of working the land to a third party without giving them complete control over the land.

One approach is Georgism with a UBI. The land value tax is paid out as a dividend per person.

so.. you are saying that if you are attacked, don’t resist, and then there will be no conflict/war?

Blood is the only unilateral way to achieve peace. Your own viewpoint on the best way to move forward is irrelevant if your opponent doesn't want to play ball on your terms.

This mindset doesn't apply anymore. Nobody to wipe up the blood after total nuclear extinction. Nobody to imagine a future. Nobody to wish we made a different choice. Nobody left.

I’m sorry but there is a literal land war in Europe with plenty of Ukrainians imagining a future without Russia, wishing their neighbors had made different choices, still there. Still left.

This sort of hysterical nuclear naivety denying the continued existence of conventional war is best left to the 90s frankly.

You don't always get a choice.

"War is peace" sounds like classic 1984 doublespeak. For example, we could be working to partner with China on mutually beneficial agreements, but instead we're choosing to promote conflict because we'd rather be the winner that takes all.

Germany followed a mutual cooperation approach to Russia. It was foreign policy doctrine for years, Ostpolitik. It didn't stop Russia invading a sovereign neighbour and it prevented Germany from reacting due to the dependence.

We did partner with China on mutually beneficial agreements, from ~1972 to to ~2015. But that increasingly seems like a mistake.

Not sure either-or is the best way to frame things. Economic ties are clearly having a moderating effect both between the U.S.-China and even, at this very moment, Europe-Russia. Seems the problem is better framed as one of timing, calibration, and optimization.

All of this conflict doesn't disprove the thesis that economic ties moderate conflict. It might disprove the thesis that economic ties prevent conflict, but that's a straw man. The only actual thesis of that sort was that democracies don't go to war, and one of the proposed, non-exclusive mechanisms was their tendency toward deep economic interdependencies. AFAIK nobody, not even Bill Clinton, presumed that economic ties were alone sufficient to guarantee peace with China and Russia, nor sufficient to induce comprehensive political democratization. Here's Clinton recently recounting in his own words his reasoning wrt Russia: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/bill-clint...

What? We have been working with China on mutually beneficial agreements for 60 years, which is the direct cause of their rise.

Agree--Humanity loses because of this posturing, well before the bombs are flying.

Mutually beneficial agreements with China exists. But, cooperation is not the same as peace or humanity. When mutually beneficial agreement with China empowers genocide going on in there or provides China surveillance to crack on human right activists, then it is enablement rather then something positive.

And vice versa in cases where west does something bad.

Beneficial for whom? Not American workers, just the business class. It's it's also iteresting that these accusations against China start popping up right about the time we've chosen to take an adversarial stance against them and they're overtaking us in GDP/PPP and influence in the world. The US has killed an estimated 6 million people as a result of the "War on Terror" so hard to say we've a leg to stand on.

Very much agree. You might find this book clarifying. I know I did.

Nothing Less Than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7687279-nothing-less-tha...

> ...kept its post-separation guns...

What is this a reference to exactly? Did they agree to disarm themselves or what was the history here exactly? Was there some treaty about being neutral and not developing a military like Japan post WWII agreed to? What's going on with Ukraine in this space?

As someone also born and raised in Eastern Europe, I feel entirely the opposite.

All of those NATO weapons and aggression destroyed my country's economic independence and increased poverty and wealth inequality. I take no solace in being occupied by NATO troops.

> Eastern Europe

A huge part of Eastern Europe (but not all ofc) would disagree with you.

Which exact Eastern European country is occupied by NATO? Cause as far as I can tell, such a place does not exists. And multiple of them pushed, pressured, pleaded and lobbied very hard to get in.

In another comment, parent said he/she is from Romania. Any other Romanians want to comment on this "occupied by NATO" claim?

Romania is member of NATO.

The governments of several countries did seek NATO membership, but the overall populations have generally been at best neutral or even against NATO.

Especially the occupying US bases are almost universally disliked.

Polls done in the 90s in the Eastern European countries provide a picture contrary to what you're claiming here. As an example - Poland (my home country), https://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2022/K_040_22.PDF - 60% of population willing to join NATO in 1999. Only 11% against. You also should consider that support for NATO today is at a level of 94%.

Your statement is contrary to the information I’m seeing. Can you provide an example, please?

That is just not true.

Most NATO members from East Europe/ex communist countries held referendums on NATO membership. And I can't recall a single state that would join NATO against the will of general population. Happy to be proven wrong if my memory failed me.

Can you lay out more how you are thinking about this? I don't see it that way, but would appreciate another view point.

Before 89, the working class of my country had control of the state and most of the economy. There were of course many problems, but wealth inequality was far lower, essentials were cheap (rent at 5% of income!) and jobs were guaranteed.

NATO waged economic warfare and funded fascists (particularly intensified in the 80s), culminating in a violent coup by the army. Since then, we've seen hyperinflation, privatisations, austerity and deregulation. While technology is much improved, the relative proportion of wages spent on essentials is vastly increased and most well paid jobs are for foreign companies that extract profits outside the country.

I think you should also consider tens of millions of people who lived under Russian boot in USSR itself and Warsaw pact countries. It appeared that wealth inequality is lower because there was no free press and thus no way to see it. People who waited years to be able to get a permission to buy a car or an apartment had no way to make their situation known.

A significant part of populations lived relatively well just because of their place in the society. The lack of free press caused them to think that everyone lives like them. However this was the exact consequence of the oppression of the rest of society.

This spanned countries: USSR extracted production from one set of countries and subsidized others. The populations of the latter group naturally saw the collapse of USSR as a bad thing since their standard of living became lower.

The fact that there were certain parts of the world that lived better under USSR does not make suffering of other people a good thing.

This is standard Russian propagated nostalgia. Romania was a poor corrupt vassal state of the USSR.

The working class did not have control of Romania, Nicolae Ceaușescu did from 1965-1989 as the general secretary.

The 1980’s in communist Romania were a time of austerity, not the other way around. Median household income is now 3x higher.

I’m not sure why I’m replying to such a disingenuous person and plain deceitful post but i guess i wanted to argue with liars on the internet today.

Which country? You're constructing a narrative that is impossible to challenge because you're being deliberately vague. If you want an honest discussion, you must be more forthcoming.

Edit: From dontlaugh's comment history, it's Romania.

Romania before 1989 had long lines for bread, it had food rations (like other countries in war time), people had to wait for about 5 years to buy a car. You could not move from one city to another, except if your job moved or you got married with someone from the target city. You could not buy milk, except if you had infants, or with a doctor’s notice. As a 14-old kid, convalescing from Hepatitis, I had such a notice, so my Dad had the priviledge to wake up every morning at 5am and go wait in a very long line for 2 hours, so I could drink milk (which was said to help the liver). We had electricity blackouts on a daily basis.

Yes, we were all equal. Equal in our collective misery.

Except for the Party leaders.

It’s very easy to look back with rose tinted glasses after 33 years. But in reality things were truly bad back then.

In the 80s, there was indeed a deep economic crisis.

It resulted primarily from economic warfare. The country was offered the chance to sell to the West, under the condition of taking IMF funds. After spending them on developing factories, we were denied the ability to sell the products (mostly industrial equipment). We were only allowed to sell agricultural products to pay off the debt, hence the rationing. Today, that would be called sanctions.

I'll bite the bait.

Do you have any sources that would cover your interpretation of events?

To the best of my knowledge, the crisis in 80s Romania was due to similar causes as in other communist countries of the period - the economy was quickly industrialized based on foreign loans (which were also spent partially on consumption) in the 70s, with most investments made in heavy industry. That is a very good base for building tanks and heavy armaments which the Warsaw Pact needed, but it's not suited so much for export to the West and bolstering the national economy.

The effects of those ill-thought investments are felt to this day in Eastern Europe - but it's not due to the West trying to sabotage national production, but due to inefficient implementation of obsolete production processes in the centrally commanded economies.

Surely all those guns can also put people behind North Korea type gulags, and caused a few hundred million to be occupied by the USSR?

Putin is on the way down. At 70, time will surely sort him out. But the rest of the world needs to support the Russian people in building a more stable and inclusive political system. Change is possible. And we all have a vested interest.

look at gorbachev, he is still alive. so I don’t have high hopes that putin will be solved in natural ways any time soon.

Putin's health seems quite iffy like he's seen a thyroid cancer doctor 35 times.

That mistake was already made in the 90s. The West had high hopes of transforming Russia into a civilised member of the world, and they've just used that support to strengthen themselves. Russians are imperialistic, Russians opposing Putin are imperialistic too. They despise other nationalities, especially those of the neighbouring countries.

Uneven gun and ammo supply did that.

As someone living in a dictatorship, I fully agree.

There is no moral high ground in letting totalitarian regimes imprison MILLIONS of people all over the world.

Democracy has the moral obligation to fight for freedom.

Either that, or remove all migratory restrictions and let people live where they want.

A capitalist system that relies on ever expanding growth and profit to survive will always create imperialism and conflict over resources. There is no vision or long-term plan to these systems. A system based on this philosophy cannot and will not solve issues like climate change and poverty.

Only a system that relies on cooperation and mutually beneficial agreements can create peace and allow us to tackle big issues such as climate change.

Thinking of these issues in terms of winner take all and good vs evil limits our thought on more productive and sustainable alternatives.

> …will always create imperialism… > Only a system…

These are strong statements that aren’t proven but are stated as fact. Such statements limit our thought on solving this issues.

i do appreciate your perspective, even if others here don't seem to, yet disagree with it slightly.

perhaps not a vision or plan, but capitalism does have an intrinsic goal--or maybe more appropriately, a central value--which is the accumulation of capital (money). it's amoral[0] to be sure, and presents a clear opportunity toward corruption, but it's a driving force nonetheless. even adam smith acknowledged that capitalism cannot exist in isolation, that it must be constrained by political stewardship, to direct it toward productive good, lest it lead to decay. in fact, no economic system can exist outside a political one, hence the term 'political economy'.

so to sum up, it isn't capitalism per se that leads to imperialism and conflict over resources, but more simply, greed (which we all possess to some degree) accumulated over a population and effectuated via political and economic means of any sort. capitalism however is more efficient, and therefore reaches its waypoints, good or bad, more quickly.

on the topic of the thread, the US probably spends more than half of this $2T, if the hidden budgets and money funneled through other federal departments toward military aims is accounted for. our official military budget is something like $800B but most estimates of the fully-accounted-for budget is well north of $1T. it's shameful, especially considering the opportunity cost, for instance, replacing coal plants with nuclear the world over ($1T ≅ 100 nuclear plants per year).

[0]: i.e., without morals, not necessarily immoral

You don't seem to understand the fundamental contradiction. Demanding growth/capital accumulation, where there is no growth can only be satisfied by taking from one group and giving to another.

Endless hoarding in nature is not a problem, as your capital depreciates over time. This depreciation means that the amount of wealth you can store is a function of your ability to replenish the loss, i.e. your income. What capitalists have done is quite remarkable, they simply declare by force that this loss does not exist. So now everyone struggles to pass off this now hidden loss to everyone else, as if the division of labor were a negative sum game.

Imagine if you owed a capitalist 100 hours of your time and they decide to only use 50 hours of that and simply wait those 50 hours. You still owe the capitalist 50 hours but you also lost 50 hours from waiting(=unemployment). Your productivity must double to stand a chance. Another 100 hours pass, you lost 150 hours and must still work 50 hours. Now you must be four times as productive. Productivity must keep going up, just to stand still. At some point you are unable to increase your productivity at the rate your time is being lost and you are no longer able to give what is owed. The capitalist will now call you a thief, you stole the 50 hours you owe him, completely ignoring that your loss of time is far greater than 50 hours and yet as if to rub salt in the wound that time spent needlessly waiting is not worthy of being called theft.

I hope it is clear that "urgency" does not exist for those with money, only those with physical capital and those with mortal bodies that are dependent on work to earn money to afford the minimum quality of life society demands have to worry about that. I want people with money to worry just like everyone else, then nobody will have to worry.

> "You don't seem to understand the fundamental contradiction. Demanding growth/capital accumulation, where there is no growth can only be satisfied by taking from one group and giving to another."

the irony... you've literally just described greed. it can, and does, happen in any economic system (communism, mercantilism, socialism, all devolve because of greed); capitalism isn't special in that regard. it just happens to be more efficient at it (and in general) than other systems. you must account for greed in any and every economic system.

americans generally don't realize that our 'innovation' wasn't capitalism or democracy (rah-rah words), but it was the intrinsic separation of power and wealth that formed the basis of our eventual prosperity (along with resource-rich, isolated, and plentiful land). unfortunately, we've allowed that separation to be corrupted from both directions in the last half-century.

Sometimes west is best, and US/Western colonialism/imperialism is good when it's preventing worse forms of authoritarianism.

People from the eastern bloc who were saved by benevolent US policy would do well to remember this.

that is the party line NATO would want you to believe.

But... Without guns, ships, and rockets you wouldnt have been imprisoned in the first place. Right?

Enemies of the freedom don't listen to pacifists in any way.

Some would point at the USSR occupations of the Warsaw Pact countries and say "See, this is why we need to defend ourselves from Soviet aggression".

But the USSR didn't take action to create an immoral buffer to it's borders until they learned about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

And if you want to bring up the USSR invasion of Poland in 1939, take a look at what Poland did to Czechoslovakia in 1938 while Germany was occupying Sudetenland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Olza#Part_of_Poland_(193...

It can both be true that the USSR was a violent, genocidal, repressive regime that oppressed it's own people AND that the ideological spread of Communism throughout the world was orthogonal to Soviet authoritarian tendencies, and was thus the threat that was described to people in the West was more to capitalist institutions and the richest classes, not to your freedom of prosperity.

tl;dr: You were never in danger of living in a North Korea-type Gulag.

The idea that a country would be surprised and shocked to find out that other countries - including allies - had plans in place for military operations against them is ludicrous. Every country's military war-games potential conflicts, even when they're far less likely to ever be used than plans for Britain ending up in conflict with the USSR after the end of WWII.

Those plans weren't even approved lol, Churchill was out of office shortly after ordering that plans be drawn up.

And the same applies to the American revolution, the English revolution, the French revolution, without which there would probably be no democracy today. Pacifism is free-riding.

The 'English revolution' is complicated. The military one (the English Civil War) was largely undone by the restoration of Charles II. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 (which replaced one monarch with another, less absolutist one) was peaceful (though with the threat of force if necessary). And the actual democratic aspects of the British constitution were achieved largely through constitutional means and certainly not by force of arms (the Great Reform Act etc.)

The American revolution worked out pretty well. I can imagine a much less violent (and consequently more successful) French one.

In China, the cultural revolution was largely seen as the destruction of their culture and the greatest blunder in their 3000yr history. They now look at mob and revolution mentality as the most dangerous thing to peace and prosperity. That's why the people support what we call 'government oppression'. They have had a different fortune when it comes to our revered revolutions

China has learned there is a different way to achieve peace, that is not based on war, but on shared values. Unfortunately we are threatening the people who could teach us the way.

Did the industrial revolution and green revolution require military expenditures?

I think the most profound revolutions are orthogonal to the conflict-pacifism axis. When a revolution is seen primarily as conflict, the key ideas of the revolution are clearly not yet ripe.

Increased military R&D spending due to extreme events (great wars) certainly has jumped some technology segments forward, faster than those jumps otherwise would have likely occurred. In exchange for an acceleration the cost comes in the form of greater spending in a shorter amount of time and, typically, inefficiency of spend (government oversight on spending will tend to be particularly lacking at such times).

It is interesting to think about the history of technology in this way. For example, the Wright brothers seemed to make the most progress despite not being military funded, in contrast to the Smithsonian's Langley who failed despite (maybe because) of generous war department funding. Was the tech acceleration of aviation by military funding only to local minima that caused longer slowdowns?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Langley

> Did the industrial revolution [...] require military expenditures?

Given the mutual dependency it had with British imperialism, yes, quite a lot.

EDIT:

on reflection, though I edited it out of the question because I wasn't immediately responding on it, the Green Revolution has a quite similar relationship to mid-20th Century US imperialism and the global neoliberal order it supported/imposed, so yes, that too.

Military expenditures of those periods were coincidental and not necessarily causal. The causality may run in reverse. For example, the industrial revolution gave Britain the means and a resource need to project empire past the colonial project of excess population disposal and mercantilism of East India Co. Likewise the green revolution is coincident to US hegemony but the roots are in Borlaug's humanitarian effort in Mexico. The Wizard and the Prophet makes for interesting reading on this.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34959327-the-wizard-a...

> Military expenditures of those periods were coincidental and not necessarily causal

Resource and knowledge flows that were direct consequences of military expenditures and the empires they built were essential in both cases.

> The causality may run in reverse.

The causality absolutely and unquestionably runs in both directions; in both cases the economic revolutions were processes fueled by an fueling military-expenditure-dependent empires.

> Resource and knowledge flows that were direct consequences of military expenditures

Can't agree to that. As noted, correlation isn't causality from or consequence thereof. Wikipedia's list of critical tech for industrial revolution is textiles, steam power, iron working, machine tools. That seems reasonable. In context, the key developments of all happened upstream of military use/development (although they had military use, military expenditures were not causal).

Take Watt's steam engine improvements. The development was substantially if not entirely civilian. Ran water pumps for coal mining which supported many industries including military, and military use was not critical for development.

Possible counter example is Harrison's marine chronometer. Development was militarily supported and spurred on by a naval disaster. However, while contributory, wasn't essential to success of industrial revolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Importan...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_steam_engine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison

Those weren't political revolutions. They changed everything, what caused some political ones, but they weren't themselves.

And the political changes that came with them did almost always come through conflict. Except that "military expenditures" doesn't really capture it, because revolutions normally come through civil conflict, not military wars.

> revolutions normally come through civil conflict, not military wars

I cant agree with you on this for two reasons:

1. A stipulated definition of revolution is needed to make a claim about what is normal or most typical.

2. Even when revolution takes the form of armed conflict (typically because its ideas can't win), I think the decisive expenditures are military as opposed to civil (i.e. police) because the territory has natural divisions within their military or because an outside entity/ies provides assistance to a side. Witness Lebanon, Syria, Vietnam, Korea, ....

> Pacifism is free-riding

Soldiers succeed when they deter war; pacifists, when they prevent it. In the same way soldiers who never go to war aren’t free riding, pacifists who help prevent even one war every few generations add more than they detract.

As these revolutions were against repressive anti-democratic institutions, I'm curious - how do you feel about today's rise of US Republican attacks on democracy.

Are you ready to defend democracy with violence if necessary as voting rights and democratic processes erode away?

Some have argued that the American Revolution was fought in order to preserve slavery in the then-colonies.

The UK declared slavery illegal in 1833, more than half a century after the Declaration of Independence.

Seems that I got my wires crossed. Many slaves in the colonies had gotten the wrong impression that Britain was easing up on slavery. The Crown tried to capitalize on that by trying to galvanize the slave population in the South against the landowners. The landowners were even more motivated to win the revolution. There were Black Loyalists who wanted to fight for their freedom (or what they thought would be their freedom) while others fought on the “liberty” side.

It would be naive in 1776 to think that adversarial manumission was performed out of beneficence.

In 1776? Well you would have to ask them.

>Pacifism is free-riding.

Normal peaceful life is free-riding. Our entire lifestyles and our inability to comprehend what it's like to live in a war zone is only due to the fact that millions fought for it 80 years ago, and won. Violence is not the answer only once someone's been violent on your behalf and crafted a world where violence can be rejected.

That doesn't make it worth it.

> As someone born behind the Iron Curtain, here’s my reply to Eisenhouer: all those guns made, ships launched and rockets fired contributed to me, and a few hundred million people like me, being free now

No it didn't. China switching sides and joining the US is what led to the fall of the soviet union. Just like if china, india, etc abandoned russia today, the russian federation will implode within a generation.

> rather than living in a North Korea-type Gulag.

North korean style gulag exists because of increased military spending. Because north korea is constantly under threat of an attack from the greatest bully in the world ( who constantly increased military spending ), they have to set aside a significant portion of their budget to defense which leads an unhappy population which leads to suppression of the population.

> Edit: they also contributed to a few other hundred million ( W Europe, Japan, etc) continuing to be free rather than being occupied by the USSR.

It also led to much of europe being turned into rubble and japan being nuked.

Not a single bullet or tank or missile contributed to you being "free". But bullets, tanks, missiles, etc kept you under soviet rule.

As a French, I am thankful for the British and American bullets and tanks (and lives lost by all Allies) so that I'm not living under a German/nazi boot, even if I regret the destruction that was inflicted on my country (a few family members got bombed)

Almost all the german military was destroyed by the russians. WW2 in europe was pretty much the eastern front. And we didn't even join the war until germany decided to declare war on the US.

If you are french, you should thank the russians for liberating france from germany. Certainly not the US. The russians beat the germans in ww2. Not the british, not the US, not anyone else. Just look at the data.

Also, if the germans won ww2, you'd be saying the exact opposite. You'd be saying how thankful you are that germany gave you freedom from the anglo imperial economic world order.

"The russians beat the germans in ww2"

- Russia did tie up the bulk of the German forces. And they suffered and inflicted the bulk of the causalities. So in a sense, this is true.

- Regarding the topic at hand, the US and UK literally liberated France.

- As others mentioned, Russia was reliant on critical US industrial help. They didn't do it alone.

- The US had still not fully mobilized when the Germans and Russians were having some of their largest conflicts. I would argue that the US had not fully mobilized even by the end of the war (e.g., look % of population enlisted, industry still ramping up). Even if Russia had not fought, the US/UK would still have defeated the Germans. If you look at the size of the Armies that could be fielded, the Germans had little chance. Their best bet was to reach some agreement with the US and UK, occupy Europe and focus on the Russians. Having said that, when their opening push against Russia failed, they'd were doomed there also (i.e., once Russia regrouped, they could have defeated Germany alone).

- The US had strategic plans to defeat the Germans if both the UK and Russia fell. The size of the planned navy, army and air force proposed was bonkers.

> the russians for liberating france from germany. Certainly not the US. The russians beat the germans in ww2

The Russians did take part in beating Germany, I didn't want to imply it wasn't the case, but they did with heavy logistical support from the US, which is what the comment was about ("guns made, ships launched"). And can you really say that the US were for nothing in Germany's defeat when more than half of the Panzer divisions were fighting in the Western front?

> Also, if the germans won ww2, you'd be saying the exact opposite. You'd be saying how thankful you are that germany gave you freedom from the anglo imperial economic world order.

well, I don't have a time machine to go and test that hypothesis, but considering how Germany was treating occupied territories, I think we got a better outcome under anglo imperial order than under German occupation (or soviet occupation had they continued West after taking Berlin).

This is why I see D-Day not so much as the end of WW2, but the first battle of the Cold War; it wasn't necessary for the defeat of Germany, but it did ensure that western Europe was liberated by the western allies, instead of by the USSR, which I'm very thankful for.

> You'd be saying how thankful you are that germany gave you freedom from the anglo imperial economic world order.

No. Very few people were happy with the German occupation. Many occupied countries had very active resistance movements. The only people who were happy with the German occupation were fascist collaborators.

The western allies gave the countries they liberated their freedom and autonomy back. Neither Germany nor the USSR did that, and that matters a lot.

Russians did not reached toward France, really. Also, they committed own atrocities in places they liberated. It just so happens that Russia was led by Stalin at the time - and Stalin did not had issue with killing thousands of people or comiting own genocides.

> Also, if the germans won ww2, you'd be saying the exact opposite. You'd be saying how thankful you are that germany gave you freedom from the anglo imperial economic world order.

Probably not, no. Germany was not promising freedom to people on the west. The plan was living space and genocide in east and domination under Aryan rule in the west. The freedom for French was not the plan. So, nazi in west would be remembered the same way Russia is remembered now.

And looking at history, Russia is not remembered as liberator in Ukraine or Poland or Czech Republic or Slovakia or Estonia either. Russia is remembered as the country that too away freedom, that stole and that killed or tortured people.

In 1945, 57% of French people owed the defeat of Nazi Germany to USSR – versus 32% to the USA and Great Britain.

Then, Hollywood won.

[0] https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/3025-1-study... (page 5)

I don't disagree with the fact that the USSR did most of the work for defeating Germany in Europe during WW2, but it was with heavy American logistical support, which is what the comment was about ("guns made, ships launched and rockets fired")

How nuanced to credit the usually thankless job of logistics. All those Hollywood movies about supply lines and transport during WWII is finally making an impact on the popular mind.

As the saying goes: Nazi Germany was defeated by American equipment, British intelligence and Russian blood.

Fighting over which pile of dead husbands and fathers was more important seems like a meaningless exercise.

> China switching sides and joining the US is what led to the fall of the soviet union.

China switching sides is one of the many factors. An important one, but not as important as US/NATO matching and outspending (adjusted per-capita) the USSR in military buildup and proxy wars.

> Not a single bullet or tank or missile contributed to you being "free". But bullets, tanks, missiles, etc kept you under soviet rule.

Sorry, what? You're responding to someone who was born behind the Iron Curtain, and you're saying that Western "bullets, tanks, missiles, etc" kept him/her under soviet rule? As in, if the west had been militarily weak, the CPSU would have stopped occupying?

> Because north korea is constantly under threat of an attack from the greatest bully in the world ( who constantly increased military spending ), they have to set aside a significant portion of their budget to defense which leads an unhappy population which leads to suppression of the population.

Not because of the dictatorship then.

> China switching sides is one of the many factors. An important one, but not as important as US/NATO matching and outspending (adjusted per-capita) the USSR in military buildup and proxy wars.

China switching sides is the factor. USSR was never going to outspend the US let alone NATO.

> Sorry, what? You're responding to someone who was born behind the Iron Curtain, and you're saying that Western "bullets, tanks, missiles, etc" kept him/her under soviet rule?

Soviet "bullets, tanks, missiles, etc" did. Our bullets, tanks, missiles, etc kept japan, germany, korea, etc under US rule.

> As in, if the west had been militarily weak, the CPSU would have stopped occupying?

Do you think poland was occupied without bullets, tanks, missiles? Do you think korea, germany, japan were occupied by accident?

> Not because of the dictatorship then.

You need a dictatorship to protect a small nation free from a much larger power with a history of all kinds of evil.

>"You need a dictatorship to protect a small nation free from a much larger power with a history of all kinds of evil."

That evil seems to be way less for small nation than the one coming from a dictatorship. If I was North Korean I'll vote with both of my hands to not "be free" and ingested as one more state of the US.

In reality this however also leads to the US destroying countries and leaving them in the state of disrepair. And due to the US having the biggest military and economy dick it risks no punishment.

> Our bullets, tanks, missiles, etc kept japan, germany, korea, etc under US rule.

If you think they were under US rule in the same way that Poland, say, was under USSR rule, then... well, if you mean pre-1957 or so, then yes, Japan and West Germany were flat-out occupied. After that, no, they were not "under US rule" in any meaningful sense.

> You need a dictatorship to protect a small nation free from a much larger power with a history of all kinds of evil.

So far, Ukraine is showing this statement is false.

Ukraine lost crimea and half the country. At least so far. They might lose everything in the next few months. Not good job of protecting itself and keeping itself free. North korea lost what? Not a speck of land and against a much greater and evil foe.

What "greater and evil foe" was North Korea facing?

China under Mao was a non-factor.

I'm not quite that pacifistic, because I do believe in self-defense, but I'm disgusted by the massive amounts of money that has been wasted on weapons, armies and violence, and I've always supported reducing military budgets.

But I do believe in self-defense. Simply surrendering when a powerful dictatorship attacks, and giving up your democracy without a fight, is unacceptable. And defending against that does require weapons. So now I find myself in the awkward position of supporting weapons trade with Ukraine, and expanding European defense budgets.

I hate this, but it seems to be necessary. I so wish for a world where we could just have peace.

The ugliest part is induced demand for violence. A lot of political actions are based on making sure their weapon manufacturer constituents are getting their bread buttered - leading to fabricated pretexts for killing humans to make sure the money train keeps rolling.

If hell is real, weapon manufacturer lobbyists are certainly on the guest list.

I'm painfully aware that a lot of weapon manufacturers are carefully paying attention to this real life test of their weapons.

When the Pentagon is regularly putting out reports saying "congress is giving us too much money, this isn't sustainable for society", it's time to sit up and take notice. They started doing that about a decade or two ago.

Congress uses the Pentagon as a pork barrel jobs program, buying votes. "Vote for me, I'll make sure the factory producing that troop carrier stays open." Next year: "vote for me, I'll make sure the proposed upgrade program to the troop carrier goes through" etc.

The only reason Susan Collins has a job is because she's kept Maine's shipworks in a diabetic coma.

But they could just as easily spend that money to create those jobs in repairing, maintaining and building infrastructure. Or education. Or health care. Or dozens of other things that would benefit Americans more than the ability to kill people in distant countries.

My personal wish is that they'd bring back the CCC for those purposes. There should be _good_ jobs available helping society, to compete with shit jobs like driving for Uber or working at Walmart.

Its the same thing with the NASA SLS in Alabama. Or how Washington state wanted more NASA funding so Blue Origin still has a shot at projects for NASA. Its all about bringing jobs to your state and keeping certain skills alive. If some industry is highly dependent on government funding, a lapse in project or funding means people will be let go. And it it happens long enough people will switch to different jobs and those skills will deteriorate.

Unfortunately this is a normal event in the history. Every N years a powerful bloody disruption happens. It's like diffusion, or better to compare with an earthquake where a long stress rises sufficiently to break through suddenly at once. The best is to identify where the next dangerous stress is rising and act smartly, persistently, and efficiently.

It is a waste when there exists a world where violence isn’t used to solve problems. Until then, it is not a waste.

Ok this is very nice, but as someone who was also bullied but is from a country that's been invaded at least 5 times by various empires in the last 1000 years, every gun ever made that wasn't used to feed people - was also made so that my ancestors could defend themselves against some king or dictator who wanted to invade other countries.

You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die. That's generally the choice throughout history, because hardly any country has ever always been the aggressor.

Violence is at the root of all human existence. To deny it is to live in a fantasy land. In the end violence is what rules, because if you are weak at some point someone stronger will rule over you. That doesn't mean a violent person will always rule, because 2 peaceful collaborators can usually take down a violent ruler, but it still means that at the root of it whoever can dominate the other in some way will win.

And this isn't unique to humans of course, it's how it is in nature and most tribal animals.

He’s not saying no military expenditure should occur but it has to be in balance with other things. In the US, where our military more often than not is used imperialistically rather than purely defensively, while the poor are allowed to starve or work for less than living wages, homeless suffer on the streets from mental illness, people are allowed to drown in medical or school debt, and where we got caught with our pants down in a pandemic when we should have been the most ready nation on earth, suddenly spending ever increasing amounts to defend ourselves from some imagined future threat doesn’t make much sense.

Take it from someone who's non US and so isn't caught up in self guilt - the US is a much more passive military superpower than almost any superpower in history.

I really don't think the US is imperialistic TBH. Just because a few countries got bombed for oil doesn't make you imperialistic. Read a bit of history about what empire building countries/kings/tyrants were actually like.

It’s not just direct military action by the US it’s also that we support a lot of the current dictators around the world while claiming to be the beacon of democracy. But the whole point of whether we are passive or aggressive is besides the fact that we don’t care properly for the people who are paying for the military that it’s supposedly defends.

> we don’t care properly for the people who are paying for the military that it’s supposedly defends

Close to a century of no war on the homeland, close to two on the mainland; not too shabby. Yes, we have problems. But enemy tanks aren’t one of them.

How much of a problem would they be if we just spent a bit less?

False economy. The problem with letting predators get the impression that they can take you down is that they start trying to do so (as current events illustrate), causing you to have to spend more on defense anyway.

False assertion. Does deciding to spend less on military on more on social services give these supposed predators the idea they can take you down when your military is still the largest in the world? Seems like we could probably divert a significant chunk before anyone thinks we're an easy target.

if we go that route I think we would have to allow some time for other countries to arm themselves because they rely on US assurances, bases, weapons for their security. Right now a whole bunch of small countries are asking the US to have bases troops, nuclear weapons in their countries because all the conflicts going on.

>"Just because a few countries got bombed for oil doesn't make you imperialistic."

If you bomb country for oil it makes you a fucking bandit and war criminal.

Oh goodness, here we go. What country did the US bomb for oil?

We went into Afghanistan because the Taliban harbored the organization that committed 9/11 and refused to turn them over.

We went into Iraq primarily because a group of Neoconservatives were drunk on the unipolar moment and believed the US could spread democracy at the barrel of a gun and remake the Middle East. Haliburton definitely made money in Iraq, but we did not go in for oil.

The invasion of Iraq was based on the fact that Bush and Cheney were neoconservatives, which means essentially liberal Trotskyites. They believed that human rights were universal and it was legitimate to uphold them by force. So in their logic, Saddam Hussein was a bad a guy and Iraq was a good candidate for showing that the US can start rolling into places and giving the people their freedom, just like that.

The basic assumption was that stable democracies grow on their own once you get rid of the dictator. So show up to a country, get the dictator, rinse and repeat. Now you have nice democracies all throughout the world. In that view, not invading is immoral because it means you’re condemning millions of Iraqis to live under Saddam’s dictatorship.

The basic lesson from this is that countries don’t act out of material self-interest as much as armchair cynics assume. Instead they’re frequently operated on an emotional or ideological basis.

>"We went into Iraq primarily because a group of Neoconservatives were drunk on the unipolar moment and believed the US could spread democracy at the barrel of a gun and remake the Middle East"

Ah sorry. All valid and noble reasons. No crime here. Dead, mutilated, starved, displaced and otherwise abused Iraqis salute you.

Also message outlining your honorable goals should be directed to the parent to whom I was replying. Was not my claim that the US did it for oil.

Uh, mind the quip, I’m actually trying to frame the invasion as more unhinged given the solely ideological bent it was predicated on. At least invading for oil would have made sense.

Most of the oil companies now in Iraq are non US. A bulk of the oil in Iraq goes to asian countries.

> You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die. That's generally the choice throughout history, because hardly any country has ever always been the aggressor.

Absolutely. When my home country declared independence, Pakistan engaged in genocide to stop it. Having been disarmed the British, the independence fighters had to steal Pakistani weapons: https://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/bangladesh-liberation-...

> Most of the weapons used by the Mukti Bahini were taken from defeated soldiers. Then, there were homemade bombs, knives and even instances of the use of bows and arrows…

> The better equipped Pakistani army used imported guns, automatic weapons, mortars, artillery trucks, armoured personnel carriers, tanks, airplanes, and ammunition.

Eventually, Bengali regiments of the Pakistan military defected. Even then, independence wouldn’t have been possible without India joining the war against Pakistan.

> You can either defend yourself, and possibly survive, or you can die.

That is just untrue. Historically, especially before the advent of nationalism, national hatred, ethnocentrism and ethnic cleansing ( so from mid to end 19th century to mid 20th century) conquest very rarely meant death. It was a different set of powerful and rich men on top, but the peasants were usually.. not really impacted that much. They were certainly more impacted when the war passed through their lands ( plunder, rape, etc.). Slaughtering the enemy civilians was rare and only done in specific cases ( like the Mongols, sone Vikings, earlier Anglo-Saxons).

What in the absolute world have you been reading?

What about neighboring tribes? You think they always traded berries and had a happy life? Do you know anything about Native American tribe life before Europeans arrived? How about African tribes even recently?

What are you even on about? Nationalism has nothing to do with violence when compared with any other system of organisation.

But just take a look at chimps and how they treat someone from another tribe (hint: they literally tear them apart). Do chimps have nationalism?

God this “everything was ok before western culture” crap is getting really tiring and ridiculous

Slaughtering the conquered enemy was the exception, not the norm, at least throughout Eurasia with whose history I'm most familiar. Was that the norm in the Americas? Considering the negligible amounts of historical data preserved about many of civilisations there, can one even make such a sweeping conclusion? Even if that were the case, significantly more people lived in Eurasia so that would still be the exception for the generic human population.

It has nothing to do "western culture", but with the evolution of warfare from the "Cabinet wars" to nationalistic "total wars". Colonial wars were often with brutal consequences, but again, massively slaughtering the native population was the exception, not the norm ( Herero and Namaqua genocide). The vast majority of humans conquered in the last few centuries weren't slaughtered en masse for the sake of it.

I learned a different lesson from school bullies.

Which was that, as a nerdy/shy but big/tough kid, I could protect other kids by telling bullies that they'd have to deal with me if they messed with anyone else in our class or anyone else I knew. I probably had to back up the threat maybe twice in minor ways. The end result was a very peaceful class for the last couple years of middle school. I was voted "Most Amiable" by my 8th grade class.

And that's how I view NATO's role: the anti-bully that is completely ready to fight if forced.

>Eisenhower's famous quote sums it up quite well.

It's a nice quote, but it's not backed up by the research.

>[...] A basic regression reveals no consistent relationship between GDP growth and military spending for the 38 countries in the OECD.

>A sprawling body of research has come to a similar, albeit more nuanced, conclusion. In a discussion paper at Monash University in 2014, Sefa Awaworyi Churchill and Siew Ling Yew examined 42 separate studies. Effects are generally quite small, but they found two distinct categories: military expenditure in poorer countries is often detrimental to growth, whereas in wealthier countries it is more likely to be beneficial. One possible reason, they suggest, is weaker governance in developing countries; a big military budget is a juicy target for corrupt officials. Another possibility relates to the gun-versus-butter framework. The potential returns on civilian investments, from health care to education, are so great in poor countries that military spending has a particularly high opportunity cost. In rich countries with good schools and hospitals, the opportunity costs ought to be lower.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2022/04/16/w...

All the "research" there says is that they couldn't find a GDP correlation between countries that spend 1.8% on defense and ones that spend 2.4% on defense. There are a hundred million billion factors that go into what your GDP growth looks like. It seems obvious to me without that study that defense spending would not be the deciding factor.

You cannot examine the what the world would look like if there was no military spending; that's a counterfactual. But we know from essential economic science that spending money on non-productive activity does not serve to increase the general economic welfare. In the US alone there are 2 million people serving in the military. Many are endlessly training for a war that most likely will never take place, others are glorified janitors, and the rest are in administration running the training and janitorial work. Imagine if the labor productivity of 2 million people were put to better use. Building houses and products and services that we all need and enjoy rather than mucking about in a field somewhere with $12000 of equipment on their back. (The division of labor is a major argument in economic circles against mandatory conscription)

Of course, militaries are important. The events in Ukraine prove this. But I don't think there is any point in trying to argue that they are good or irrelevant to the economy.

>You cannot examine the what the world would look like if there was no military spending; that's a counterfactual. But we know from essential economic science that spending money on non-productive activity does not serve to increase the general economic welfare

Right, but it's not exactly "non-productive", from the article:

> One way in which defence spending might be said to boost the economy is as a jobs programme. [...]

> Defence spending may deliver better returns as an undeclared form of industrial policy. [...] On average, they found that a 10% increase in government-financed R&D leads to a 5% increase in privately financed R&D in the targeted firm or industry. Moreover, there are knock-on benefits for productivity.

Jobs programs are not net boosters to the economy. There is a short anecdote of this, when a famed economist visited China in the 1970s. He was shown a work site where hundreds of men were digging with shovels. He asked why there were so many shovels, but no machines. The party member looked at him and said, "Oh, this is not a construction project, it's a jobs program". The economist promptly replied, "In that case, you should take away the shovels and give them spoons!". The economic situation in that instance would be improved if the workforce was cut in half and they used steam shovels, not if they paid wages for nothing of value in return.

And yes, it's true the military research provides benefits and applications outside the military, (GPS for instance), but if your goal is R&D, it's far more efficient to invest in R&D for R&D's sake, not retroactively justify massive military excess because of knock-on effects.

Imagine a jobs program that instead of pissing away money building rifles and tanks, we spent that money and labor building high speed rail, more light rail in cities, solar panels, wind turbines, e-bikes, electric cars, hybrid transit busses.

We spent two trillion dollars in Afghanistan. Imagine what that could have done for our country's energy and transportation infrastructure.

> military expenditure in poorer countries is often detrimental to growth, whereas in wealthier countries it is more likely to be beneficial.

I wonder how much of this is that as a very best case for poorer countries, the military expenses are an attempt to guarantee minimal sovereignty and stability. Poor countries which are well-protected client states of a larger power may not need to spend anything on military.

Whereas for wealthy countries, marginal increases in military spending are generally towards force projection. This is often used to decrease costs associated with international trade…so there’s potentially a direct return on additional spending.

For example, our leadership in overthrowing[0] the government of Guatemala to ensure continued access to unconscionably one-sided contracts for the United Fruit Company (now “Dole” fruit company).

The USA still gets >85% of our pineapple from Costa Rica and Guatemala, which was secured via direct forceful subjugation as well as military spending to quietly support favorable factions.

I don’t think all our wars are directly profitable to the winning belligerent, certainly the GWOT has not given USA access to enough resources in the Middle East to offset the cost. But these indirect benefits of forceful interventions absolutely do at least subsidize our military, and may often make the marginal spending above the minimum necessary for sovereignty, profitable.

Small countries generally can’t leverage this “marginal profitability” so all their military spending is purely a cost center. Potentially necessary, but costly.

Even if the wars in the Middle East greatly increased our GDP through deficit spending, or lost money but enriched the powerful owners of defense companies, those profits came from destroying unbelievable amounts of value in other countries. Completely demolished infrastructure and millions of deaths.

I wonder how much richer USA businesses would be if that money had been poured into schools post-9/11 instead of into literal destruction of value overseas. People born then would be graduating now with greatly increased skill and ability. USA businesses would have far greater access to top talent, at significantly lower cost.

I wonder how much richer the world would be if we’d poured that money into creation, building, and education instead of into destruction and partial reconstruction.

Obviously I also wonder how much value the world might be missing out on from the intellectual capacity of South Korea if USA hadn’t spent money on a military intervention there.

The money for the global war on terror was enough to immediately build 50% more schools (reducing class sizes from 30 to 20), pay all K-12 teachers $100,000 (in 2006 dollars), and buy every K-12 student a new high end MacBook every year.

Lord knows how much internet, highways, railways, port facilities, and manufacturing facilities we could have built with that money. Perhaps we wouldn’t have a shipping crisis right now.

> Obviously I also wonder how much value the world might be missing out on from the intellectual capacity of South Korea if USA hadn’t spent money on a military intervention there.

I don't get that part of your (otherwise excellent) comment. If the US (and the UN) hadn't taken part in the war in Korea, South Korea wouldn't exist and the reunified country would have looked like something like either current-day North Korea or China and might not have gone through a similar economic boom, which allowed the intellectual capacity to get to work (and export the results of their work, which wouldn't have happened in a North Korea-style outcome)

A Vietnam or worse outcome would have been exceptionally likely for north-ruled unified Korea, especially if the Kim family had ruled it this entire time.

South Korea is expected to have roughly a $35,000 GDP per capita this year (barely behind Japan at $39,000; they're certain to overtake Japan this decade).

Vietnam is at around $4,100.

It's definitely implausible that South Korea would be anywhere near so well off had the US and UN forces not prevented North Korea from conquering them.

There is some question about how much NK/SK outcome disparity is due to economic penalties vs artificial support. For many decades after the Korean War, China’s economy wasn’t large enough to prop up North Korea.

One wonders, regardless of regime, how much better off North Korea would be if it similar trade opportunities as South Korea. Or how much worse South Korea might be without generous western economic aid.

UAE/Qatar/Saudi/Kuwait for example, are doing well on a per-capita GDP basis despite being absolute monarchies / authoritarian states. Perhaps their ruling families are a bit better than the Kim family, but perhaps the Kim family would have been better if they’d received similar levels of western support and constant access to top advisors instead of isolation.

"I'm the kind of weird pacifistic person who literally sat down at school and took the beating from the bullies"

And sometimes, a lot of times, that's really the best option. People are under the impression, coded in our mythology and promoted by Hollywood, that if you defeat the bully your problem is over when in reality it often just escalates. You didn't fail because you weren't willing to defend yourself, the system which allowed such behavior to reach that point failed you.

That’s generally very false. You don’t need to beat the bully. You just need to establish that you will respond violently. A credible threat of violence is a strong deterrent.

But then what's the option?

At least you can maintain your dignity by defending yourself, even if it's supposedly not the best option.

The best option is to get the hell away from the assholes.

Every time I get angry at some idiot on the road I calm myself down by thinking "I should get the hell away from this guy" instead of escalating it further like my mother who used to get in all sorts of pointless trouble afterwards.

The other option is mutually assured destruction. Probably works at the micro-scale as well.

We have proof of the contrary. There is quite a lot of reports about ppl killing their partners (children, family) when abandoned and then committing suicide. I'm not saying that you should not stand your ground, I'm just saying that your are making dangerous assumptions, some ppl can be irrational or just overwhelmed with emotions. With micro-scale MAD 2 ppl die, with a large scale one you just need 1 person go crazy and it's over. TBH I'd never believe that the real reason for avoiding ww3 was MAD.

> took the beating from the bullies, safe in the knowledge that I had the moral high ground

Would you still just sit there if they were getting to the point where someone was going to kill you?

Are pacifists really of the mind that they're happy to stand and be killed if it comes to that?

Do you think that's what the Ukrainians should be doing right now?

Yes, some people are.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Willems

It would certainly shorten the war, but I’m not sure very many Ukrainians would be ok with that.

If people want to be this rational, they might as well just hang themselves now and save the climate impact of the Russian advance.

Nothing says "pacifism" quite like having the biggest guns (or, well, muscles in case of high-school bullying) and seldom (ideally never) using them.

In fact, deterrence is the best form of pacifism - the one that won't require surrender to maintain.

Note: You can have a higher moral ground while protecting others from bullies too.

In fact your morals can be whatever you make of them.

“Everything is relative except this fact”

Military spending is an easy trap for a developed country to fall into. Once all basic needs are met, there isn't much to do. A stockpile of weapons might not be useful immediately, but it is a better "investment" than doing nothing.

The problem with weapon stockpiles though (I include well educated personnel that can use those weapons as part of the stockpile), is that it is inherently negative sum. A neighboring country may feel threatened and thus increase their stockpile. Then one accident or harmless aggression occurs and the calculation shifts in favor of "deploying" those weapons, leading to a far bigger war than is actually necessary to settle the original dispute.

Thankfully we can make accords: under an accord, everyone can agree to simultaneously disarm themselves. It's not a perfect and forever solution to conflicts, but it's quite close. If everyone is disarmed, and we are under constant watch to make sure everyone is, the risk of conflict is very reduced. If a country breaks the accord others should have enough time to chase and seek peaceful solutions. Political instabilities can dissolve.

War really should interest no one with good intentions. Anything war can do, conversations, cultural exchange, agreements and even sanctions can do better (if everyone agrees to abandon war). It's like in a scientific discussion... there's is effectively no, zero, case where punching your peer is better at progressing science than discussion and understanding.

Of course, we also need to abolish fascism meanwhile -- it doesn't mean absolute tolerance, just that other tools should always be used to prevent and correct fascism and other dystopias that seem to require weapons to save yourself from.

> I'm the kind of weird pacifistic person who literally sat down at school and took the beating from the bullies, safe in the knowledge that I had the moral high ground. It didn't make me feel much better when they broke my ribs, but I've never punched someone in my life.

I really really heavily blame adults here. It is adults who prefer silence and own comfort that teach kids to be passive and just take it. This is not in kids interest at all. And I don't even mean that you should have beat them up back.

Adults should have work with both aggressor and victim. They should have teach the victim healthy assertively and how to set boundaries before bullying gets that bad. And they should have taught the bullies to stop being bullies. And when aggressors are uncontrolable and relationships impossible to navigate for victim, when it escalated to the level of broken ribs, adults are responsible for stopping it all.

Adults are just older versions of these kids. Passing blame around seems less helpful than fixing the problem. Good people need to act…

Not all military spending is designed for offense. I currently work in the defense industry and the projects I've been on have either been intelligence gathering, passive defense systems, or currently some work on satellites.

Advances in these systems do lead to other technologies that are used in other industries. I understand your concern considering that the cost of a Tomahawk missile is $1.87 million dollars. I personally don't see myself working on technologies used for offensive purposes but I find a sense of fulfillment by trying to keep soldiers and sailors safe.

Have you considered that your perspective is "keeping soldiers and sailors safe" because it is crucial to your self esteem to believe your work is a net good for society, and if you didn't believe that you'd be unable to continue this work?

Causalities are going down. Indiscriminate killing is going out of "fashion" but there is always going to be collateral damage.

What surprises me on the other hand are those armchair drone experts that talk about swarms and extremely high levels of capability at absurdly low cost. Like, just run the "numbers" a can B-52 carry 100000 drones for the cost of one F-35.

The obvious problem is the lack of a mission that requires sending this many weapons. People just randomly got this idea we are going to carpet bomb everything but this time with drones.

I explicitly chose to not work on offensive technologies like missiles or drones because I didn't want to be associated with potential misuse. I don't think a lot of people on HN have a good perspective of the DOD to understand why certain mission critical technologies are necessary for the defense of our soldiers and our own people. At the same time though, there is a lot of bloat and I would argue from what I've seen that it mostly stems from contractors more than actual government employees.

This is true for all work.

Most work isn't directly involved in the kill chain. That's a ridiculous dismissal.

I mean the mindset as “crucial to your self esteem to believe your work is a net good for society”

Because ‘net good’ is debatable, your beliefs will clash with others who think it is not a ‘net good’ regardless of the work.

E.g. people involved with sugar production have probably caused more integrated harm than those making missiles. This is especially true as obesity passes 50% of the population.

Military spending means money flowing into science and education. WWII led to dramatic technological breakthroughs. The cold war inspired much stronger emphasis on STEM for decades.

A major conflict would force the government to be more serious about secondary education too and so help with reversing the decay (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31170431) of math programs in particular.

Even if the world should achieve complete peace, some power-monger will rise with an ambition to rule everyone. All the weapons of the world exist only to deter that individual.

I feel bad that you went to a school where the bullies could go so far as to break your ribs. While I agree that war spending is a type of monumental waste compared to what we could accomplish theoretically, it's also important to stand up to bullies I think, including the type that would beat anyone just sitting down.

I'm reminded of a recent survey I saw, discussing if NATO expansion post-soviet collapse was a mistake or not.

The Americans were all over the board. Some agreed strongly, some disagreed strongly.

The eastern Europeans were united - NATO expansion was vital to keeping eastern Europe independent.

Military spending is an example of prisoners' dilemma: the ideal option would be for nobody to have a military, but no matter what the stature of your enemies are, it is more valuable to spend money on maintaining a military than not doing so.

My personal views on the matter tend towards what I would call a militaristic pacifism. I am pretty against actually going to war, but I am generally in favor of maintaining a large, powerful military, far more than most pacifists are. Having that military power gives you better leverage in international affairs, and more resistance against others' leverage. While you can theoretically get a similar position with strong moral high ground, the reality is that you need a truly impeccable history of sustaining the moral high ground for that position to not be eroded with whataboutism, a history that I think no political actor has ever attained.

Another perspective I will point out is that a decent fraction of "military expenditure" is not on actual military readiness. I've been on research grants that are coming out of the defense spending bucket, but I've never worked on anything remotely close to a weapon (e.g., one line item would have been building compilers, which is difficult to even maliciously twist into working on weapons).

>one line item would have been building compilers, which is difficult to even maliciously twist into working on weapons

How so? Your compiler produces a binary, binary gets loaded on a chip inside a weapon system. Is that not working on weapons? That wasn't so difficult.

I get the overall point, military spending as a huge funnel of free money to be thrown at research, of which not necessarily all would end up in actual combat ready systems. But you don't know which of your research would the uniforms throw away in government labs and which they would put on assembly lines and send to the field. Compilers are extraordinarily essential pieces of software that lie downstream of literally any source program, so even if your compiler was a research toy, it can be scavenged for that one algorithm or tricky data structure that can increase the efficiency of production compilers that produces the binaries that animate the killing machines on the field.

For example, here's [1] an article about how formal verification helps unmanned helicopters be more resistant to cyber attacks. I didn't even search for it specifically for this comment, I had it on open tabs for 3 days.

[1] https://m-cacm.acm.org/magazines/2018/10/231372-formally-ver...

Formal verification helps everything be more resistant to cyber attacks.

Very well written , thanks! And what I don’t get is how even in 2022 decision makers can take a decision that results in killing of innocent lives somewhere. When there is even the slightest chance of dialogue why don’t they seize it?

> Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Eisenhower is quite wrong here, because the world is not lacking for food or clothing; we have plenty enough to feed, clothe, shelter everyone, and generally attend to their basic needs. What the world is in desperate need of is good policymaking that promotes human flourishing, as opposed to dictators or criminal cartels depriving their own people of the freedom they need to thrive and grow wealthier through good, productive work and investment. Good national and collective defense is a key part of the solution despite its drawbacks, and we haven't managed to come up with a workable alternative.

You do know the quote is in the context of defense spending, which spends tax dollars on guns, warships, and rockets instead of food and shelter? The “world” may produce enough food and clothing, but that is little consolation to the impoverished who cannot afford them.

$2.7 billion per day on military, $0.3 billion per day on hydrocarbons from Russia (to release these as CO2 into the atmosphere). Sounds like wasting $3.0 billion per day.

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

However, the intent for peace has to be there. Si vis pacem. You can also prepare for war w/ intent for war, after all.

> I really don't know what to think about this

Simple: it's bad, very bad. Increasing expenditure increases the threat level: it's the whole point.

Not to mention that the world is facing a climate catastrophe and the war machine is amongst the biggest sources of pollution.

Wouldn’t the war machine also be one of the most incentivised to find alternative energy sources? Can’t defend your country if you can’t source enough energy (legacy and renewables).

One of the first 'real' modern uses [0] of Opposed Piston Diesel engines in by Fairbanks Morse, for military uses.

the Army is funding [1] Cummins new $87M opposed piston diesel engines for vehicles, they will have about a 25% decrease in fuel use. (which is HUGE for an army that has to carry their own fuel) That will definitely be quickly implemented by the major transportation companies, since fuel is such a huge part of their cost for trucking.

0. https://www.fairbanksmorse.com/blog/new-opposed-piston-engin...

1. https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/08/20210803-ace.html

Not if the war machine has enough safe resources. While the Pentagon is "researching" alternative energy sources, I am not sure if they are just paying lip-service or actually serious about it. The US military is the single largest point source of pollution in the world.

[1]:https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/06/13/report...

In this context, "alternative" does not mean sustainable. The war machine has one priority: be ready to win wars. Sustainability is not a priority.

Unsurprisingly the US army is the organization that uses the largest amount of oil in the world.

> Simple: it's bad, very bad. Increasing expenditure increases the threat level: it's the whole point.

Not necessarily, after a certain point MAD comes to play ( assuming rational actors, which Putin is not).

> after a certain point MAD comes to play

That's the obsoleted narrative that the proliferation of nuclear weapons would create long-lasting world-wide peace.

Easily disproven by current events.

> assuming rational actors, which Putin is not

Hence the criticism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction#Cri...

Unsurprising the Doomsday Clock is showing increased threat level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock#Timeline

> That's the obsoleted narrative that the proliferation of nuclear weapons would create long-lasting world-wide peace. ... Easily disproven by current events.

It's clearly not obsolete nor disproven by current events at all.

The conflict would have to involve two nuclear powers at war with eachother. The US and Russia are not at war; NATO and Russia are not at war; MAD hasn't failed what-so-ever, nor has it even come to that context. The situation is presently one nuclear power vs a non-nuclear power (being supplied with weapons by foreign allies).

The present events don't disprove the effectiveness of MAD any more than Russia in Afghanistan did.

If Technological advances lead us to a world of abundance, then $2T doesn't matter.

Also, military provides plenty of people to

a) have a purpose b) be physically fit

Military spending also provides stable economies for a lot of countries.

Also conflict seems to happen in regions where there are no military spending.

Would US have gone into wars with Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan or Iraq if they had military spending (or nuclear warheads)? What about Russian invasion of Ukraine, Georgia?

Paradoxically may be its best that every country have strong military spending and a decent proportion of the population who are physically fit and working on technological advances even if it's military related. Innovations out of military almost always benefits general society.

> Also, military provides plenty of people to a) have a purpose b) be physically fit

You know, have we considered maybe a massive increase in sporting leagues? The kind where generally people don't get murdered?

Training people to kill each other and then having them do so seems a literally sociopathic way of accomplishing the end of physical fitness and giving people a purpose, no? A massive network of athletic tournaments and government-subsidized athletes would probably be a lot cheaper for the outcome too.

I get this isn't really why we have militaries (I think? I hope?). I honestly think it's a pretty ridiculous suggestion to make that it is, or that it justifies them. If the military expenditure is to be justified, it's sure not for that.

The problem isn’t that the military can provide a sense of purpose or physical fitness it’s that there are so few structured alternatives outside the military for those not wanting to find purpose in a system that designs ever creative ways of killing other humans.

Not "Always". A lot of spending in the military is wasteful. This typically means a lot of people just are free loading.

Then again there's a lot of consumer tech that comes out of military research like the internet.

> A lot of spending in the military is wasteful. This typically means a lot of people just are free loading.

Same could be said of any sufficiently large government run programme. Military, healthcare, social security, etc.

Not only government run. Large corporations can be similarly inefficient.

less so because of incentives. Capitalism is a bet saying that the incentives of the the commercial world makes it more efficient then an economy run by the government.

I mean a lot of people do crime. Doesn't justify it.

The US military has never passed an audit. Never. It took over 3 decades for the first audit to take place.