It’s really bizarre that we are looking at a near future where our best ally is Russia and West Europe/Canada and everyone else who was our friend is now our enemy. You literally couldn’t write this up as fiction and be taken seriously a decade ago.

You'd better report your wrongthink. We, Oceania, have always been at war with Eastasia, Eurasia was always our ally.

US's Republicans have been so afraid of '1984' that they took it as an instructions manual.

We have an authoritarian nation conducting a literal unprovoked invasion of a liberal democratic country, this entire thread is objecting to the United States STOPPING providing materiel to said country . . . and yet people still think defense contractors are the "bad guys."

It's morbidly fascinating, really. If there's anyone who could be accused of profiting from blood money in this instance, it's companies like Sukhoi and Kalashnikov Concern.

We have a border conflict on the other side of the planet that doesn’t involve America, except insofar as defense contractors are ginning up a campaign to have american taxpayers bankroll one side of that war.

And throwing around words like “liberal democracy” is just how the neocons get americans to turn their brains off and support such endeavors, as with the iraq war, and as with vietnam and korea before that. It actually doesn’t affect america whether other countries are liberal democracies or illegal democracies or something else, so long as they don’t attack america and keep terrorists who might attack america at bay.

RUSSIA invaded Ukraine. WE invaded Iraq. WE invaded Vietnam. WE invaded ̶K̶o̶r̶e̶a̶.

You're exposing yourself. Stop while you're behind.

editted after child replies

Iraq invaded Kuwait, our “ally.” South Korea, a democracy, was invaded by North Korea, a Soviet proxy state. South Vietnam, a democracy, was invaded by north vietnam, a Soviet proxy state.

It depends on which Iraq war they mean. Most people your age and under typically mean the second war, when the US did invade Iraq.

But yes, the first time it was Iraq that was the belligerent and invaded Kuwait.

You can’t disentangle the two like that. If you posit that the first gulf war was justified, you’re 90% of the way to justifying the second. The intelligence was that Iraq was rearming. If your position is that the U.S. would’ve had to intervene in the event Iraq invaded a neighbor again, then it doesn’t seem unreasonable to invade preemptively to avoid a potentially costlier conflict.

That's not the reason we used for invading, though.

This thread's corrections to my getting history wrong are just showing how disingenuous you are.

You’re the one who doesn’t know the history of mistaken american wars in the 20th century and I’m the one being disingenuous?

How do you distinguish Korea, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War from Ukraine? And I suppose your only quibble about the Iraq War is that we should’ve waited until Saddam invaded another neighbor, like he did the first time?

I admit when I'm wrong. You don't. That's one way you're being disingenuous.

The US did not invade Korea. Post WWII, Korea was split into its northern and southern zones which ended up becoming North and South Korea (the intent had been to make it one independent Korea, but put the USSR and USA in a room together and there will be no agreement on how to do that). In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. The UN called for a military response, the US supplied most of that response. But the US did not invade Korea.

North Korea invaded South Korea, the US and others fought them back on behalf of, and with, South Korea . China and the USSR supported North Korea, which is ultimately why it ended in a stalemate.

Sorry yeah i was wrong about Korea.

The present administration isn't really planning to cut military spending, they just want to redirect it. $4B of military aid was recently approved for another country.

Here's the budgetary outlook: You'll notice that defense spending is projected to have a slight increase in real terms, or a slight (0.1%) decrease in terms of fraction of GDP.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61172

Yep. DOD spending is likely to shift, but not be reduced. The major firms are probably going to see some contracts cut or tougher competition from the likes of Anduril in certain domains.

DOD spending in IT-related efforts may also shift, Palantir will be a major contender here.

What a reductionist cliche of a moral position.

Are you the mythical "ethical consumer under capitalism" I've heard so many legends about?

addendum: sibling comment's point is more relevant

Very well played!

https://www.abhafoundation.org/assets/books/html/1984/24.htm...

The Manchurian Candidate was along these lines, though it has an (early) happy ending, before the candidate becomes president, at least in the movie. I haven't read the book.

“Our best ally is Russia” is a nightmare scenario; ask anyone else in the CSTO how responsive Russia is to allies’ needs.

And a bit further back, ask anyone who the Red Army helped liberate in WW2 what has happened later, and how long it took the Red Army to actually withdraw.

For a generic village in Poland during WWII having the Red Army show up was an order of magnitude worse outcome then the Germans.

What was expected were rapes and thefts so people preferred to flee. It was really the nightmare scenario.

Found the Nazi.

The shift to bailout Russia is no surprise to anyone taking notes, there is a long LONG history

https://reddit.com/comments/j6z8eh

It was idiotically unbelievable fiction until literally the day before Trump took office, even with project 2025 readable on the internet.

In fact, we discussed how the whole idea of an USA ex-president calling up a personal militia, trying a coup that could reboot a civil war, giving up half way, and not ending up in jail or even politically castrated was garbage fiction until 5 jan 2021.

It really makes you feel like you're in the middle part of the 1980s.

I lived through the 1980ies, and I still have trouble processing the idea that the anti-Soviet, rah-rah patriot types that loved movies like Red Dawn are now in bed with the Russians. It's just bizarre.

It used to be that fascists and communists were our most hated enemies. How the tables have turned!

EDIT: more seriously, though, throughout the 20th century America hewed much closer to fascism than communism. It's always been there, if not always out in the open.

They are more or less the same thing. Fascism in its original form (with that name) in Italy one century ago had an anti communism flavor because communists were its internal enemies to the road of power. Remove that and you are left with nationalism, control of society (what you can say in pubblic, how to behave) and control of economy even in something as thin as do as you please but do not challenge the big boss with the influence you gain with your money (see what happened in China a few years ago.)

Communism had an internationalist phase but that was over by the middle of the cold war. It started as an ideal, then become a way to rationalize the USSR's grip on the East, then it died out as countries started to realize they would be better off with the other bloc.

Edit: of course communism had more ideals than internationalism. For example it did not include the authoritarianism part. However they disappeared after it was implemented as a way to rule a country and were replaced by the means that allowed the ruling group to stay in power.

It is, but it also makes sense. The enemy wasn’t really Russia, it was communism and, more broadly, leftism.

Modern Russia resembles the USSR in some respects: oppressive government, not particularly wealthy, over-militarized. But it’s definitely not communist.

If freedom and democracy is your thing then that part doesn’t matter. But if your thing is anti-leftism, conservative morality, militarism, powerful rulers, and white people, modern Russia looks pretty good.

You must have been traveling in some neocon circles a decade ago. But normalizing relations with Russia and disengaging with the rest of the world military was the goal for us liberals back then: https://youtu.be/T1409sXBleg?si=svqMzx1aAIKgMd13; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/

And that made sense, as there was a point in time that Russia did seem like it had a chance of becoming a normal democracy. At some point even the idea of the EU membership was floating around.

By the 2008 attack on Georgia it was clear that there is no democratisation of Russia, but some people didn't want to believe it for a long time, not even after 2014 attack on Ukraine.

EU membership was never feasible. Russia is too large population-wise, it would have threatened franco-german leadership of the EU. The EU, as it was back then was hanging in a delicate balance, where France and Germany usually had to agree on something to get things done, but other countries could form blocks of convenience to push their own demands through (eg. UK, Nordics and the Netherlands on fiscal discipline, or the Baltics, Visegrad and countries from the Balcans on immigration). France and Germany would not have wanted to lose that much influence, Poland would not have wanted to be between Russia and Germany again (politically speaking), and hatred of Russia runs rather deep in countries of its former empire.

The US has had normal relations with places as radical as Saudi Arabia for many decades. Ideological, political, and other differences do not preclude normal relations. There's really an absolutely phenomenal article on the deterioration of Russia-US relations here. [1] In general, the problem is that after the collapse of the USSR, the US was left as the defacto ruler of the world. And we wanted to cling onto that position permanently. Germany, for example, is a country that could be independently great but has made no efforts towards such and has largely been content to remain deferential to the US, so it retains extremely positive relations with the US, so far as such a relationship can be called positive.

But as Russia started to regain strength in the early 2000s, they specifically aimed for positive relations with the US, but also were not happy with a Germany style relationship and wanted to be treated as equals. This led to us doubling down on hostilities towards them. But this deterioration of relations inevitably led to where we are today, but fortunately not where we could have ended up - which is in the nuclear wasteland that was briefly called WW3.

This also ties right back in to Georgia. Back in 2008 at the Bucharest summit the US was openly encouraging and supportive of Georgia's efforts to join NATO. France and Germany were strongly opposed to such, arguing that such a move would needlessly provoke Russia, but we aimed to move ahead with it anyhow. The Georgia-Russia war would start a few months later.

[1] - https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/us-russia-putin-re...

Sure, back when Russia looked vaguely like a democracy for about ten minutes.

We are allied with lots of non-democracies, including ones that invade their neighbors (like Saudi). That part is irrelevant.

It’s extremely relevant when you’re talking about why liberals would think we should be friendly to this country. I haven’t seen a lot of liberals in favor of being friendly to Saudi Arabia.

Once they hold national office they become favorable to it.

> You must have been traveling in some neocon circles a decade ago. But normalizing relations with Russia and disengaging with the rest of the world military was the goal for us liberals back then

I don't know which is more wrong, the broad claim here or the claim that you are a liberal.

I mean, what you describe was generally the case...but between the fall of the USSR and the start of the new US-Russia Cold War around 1998-1999, with the belief that Russia was on a path that, while rocky, led to Western-friendly democracy with the right support.

From 1999-2014 (but generally declining through that period) engagement was viewed as useful, in part because Russia’s hostile turn was seen by some as curable with reassurance, but more because Russia was seen as a generally hostile generally but having useful alignments of interest in some parts of the world.

But by a decade ago, 2015? “Normalizing relations with Russia and disengaging with the rest of the world militarily” was certainly not a common, much less the dominant, American liberal position on foreign policy.

Obama's 100% correct point was that Russia was incredibly weak economically. Obama never said we should disengage "with the rest of the world military." Bush, Clinton, W. Bush also tried to normalize with Russia. Everyone hoped Putin was sane. Obama strengthened our alliances. And he has been proven right. Ukraine has depleted Russias military stockpiles and their National Wealth Fund. Russia was weaker than people thought.

>Bush, Clinton, W. Bush also tried to normalize with Russia. Everyone hoped Putin was sane.

Bush Jr, who unilaterally withdrew from the START treaty in 2002[1], and pushed to establish ABM sites in eastern Europe in 2007? That's considered "normalizing"?[2][3] And Putin, who protested both of these actions as destabilizing, is somehow considered the not-sane one in this narrative?

>Ukraine has depleted Russias military stockpiles and their National Wealth Fund. Russia was weaker than people thought.

"Russia is never as strong as she appears....and Russia is never as weak as she appears." -- multiple attributions including Bismark and Churchill

Russia was supposed to run out of ballistic missiles...in summer 2022.[4] They've also likely taken more casualties than the entire active duty strength of the UK, French, and German land forces combined (73K + 118K + 63K ~= 250k) while still keeping a cohesive force capable of offensive combat operations in the field, which has GROWN since the war started to somewhere around 550-650K (up from ~200-350K in 2022).[5][6] Russia only appears weak by the standard established by the US 1990-2005....but the US is essentially a super-saiyan and functioned on a different plane of existence from every other military in the world.

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unilateral-withdrawal-fro...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna21262371

[3] https://www.insightturkey.com/articles/missile-defense-in-eu...

[4] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/04/01/vladimir-p...

[5] https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4589095-russian-army-grow...

[6] https://archive.is/zQ6CU

The article in Telegraph is not about ballistic missiles, but about a very specific type of cruise missile, Kh-55, which is a nuclear capable missile. There are other cruise missiles that Russia makes, and there is still production of ballistic, aero ballistic and hypersonic ones.

I am in no way defending their conduct but they did simply ask for a firm No NATO in Ukraine and they were rebuffed before he 2022 invasion and during initial post invasion negotiations.

They absolutely positively did not. They wanted to roll back of NATO membership as a start and were uninterested when Ukraine was trying to avert the possibility of a larger scale invasion (not to mention when Russia violated both Minsk treaties then pretended it didn't apply to them).

Russia knew that Ukraine had little chance of getting into NATO in early 2022 and wasn't even persuing it after the revolution of dignity before the 2014 invasion

It's almost like things have happened between then and now.

Well, there was a point when everybody, including European politicians, wanted to normalize relations with Russia. But the guy had a different view and chose to invade Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. At that point some people still chose to believe that he can be civilized. It backfired badly in 2022. So now Trump trying the same thing and pretending to be Putin's buddy and trying his best to make Ukraine miserable is just sad.

Obama’s dig at Romney was well after the invasion of Georgia. what Obama correctly understood is that Russia’s designs on Eastern Europe don’t actually matter to America.

Dont forget the first and second chechenya wars.

Russia didn't pivot its policy in 2008, it did so a decade earlier, when the second Yugoslavian war was carried out without buy-in from it (the first one was, to an extent, a joint NATO-Russian operation).

And then the coalition of the willing invaded Iraq[1], again, against Russia's wishes, and by that point, that's like two countries attacked (one invaded and occupied) by NATO/most of its members, and you'd have to be an idiot to look at that and not notice that it shifted from a purely defensive alliance to an offensive one. [2]

Putin isn't an idiot, he looks at this and starts surrounding himself with buffer states, through both soft and hard power. Unfortunately, soft power isn't working out great in this, for various reasons.

---

[1] It's weird how when you mention Iraq in isolation, people think it's indefensible, but when you mention it in the context of Russian anxieties, all of a sudden, we are all bending over backwards to explain how it was perfectly justified, and it wasn't unprovoked aggression against an uninvolved country.

[2] It's been 14 years since NATO attacked a country, though (Libya in 2011 - if you squint hard enough, Syria might not count), so I guess we could once again reframe it as a defensive alliance. [3]

[3] It the US continues on it's insane trajectory and withdraws, it will definitely become a defensive alliance, simply because it will lack the ability to project power.

“It's weird how when you mention Iraq in isolation, people think it's indefensible, but when you mention it in the context of Russian anxieties, all of a sudden, we are all bending over backwards to explain how it was perfectly justified, and it wasn't unprovoked aggression against an uninvolved country.”

Wat? I’ve never heard anything like that. I’ve heard people try to justify it on the basis of believing the WMD lie or removing Saddam from power, but Russia is never even mentioned in this context.

The game Tom Clancy's End War is basically about a quadripolar world (you play as Russia, USA or Europe), where Russia hacks the EU WMD network and uses it to attack an American space-based weapon, using that as a false flag operation to make America go to war with Europe. Russia "joins" USA in an alliance and attacks the EU from the east while the US attacks from the Netherlands and Denmark.

There were people saying that, but you are right that they were not been taken seriously. Maybe they should have had.

I think this is a popular but unrealistic take based on real observation.Real observations being. Increase friendliness towards Russia. Decrease friendliness towards Europe/canada. Don’t confuse inflection points with the actual position.

Leaving NATO is not a one way street. If the US leaves NATO, then the NATO countries can also stop supporting the US. How many components of US weapon systems are made in the EU?

The US cannot support it's military projection without allies. If every US base has to be ran as 'fortress USA' the budget will break. Even just losing a few strategically located bases will greatly increase the cost of power projection.

All Europe has to do is stop all local support for US bases and force all resupply to be done via the US military and the bases existing infra, not via ANY civilian infrastructure (no civilian airports, no civilian trucking, no civilian shipping). That's just one pain point in the USAs soft underbelly that we didn't have to worry about before because we had allies.

But why do we need “power projection?” Why do we need bases all over the world?

You mean why do we need Greenland and Canada?

US power in Europe has been our intentional policy since the end of WW2. I can't do justice in educating you on the geopolitics of it all but there is a plethora of information out there for you. Not sure how an American can get to be an adult without understanding the background and reasoning.

We did this to the point of encouraging Germany to include limitations on their own power in their constitution (along with Japan). Anyways it's a long, thought out standing position of our country that has 70 years of thought put into it versus the recent 'but it's not fair to us' MAGA reaction based position.

You asked this exact question last week and I answered it. If you are just going to ignore the people who reply to you, why bother commenting?

But your answer was handwaving. What’s the evidentiary basis for concluding that maintaining bases all over the world benefits americans? The British Empire was motivated by mercantilism: by requiring colonies to sell raw materials to Britain and buy finished goods from Britain, it ensured Britain remained highest on the supply chain, and redirected capital from the colonies to Britain.

We don’t do anything like that. We don’t extract resources from Europe at below market value. We run a trade deficit, so free trade doesn’t even help us. So what’s the concrete explanation that isn’t just recycling liberal internationalist tropes?

I would like to see the trade deficit evening out, but even then, the deficit is ~0.6% of our GDP. Charitably, the intake of goods we do support keeps our internal economy extremely productive, so even at a deficit maybe it's worth it.

That said, it's not very difficult to fix the deficit if there were any will. And once fixed, the US would benefit from open maritime trade more than anyone else. Holding these bases helps us keep the world in order, and in the current order the US winds up on top. (Though the US does need to deal with China's incursions).

It's funny to see you use the word "evidentiary" when you do not apply any standard to your own comments. If you do reply, please try to back up your points, since I'd like to understand where you're coming from.

Why would we benefit from more trade when we don’t make anything?

I don’t have evidence that american empire is bad for the economy. But the cost of maintaining it are indisputably high and result in a lot of immortality. So I would like evidence that maintaining an empire actually results in benefits that offset the cost.

Economic theory certainly doesn’t predict that empires would make you richer than free markets. And if empire makes you richer, why is Europe so content to be under our yoke?

We make a lot of stuff. The manufacturing industry contributes >$2T to US GDP.

The US doesn't have an empire, but we do have a degree of worldwide hegemony. As a practical matter if the US turns isolationist then China will fill that gap. Will that make US citizens richer?

> As a practical matter if the US turns isolationist then China will fill that gap.

That sounds like a very neocon view of how the world works. We have to maintain an empire because if we don’t, someone else will?

One nice thing about being a superpower is that we don't have to do anything. We can choose to be isolationist. That seems like a seductive option in the short term because it costs us nothing. But historically that approach hasn't worked out well for us in the past. Will the average US citizen be better off if China takes over as the primary global power?

And stop being disingenuous by labelling the current US-led global security system as an "empire". Words mean things and I'm sure you're smart enough to know what a real empire looks like, so I can't imagine what you think you're accomplishing by trying to frame the debate that way.

Why do you assume China will take over as a superpower? It’s certainly not the case historically that there’s a single global hegemon.

Also, I use “empire” because people are justifying our having military bases all over the world on that somehow benefitting america economically. I am not sure I understand why—forcing the world to use dollars as the reserve currency seems to be part of the theory. But if that’s the case then empire is an appropriate label.

Well, the US has been the most prosperous country for a long time, so clearly something is working. Maybe the "empire" has nothing to do with it, sure, but I'd like to see you support your position instead of nitpicking other people's.

> why is Europe so content to be under our yoke?

Sorry to disappoint, but Europe is not particularly content to be under the US yoke.

Actually, the US has been actively pressuring Europe to keep it under their yoke. For decades.

US doesn’t have to make “anytime” why export products when you can just export cash?

US economy, trade and budget deficit are subsidized by the rest of the world which buys their bonds.

Dude please stop 'just asking questions' soley so you can respond to your own questions with your already established position. It's extremely bad faith.

You asked this questions previously. You got an answer previously. You justify asking the question again because the answer doesn't align with your position and also because... smears on liberal values??? Stop, you are not acting in good faith. You are acting like a propagandist.

I’m sorry, but if you’re extolling the virtues of american empire and having military bases around the world you’re the one acting like a propagandist.

Haha. You can't defend your manipulative posting designed to let you inject your narrative so you just turn around and accuse me of something you randomly assign.

Again showing you are just a propagandist troll and not posting your questions in any sort of good faith.

Because the alternative to a US dominated world is a world dominated by someone else.

History has shown that lesson again and again and again. There is no “peaceful world without a hegemon” period of history. There is Pax Brittanica, Pax Romana and Pax Americana which is now coming to an end.

So we can extract value value from having the biggest stick. Surely any competent businessman turned president couldn't fail to turn a profit when our military, and only our military, can secure the safe travel of goods anywhere in the world and overthrow any non-nuclear power who acts not in america's interest.

Same reason US needs a huge military.

Deterrence and overwhelming force are the only ways to ensure longterm peace and stability.

Establishing fascist military regimes all over the Americas, Europe and Asia might have been good for longterm peace and stability, and esp. US companies and global trade, but not so for the oppressed civilians and workers.

Could you actually explain what fascist regimes did US establish in Europe?

Greek Junta perhaps, but it was anything but stable and it collapsed because of a war in Cyprus with another NATO member..

Or are you claiming that Americans put Putin in power in Russia? Slightly far fetched but you might have a point..

Because I can’t think of anything else.

Out of my head all. It started with financing Hitler and Mussolini.

Spain and Portugal.

Then Turkey, Greece, Italy, Belgium. Belgium didn't last long though.

I’m not sure in what way do you think US “financed Hitler and Mussolini” (or whatever’s going on in your head for that matter..)

But it’s a weird thing to say when the USSR/Stalin literally bankrolled the Nazi invasions of Norway and France (whatever the financing they got from the US USSR contributed a few magnitudes more).

Germany had no oil after Poland and its not far fetched that France/Britain could have just waited it out had the Soviets not bailed them out.

I think that's kind of the point. The Trump admin takes a very isolationist view of things, so I don't think they even want all those international bases.

That's about two orders of magnitude more thinking than they're actually doing.

It's not the point for the MAGA types. They want the power AND deference of the good old days, not actual feeble pullback and irrelevance. They think Europe paying it's share means Europe will pay for OUR military presence. Add on their kids no longer having access to military jobs/path to education and those communities will start to freak out. Trump wants to project power in the middle east. That's current done out of European bases.

tell that to Greenland.

he doesnt care about the military bases. he just want the resources. National security is just an excuse.

If you add to this cutting power and water supply you really need some infrastructure upgrade.

> Leaving NATO is not a one way street. If the US leaves NATO, then the NATO countries can also stop supporting the US. How many components of US weapon systems are made in the EU?

For example, 15% of every F35 is made in UK.