Joe Biden: Accelerated Liberal Imperialism
What will the Biden presidency of the United States mean for the world?
[quote=Joseph Biden]It falls to the United States to lead the way. No other nation has that capacity. No other nation is built on that idea. We have to champion liberty and democracy, reclaim our credibility, and look with unrelenting optimism and determination toward our future.[/quote]
Why America Must Lead Again
This, along with the generally more bellicose tone of the Democrats over the past few years, leads me to wonder if we might be going to see an interventionist foreign policy even more ambitious and more dangerous than Bush's or Obama's. The following article from publicseminar.org argues that this may indeed be what's happening:
The Rotten Alliance of Liberals and Neocons Will Likely Shape U.S. Foreign Policy for Years to Come
As described in the article, Trump's term as president led to some striking cross-party unity among his opponents. Former officials of the Bush administration, and then Republican national security officials, came out in support of Biden's campaign, the latter being specifically concerned with foreign policy.
From my point of view, this seems like it will only strengthen Biden's liberal imperialist agenda. Am I wrong? Was the neoconservative flavour of Biden's rhetoric just a reflection of his need to oppose everything Trump was seen to stand for, in this case realism and isolationism in international relations? Or will we really see the US aggressively attempting to reassert its role as world policeman? Is that even a bad thing?
[quote=Joseph Biden]It falls to the United States to lead the way. No other nation has that capacity. No other nation is built on that idea. We have to champion liberty and democracy, reclaim our credibility, and look with unrelenting optimism and determination toward our future.[/quote]
Why America Must Lead Again
This, along with the generally more bellicose tone of the Democrats over the past few years, leads me to wonder if we might be going to see an interventionist foreign policy even more ambitious and more dangerous than Bush's or Obama's. The following article from publicseminar.org argues that this may indeed be what's happening:
The Rotten Alliance of Liberals and Neocons Will Likely Shape U.S. Foreign Policy for Years to Come
As described in the article, Trump's term as president led to some striking cross-party unity among his opponents. Former officials of the Bush administration, and then Republican national security officials, came out in support of Biden's campaign, the latter being specifically concerned with foreign policy.
From my point of view, this seems like it will only strengthen Biden's liberal imperialist agenda. Am I wrong? Was the neoconservative flavour of Biden's rhetoric just a reflection of his need to oppose everything Trump was seen to stand for, in this case realism and isolationism in international relations? Or will we really see the US aggressively attempting to reassert its role as world policeman? Is that even a bad thing?
Comments (393)
I hope we do not. I suspect that, should the US attempt this, we will see dramatic reprisals from countries that are interfered with, and understandably so. The US is no longer a shining example of effective and functional democracy. I would suggest it is more the latest example of democratic chaos and near failure, which may yet occur. Hardly suitable material for a policeman.
Should Biden pursue too aggressive a foreign policy I foresee the US being slapped down. However a war might unite the US citizenry, perhaps the real goal Biden is working toward.
I think Biden is genuinely hawkish, but the pandemic, weak economy, and the need to patch up Obamacare and extend Medicaid will keep him busy.
A far more united global effort to fight climate change for one. Of course there's no where to go but up from here.
Quoting jamalrob
BUSH: Would you like to see Saddam back in power?
OBAMA: Would you like to see Al-Qaeda restored to it's former glory?
TRUMP: Bring back the Islamic State?
And if you would please sir, could you please explain why a philosophy forum which absolutely refuses to discuss nuclear weapons even the slightest little bit should be considered qualified to offer credible commentary on issues of global security?
Quoting jamalrob
Here's one view of the last century seen through one American's eyes.
1) In WWI we lost about 100,000 American lives to help stop Europeans from killing each other in vast numbers in yet another totally pointless European war.
2) Twenty years later in WWII we did the same thing again.
3) From 1950 until 1989 we risked the nuclear annihilation of the American homeland in order to prevent Russian tanks from rolling across Europe to the English channel.
As our reward we now get to enjoy some (certainly not all) snooty Europeans lecturing us about what baby killing war mongers we are pretty much any time we try to liberate from bondage any one else in the world. This moral "logic" is summarized as follows:
Saving Europeans from themselves = good.
Saving anyone but Europeans = bad.
1) Biden applied to be the American Commander-In-Chief which gives him, a single human being, a single button he could press to utterly destroy modern civilization within minutes.
2) We American voters didn't ask him about that button.
3) Biden said almost nothing about the button himself.
4) And you too dear great philosopher are as equally guilty of being as utterly clueless as any of those mentioned above.
See the problem here? You can't throw stones at Biden and America without throwing a few at yourself as well. And that is... UNACCEPTABLE!! So this line of reasoning will die a quick and quiet death.
A transparent (and somewhat lazy) attempt to position yourself as being above the arguments presented, without actually meeting any of the arguments. Or even trying.
None of them have their mutually assured destruction certificate!
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9544/iraq-war-2003
Paul Edwards makes the case for aggressive military action to overthrow despots.
In that thread I applaud the clarity of his moral vision, while debating some of his suggested tactics. Personally, that seems a constructive way to proceed on such topics. Here's an example...
Imagine that Donald Trump (or the leader of your own country) took away your right to vote and then shot you and your friends down in the street when you dared to protest that theft. I think we all know how you would feel about such a theft and the thief. You'd be OUTRAGED!!!. And that's the appropriate way to feel. We should all be able to agree on this. If we can't, there's really no point in further conversation.
The next question is, what to do about the theft? This is a tactical question where we can reasonably differ because none of the choices are pretty or easy. If such a discussion can be stripped of the fantasy moral superiority poses which are so popular, I'd find such a tactical debate to be reasonable and constructive.
You have to admit that some of the more recent attempts to show morally right balls ended up making things worse, as in Iraq?
Because your elections are bought and paid --> everything that derives from it is circumspect. It's you and your fellow US citizens who by and large fail to grasp the US is a plutocracy. The idea that those people have "clear moral vision" to spread freedom and democracy would be absolutely hilarious if it wasn't so dangerous for the rest of the world.
So, bring back Saddam then? That's a reasonable question which members could address.
There was a choice. Invade Iraq, leading to what we see in Iraq today. Or don't invade Iraq, and Saddam's sons would most likely now be in charge there. Both of these outcomes are highly imperfect. There is no perfect choice available.
As a test, someone could run for high office in Iraq on the platform of bringing back a regime as close to Saddam's as possible. We could see how that vote goes.
I do agree that tactical debates are reasonable. There are better and worse ways to confront tyrants, and all solutions are not created equal.
Ok then, you're right. So America will now bow out of all it's partnerships around the world such as NATO and then the morally superior Europeans will be free to make the best deal with Putin and the Chinese Communists that they can get.
If your argument is that Americans are not perfect, I agree. If your argument is that America makes mistakes, again agree.
Are you in Europe? If yes, why not petition your government to leave NATO? Nobody is forcing you to be part of that alliance, so if you think we suck, ok, fair enough. So go do your own thing instead.
NATO isn't just the USA and I'm not against protecting other countries from aggression - even the USA. But nuance and subtlety and actually thinking things through seem to be a problem.
Your idea of "not perfect" is that your last two presidents exercised dictatorial powers and you applaud the "moral vision" of one of them. It's not "not perfect", it's a plutocracy. You're not living in a democracy. You have no moral standing, as a nation, to lecture other countries on democracy or freedom as you don't understand it in the first place.
Biden's rhetoric is exactly continuous with his lifelong hawkish policy commitments, and I see very little reason to think he's taken some kind of hard turn away from that. That said, I'm curious as to how that would be exercised given that state of things atm. I don't see direct military deployment anywhere being particularly viable, given the war weariness of the domestic population (maybe to the South China Sea to try and check Chinese claims there?; Reinforcing both the Philippines and Japan?). So sanctions, trade policy, and diplomacy (especially 'renormalizing' relations with European institutions) are probably the more the likely routes of US influence wrangling. At the very least they'll likely be a significant uptick of intensity on the last two in comparison to Trump.
If anything, I think IP and tech is where Biden is going to make his push against China. He flagged IP in particular in his FP proposals, and he's got every reason to try and maintain the supremacy of US tech. Exactly how I'm not sure. Perhaps banning Chinese tech, especially for public services (like Australia did with Chinese 5G tech). That seems to make more sense than Trump's disastrous trade wars. As for the neocons, they always wanted to wipe Iran off the face of the earth, but I don't yet see how that would fit into Biden's announced policy plans, which looks, once again, to renormalize and renegotiate nuclear treaties with them. I wonder which arena, exactly, they'd be pushing for action for (making South America a US plaything again?). I really don't know. In general Biden's FP strikes me as nostalgic and promissory, rather than concrete. Alot of it seems centred around repair and not vision - like the rest of his domestic 'policies'.
See? You haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about, which is why I'm not taking you seriously. A million people were killed in the Iran/Iraq war alone.
Also, you continually make the classic mistake of the typical Iraq war critic. You completely ignore what Saddam (and his sons) would have done given another 20 years in power. Whatever that death toll would have added up to, it's completely missing from all your calculations.
As you know, Iran is riding the edge of becoming a nuclear power. How do you think Saddam and his sons would have responded to that threat? There's an excellent chance that with Saddam's regime still in power we'd now be witnessing a nuclear arms race exploding across the Middle East. Instead, today's Iraqi government presents no threat to any of it's neighbors.
Quoting Benkei
Blah, blah, blah, thank you for the morally superior lecture. Try again when you get around to thinking things through.
Irrelevant. You argued that it was just and right to invade Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people.
Quoting Hippyhead
I don't have a crystal ball. All I know is what happened after the invasion and that's that Iraq destabilised. All your what-ifs are neither here nor there because unprovable.
But let's play your game. The USA's military might makes it a dangerous player especially since it's elections go to the highest bidder. It's 'leaders are currently not democratically elected and large swathes of its population are oppressed by an outsized police force, debt and wage slavery and racism. We should liberate them and install an actual democracy. Even worse, it's just a matter of time before the USA will start unjust wars because money is the predominant influence in its politics. We should therefore attack it before it unjustly attacks other countries. This is all that your argument amounts to; a license for any country to invade another.
Pre-emptive attacks are aggression.
Quoting Hippyhead
Moral superiority? I'm providing facts and draw conclusions. If you think the US isn't a plutocracy, then educate yourself but quit sidestepping the issue by handwaving this problem away.
EDIT: Come to think of it, I'm not the one going around claiming moral superiority as grounds to kill hundreds of thousands. The hubris is all yours.
They wish to wipe the Iranian REGIME off the face of the earth. So do most Iranians best I can tell. Just to be clear, the Iranian regime is not Iran. The Iranian regime is a relatively small group of gangsters holding the Iranian people prisoner.
My argument is that we should share agreement that the Iranian regime is a psychopathic theocratic dictatorship, and that it is morally sound to wish them gone. Once that's done, then we can then have a reasonable debate about tactics. As example, Paul Edwards feels we should try to overthrow the Iranian regime with an air war, which I have already argued against in his thread. I prefer a more patient and peaceful strategy of attempting to bankrupt the regime through sanctions etc. Others may argue we leave the job to the Iranian people. If such debates can be stripped of the fantasy moral superiority poses, such debates seem reasonable and constructive.
The challenge we face is that many critics of American policy cherish their fantasy moral superiority poses above all else, and once that's taken away they typically lose all interest in such subjects. I'm open minded on that for now, but my best guess is that this will be the fate of this thread.
More idiocy. Sanctions have always only hurt normal people and caused untold misery for them in the process.
If you intend to continue a pattern of blatant intellectual dishonesty it will probably be best for me to ignore you so as to preserve the peace of the thread.
Quoting Hippyhead
which was a war that the US gave weapons to both sides in. Hussein was a leader that the US armed before that war. Those deaths are included in US foreign policy to some degree.
The US neo cons glossed over and downplayed SHs use of WOMD on the Kurds when he gassed them. And SH is not the only leader the US propped up and supported despite knowing what he did. Noreiga, the Taliban as a couple of other examples, only to turn on them and Satanize them when it was convenient for the Wall St. and the military int. complex to do so.
Saddam and his sons and their effects are partly the responsibility of the US (and England). And included technology IN SUPPORT of Iraqs potential nuclear program.
Quoting HippyheadThough the invasion led to the creation of Isis and this was certainly a threat to the neighbors. Further this seems to come in some historical void. The US wanted Iraq to be a threat to its neighbors and encouraged it to fight Iran and gave it the means to do it better or worse really.
Part of the reason it poses no threat is because it was left in a mess after a poorly carried out intervention that was based on a conspiracy of lies around 'WOMD then changed to fighting an evil regime for the people of Iraq and then didn't give a shit about them in the long run.
What country are you in Street? If your country is in NATO have you petitioned your government to leave that alliance? If yes, that would seem to be an intellectually honest position which I could respect.
If I understand correctly, the EU has an economy roughly equivalent to the US. If true, then the EU should be able to afford to defend itself without reliance on America. You might be surprised how many Americans would be agreeable to such an outcome. Should Russian troops push deeper in to Ukraine, it's your continent, you deal with it.
If you think "removing dictators because freedom and democracy", which was the gist of the Iraq War thread I picked up from you isn't correct, feel free to enlighten me on what on earth you actually meant every time you agreed with Paul.
If you think my representation of your crystal ball nonsense is incorrect, explain. Don't just handwave like a moron but try using words.
I'm not sure who you're referring to here, but note that the authors of the article that prompted the discussion and that I linked to and briefly wrote about in the OP, are American, and they don't mention the killing of babies.
My instinctive position on the matter is probably obvious from the OP, but it's partly just that: instinctive. I'm open to other views. I was looking for some serious analysis from people who know more than me.
Quoting Hippyhead
I've read that discussion. To me it's a very unattractive, rather deluded and unhinged vision.
Quoting Hippyhead
Not for me thanks. Aside from the crucial fact that at least one of these achievements has been won at great cost to the people in the region, and aside from the prior role of the US in maintaining Saddam in power, in the growth of al-Qaeda, and in opening a space for the growth of ISIS by invading Iraq and then allowing the country's disintegration--aside from all of that, the US has done some good things, but it still doesn't follow that US liberal interventionism is, currently, a wise way forward that will make things better on the whole. By "liberal interventionism" I'm referring to efforts ostensibly to spread democracy or help suffering populations by means of interference in sovereign states: meddling in elections, imposing sanctions and other economic punishments, sponsoring opposition groups, regime change by direct military force, and so on. Arguably, destroying al-Qaeda and ISIS on its own doesn't commit you to the full liberal interventionist program.
Good points, especially about Iran, which is where Biden obviously doesn't fit with the neocons. What led me to this stuff in the first place was my narrow focus on Biden's aggressive attitude to Russia.
Quoting Hippyhead
Even if that's true, it doesn't mean they want the US to do it for them.
This is one reason I seriously considered voting Trump prior to the pandemic.
Political scientists would say this would actually create more global volatility, though, right?
Yes, because the strategy at that time was to let the competing psychopaths fight each other instead of fighting us. And because Saddam exhausted himself in Iran he was thus much easier to defeat when it became necessary to do so.
Quoting Coben
Yes, IS was a threat, and so the Islamic State was then effectively crushed.
We might observe how Iraq war critics are typically far more interested in demonizing those who crushed the Islamic State than they are in demonizing the Islamic State. It was the same for Saddam. Five words about Saddam being bad, and then 27 billion words about Bush as the new Satan etc. Complete lack of moral clarity.
Quoting Coben
Iraq war critics showed no interest in the Iraqi people before the war, and now that American involvement in Iraq has wound down they again show no interest. That is, they were never interested in the Iraqi people, they were only interested in using the war to score partisan political points. If Iraq war critics were interested in the Iraqi people they could, for example, argue for a massive rebuilding fund.
You're clogging the thread with junk, if I reply to every one of your little posts all hope will be lost for this thread. If you wish to now claim victory, please do so, I don't mind.
Erm, isn't that all politics- anywhere? Lol. It's not funny it's really rather tragic but yeah.
Quoting Hippyhead
Eh to be fair many people have either said or thought that about their own governments at one time or another. Why do I have to pay taxes? Why do I have to go to jail for such and such? I've said it before, and though this quote isn't mine: "the utopia some wish for is actually a dystopia of the worst kind".
Quoting Hippyhead
Any such group was always irrelevant if you're concerned about religion and statehood,. The entire ME and yes now even parts of Europe is and has always been an effective "Islamic state", that grows in territory, wealth, and power with each passing day. I'm not one to say if that's good or bad- shoot who knows, maybe they were right and we were wrong. Personally I subscribe to there being a possibility where "no ones wrong", of course not everyone will get behind that and the money and pride sure isn't there. Especially when people from alleged groups or sides do things to one another, forgiveness seems easy in theory- til you're actually on the receiving end of a major grievance. Either way, former Christians (whose ancestors swore their successes/conquests and future ability [or inability] to hold onto them were contingent on their faith in God) are becoming less and less religious and globally aware, becoming more atheist, while others become the opposite. It's just what's happening.
I was under the impression the political elite has been trying to extricate themselves from the ME as it definitely is turning to costly. They were fine with the JCPAO after the IAEA greenlighted it.
The causal chain is that the US reneged on the deal and then the Iranians breached some terms of the agreement. My guess is what Biden would want is agetting Iran to abide to the JCPAO again with the offer to sign up again to it from the US side. I'm not sure to what extent it is feasible though after 1+ year of Iran enriching uranium above agreed limits.
European critics of American involvement around the world.
Quoting jamalrob
Ok, cool, you've certainly succeeded in generating stimulating conversation.
Quoting jamalrob
I disagreed with Paul's tactics, but he's the only person I've read on this forum so far (best I can recall) that has the morality right. Gangster regimes are our enemy. Simple! But how to confront them, not so simple. Like I keep saying, I'm very open to a tactical debate. But people who don't understand who the enemy is are mostly a waste of time.
Quoting jamalrob
1) I agree with Paul that it is the moral responsibility of those who are free to help others to also be free. This part is very clear and very simple.
2) What is the best method of helping imprisoned people in various circumstances? This part is very complicated and tricky.
Quoting jamalrob
Yes, I understand. How would your perspective relate to cases such as the allied invasion of Normandy, or resistance to Soviet expansionism? What should our relationship with despots be?
Quoting jamalrob
As Paul correctly pointed out in the Iraq war thread, it's asking a bit much for unarmed civilians to overthrow determined psychopaths with armies at their disposal all on their own. The thing is, we have no way of knowing what the Iranian people really want because the Iranian regime has stolen their right to speak, to vote.
I honestly think the focus on Russia has largely been played for the domestic audience: It's Russia which 'explains Trump', and not the fact that the democratic party is a hollow waste of space that no one cares for if it wasn't for the even larger unmitigated disaster that is Trump. Also Trump is friendly to Big Bad Russian Tyrant, and Democrats are not, so please vote for us. That's not the whole story of course - Russian support for Iran no doubt plays into it, especially if the neocons are trying to weasel their way into democratic FP decision making. The animosity to Russia makes very little strategic sense for me otherwise. Any clues?
Not really no. Dutch politics, while certainly not perfect, is pretty vibrant. Last time they tried to sell out to corporations on taxes all hell broke lose. There's of course a direction in which the Netherlands is moving, which isn't pretty but there are active counterveiling political forces that don't result in rich people/corporation get what they want all the time. But in any case, the example was given because the possibility of Saddam starting a war was just another ex post facto justification warmongers like to bandy about.
Another dodge.
There is no animosity to Russia from anybody that I've heard. There is animosity by many to the Russian regime.
The Russian regime is basically a high level Mafia organization which exists for the purpose of sucking as much money as possible out of the Russian people for deposit in secret off shore bank accounts. Where are your posts screaming snotty outraged rants about such a ruthlessly large scale theft, one wonders.
All of these regimes are basically just very smart criminal gangs who have progressed from robbing banks to stealing entire countries. They are, if you will, the elites of the criminal world.
Show me you are as outraged by psychopathic regimes shooting their own people down in the streets as you are by legally elected Western politicians, and then maybe we could have a useful discussion. Until then, I can only spend so much time in this thread.
Yeah that's the vibe I'm getting too. I also wonder where Israel stands on this - is a treaty too passive for them? I really dunno.
Please stop talking to me (like, in general) you're a moron and beneath response and it would save us both time.
You can ban me when ever you wish, no problem. This thread is just another example of why I have no fear of such a decision on your part.
That's what I was thinking, but I think there's more to it. I think that Biden sincerely believes in doing everything he can to undermine Russian influence and power, partly to enhance American legitimacy and moral authority, but partly because he has delusions that the Russian people want American help. If we look at Biden's track record and that of the Obama/Clinton administration that he was a part of (Ukraine 2013/2014), his currently stated position on Russia is totally consistent with that, in which case he might be seeking to continue and intensify the cold war against Russia.
I just realized I may have to clarify something for suspicious readers: my criticism of liberal imperialism here is not in any way connected with the criticisms of liberalism that have occasionally been heard from the Russian government and leadership over the past few years, and my opposition to American cold warriors should not be seen as support for authoritarian rule.
Hm, I must be paranoid about being seen as a Putin apologist.
I had to think about this. A part of this also has to do with the face of war in these times. If we're talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or Syria then I think the first two are now low intensity conflicts (LICs) and the latter fluctuate between war and LICs with many non-state actors involved.
We see that since Obama, US presidents are capable of initiating LICs or involving themselves in existing LICs (for Trump see Yemen and Iran) without any congressional oversight. Presumably, Biden will use this option as well and will have the support of the neocons and thereby won't be challenged when doing so despite the War Powers Resolution. In a way, this seems to be answering to the fact that enemies tend to be non-state actors more regularly than State actors.
My guess is, increase of LICs in relation to the fight against terrorism and geopolitical theatres that require some measure of control because of real politik considerations.
I don't expect more convential wars because I'm not convinced that US military capabilities or budget can be stretched to support another (decades?) long occupation or at least, I don't think there's political appetite for it. Another reason I'd expect de-escalation with Iran.
Well, how so? Leaders are dealers in hope, which of course isn't or doesn't have to be some kind of material gain be it better infrastructure of just more money in your pocket at the end of the week. Unity and faith in one's own life and being to instill a sense of purpose is great- crucial even. But it only goes so far? Would you vote for a leader where you stand to lose something or otherwise cut established gains or would you vote for one who declares the opposite? It's about who can do what's best for the people and unless he or she is going to be a motivational speaker every day, it usually revolves around some sort of benefit or gain. The idea or possibility, at least.
Ugh, there are few more hell-paved paths than Americans with good intentions. I guess I also wonder about how the world's coming pivot on oil and coal is going to affect Russia (and consequently US relations to them). I mean, that's the literal power-house of the Russian economy, and if demand begins to wane - coupled with overproduction - I wonder if a resurgent Russian imperialism might reassert itself as compensation and (domestic) distraction. That, I imagine, would give cause for the US to play white knight and Biden - or Biden-adjacents - to play out his fantasies.
There are plenty of European democracies that manage to do this to an adequate degree. I suppose it's a win if there's at least not an inverse correlation between the number of people wanting a specific policy and the likelihood of that policy being enacted as law.
I think that if the US looks weak, it invites more of that kind of thing. I'm pretty sure nobody in the US government cares about real Russians and their political challenges. If they're starving, we'll send food, otherwise, no.
May I please renew a call for a bit more precision in our language? Nobody wants any kind of war with Russia. Some people do seek a higher level of opposition to the Russian regime.
The reason I keep quibbling about what may seem a small point is that when we refer to conflict with "Russia" or "Iran" implicit in such language is an assumption that the regimes of these countries are legitimate representatives of the populations which they dominate.
Putin is not Russia. Putin is a gangster who is robbing the Russian people. Do a google search. Many sources speculate that Putin may be one of the richest people in the world. Whatever his net worth, where do you think all that money came from? It came from the Russian people. They didn't donate this vast wealth, or willingly pay Putin a super generous salary. Putin stole the money through the elaborate patronage scheme which is the Russian government. It's just like the mob, everybody in the system steals whatever they can, and then kicks money up to whoever is above them on the totem pole. And Putin sits on top of the pole.
The Russians are very intelligent people. So why does their economy always suck? The answer is that the wealth of the Russian people is being systematically stolen on a massive scale by a very highly organized criminal gang headed by Putin.
The Russian people are one thing, the prey.
The Russian government is something else altogether, the predator.
We should use language which makes the distinction between the two clear.
Is this Alex Jones talk or do you have a link to this? I can say I'm whoever from wherever acting under whatever, and do something to make people turn against one another, doesn't mean it was so.
Quoting frank
Look at it this way, if they don't, somebody else will. So, it makes sense to be considerate. Such as said scenario would be. When you devalue empathy and compassion toward one, you devalue it for all.
I was also suspecting that it would be necessary to clarify that you mean “liberal” in the historical and current international sense, which is closer in meaning to the American sense of “libertarian”, or perhaps just “capitalist”, and is generally a right-wing position contrasted with labor parties, socialism, and other leftist movements.
Not in the modern American sense of “liberal” as opposed to “conservative”, meaning roughly “left” and “right”.
Thankfully it looks like nobody has assumed you were attacking the American left from a right-wing point of view.
It's good that you want to be careful with your language, so I applaud you for that. But the language you use when you're trying to use language carefully, as in this last post of yours, is not much better. You have a cartoonish view of the Russian state.
Could you then please explain how Putin became so rich?
And it's not just Putin as a single person. Putin stays in power by allowing those under him to also steal a piece of the pie. So if the guy at the top is worth some number of billions, and there are god knows how many people under him doing his dirty work, and the theft goes on year after year, decade after decade, the total haul may be in the trillions. All sucked out of the Russian people.
Anyway, good try, but this thread is pointless. It's just another reminder of how bankrupt philosophy really is.
Political pseudo-philosophy at least. :P
When it comes to anything political, we're all just really playing game of thrones and want to rule the world. Take it from someone who lost it all- just be open with it. Or.. perhaps not, eh? Ha. "All warfare is based on deception". It's an ugly game, with no real winners. Not for long anyway. Eager to return to actual philosophy as well.
See the book Russian Cyber Warfare, Charles River edition.
Quoting Outlander
Unless you're actually in Russia, my country is more ethnically Russian than yours. We love Russians, but we don't have responsibility for running Russia.
The Iranian people don't speak with one voice. We now know that 87% of Afghans and about 50% of Iraqis wanted the US to liberate them. The figure was probably above 90% for the Libyans who had risen up in Benghazi and now faced being mowed down by automatic weapons.
Regardless, x% of Iranians would welcome a US military intervention. Those x% are my ideological allies (ie I would want a US intervention if I was an iranian), and I believe in supporting my ideological allies. So it's a no-brainer for me to support a coalition of democracies to go and liberate Iran.
What's the alternative? Keep 85 million people enslaved indefinitely? How would you feel if you were one of those enslaved people? Do you expect to have your own human rights protected to the nth degree?
And that's before we get into the strategic reasons for replacing a hostile dictator with a (likely allied) democracy.
The governance will, however, most likely maintain thinly veiled yet firm ties to large corporations, as though elected heads represent big money interests over those of the working citizenry.
(It may be reflective of why those powerful interests generally resist proportional representation electoral systems of governance, the latter which tends to dilute the corporate lobbyist influence on the former.)
Those doubting the powerful persuasion of huge business interests need to consider how governing officials can feel crippled by implicit or explicit corporate threats to transfer or eliminate jobs and capital investment, thus economic stability.
Also concerning is that corporate representatives actually write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, typically word for word, supposedly to save the elected officials their time.
:up: :100:
I’m almost a complete pacifist, and even I’ll say it’s fine to go help someone else under attack if they want it, and they’re in the right in that conflict, and we can afford to stick our necks out for them.
If I was dictator for a day I’d make that the official requirements for ever going to war.
If you didn't hear the screams of Iraqi women as they were being raped by their own government, you must be deaf. I heard them and called up the US military to put an end to it.
I don't recognize the rape of women, or cutting out the tongues of Iraqi men as something "internal" that should be protected. The rape of any woman on this planet is my business. THAT's what should be protected. The right to not be raped by anyone, including your own government.
If my country (Australia) ever has a military coup, US help is most welcome by me, and I hope the majority of Australians. No sanctions. No dilly-dallying for decades. IMMEDIATE use of military force. I don't want to be enslaved by an Australian dictator for ONE SECOND more than necessary.
This is the problem with society. Like children disobeying their parents because they have some sort of say over their actions and behaviors, completely neglecting the fact said authority were once children themselves and subject to the same level of authority. Yes, in modern Western countries you can work hard and said work, time, and effort counts for something. I don't see why that even needs to be explained or worse "apologized" for. I get the (one and sole) argument some may have that those who have reached the top or "pinnacle" of human success in this world seek to and do "lock down" opportunity for those outside to ever reach said spot, but in a democracy with laws, rules, and order- that gate is more of a hurdle or obstacle that builds character and resilience while increasing one's own talents as opposed to a solid wall or mountain that does the opposite. So they say anyway, eh? :grin:
Wise man, who's no longer with us (thank God- don't take that the wrong way) once said: "you can't make everybody happy".
Yes, that is why I fly the NATO flag, even though Australia is not yet part of NATO.
One day I hope that the entire world is a member of NATO (because they meet the requirements of being a secular capitalist liberal democracy) and then we can rename NATO to UN or UN to NATO (doesn't matter to me).
Quoting Paul Edwards
And for the time being, I think the sovereignty of each country should be respected. It is the moral obligation of oppressed people to liberate themselves; otherwise, oppression will just change forms but will always be present.
Unless there is an expansionist agenda, of course. In this case, you should have the guts to declare war, invade, conquer, and annex.
Some seek new lands to share a gift they've been given, others do so to take what gifts were given. This is the only true divide between men and what actually defines nations. Though, they won't tell you that. #Atheism - because, why not right?
Or maybe there are better benefits when you expand without annexing?
No, for the time being we should actively convert countries so that they meet the requirements to join NATO.
No, that's what the Iraqis tried in 1991 and they got slaughtered. It's what the Chinese tried in 1989 and got slaughtered. It's not technically possible to defeat automatic weapons. We experienced the same thing in WW1 when *armed* men tried charging against machine guns. Unarmed civilians going up against automatic weapons is just a blood-sport.
And I can assure you that if Australia has a military coup, I will not be charging against armed Australian soldiers. I'm not going to throw my life away for nothing. I am happy to negotiate under what circumstances you are willing to send the US military to liberate me. Let's negotiate.
No, this theory about it being impossible to install freedom by force of arms was shown to be bunk in Iraq, just as it was in Panama.
Quoting Pfhorrest
But this is difficult to swallow. For both of you, apparently, silent genocide victims ought to be ignored even by countries in a position to help. Aside from the sometime legality of humanitarian intervention under the aegis of the United Nations and international law, moral intuition tells us that innocent victims ought to be helped even if they don't ask for help. A strong man ought to help a frail old lady who is being beaten by someone younger and stronger than she is, even if she is not asking for help. The situation with humanitarian intervention is significantly different from that analogy, but exactly how is it different, and what are the consequences of that difference for the moral rightness or wrongness of intervening?
I am not arguing for @Paul Edwards's position, and I am not saying you are both wrong, but I don't feel that his challenges have been fully met.
@Benkei What's your view?
I actually live in fear that one day someone is going to trot out a convincing argument that ends "And that's why Iraqi women should continue to be raped for as long as Uday felt horny". Because that will put an end to my hope of seeing world freedom in my lifetime. I'd like to die in peace.
Quoting HippyheadAfter intelligence agency warnings that it would happen were ignored. Only after they had done a great deal of damage to at least thousands of people (and they are not finished yet). And only after the Russian took a real aggressive stance in relation to them and also Trump. IOW the regular neocons, including people like Hilary, were not that interested in crushing them. (and I am no Trump fan by the way)
Quoting HippyheadMost people on both sides did not give a shit about them. One side created a mass of bs that this was (after no womd were found) the reason they were there and cared. Thus giving them the hypocrisy. But further on the left there was a significant minority who had been concerned about the embargo and the first war and had also long before that been critical of neo-con support for Hussein and other policies harming people in the Middle East.
Are you one of those who didn't give a shit about them? What set of morals do you follow that ignores the plight of the Iraqis? Are you in a religion that teaches to not care about Muslims? We need a comprehensive review of all of this in light of the failure to act over institutionalized rape and tongue-cutting in Iraq. A philosophy forum is exactly the right place to be doing it. This is really basic philosophy. Do we care about Iraqi men having their tongue cut out by their own government or not? Or is their plight dismissed because they are brown, or because they are in the wrong religion? Would you like to see video of Iraqi men having their tongues cut out so that you can see if you are moved or not?
No. Far from it. I believe everyone has the right to live in freedom, including Iraqis, and VERY much supported the 2003 war to free them.
I've spent decades trying to understand the forces that prevent others from supporting the same action I supported.
Note that I was an atheist in 2003, and I didn't need any religion to teach me to care about the Iraqi people. It was just innate. I wasn't alone either. See what these American soldiers said. Everyone in the free world should be supporting the Iraq war for the same reason as those American soldiers.
One can care about Iraquis and be for the war or against the war. One can recognize people's good intentions, some people's, on both sides of the argument. I think it is hard to know what actions were for the best and what side effects of the actions taking are in their completeness. Cynical selfish people can end up doing good things for the wrong reasons. I am not sure they managed even that. Soldiers on the ground can have all sorts of motives, obviously including good ones, though I don't think one should romanticize those motivations in a general way.
I think if you're conjecturing a conspiracy between enemies to explain unanimity in hatred of Trump, you're missing the blindingly obvious! :rofl:
Shouldn't the cost of intervening be factored in? A country like the US is often in a position to interfere, but then what are the consequences? You get embroiled in someone else's civil war? Then it turns into another nation building exercise with troops still stationed there a decade later? And what if this involves complications with other nations? This also raises issues of why countries like the US or the EU get to intervene. Does that mean China and Russia do as well?
It's easy to say someone should stop and stop a Rwandan genocide. It's harder to think thought all the implications. What if the answer is yes for Rwanda because nobody else will oppose it, and no for Syria, because Russia, and no for North Korea because they could level cities?
YOU should have supported a war to free them, as I did. What stopped YOU from trying to help the Iraqis? Is it because they are brown?
Billions of people the world over should have supported the liberation of Iraq to free them from state-slavery. If Bush (allegedly - why don't you read his 2003 State of the Union address prior to the war) wouldn't act for any reason other than WMD, then billions of people should have been trying to convince Bush that Saddam probably had WMD, so he should take action. Bush shouldn't have needed to sell this war to the public. The public should have been clamoring for intervention. And let's start with you, as a member of the public, who likely expects his own human rights to be protected to the nth degree.
Quoting Marchesk
Okay, so one answer to my question is that unlike the analogy, the possible costs often outweigh the moral imperative--costs in terms of, say, peace and stability, and in humanitarian terms. Would you want to generalize this to say that US involvement always makes things worse? Or would you say that it's fine under certain conditions? What would those be?
Yes, the US has been incredibly generous. Instead of lashing out after 9/11, they turned around and freed 52 million people from state-slavery, and did nation-building in 2 countries.
The US should be praised for its generosity, not derided.
I don't know. I tend to support pacifism and non-intervention. But reality is messy.
Would you also go for pacifism/non-intervention if you saw a woman being raped in your street? Or are women in your street more important than Iraqi women? If so, why is that? What's so special about your street? What set of moral codes do you subscribe to that elevate women in your street?
Quoting Paul Edwards
You want to focus on me and judge me and not focus on what I wrote, for the most part. The people around Bush, as I said before, were perfectly content with Saddam H.'s behavior toward the Kurds and his own people when it was in their interests to do that. These people lied to the American public and the world and whatever support they had was in large part due to those lies.
You choose to take an uncharitable ad hom approach to this discussion. You do not, for the most part, respond to points I make. It's rude and you make for a poor discussion partner.
I'll leave you to your moral superiority, assumptions and poor posting. I am sure you can find others to go ad hom about, and not really respond to, and they will likely treat you in a similar manner. There are plenty of people on both sides who post like you do. May you enjoy each other and confirm your biases.
"I don't think intervening in other countries is analogous to helping an individual here."
Why not? What moral code or philosophical argument says that the number of meters away the victim is calls for different action?
In my moral code, I immediately call whatever phone number I have available to get the forces required to respond to the crime.
This is an excellent point. In terms of global authority, and even moral authority, the US doesn't have it all its own way, certainly not these days. Among the most powerful countries, each has different interests and priorities, and intervenes in different places supporting different sides. Who has the moral high ground?
One reason I'm more inclined to agree with you, @Pfhorrest, @Daniel, @Coben and others here, against Paul Edwards, is precisely the situation that the question, "who has the moral high ground?" reflects, namely, one in which great powers are competing internationally for influence and authority, and internally for domestic approval. Simply put, I cannot trust the USA to do the right thing, or to attempt to do the right thing carefully. Their meddling overseas has been reckless and destructive, and often makes the world a more dangerous place, even if it is well-meaning. As it happens, I think it is sometimes well-meaning on the part of many of its proponents, and yet also founded on an ignorance about other parts of the world; but just as much, or even more, is it about building up their international stature, spreading their influence, undermining their competing great powers via proxy conflicts, bolstering their public approval back home, and so on. This means that welfare, peace, and justice for ordinary people are not as such the highest priorities. (Much of this can apply to China and Russia too)
By the way, that's part of my answer to my own question above:
Quoting jamalrob
Even in the absolute worst case, that Bush only went to war because Iraq had the best sunflower seeds and he thought he could steal them, why didn't YOU have a goal to liberate the Iraqi people, which would have happily coincided with Bush's plan for (allegedly) different/immoral reasons?
Regarding Saddam's crimes being ignored earlier, the US was focused on fighting the Cold War, not do humanitarian interventions. If you have any complaint about that, take it up with Mr Marx.
Maybe it had to be done, but it's not so easy if you start out knowing that will be the cost. At the very least, the potential cost should be seriously taken into consideration before committing to such action.
What moral/philosophical code introduces the concept of a "country" where a previous strategy becomes invalidated?
YOU should have the high moral ground. YOU should have derived a philosophy even superior to that of the US. What did YOUR moral philosophy say should be done about Iraqi women being raped by their own government?
Ok, thankyou. So it depends on how much force is required to respond to the rape call. What if some terrorists have taken people in a building hostage, and you need SWAT to intervene, and there's a high likelihood of innocents being killed by the SWAT action? Would you say SWAT can't be used? Or would you just say that that's the appropriate level of force needed to respond to that particular criminal act, and the deaths are on the criminal terrorists, not SWAT?
The countries, and thereby their governments, and thereby the people these governments represent, insofar as they were democratic at the time, have signed the UN Charta, which enshrines non-intervention. That's at least a contractual obligation with some moral weight.
But the rule is also reasonable because outside of the UN, states operate in an anarchic environment with only few overarching principles. Interventionism would amount to a state, or states, imposing their will on other states without any process of redress and without any possible oversight. It'd be akin to mob justice, done without the consent of all parties.
I didn't sign any such thing, so my moral code is not dependent on the UN Charter. Is yours?
Not all parties consented to being raped by Saddam's goons either, or having their tongues cut out. It's already mob justice in my eyes. But not yours?
Case in point is ISIS, which was generated by long distance fumbling and apathy on the part of the US.
The US didnt want to govern the middle east the way the British did. There was no popular will to do that. It's not in keeping with the image the US has of itself. And it's immoral to bomb a working ecosystem if you're not going to invest in helping a new one grow to stability.
But I do think Putin wants Russia to at least appear to be a superpower. Someone needs to say no to further expansion by Russia. Maybe the EU could do it. Or China.
Contractual obligations have moral weight according to my moral code.
Quoting Paul Edwards
Two wrongs do not make a right. There is a difference between you personally fighting an injustice and you employing the machinery of a state against another state to help their subjects. The latter will obviously have significant negative consequences on an international scale that you cannot just ignore in your calculus. An goal is only morally good if it can also be accomplished by morally good means.
Contracts come with escape clauses. Shouldn't you be seeking to extricate yourself from this contract, now that you realize it allows Saddam to chop out people's tongues with impunity?
I don't consider protecting Iraqi women from rape to be a "wrong".
I don't see a difference in my moral code. I outsource violence to different institutions depending on the circumstances at hand.
There is nothing immoral about calling up International SWAT to go and spread human rights. There is something immoral about trying to stand in the way of SWAT.
Of course there is. Because yours is not the only SWAT team around, and all of them also shoot innocent bystanders.
Any SWAT team that wants to convert a dictatorship into a democracy is OK. Like Senegal liberating Gambia.
So long as they don't deliberately target them, it's not immoral.
If it was you having your tongue cut out by Saddam's goons, would you want International SWAT to rescue you? Doesn't your moral code require you to look at the world from the perspective of others?
Yeah, I disagree. You're limiting responsibility for your action only to your intended results. But it's a fact that you don't control the exact result, so your idea of responsibility rests on a fiction.
Quoting Paul Edwards
From a purely rational perspective, I'd only want to be rescued if the rescue can be achieved without endangering even more innocent people. I would not want to make it a rule, for example, that you're allowed to torture the spouses and children of kidnappers in order to determine their hideout.
Then you cannot call the police when you see a rape occurring outside your house. The police might hit a pedestrian when responding to the call.
Again, this precludes calling the police on a rape occurring in your street. More innocent people are endangered.
Note that if I was having my tongue cut out, and I had a button to destroy Earth, I would do so to end the injustice. Certainly International SWAT can do a much better job than destroying Earth, ie they will accidentally kill a lot fewer people.
That doesn't follow from what I said. You have to consider likely outcomes. Some risks are justified. But you can't go around simply ignoring all undesirable outcomes.
Quoting Paul Edwards
That just means your moral compass is way out of whack.
The likely outcome was that Iraq would be converted from an enemy dictatorship to an allied democracy, which is what happened.
You talk as if you can handle having your tongue cut out, but I really do wonder how long you could really withstand torture before pressing the magic button to either end Earth or at least call in International SWAT.
What if it was instead your daughter who was about to be raped by Uday? Would you at least call International SWAT for her sake?
[tweet]https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1326306141056364544[/tweet]
I'll start by saying that I'm only aware of one clean humanitarian intervention ever, since the idea has come into play and that was the intervention by the French, approved by the UN Security Council (UNSC), in April 2011. But this one was even legal, because approved by the UNSC.
Legally speaking there's only a right to defend one's self from the threat or use of force or to protect another from that. A threat has to be imminent and clear, not something that might happen or still far off. For any other reasons, including humanitarian intervention, approval from the UNSC is required. That's the legal answer.
We all know the UNSC is a political body and that its permanent members will block resolutions if they concern political allies. The UNSC can therefore fail to intervene where intervention would be appropriate. This has given rise to a body of work with respect to humanitarian intervention in literature and humanitarian intervention in practice. The latter is crap, the former has a lot to say for it depending on what you read (I don't recommend Hippyhead or Paul Edward's posts obviously).
A humanitarian intervention is broadly the use or threat of force against a State in order to protect non-State groups or people from some type of substantial breach of their human rights. There's a movement to get this codified as part of the UN Charter (The Responsibility to Protect) - and therefore shouldn't be confused as a roadmap for individual states to intervene without UNSC approval - others base themselves on customary international law, or consider it illegal. If they consider it illegal then there are those who say sovereignty trumps human rights and those that believe it can be illegal to intervene but that this may be excused because it protects a higher cause.
I'm personally inspried by the just war doctrine to qualify sovereignty. I'm reaching back to some old work again to explain my thoughts on the subject of "right authority", which equally applies to sovereignty:
Can a sovereign nation lose its sovereignty? I think it can and I believe there is where the gap lies in which humanitarian interventions should be allowed. But it takes quite a bit before it does so. And that's because, if we're talking about oppression this is a vague concept. Are the Chinese oppressed? How about Hong Kong citizens? Or for the communist minded among us, how about the poor in most capitalist societies?Torture might happen (Guantanemo) but it may not be systematic or at a large enough scale. How about not being able to appeal court cases? Strictly speaking a breach of due process and therefore a gross breach of human rights but does it warrant intervention? So which human rights abuses and how bad should it be before we should even start considering to act? This is not something with an easy answer from a moral point of view. From a political one it is too easy, leading to abuse. Whatever the answer, it's clear that we should judge on a case by case basis.
Problematic too is to find an alternative authority within the relevant community to take the place of the illegitimate authority in a manner that not only makes it legitimate but also effective. It won't do to simply occupy and impose a new system on people. So even if we are talking about an illegitimate authority any intervention must ensure it reaches the goal of establishing a new authority as well. If it's absent, your have no business intervening unless we're talking about genocide.
Aside from such considerations of course the intervening party should have the right intention and the situation his use of force introduces should be an improvement over what it tries to stop and the war itself should be less bad than the situation itself. An intervening party should also use force only as a last resort, especially because we are here not speaking of imminent threats or actual use of force at scales we understand to be conventional war. And finally, the action needs to be proportional.
That's more or less my take on it.
Great stuff. I'll chew on it.
So yes, I think it does. It is not for nothing that every time some country breaches international law they do so couched in reasons why what they're doing is actually legal. So Russia liberated ethnic Russians in Crimea and protected their right to self-determination thereby reinforcing the idea that humanitarian intervention to protect self-determination should either a) be excused despite being illegal, b) is part of customary international law or c) should be codified in the UN Charter.
No country is going to say "because I can" because you don't want to create the precedent among a group of peers where the power relations shift over time that you can always do whatever you want because might makes right. At some point whether it's 10 years away or a 100, you're going to be on the receiving end if you don't watch out. As a consequence, even when a country breaches international law they tend to reinforce it at the same time.
The world stage is just a bunch of gorillas. There's no law, not really.
Every modern ruler, including Hitler, just makes it up as they go along because... shits and giggles. Germany attacked the Netherlands because England and France were going to attack the German Ruhr Area. Hitler has a legal defence for every invasion. Explain to me why the gorillas are bothering?
Customs, such as shaking hands, are regulated by informal social sanctions, aren't they? If I don't present a firm handshake, I won't get the job, or the contractor will think I'm weak. It's about getting what you want.
On the global scale, international law is established by agreements between nations. If those agreements disintegrate, the law does too. So if the US breaks the law, at that moment the law, for all practical purposes, is gone because the US is no longer in agreement. Right?
I think the sentiment in the wings is that we need some way to call down divine condemnation on those who irritate the hell out of us. From a nihilist point of view, that's a waste of time.
Quoting Benkei
Propaganda probably.
That doesn't make sense. That's for the home team and definitely something dictators don't need to worry about. Try again.
So your point is that Hitler was intent on following international law, and to that end, he made sure everything he did was legal?
Where did I say that? Read this again:
Quoting Benkei
And while rare, the international community does sometimes act to use force and it does so based on established principles of international law either customary law or the UN Charter.
Meanwhile, you shouldn't forget that inviolability of embassy personnel is just international law or the prohibition on the death penalty for juvenile offenders (see Michael Domingues v. United States). The universal jurisdiction courts have established to persecute torturers. These are a few examples of ius cogens.
A famous example of this would be Assyria. They were relentlessly aggressive and cruel. Eventually Persia organized a coalition to permanently smash them flat. Is that the sort of thing you mean?
If not, could you give an example?
But imagine if Iraq had invaded Kuwait but for decades before that many other countries had regularly invaded ME countries and the reason they'd given was "we want their resources". That would make "taking a country's resources" a valid ground for war. Do you think a coalition would've been formed to oust Iraq from Kuwait if that was a regularly touted justification? Probably not.
I hope this analogy is clear (True story, FWIW).
Strangely enough, Saddam asked the American ambassador what the US's response would be to Iraq's invading Kuwait. No coherent message was delivered back to him, so he invaded believing the US would accept it. Saddam was trying to follow the law of the jungle, he was just dealing with an oblivious gorilla.
Volatile behavior undermines cohesion, as we've seen with Trump. Fear of instability is bad for business, IOW, if relations between the EU, Russia, China, and the US deteriorated too much, the global economy would start contracting, so everyone has a stake in stability.
Would you say that international law is rooted in something basic about human nature? That we're socializing mammals, hardwired to need one another?
The same thing happened to me. I was bitter about the experience.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Yes, in fact it's a nicely concise way of saying what Marchesk and I subsequently said, about the messy and disastrous realities of intervention.
But obviously I was looking for a clear-cut case: wouldn't you agree that there are cases that are clear-cut enough for pacifism to be morally reprehensible, even without an explicit call for help?
I guess the analogy wasn’t clear enough then, because the point of it was that we can (and should) intervene just enough to find out if our help is welcome by the people we think are in need, even without it being explicitly called for. If the apparent victims want us to butt out, we should. We shouldn’t just assume that they want us to, and go headlong into attacking their apparent enemies.
Right, fair enough. I thought the analogy was designed just to show that reality is messier than we can know from the outside, and that your own intervention was misjudged, but yes, that makes sense. But crucially, you did intervene, and in the case of humanitarian intervention it may be impossible to draw a line between tentative and full-on intervention (in the analogy, the man attacks you just for butting in where you're not welcome, you defend yourself, etc). And taking your analogy further, the woman may have been too fearful of the man's reprisals to admit that she needed help.
Cartoonish, pretty much everything. Mainly, the idea that Putin is merely a gangster out for himself, bleeding the people dry so he can build more palaces for himself. It's simplistic and a bit ignorant, I think.
To be fair, I hear it from Russians as well sometimes. I disagree with them too.
I doubt it. Too abstract and we'll probably end up committing the naturalistic fallacy if we'd try to ground it in human nature. I think in the end morality is mostly grounded in empathy, which is why the more abstract a situation becomes the more people disagree on the right course of action.
Ukraine, Libya, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq—almost everything Biden touches turns to instability, poverty and rubble.
That description is bang on. I would supplement it with the fact that he's a murderer and loves a bit of plastic surgery.
Is there any way I can bypass giving money to this site by subscribing and just giving it to directly to other, non-putin-backing mods instead?
Putin is a ruthless authoritarian who (1) sincerely believes that what he's doing is best for Russia and is dedicated to the Russian state, which he sees as a continuous and almost unbroken line of strong rulers going back centuries (this is not necessarily a recommendation, but it's far from mere gangsterism), (2) is genuinely popular, because (2i) he brought stability, security, and some economic improvement following the traumatic disaster of shock therapy in the nineties, and (2ii) he prevented the breakup of Russia by making an example of Chechnya.
As an aside, here are some great arguments against pacifism written during times when such an ideology would have been disastrous.
Orwell wrote a great article against pacifism called Pacifism and the War.
CS Lewis makes a great argument against pacifism in Why I am not a pacifist.
Year over year 7% in the early 2000s + law and order. Weird thing is almost nobody expected him to last. That he controls the MSM and "tutored" half the political class helps too.
Quoting jamalrob
This is expressed quite clearly in his/Russia's goal to be or maintain its position as a global superpower.
Someone painted a caricature. A Westerner living in Russia clarifies why its a caricature and provides some much needed facts and colour. I add a dash more. And your take away is that Putin is being "lauded"?
Now you're insulting people with developmental issues to defend your own ego. Rather moronic I must say.
The concern is reasonable and l expect that his administration will be very aggressive. I fear greater foreign intervention in the future. Take for example, Turkey. His policy is quite clear and he is willing to support an opposition party against the current government. In other words ,he wants to install a puppet government.
This isn't true, actually.
The theory of strategic bombing as a war winning strategy was made famous by the Italian general Giulio Douhet in the 1920's and you should remember that the first example of concentrated aerial bombardment of a city happened during the Spanish war, which was made famous by Pablo Picasso's famous painting, Guernica.
(Theories put into action for the first time: Guernica)
Then the Germans had their famous London Blitz, where (thanks to Hitler) the focus was shifted to bomb London and other cities from the more smarter strategy of bombing RAF fields, radar stations and airplane manufacturing plants. The Germans failed to produce a heavy bomber and had to rely on medium bombers, so this really isn't something that the Allies invented. Had they had an bomber capable of crossing the Atlantic, American memoirs of WW2 would be different.
Not to say that war crimes were done by both sides, yet some nations did commit far more than others and few didn't do much.
What's the difference between Putin and Erdogan? Both are corrupt, both harbour imperialistic ambitions based on past glories, both suppress their own people, both advocate traditional religious values. We're talking about billions of dollars being embezzled here, he has a net worth of at least $70 billion US which makes him the most corrupt politician in the world. The media is controlled, free speech curtailed, it's an authoritarian state as you said, how much does his popularity at home matter? He has crafted laws that grant past presidents immunity from prosecution from any crimes committed during or after office. I guess the Russian economy isn't too bad, if you're comparing them to former USSR states, certainly not the best or second-best though, despite their natural resources. Russia is spending a huge amount on their defence because Putin wants to hold onto a bygone age, trying desperately and ruthlessly to hold onto influence that Russia is clearly not going to be able to maintain. No need to refer directly to his PR campaign as a strongman and credit him with doing Russia any favours.
edit: I am actually not sure about whether Putin or his friends got any of their billions from embezzlement, I am not sure what means he used to acquire all his wealth.
Or to put it a different way - the US took the lead in winning the Cold War. Something which the whole world should be thankful for. If you have any complaints about how the US acted during the Cold War you should take it up with Mr Marx.
No. Any war crimes committed by rogue US soldiers result in the US soldiers being charged and jailed in accordance with the US's democracy.
This "moral equivalence" that some stated existed between the US and USSR is also being applied to the US and Saddam's Iraq?
They can trust their government because it is an open democracy, usually reflecting the will of the people.
The defence spending being high is simply a fact, it's the third-highest in the world and higher than the US when calculating as a percentage of GDP. As for Russia's imperialistic ambitions, both geopolitically in terms of keeping former USSR states within Russian sphere of influence as well as in terms of actual wars, which Russia is up there with the US as one of the contemporary warmongers. Ukraine is the best example, with Russian interference in the Ukrainian democracy, their eventual invasion and annexation of Crimea, none of this is imperialistic according to you? Your justification of Putin is what is silly, do you disagree that nearly exactly the same argument you made for Putin could be made for every Fascist government of the Axis? Erdogan? Iran? the CCP? Your characterisation of him is flattering and accommodating, you didn't have to post it but you did anyway. Avoiding commentary about your opinions would have been easy, simply don't post them publicly? If you don't want a response then don't reply.
silly person: Hitler invaded Poland and the Soviet Union so he could kill more Jews and steal their gold!
jamalrob: That is a misrepresentation of the Nazi project, and it makes it look as if Hitler was just a greedy sado-racist. His invasion was a form of colonialism based on the principle of Lebensraum, or "living space" for the German people. With the Nazis, this principle, which went back to the late nineteenth century, took on a more virulent form, combined as it was with the notion of the Aryan master race and the assumed inferiority of the Slavic and Jewish peoples. Hitler's territorial expansion Eastwards, and the extreme measures considered necessary to ensure its success, were thus based on and justified by the racialist dehumanization of the local populations. So killing the Jews, rather than the Nazis' central aim, was merely a means to the end of German and Aryan hegemony.
silly person: Hitler apologist!
Maybe it was both? I really don't know much about it, but it seems like a fine distinction to draw between killing Jews because he wanted to, and killing Jews because he wanted to make more room for the Aryan race by having less Jews.
Sounds about right. Unless you've read back over the past couple of pages, it's unlikely you did mean that, but it's a good angle nonetheless. And it's actually implied in what I wrote: "makes it look as if Hitler was just a greedy sado-racist", and "the idea that Putin is merely a gangster out for himself".
It would not surprise me.
Quoting jamalrob
Not in any great detail.
Quoting jamalrob
Sorry for any misinterpretation.
The US and the USSR put the entire planet at risk with their nuclear arms race. Luckily, none of the close calls triggered an actual launch. One could argue that nukes have prevented a third world war, because it's too terrible a price for the major powers to pay. But even so, it's a big gamble, and one we still live with, because who knows what could escalate matters in the future.
I suspect that Biden will continue Obama-precedent imperialism.
And it is a bad thing.
If remember correctly, Hitler responded to a tiny force of British bombers bombing Berlin by starting massive bombings of London. The idea that nations can lose their will to fight and can be demoralized by bombing their cities was the theory of Douhet. The opposite appears to be the reality with conventional bombing. Yet politicians are sensitive to these kind of issues and many times the response if more about politics than military necessity.
Once Germany started bombing the UK with V-1 flying bombs, a thick wall of anti-aircraft artillery was deployed all along the southern coast of England. When the bombing with V-2 rockets started, which didn't cause much damage (more prisoner labor died manufacturing the rockets than were killed by them), the whole strategic bombing effort was diverted for some time just to bomb the known manufacturing plants.
Similar issue happened during the Gulf War. When Saddam Hussein fired few Scud missiles to Israel in order to get the country to respond (and hence get popular support from the Arab street), the Americans diverted a huge number of aircraft and special forces to look for the mobile units in the vast deserts of Iraq. Few if any were found.
Brutalizing civilian population on enemy-controlled territory still seems to be the standard tactic in modern conflicts, from soldiers and rebels slaughtering villagers in sub-Saharan Africa, to Russian special forces burning villages in Chechnya, to government forces bombing tenement buildings, markets and hospitals in Syria and Yemen. The only difference now is that perpetrators routinely deny their war crimes. The times during WWII and before were, in a way, more honest, but hardly more brutal than they are now.
If Russians are playing out a pattern over centuries, maybe it comes from who they are.
Same with westerners, especially those influenced by British culture. There's an almost irrational fear of tyranny among some of them, so Putin is kind of like Sauron, trying to bring torment and suffering to the world.
Is Russia pretty liberated from their horrendous 20th Century experience, or are they still scarred?
Among the people I know and their parents, there's a lot of nostalgia and affection for Soviet times, but WW2 still leaves scars, because most families lost a few members.
But the most immediately painful scars are from the 1990s. Nobody wants to go back to that, and that's partly why Putin has been popular. Pro- and anti-Putin often agree that he did what had to be done in his first years in power. Anti-Putin people differ now in thinking, come on, that's enough, time to go.
Well, have to say that some progress has happened. For example the US hasn't relied on the ancient Roman tactic of "Deal with an insurgency by creating an artificial desert" like the Soviet Union did in many places in Afghanistan. Creating millions of refugees is a war strategy.
The statistics tell something:
Civilian casualties during Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (9 years): 562 000 - 2 000 000 civilians killed
Civilian casualties during US invasion of Afghanistan (19 years): 38 480+ civilians killed
The US might have hesitantly understood that just killing enemy combatants may not lead to victory as an 60 000 strong Taliban, with the safe haven of Pakistan, can be formed from a population of 32 million.
(The next generation getting ready to fight the foreign occupiers.)
How much experience to they have with democracy? Are local decisions made democratically? Are judges elected?
I can agree with part of this. There is sometimes confusion contextualizing other people's problems and in some areas there is moral ambiguity. There are other times, though, when we can clearly and accurately identify evil and we can rightly say the world would be better off with its elimination. Where I'd agree with you, though, is that sometimes the cure turns out being worse than the disease and the joy we intend to bring doesn't come close.
If I could tinker with the analogy then, I'd say if I were to see a woman being physically assaulted by her husband, intervention that brings about the end of that abuse seems in order, including perhaps arrest and at least probation and maybe incarceration. What then if that arrest leads to his loss of employment and the financial deprivation of the children? It's complicated, but not by virtue of the fact that I can't decipher the good from the bad, but by the fact that a sledge hammer doesn't solve all problems.
As you noted, many Russians don't want America to free them of anything, and I don't think that most Russians remember the times soon following the dismantling of the USSR to be particularly pleasant or a time of spiritual renewal. It was much the opposite so I'm told. But to the question of whether the totalitarian regime during the USSR years was good or evil (should we be left with that limited dichotomy), I'd say evil, standing in opposition to the values many of us hold so dear. I don't think the sledge hammer to the wall fixed much though.
I'd also like to point out my initial use of the figurative sledge hammer followed by my then literal use of the sledge hammer was a nice literary device by me.
Putin has also rolled back liberalization and Democratic reforms, and he could very well be the richest man in the world all on a $133,000/year salary if we're going by the Kremlin. His net worth has been estimated at around $70 billion.
But he's also a savvy leader, no denying that. He could very well be doing what he believes is in the best interest of Russia as a state. But does that preclude someone from being a criminal?
Some of that fear of the "chaotic 90s," as well as the nostalgia for the good old days of the Soviet rule has been helped along by state propaganda. So is the idea of Putin riding in to save the day in 1999. A lot of the economic recovery during 2000s can be quite simply accounted by the booming oil prices and the accompanying rise in Russia's oil and gas production.
Yes, you are right, if you look at the numbers, the good old times were pretty terrible compared to now. State and even some non-state actors have become more shy about committing atrocities, although often that just means that they lie about it (not caring very much about whether anyone believes their lies).
Yes. And yes, Putin was lucky.
No, of course it doesn't. I don't understand this black and white thinking, on a philosophy forum of all places. Are we just slaves to propaganda, or can we discuss things rationally and imaginatively? It's as if you guys are not satisfied until I do the correct virtue signalling, like saying Putin is a monster or whatever. It's just dumb.
@SophistiCat could probably give better answers than me. Before I married a Russian I knew about Russia from 1890 to the 1940s, but not much else. SophistiCat's knowledge of Russian society and culture seems much deeper.
But for what it's worth, there isn't much democratic choice locally, like in Moscow, than there is nationally. I can't speak for other regions. I don't know much about the judiciary.
You know what is a real genuine reason why the Soviet Empire collapsed?
Gorbachev tried to take the vodka bottle away from the Russians. He thought that it was really bad that the Soviet male was dying in his mid 50's. Yet Russians need the vodka bottle to endure the system posed on them. So it didn't work. Soviet Union collapsed. Same thing was tried earlier with similar outcome by only one Russian ruler, and that was Nicholas II. Revolution happened back then and the Tsardom was history. Now you might smile at this, but it's really a genuine reason. Putin made it sure that vodka was cheap and plentiful. Unfortunately, the younger generations of Russian don't drink so much vodka as before. Bad thing for someone like Putin.
And just think what would happen to the US if the supply of all drugs were stopped: from weed to opioids and everything in between?
I agree, but I didn't actually see that question come up. Did it?
Otherwise, it was a beautifully crafted post and I enjoyed reading it.
"Meanwhile their climate is changing rapidly and they're just sitting there."
BTW, Biden is going to pressure Australia to improve their carbon footprint. How weird is that? Is that imperialism?
Responding to me without actually responding to me doesn't count, your "parallel" with Hitler is just an irrelevant but convenient example for you. You have not actually done much to defend your stance on Putin except "silly people" and I'm sorry but if that's the best you can do then you aren't avoiding "black-and-white thinking" but perhaps just avoiding thinking altogether? I gave you reasons backed up by facts, what have you offered? But you nonetheless ascribe my position as "being a slave to propaganda". Putin's PR campaign and Russia's propaganda machine gives exactly the same messages, word for word, that you have offered. That Putin is a strong leader who has Russia's best interests at heart. What is "Russia"? I have to assume you mean geopolitically because obviously the people of Russia are being suppressed and manipulated by the state. Geopolitically, Russia supports rogue states like Syria and Iran, Putin is insistent on acting like the superpower his country cannot afford to be and what has Russia gained in return? Prestige? Influence?
Look at the former USSR states and compare nations by those which joined NATO and those who stayed in the Russian sphere. Russia is being outdone economically by the resource lacking Baltic states, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and certain types of people within Russia enjoy persecution and political imprisonment. At least stability should be something an ex-kgb officer can provide, if not through good governance then through brutality.
Where is the "grey" here? Your characterisation of Putin is merely listing the few accommodating and nice things you can say about him. I don't know your motivation but you're actually talking about virtue signalling here? Agreeing on the obvious isn't a virtue, you can say good things about Putin on a specific note but if you only have 3-4 sentences to describe him, do you think it's fit for those 3-4 lines to be singing his praises and justifying his leadership?
I'm pretty sure I got this part right. Hitler hoped for a truce so didn't want to attack civilian targets. There were civilian deaths of course but as collateral damage and I think only a few bombing runs went (purposefully?) wrong. The Blitz still targeted docks and war effort manufacturing. It was Churchill who went for the jugular.
I don't think we're going to get very far trading bombing intensity, or targets. It was a complex situation. I'm not well read on the 2nd world war, but it is common knowledge in the UK that the Germans carpet bombed a number of city centres in the UK. Notable examples were Coventry and Sheffield along with a great deal of bombing in the centre of London. They took out the docks in London resulting in a massive firestorm. Also Hitler had singled out buildings of special architectural merit which were not to be bombed as they were to be important buildings for use by The Third Reich following the invasion. Hitler may have sought an alliance with the UK in the beginning, but he was clearly delusional and a megalomaniac by the time he got into power.
There are quite a few oligarchs in London, where they have infiltrated the social circles of the Conservative party, have made large donations and may even have compromised leading politicians. Some people think there may have been some involvement in Brexit. Indeed we have had a report into this which pointed the finger at Russian interference in the referendum and the Conservative party. Which was largely redacted by government representatives. And is regarded as a whitewash.
I don't know why you feel the need to ask these questions as I feel they are sufficiently answered already but here's a recap. You offered a characterisation of Putin in response to others characterising him as a "gangster" and said this:
Quoting jamalrob
So what's the problem here? Firstly, this is an almost entirely positive characterisation and secondly, it's really quite objectionable. Let us imagine that you rephrased this exact same statement as "well, here are some positive things about Putin" then we can solve the first part and you can say "well, here are some positive things about Stalin" or whoever else you want and I won't care.
Unless they're just questionable characterisations which brings us to part two. Imagine any other leader in the world, they're extraordinarily corrupt, they repress their own people, they control the press, they create laws granting themselves immunity from prosecution and describing this politician as "sincerely believing that they are doing what is best for their country and is dedicated to their state". The popularity of a leader in an authoritarian state cannot be treated seriously. Dissenters are punished, information is controlled, education is lopsided and it's not exceedingly rare to see popular dictators for these reasons.
Looking at Russia and Putin's direction, it seems ridiculous not to factor in Putin's aim to preserve power for himself in his actions. To see him as someone who is dedicated to the Russian state while not disputing his net worth of $70b and those are low estimates. Putin puts Putin first and "Russia" if we're talking about Putin's chess game with the West, second, and then Putin creating the type of Russia he prefers culturally and religiously, maybe the wellbeing of the Russian people factor in somewhere I don't know.
I did not dispute his personal enrichment.
Quoting Judaka
But I was trying to explain what is important to Russian people. I explicitly said, he is, or has been, genuinely popular because... and went on to attempt a really basic explanation. Do you know better?
Quoting Judaka
That's war talk, nothing more. It's a justification for rejecting any views from Russia that you don't like. Do you think the Russian people are oppressed and want the help from outside powers? The very idea, even among opponents of Putin, is laughable and contemptible.
Quoting jamalrob
Yep and that's what I just said.
Quoting jamalrob
There are all kinds of ideological hubs on the internet which demonstrate what should be pretty obvious, you're in the position to do the very same thing on this site here. If you started banning people who disagreed with you politically, penalising people for criticising you openly, what kind of effect do you think that would have? In this hypothetical case, which isn't as extensive as what occurs in Russia, how do you think people should treat the ideas espoused within the forum? Should your forum be considered the "the general opinion of philosophers" and your ideology "very popular among philosophers"?
Russia is one of the most poorly rated countries in the world when it comes to the freedom of the press, there's obviously limited political freedom as well. The question is not "what do the Russian people really want" but "should we pretend the state is totally ineffective in controlling public opinion". Should we pretend that Putin doesn't have a say in how Russians are educated, what they see on TV, what they read online?
I'm not saying this doesn't happen in the West, I think issues like the Vietnam war were made complicated by how much misinformation the US government gave its people, how do you judge public opinion of Vietnam when the US public has a generally factually incorrect understanding of the war? The Afghanistan war is not all that different. These are worthwhile criticisms, we cannot always take approval rating at face value.
The West couldn't invade Russia even if they wanted to, so that doesn't even matter. However, talking about the popularity of authoritarian leaders, Putin or anyone else should be taken with a grain of salt. Also, you did not say "this is from the perspective of the Russian people" and you might've gotten a different tone from me if you said that but you didn't. Different again if you said, "here are some positive things about Putin from the perspective of the Russian public" or whatever you now seem to be veering towards.
I'm not doing the black and white thinking - I was saying that both a) Putin is a skilled leader who has successfully advanced Russian interests in many cases and retains popularity and b) Is likely a criminal and is responsible for terrible human rights abuses - are both true and both statements should be acknowledged in any account of Putin.
It's not about virtue signaling for me. It's just about the facts. I think we're on the same page here?
Primarily the issue isn't about true/false, it's that you were asked to give an alternative characterisation of Putin and offered only positive comments and justifications. Then you responded to criticism as propaganda and virtue signalling, brought up your comments about silly people and black-and-white thinking. I think you have equal explaining to do about exactly what your problem is. My initial problem has already been summed up.
Quoting Judaka
You say you're not singing his praises and justifying his leadership but I don't see how that is a reasonable interpretation, Putin would be very happy with what you wrote. You only dug your hole deeper when you started giving resistance to alternative characterisations of Putin and generally lamenting about Western propaganda.
You said stuff that a belligerent moron with no reading comprehension might interpret as you endorsing Putin. Shame on you, sir!
In total, how many rubles are you three currently pocketing per month?
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Well, you're certainly belligerent, you sound like a moron and I'm pretty convinced your reading comprehension skills are selective at best but you make it sound like you're talking about me? I'm certainly going to reflect on my actions.
monkey
None of the staff pocket rubles, we give our generous KGB funding to anti-Russian internet troll farms to undermine the legitimacy of Western democratic institutions. It's a signal boost for the Kremlin at the same time as an invitation for us plants to appear neutral and reasonable defenders of Putin's regime.
What could any of us do to change your mind that we're not Russian plants?
I am going to state for the record that I have absolutely no idea what you're on about.
Typing insults really just does nothing for me and since that's all this thread has to offer, I'm out, nobody @ me pls. Actually, can a mod just delete this entire page?
Maybe the aliens can get off their butts and beam us plans for an economical fusion reactor along with the wormhole machine, instead of just judging us from afar. *Borat voice* Assholes aliens.
Maybe they're actually doing that, but at a leisurely pace.
That Germany ever carpet bombed in the UK indiscriminately before the British did - and I'm now even certain they did so in retaliation after Churchill did. The Germans totally bombed the shit out of industrial centres (like Sheffield) and plenty of collateral damage but they didn't target civilians. Even the second great fire of London avoided residential areas, which was a standing order from Hitler (directive 17). Terrorist bombings (eg targeting civilians) were prohibited based on the view of international law at the time in Germany.
I think they would, but they're worried about American liberal imperialism crossing the galaxies liberating everyone like freakin Liberation Incorporated.
You will always annoy me with your return to this argument, which, at least to my ears, asserts some sort of moral equivalence between the axis and allied forces by pointing out that the British bombing of Berlin was a war crime of sufficient magnitude that we need to evaluate it outside the context of the greater events occurring at the time and therefore condemn it.
Maybe Hitler had some immediate strategic purpose for avoiding civilian casualties in his bombing raids, but it certainly wasn't because of his love of humanity or his respect for international law. I can't imagine an argument can be made that had he defeated Britain he would have kindly admitted his fallen foes into the egalitarian society he ultimately envisioned. That is to say, had Hitler won, Britain would have seen plenty of civilian casualties.
What made Hitler the monster he was was his systematic and cold-blooded murder of non-enemy civilians, many of whom resided in his own nation. He didn't care about the law of his own nation that prohibited murder, but I'm to believe he was worried about some other international law, as if legal advisors guided his decisions?
My point being that whatever Churchill did in response to a genocidal maniac who murdered over 10 million people and relentlessly tried to overtake his British homeland in a quest to literally dominate the world with his brand of insanity, I forgive him. Maybe you'd have maintained your composure better than Churchill, but I don't see that necessarily as a virtue.
The points I think to learn is that we weren't heroes, or if we were, more anti-heroes. I don't forgive Churchill for wilfully targeting innocents; I do prefer Churchill over Hitler though.
Second is that targeting civilians hasn't been effective in breaking moral. If you're going to do it, it apparently takes a nuke. But that's problematic for other reasons so really : don't target civilians.
A hero needn't be perfect. I'm not looking for a messiah, just someone to free the innocent who have been damned to torture, abuse, and death.
I wasn't in Churchill's head, so I can't say whether his bombings were designed as much to break morale as much as it was to exact revenge. You may not consider revenge the holiest of concepts, but it's understandable, forgivable, and can be argued even as ethical, assuming how you wish to interpret Kantian retributivism. When someone hits you back after an unprovoked attack, asking him "whatever did I do to deserve this" really doesn't gain you much sympathy.
That requires technology they didnt have.
Nice to have a history discussion.
What is true that Hitler wasn't a proponent of strategic bombing and didn't put the effort on long range bombers. Hitler's army was focused on the land force, obviously because of the geography of the country. This can be seen from the total lack of four-engine long bombers in the Luftwaffe. What is notable that in 1935 the American B-17 (12 700 built) flew for the first time, the Liberator in 1939 (with over 18 000 built) and even the heavy Lancaster bomber flew in 1941 (7 000+ built).
Germany relied on medium bombers, which there weren't so many. Most produced bomber was the Ju-88 with 15 000 bombers, yet it was a medium range twin engined medium-bomber. Now the German equivalent long range bomber that was twin engined the Heinkel He-177 Greif, first flown in late 1939, that had a production line of just 1 000 aircraft, while the Amerikabomber Me-264 was cancelled with just three prototypes made (first flight in 1942). The German long range bomber program simply failed. And after having attacked Russia basically Germany had it's hands full: the Luftwaffe was needed in everything and obviously the air war lead to a situation that Germany had to focus on fighter aircraft (nearly 34 000 Me-109 and over 20 000 Fw-190 fighters built). When the Western allies were only in contact with the axis in Africa, it is understandable that the air war took center stage. A bit different if there wouldn't be the English channel, but the panzers could invade Britain through a land route. Hence the focus of bombers isn't just a choice of following blindly Douhet's strategy.
Yet if Hitler thought so at the start of the Battle of Britain, we should not that he did have other thoughts later, but simply not the capability. In a similar fashion one might note that Hitler didn't use the vast amount of chemical weapons at his disposal, as he thought the allies would have similar amounts, which they actually didn't have. If we forget the use of one very infamous pesticide.
Quoting Benkei
Yeah, once the other side has done it, that makes it justifiable. Yet a weapon system like the V2, successful in hitting a target as large as London is hardly a weapon of pinpoint accuracy. And when you call them reprisal weapons you hardly take humanity into consideration.
I'm mainly just confused about why you would make such shit up. No, they didnt do as well contemporary bombers. They 1940s technology and they flew in the dark.
Quoting Benkei
No, he most certainly wasn't. :lol:
The most intensive bombing of Dresden was by the USA, not the British.
Again it's debatable whether Churchill can be labelled a war criminal. War is war, particular strategies in real time are complicated with many factors being considered. The real criminal in any war is usually the one who starts it, or insights it in the first place.
Not to me it is. You must be either English or American to have confusing morals about purposefully targeting civilians.
As I said, we fought for the right reasons but still committed war crimes.
Maybe it would be a topic for another thread, but I dont see how you could say any treaties would have been in force during ww2. It wasnt a gentlemanly disagreement. It was all out slugfest.
And without treaties, all you have is jungle. From my angle, it's incredibly naive not to recognize that.
That simply isn't true.
For starters, all sides did take prisoners of war. Even if treated most inhumanely (especially by the Japanese and the Russians by the Germans), enemy soldiers were still prisoners of war. Not terrorists or unlawful combatants, capable to dealt like spies. Shot the next morning after interrogation.
In the German case the tactics have to be understood from it's ideological base. Russians and Poles were untermenschen while British, (white) Americans or Nordic people were not considered as so (if a slightly inferior race). Norwegians and Finns (the so-call Nordic race) so lightly that Germans were permitted to marry them. And this is directly seen in the actions of the Wehrmacht and just how the fighting and the war was different in the Eastern front as in the West.
Just to give an example, when my country brokered an armistice with the Soviet Union and had then to fight the Germans (who just weeks ago had helped to repell the Soviet attack), suddenly the Finnish civilian population of Northern Finland found itself under a new enemy. And how did the German forces react? Basically they made a fighting withdrawal to Norway and burned down every town, blew the bridges and mined everything. And the population? The rather small population of Lapland were let to take refuge in Sweden, sometimes even with the Germans assisting the move to the Swedish border. The later depictions of SS troops shooting Sami people simply isn't true.
In short we have to acknowledge those actions that indeed were war crimes, but should not use a large paint brush and declare everyone a war criminal.
"The singular term Geneva Convention usually denotes the agreements of 1949, negotiated in the aftermath of the Second World War"
Ok I'm back. WTF do you want? :halo:
The US didnt have to obviously. Did the British do that on purpose?
It doesnt look like they did.
[quote=Peter Hitchens]
Are all other horrors of war so eclipsed by the Holocaust that we no longer have any usable scale by which we can condemn them? Can we condemn them as much as they ought (in my view) to be condemned without being falsely accused of equating them with the Holocaust?
[/quote]
Is the motivation for defending Britain's deliberate bombing of civilians that giving even an inch to those who condemn it would be seen to moderate one's uncompromising opposition to everything the Nazis did and stood for? I don't understand it otherwise. And even this motivation is difficult to understand except as a thoughtless kneejerk reaction. It seems to me that your moral authority is only enhanced by facing up to the crimes perpetrated by your own side. After all, if anything you do can be justified by "but Nazis" then you don't have much of a morality at all.
As for the idea that condemning the bombings excuses or diminishes the atrocities of the Nazis, I just find it bizarre. Note that British historians right across the political spectrum condemn the actions. Not all would label it as a war crime, but none of them, as far as I know, think that the earth-shattering horror of the Holocaust makes everything the Allies did somehow all right.
Myself, I also hesitate to label it as a war crime, partly because I'm simply uncomfortable, unlike Benkei, with a legalistic framing of such things, even if I can admit that international law has its place, given that we do live in a war-torn world. But to me, the law here would seem to me just to normalize the war, and to simplify it, to isolate specific actions that have to be understood in context, etc. Anyway, that's beside the point. The point being that killing those people was an inexcusable evil.
To condemn the targeting of innocent people, who included children, the old, and the sick--to say it was evil, as I do, is not to say that the war effort was evil, that RAF personnel were evil, or even that Harris or Churchill were evil--and it is not to draw an equivalency between the bombing and the exterminations carried out by the Nazis.
Would any Allied action have been justified? Would it have been "yeah it was bad but we were fighting the Nazis" if the Allies had, after liberation, continued to use the concentration camps and death camps, this time to murder German people in exactly the same way as the Nazis used them? People who were not in any sense responsible for the Nazis? Would you simply shout "Payback" in that case too? (As it happens, the Soviets did continue to use the camps for a while, especially for political prisoners, though not to gas people)
Peter Hitchens is an extremely unfashionable conservative but he has a lot of good stuff to say about the issue:
[quote=Peter Hitchens]
I get into no end of trouble for my position on this. I am told that I am unpatriotic, even now, for discussing it or for being distressed by the extreme and horrible cruelties inflicted by our bombs on innocent women and children, who could not conceivably be held responsible for Hitler’s crimes. On the contrary, I believe it is the duty of a proper patriot to criticize his country where he believes it to have done wrong.
I am told I am defaming the memory of the bomber crews. I have never done so, and never will. They had little idea of what they were doing, died terrible deaths in terrible numbers thanks to the ruthless squandering of life by their commanders, and showed immense personal courage. It is those who, knowing what was being done, ordered them into battle that I blame.
I am told that I am equating our bombing of Germany with the German mass murder of the Jews, when I would not dream of making such a comparison, never have done so and never will. I am told that I am excusing the mass murder of the Jews, when nothing could ever excuse it and I should certainly never attempt to do so. Is it still necessary to say that two wrongs do not make a right, and that one horribly wrong thing may be worse than another horribly wrong thing, and yet they may both still be horribly wrong, examined by themselves as actions?
[/quote]
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/02/the-bombing-files-arguments-against-the-raf-bombing-of-german-civilians-summed-up.html
I prefer the expressions of artists like Vonnegut, who was in Dresden when it was bombed, or Kiefer, who grew up playing in the rubble. It's more raw, less like a condemnation from a distance, and more about entering all the emotions involved in coming to terms with what we're capable of.
Sorry, misread it.
Have to say this, in the 19th Century those laws of war or basically civilized conduct was followed many times far more as during our more "civilized" times. It is especially after the slaughter of WW1, the extensive propaganda effort to dehumanize the enemy and the ideological charge to the war effort that changed the way we look at war. With WW2 it turned even worse. As I've said earlier, the only modern conflict where rules of war were followed by both sides was the conflict on remote islands in the Southern Atlantic between the UK and Argentina.
Yet we naturally emphasis brutal tactics that the Imperialist nations dealt with native populations and totally disregard that actually Victorian manners did also surface in the manners in the warfighting of the British. There are so many examples of how totally differently belligerents interacted back then that we would have difficulty to relate to a time when officers were likely aristocrats. Who would think today that if the British Army captured enemy officers that would be taken to the British Isles to be prisoners of war, these officers would be then let free to travel inside the country if they give their word of honor not to try to escape? That kind of reality isn't going to come back.
(The White flag in war isn't actually for surrender, but for negotiation, ceasefire or truce and it's use comes from Ancient Times as Tacitus mentions it. White flag signifies to all that an approaching negotiator is unarmed, with possibly an intent to surrender, but also a desire to communicate. Persons carrying or waving a white flag are not to be fired upon, nor are they allowed to open fire. Today we assume that these codes of conduct will not be followed and at best that the person wants just to surrender. Progress?)
Anyway, the attack on Churchill is basically done to get a response from the British public who have a positive view of the person. If we delve into commands given to the Bomber command or US Army Air Force and discuss how the given orders were in relation to then current rules of war, the discussion will interest just a few armchair military historians. So better to attack Churchill to get a media frenzy in the UK.
There seems to be what I'll call a "combatant's exception," where we allow some degree of excuse (or at least we mitigate our evaluation of the severity of the infraction) when the person committing the act is in the heat of battle. It's for that reason that court martials are notoriously lenient. If a soldier fires off too many rounds after fighting for his life, we tend to allow for some degree of overkill (literally). You see the same with the current shootings by police, although those have been called into question because the concern is the overkill is not motivated by uncontrollable emotion, but by racism. This exception would also apply to those in the command center, not just on the ground, so it could apply to Churchill as well. This exception appears to be acknowledged by both you and @Benkei. You've stated that you're not willing to call the bombings of Berlin a war crime and Benkei specifically stated he did not see a moral equivalence between the Nazi crimes and the crimes of Churchill.
Whether this combatant's exception is an unethical and unjustified kneejerk response, I don't think it is. A Kantian analysis allows for retribution, and it ignores consequentialist concerns. As Benkei pointed out, targeting civilians does not damage morale and serves no military purpose, but that is irrelevant if one is conducting a Kantian ethical analysis and not a Utilitarian one. The question would be whether the attack of enemy, which includes civilian attacks, is a proportionate response to whatever preceded it. I tend to think the pain doled out on civilian populations by the Nazis leaves them in a difficult position to argue that they were being disproportionately punished by the bombings over Germany. The last place a Nazi would wish to find himself is in a court guided by the principles of retributivism. I'd also point out that this Kantian analysis is consistent with other Western ethical theories (see, for example, 1 Samuel 15:2-3).
All of this is to say that the acceptance of Churchill's behavior as ethical is not just a kneejerk reaction, but it does have a philosophically arguable basis and it is embedded in the historical moral conscience through culturally accepted sacred documents (to the extent that matters).
Additionally, I entirely disagree with Benkei's assessment that Churchill was not a hero even if I were to agree that the bombings of civilian German targets was entirely unjustified. I can easily divide Churchill's dogged refusal to submit to the Nazi onslaught and his unrelenting effort to protect his island and the greater Western world on the one hand from with his decision to bomb civilian targets on the other. That one saves humanity on Monday and engages in acts of depravity on Tuesday doesn't make me reassess their heroism on Monday. It simply means that I get a trophy when I'm the champion, and I get relegated when I go winless.
Agreed.
Quoting Hanover
But in what sense was it the Nazis who were being punished? I think in no sense at all, but I suppose you have another view. I think I could accept your interpretation of Kantian retributive justice as it applies to war (which I think is controversial, but never mind) without accepting that incinerating innocent Germans amounted to retribution against the Nazis.
Quoting Hanover
I have a slightly different view of Churchill, but I'm happy to go along with this here, and I think I made it more or less explicit in my mention of Churchill. My post was not aiming towards a reassessment of Churchill as a leader, a person, a hero, or whatever. Rather, it was a plea for the acknowledgement of all acts of depravity.
I think the original point of Benkei's that you objected to was this: "The Blitz still targeted docks and war effort manufacturing. It was Churchill who went for the jugular." The thing is, in the context of Britain and Germany's bombing of each other, this is a fact. That you took Benkei to be implying a general equivalency is partly why I accused you of kneejerk reaction.
My own position on this question is about the same for Stalin as for Churchill: the cause of fighting the Nazis was a good one, and we can be thankful that they were victorious, and they certainly had personal qualities that helped the Allies win, but to call them heroes doesn't seem right to me. Most Russians are proud of their victory against the Nazis, but they're mostly not very enamoured of Stalin himself.
Of course, it's fair to say that unlike Churchill, Stalin had signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler and only joined the Allies because Hitler broke it. But I don't think Churchill's motivations were much more noble, old-fashioned imperialist that he was.
In case it's not obvious, I'm not saying Churchill's crimes were as bad as Stalin's.
But isn't it always a matter of degree of responsibility that the citizens have for their leader's actions as opposed to offering the citizens full absolution? It's not as if the citizens are nothing more than loyal fans cheering on their football team to victory without expectation of personal consequence should they win, or should they lose. It is a reasonable expectation that if my government rounds up millions of innocent people for the slaughter that there might be some horrible consequence to myself if the tides turn and comeuppance is sought. So, I do offer some degree of complicity to the average citizen, but certainly not as much as to those carrying out the commands and certainly much less than to those issuing the commands. As the bombs fell over Berlin, the curses from the ground should have been directed at Hitler first and foremost. The rest of their curses should have been directed at perhaps Churchill, but quite possibly themselves, depending upon their level of acquiescence to the actions of their government.
Demanding that each citizen answer for their silence, their acquiescence, and their complicity would make the ethical violations of their leaders more difficult to execute. I'm really having some amount of difficulty hearing the cries of the German citizens over the cries of those who were executed by their government. Maybe my sentiment is unrefined and illogical somewhere, but surely it's understandable and not entirely wrongheaded.
Quoting jamalrob
My objection to @Benkei's comment is that it implies (at least to my ears) that at least Hitler kept his attacks within the purview of international law, but it was Churchill who rampantly killed without justification or basis. My comment that followed was that there was nothing at least about Hitler. To the extent he limited his bombings to military targets wasn't because he wanted to keep the war nice and clean and strategic. What he wanted to do was exact the most possible damage on the centralized forces as he could so that he could get his boots on the ground and purge the land of non-Aryans. Hitler was going for the jugular, trying to kill the whole organism. Churchill was at worst lashing about in revenge, but he never did as Hitler would have and tried to wipe out all Anglo blood from the German soil.
This is confused on various levels. If war is amoral, what were the Nazis guilty of? An argument for convenience.
The 1907 The Hague Convention stipulates clearly civilian targets were off limits. The bombing of Dresden concerned a city the size of Manchester, that had no military value and was more or less undefended and crammed with refugees fleeing the Russians.
Nagasaki and Hiroshima is the same story but also includes the brutal consequences of radiation poisoning. Those were even worse.
The laws at the time were clear. The morality is even clearer.
Quoting tim wood
Oh? So weird. Was Germany on trial in Nuremberg then?
Specifically with respect to the Battle of Britain this was true. And this only concerns the way war was waged, Hitler was still the aggressor which means everything that followed was unjust.
In the end, I can't refer to someone like Churchill or Truman as heroes. They only have the moral high ground because "well, at least they weren't as bad as Hitler". That's like saying the murderer wasn't so bad because at least he didn't rape his victim.
Assuming international law is not an authority on morality and assuming retribution is a valid militaristic response to an unprovoked attacked, do you agree that Churchill was justified in bombing Dresden?
I'm just seeing if you agree with my logical conclusions if you assumed my foundational beliefs. If you do, then I've least deciphered the origin of our disagreement.
My view and the view in my country would be a bit different, of course.
If it wouldn't have been for Stalin, would a hopeless experiment like the Soviet Union persisted? No, and there are a multitude of similar examples that Marxism-Leninism needs strong dictators to survive.
Yet Russians love their country regardless of the moral righteousness that we at the present judge now the past. It's actually the Americans who see things from a viewpoint of moral rectitude, or at least want to. At least the British have (or had) this collective experience of actual war with German air raids. For the Russians the war is even more present. The modern Russian will admit Stalin was a dictator and the gulags existed, but that wouldn't tarnish their view of the Great Patriotic war. He and she does know that the system sucked, but still has a lot of pride in Juri Gagarin being the first man in space.
There actually is no problem in this view.
I think there is a problem with people identifying as "Russian" or "American". It makes as much sense as "Northern Hemispheran". Being proud to be a northerner. I think a comprehensive response to 9/11 will involve getting people to think of themselves as individuals rather than as a member of some race/religion/sex/nationality or any other form of aggregation.
Correction. Ideological groupings are appropriate. E.g. anti-rapists.
Well, everything in your post is consistent with the post of mine that you replied to, and I agree with you.
Well, what does that scale look like in the case of these bombings? Does it go by age and ability, with infants and the mentally disabled being the least responsible, and capable adults being the most responsible? Maybe it's intersectional, such that we can use social class as well: the industrial working class were down at the bottom end of the scale (because they were overwhelmingly anti-Nazi), and Protestant small-businessmen and farmers were at the top (the Nazis' support base)? Even if this were a reasonable scheme for the apportioning of responsibility, the bombings made no such distinctions (although I'm pretty sure they didn't bomb many farmers).
The sense in which some civilians in a war might be regarded as to some degree responsible for the actions of their government is, I suppose, that some of them fully approve of its aims and actions. But, even aside from the presumption of civilian innocence enshrined in international law, in Germany, most of them did not. It was a totalitarian regime that had seized power through a combination of minority support, terrorizing the electorate, and destroying the massively popular anti-Nazi parties and their unions. After the seizure of power, the scope for resistance shrunk to nothing, if one discounts those actions that were suicidal.
Quoting Hanover
But you don't have to choose between them. They are not competing for your sympathy unless you see every civilian victim merely as a representative of the Nazis, on one side, or of the victims of Nazism on the other. To hear the cries of the Germans is not to sympathise with Nazis or belittle their victims. Quite the opposite.
So yes, I do think you're entirely wrongheaded.
Retribution on civilian populations, or to make it morally clear - innocent people - is never a valid response. So no. I don't think the bombing of Dresden das justified in any way, shape or form especially when you dive into the reasoning of Bomber Command (which wasn't retribution to begin with).
Says the person with the NATO flag avatar.
This illustrates the fact that some kinds of aggregation can be in opposition to others. One of the most interesting examples is Islamism vs nation-states, which is one of the fundamental dimensions of what some call the Islamic civil war (the other main one is Sunni vs Shia).
"Says the person with the NATO flag avatar."
Yes, but I consider NATO to represent the *ideology* of secular capitalist liberal democracy (aka "free world") rather than being an arbitrary geographical area. That is why I fly the NATO flag even though Australia is not part of NATO. Getting Americans to see themselves as part of a wider community, and wave the NATO flag instead of the American flag, is to me part of the comprehensive response to 9/11.
The beauty of 9/11 was that it cut across nation-states forcing the US to respond to every hostile individual and every hostile idea instead of just dealing with governments.
Basically we now have ideas competing rather than nation-states competing. Well, the Cold War was also ideas competing and also cut across nation states. The heavy weaponry was held by nation-states which were sometimes taken over by the communist ideology.
Well the subject of this thread is "liberal imperialism". Is that classified as an attempted replacement and do you think it works well?
What do you think of the US military putting down a coup attempt in the Philippines in 1989? It seems to me that this should be used as the basis for the world in the long term. All they needed to do was to buzz some air bases and the coup was defeated. One day it may be US air bases that are being buzzed by NATO forces operating from Canada.
I'm not sure if it could be classed as a replacement. Traditional imperialism, with settler colonialism and all that, was still fundamentally tied to the nation-state, and perhaps it's the same now. In any case no, I don't think it works well. See my various posts in this discussion.
As for the Philippines, I'm confused as to what your point is. Its history doesn't seem to be a good advert for American interference.
It's a ridiculously light touch required to have a democracy instead of a dictatorship in the Philippines. I think it's the best intervention ever. ECOWAS in Gambia was also very good. I think interventions like this are much better than letting some thug take over and calling it an "internal matter" that we shouldn't interfere with.
At the end of the war USAAF was running out of targets, so they were also targeting individual houses. And I remember Chuck Yeager in his memoirs telling that they got orders designating a small patch of land in Germany to each fighter, where they should attack everything that moved. At least in his memoirs Yeager told that they thought the order to be so bonkers, that they just flew around and left the rare civilian driving his bicycle alone.
I've been thinking about this some more, and I think that when the US acts as part of a coalition, it would seem to be a pure ideological movement. And spreading democracy is a far cry from colonialism. Again it is just spreading the ideology of freedom.
Do you have any issue with ECOWAS liberating Gambia?
Would you be more ready to liberate other places (like Iran) if it was an ECOWAS-led operation? Or Philippines-led? Or Australian-led?
Maybe we can negotiate a solution.
And the "details" I was referring to was how bombing worked in WWII, which is irrelevant if we have documented evidence that the decision to bomb Dresden was to attack civilians in hopes of weakening morale and causing an uprising against Hitler.
But you've made it abundantly clear you think he's a hero, which is the same type of moral blindspot neo-nazi's have with regards to Hitler. Hitler was just defending a down trodden nation and people who were unjustly extorted by their neighbours after WWI. Poland had stolen land, the French had stolen land and the reparation pays were devastating. Hitler was a hero! Never mind he gassed millions of Jews because he stood up for his people!
Just curious, would you include FDR in this list? The war in the Pacific was absolutely brutal and the soldiers and high command for all intents and purposes operated under a "take no prisoners" attitude for much of the war. On the other hand the Japanese were known for fake surrendering.
Also, lest I forget, a war of aggression is also a war crime. So in fact they were prosecuted for war.
I don't know enough about that part of the war to tell you. I have to look up the rules for POWs again to see if there's any exceptions possible. I can't imagine that you're obligated to take prisoners in the middle of an assault.
Morally I think it would depend if the Japanese fake surrendered first and "take no prisoners" was a reaction to that. I don't see a moral imperative in that scenario to take prisoners if that means seriously risking the lives of US soldiers. If fake surrendering was a reaction to take no prisoners, then I don't see any fault with the Japanese. It also depends on what he knew and what he ordered to do.
The way that POWs were treated on both sides of that conflict would be completely inexcusable in 2020/according to modern conventions. There was just very bad blood on both sides - both sides were fed vicious propaganda about the other and the horrific Japanese treatment of prisoners was well known to the Americans. Only around 60% of Americans survived Japanese captivity.
My point is while the way that the Japanese treated their POWs and captured civilian populations was obviously inexcusable and no one tries to defend that, the way the Americans dealt with the Japanese could quite brutal as well and cannot be justified according to modern standards of morality. I think it's a mistake to try.
If we are to hold our leaders during that time period to modern standards virtually all of them fall gravely short. I'm not entirely sure what the upshot of that is though: Does it mean that they're monsters? How harshly should we judge them?
EDIT: My understanding with the killing of POWs was that it was often just inconvenient/annoying to transport and keep watch over them, not that they were really a threat.
Likely not.
There just is going to be many regional power plays as basically old allies (and rivals) of the US would start shuffling their cards to the new reality. Simply the large vacuum left from retreating Uncle Sam just by momentum has to be filled.
Just like, uh, already is happening in the Middle East. Because let's face it, the last US President that had control of the Middle East was the older George Bush. Getting countries like Syria to be on the side of the US alliance (when Syria had shot down US Navy jets just some years earlier) is a feat a genuine Superpower can pull off. From there it has been downhill. So don't be too melodramatic about it.
Bye bye!
In a response I was writing in another thread I was going to compare Stalin, Churchill, Hitler, and Roosevelt, drawing the conclusion that Hitler was categorically worse than Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt. I changed my mind because I figured that someone like you would say they were all guilty. Which, of course, they were -- just not of the same crimes and not under the same circumstances. I've read about Stalin's various crimes, and can think of several things for which FDR could be found guilty. But Churchill? I'd appreciate your pointing out his crimes. The books I've read and the films I've seen about Churchill were all pretty positive. I admit a bias from insufficient study.
While granting the Big Four were all guilty, I'm not willing to concede that their crimes were all equal. Stalin has crimes to his credit that happened before Operation Barbarossa, and continued after WWII came to an end. What are the major counts against Roosevelt? The Manhattan Project (atomic bomb)? Japanese Internment? What? Churchill?
As for "Joe Biden: Accelerated Liberal Imperialism" hasn't imperialism, liberal or otherwise, been US policy, more or less, since the get go? (Earlier eras of imperialism maybe shouldn't be described as "liberal".)
Imperialism tends to be such a good thing for the imperialists, be they Belgian, Dutch, German, Russian, English, French, Italian, American, Spanish, Japanese or Chinese--whosever--it's hard to imagine potential imperialists foregoing the opportunities. If they could be imperialists, why wouldn't they?
Since the beginning, has any country's leadership ever said: "We could become fabulously rich by taking over and exploiting those shit hole territories over there; but, you know, imperialism is just wrong, and we wouldn't want to become wealthy by doing something that moralists would consider distasteful." ????
I don't think so. (We can exclude countries from consideration that lack/ed the wherewithal to conquer Monaco, let alone seize a large slice of a continent.)
So long as the funding to the ANA is not cut, they should be able to manage with or without international boots on the ground. It would be good if the Afghan Air Force could go to somewhere like Turkey to be trained though, in the absence of foreign trainers in Afghanistan.
It will be interesting to see if the Taliban has increased difficulty getting recruits because they can no longer claim there is a non-Muslim occupier.
I hope that if something goes wrong and the ANA need external assistance again, that the coalition will come back instead of standing idly by watching the Taliban beating women with sticks.
The coalition has already done something miraculous - installed democracy by force of arms in a place that has no history of democracy. There were plenty of people who said that was physically impossible. The hard work has already been done. All that is required now is money to the Afghan government so that they can afford their huge security forces.
Exactly. I made my case and you continue to hero worship a war criminal. Just like neo-nazis do with Hitler.
This is a misrepresentation obviously but requires you to read carefully. I'm not going through the motions again, it's all in my previous posts.
"I pledge allegiance to use my brain to fight subjugation of my species - do you?"
All guilty but that doesn't make them equally bad. I'm not sure Hitler was categorically worse than Stalin. But that has more to do with the sheer number of deaths Stalin caused and how to weigh that against attempted genocide. Also, as far as I know (and I just googled it) it was Truman who ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are clear cases of war crimes. Roosevelt was President until april 1945. Roosevelt can join the list though considering his involvement in the Dresden bombing.
The best example of Churchill's war crimes is the Dresden bombing. The internal RAF memo:
While Dresden had a few weapons factories, there was no attempt at precision bombing but instead they purposefully and indiscriminately attacked civilians. Moreover, the industrial sites and military barracks were outside the city centre. Those and important bridges weren't even targeted (not missed, really not targeted), which gives the lie to the ex post facto defenses of Dresden being a military target. It was already clear the Germans were losing against the Russian advance so the bombing was also unnecessary. Churchill and Roosevelt had already concluded that Stalin would become a problem and this is what informed the "show the Russians" what we can do. Based on The Hague and Geneva conventions the US and UK had signed up to, this was a war crime.
You've yet to explain Putin's vast wealth. Please proceed to do so.
The label "cartoonish" is an attempt to fool readers, or perhaps just yourself, that characterizing a claim is equivalent to defeating that claim. Such an effort is fairly labeled "high schoolish", and unsuitable for the owner of a philosophy forum, who one would think might be making an attempt to model the kind of thinking and writing one would like to see more of.
I didn't say that "Putin is merely a gangster out for himself". You said that, and then attributed the claim to me. His regime is bleeding the Russian people dry, and he is building more palaces for himself, but we agree that's not the only thing he's doing. He's invading his neighbors for example, which as best I can tell you've expressed no complaint with.
Here's the core problem of this thread. A number of members wish to present themselves as sophisticated commentators on the geo-political situation, but they don't even know the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, thus rendering all the rest of their blabber without any credibility at all.
This is a common problem in philosophy. Immature thinkers will often feel their value can be measured by how complex and sophisticated their statements are. In time they hopefully learn that the point of this process is to get to the simplest possible bottom line by the shortest path possible.
PLEASE NOTE: I said nothing about perfect guys, as there has never been such a thing and most likely never will be. Good guys and bad guys is a relative concept, as it always is when describing any human beings.
The question is, who is most likely to assist in building peace and freedom, and who is least likely to do so?
America invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, invested huge amounts of money in to the attempt to make these better places, and now we are voluntarily leaving.
Putin invaded Ukraine, is doing nothing to improve what he has stolen, and he ain't leaving until somebody kicks him out.
The failure of so many members of this philosophy forum to grasp the overwhelmingly obvious difference between such good guys and bad guys is truly pathetic. It makes me embarrassed to have invested so much time in such a juvenile operation.
You couldn't stay away though, could you? :rofl:
But you managed it for a week, which is more than I can do, so well done. Now see if you can manage a month, or even a year! I for one will be praying for your success, and I'm not even religious.
Ciao, and good luck!
Seeing the world in good and bad is the actual philosophical failure here, allowing for no nuance or reflection.
Paul Edwards seems a good example of someone qualified to discuss this particular topic. Paul clearly understands that there are good guys and bad guys, and that the bad guys represent a clear threat to everything we hold dear. Paul is not at all confused about any of this, and the intellectual and moral clarity he demonstrates makes the rest of what he has to say worth considering.
Please note that I've been happy to disagree with Paul on tactical issues (in the Iraq war thread he started), and he has agreeably accepted such challenges and replied with his own. Such debate is entirely constructive. Paul doesn't know an air war against the Iranian regime would work, and I don't know that it wouldn't. So it's good to have opposing notions come in to constructive conflict so that additional light might be shed upon the options. Neither of us are afraid to be challenged.
My point is that it's not possible to have constructive debate with anyone who can't tell the difference between good guys and bad guys. And when when such ignorance is being hard sold by the mod team, the supposed "leaders" of the forum, we are traveling beyond the absurd. To the degree I've attempted to engage in such a ridiculous process, that's my own typoholic disease speaking, which I can blame on no one else of course.
I like it. If I could do that, maybe I wouldn't be here.
Plenty of nuance and reflection is possible once one has reached clarity on the bottom line. The problem with your posts is that you offer lots of nuance and reflection etc built upon a foundation of a fundamental confusion. That is, on this particular topic, you are an immature thinker, confusing a big pile of data, nuance and reflection etc with clarity.
If your ego wasn't so wound up in fantasy moral superiority poses you would likely be able to see the simplicity of such clarity. If Saddam moves in next door to you and screams start coming from the house, Saddam is the bad guy, and you are the good guy, the civilized neighbor. And as the good guy you would immediately call the police, knowing as you do that the police are imperfect human beings carrying guns.
Paul gets this. You don't.
When you do get it, you might become an interesting commentator on such subjects.
Hi Hippyhead. Thanks for the kind words. Like someone else said, we should start a website together. But you haven't responded to my PM.
Quoting Benkei
I don't really care about the agreements. I'm talking about the actual treatment of POWs. The "standards of the time" was the actual treatment, not whatever legal standards states happened to sign or whatever standards were outlined in legal documents. I understand that the US and Germany had legitimate POW agreements that were by and large followed, but this was not the case in the Pacific.
The conduct in the Pacific Theater would never, ever fly today.
Take away eleven zeros and he is just an ordinary man: 1. He will be first ever to take it all with him. 2. His family are big spenders. 3. He plans to give it all back
Kadri Liik of the ECFR explains this from, I think it's fair to say, a basically EU and NATO perspective:
[quote=Kadri Liik]
What Russia truly wants in terms of territory is a sphere of control in its neighbourhood – mainly, the six countries that lie between the EU and Russia and comprise what the EU calls its Eastern neighbourhood: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Moscow expects these countries to be sensitive to Moscow’s wishes; it wants to have the ability to manage, arbitrate, and veto their relations with the West, and to prevent the expansion of Western organisations into that part of the world, based on the assumption that any Western actions there should have Russia’s approval. What Moscow wants to avoid is the emergence of direct links and true closeness between the region’s countries and the West: that is why it bent over backwards in 2013 to prevent the association agreements with the EU from being signed.
And this is where the clash between Russia and Europe becomes fundamental and paradigmatic: it is impossible for the West to grant Russia such a sphere of control. The countries either have the right to choose their own arrangements and alliances, or they do not – there is no space in between, and this is not a question that can be managed with a wise compromise.
However, it is rarely understood that this paradigmatic disagreement extends far beyond this territory. What Russia really wants is a new international order, and new global – or at least European – rules of the game. It wants to do away with many of the basic concepts of what has been called the post-cold war liberal order: the emphasis on human rights, the possibility of regime changes and humanitarian interventions.
[...]
Russia’s view of the new world order that it desires is admittedly neither very developed nor sophisticated. But in essence, Moscow wants the West to give up on its vision of liberal international order and to return to conducting international affairs based on realpolitik. And because of this, the West and Russia are again locked in a conceptual standoff, not unlike that of the Cold War – this time, not over domestic models, but over the international order.[/quote]
https://ecfr.eu/article/commentary_what_does_russia_want_7297/
I no more approve of Russian realpolitik than I do of what I've been calling "liberal imperialism"--between Russia and the West I haven't taken sides and I don't feel compelled to do so--but I think this basic incompatibility of foreign policy aims is useful as a frame.
I think one also has to keep in mind Russia's habitual and well-known defensiveness, otherwise one will never understand that its actions in Ukraine and Crimea are largely a response to the encroachments of NATO and the provocations of the US. This is not to justify those actions, but to understand them.
Incidentally, there's an interesting paper that posits a domestic defensiveness--wielding the concept of defensive realism in international relations--to explain Putin's increasing authoritarianism at home:
[quote=Robert Person (Associate Professor of International Relations at the?United States Military Academy?in West Point, New York)]During the 17 years that Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia, the country has become increasingly authoritarian. However, I argue that this rollback of democracy has not been motivated by Putin's blind desire to maximize his political power, as many have assumed. Rather, his anti-democratic policies have responded to perceived specific threats to his control. In applying theories originally developed in the field of international relations to individual leaders, we can understand Putin as a “defensive realist” who balances against threats in order to maintain security rather than maximize power. This is an essential distinction that produces important conclusions about what motives lie behind the increasingly authoritarian character of the Russian state and gives insights into the possible future trajectory of the regime.[/quote]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879366516300239
This is super interesting. I was thinking about something along these lines today while daydreaming - that I seriously give very little shits about Russia as any kind of major world-level threat because at most - or rather, as it's overriding geopolitical ambition - it seems that they want to just secure their control over the old soviet bloc countries and ensure that they have a direct pipeline for oil into Western Europe without being undercut by intermediaries.
I was thinking in particular about a comparison to China - with Belt and Road making itself felt in every other country in the global south, and Chinese investment flooding the global north, coupled with a massive dispersal of actual Chinese people across the globe in a way that Russia can only dream of - like... Russia is small fry. It has nothing even close to that. The prominence of coverage that it gets over its actions is markedly outsized with respect to its ambition and capacity to actually project power outside a very limited geographic zone to it's west.
(Much to Putin's frustration, no doubt)
I think it's almost to Putin credit that he's made it seem as though Russia is a far bigger fry than it is. I think it helps too that the US likes to play Reds under the Bed every once in a while to stoke up nationalist ferver and keep them in focus (and off American domestic policy).
--
Also just to add a note now that I've said something vaguely substantial: those who want to use cartoon categories like 'good guys' and 'bad guys' to think about any of this stuff ought to go back to watching the Disney channel rather than commenting on this stuff. Like, fuck off back to the Dora the Explorer forums or something.
In this case, I heartily approve of your abusive language. :grin:
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
How is a treaty with a Chapter "Prisoners of War" not a "legitimate POW agreement"? Or the 1929 Geneva Convention III titled "relative to the treatment of prisoners of war"?
I understand that legal standards existed but whether the nations signed to them or not, they were not followed in the Pacific theater. I was just wondering whether you'd consider FDR a war criminal due to this, and if so, is there any conclusion beyond that that we should be drawing?
I'm not trying to defend FDR here. FDR is an icon for the American left though. I'm not even trying to push a certain view here - a part of me obviously wishes affairs in the Pacific could have been more humanitarian, but on the other hand I understand that was a completely different time period and that I'm so far removed from the actual situation in my warm home and comfy chair. There were American war crimes in the European theater as well that went completely unpunished. No one should try to white-wash them, but on the other hand excessive criticism comes off as suspect. How we ought to view these crimes is an interesting topic.
Think so?
If last May the Taliban controlled 75 districts and the Taleban had roughly about 60,000 full-time Taliban militants and some 90,000 seasonal fighters, it means that it's quite alive and kicking. 60 000 insurgents means that the counter-insurgency war is anything but won. The Afghan security forces lose nearly 1000 troops a month (see here).
Knowing something about history, the US was never near beating the Taleban. Besides, the Taleban could always withdraw to Pakistan and then come back. Hence the Doha agreement was in truth realism from the Trump administration.
The few things Trump got right.
(The US making an agreement with the Taleban in Doha. Not something the Trump supporters eagerly display like the Israeli - Gulf State relationship normalizations.)
I do think Russian bombing in Syria has been de-emphasized here though, which is Putin’s worst crime in the past decade. You can squeeze in a realist interpretation in this too to an extent, but not as much as for Ukraine. So I think the bounds are a bit more than Eastern Europe.
Yes, that occurred to me, good point. Maybe I'll get around to dealing with that.
Your sentiments would make more sense if there was a global government. Without that, theres no social contract to support intervention and no taxation (on loudmouth Dutch people) to provide structure post intervention.
There's also a touch of condescension to it that's a downer
Globalist efforts are back on the table. For instance, listen to the “great reset” nonsense from the World Economic Forum, or Agenda 2030 from the UN. I suspect that with Biden as president the US will take back its role as the neoliberal spearhead.
My theory is that there are forces in human life that lead to unity and forces that divide. Global unity would require a crest of the former and a great weakening of the latter.
I think it would require a new global religion. Biden's personality is just a grain of sand in that ocean.
As for the Dresden (or Hamburg, Tokyo...) fire bombing, the 'total war' approach to civilians was tried out in WWI. The level of mechanization and air power in in the 1914-18 conflict didn't allow for the kind of devastating attack that was possible 20 some years later.
So let's discuss creating these things so that there is a contract in place to make everyone care about Iraqi women being raped by their own government.
The NATO coalition would be a good place to start. It requires unanimity for decision-making. It only allows secular capitalist liberal democracies in. It's reach could spread beyond the North Atlantic to allow Australia et al in.
Ok, so create one! I've made an attempt here.
Let me know when you think Iraqi women being raped by their own government and Iraqi men having their tongues cut out is a serious issue worth addressing.
The CIA equivalent here is "ASIO". And no, I don't trust ASIO to respond properly to the rape of Iraqi women, or indeed to Americans jumping out of skyscrapers. I think you have brought up some very interesting points that need to be explored in the free marketplace of ideas, and I wish you would expand on them. And I'd like to see your response to my suggestions. I'd like to see Hippyhead's thoughts too.
Too bad one of those things has to spoil the great civilization that the other three together would make.
Part of the comprehensive response to 9/11 is to get people like you to stop running the same absurd social experiment on multiple countries at the same time, instead of testing your theories on one small island at a time, voluntarily (like Venezuela did), and without accompanying human rights abuses and lying about the results.
It hasn't been failing. It's the best system we actually know of. Any time someone tries out a different system it only ever makes things worse. Your different take on the same data is why we need to have an ideological war, an all-encompassing ideological war, in response to 9/11.
How many GiB of RAM did your computer have 40 years ago? We've had massive improvements in standard of living thanks to our capitalist economy. Note also that capitalism is the *natural* form of trade (no-one in charge of setting prices) so it's not surprising that that is the best system we know of to date.
Again, I'm sure you've got your pet idea which is guaranteed to work and be better than what we have now, and it's a crying shame that no-one has implemented it to date. I'm not against trying out kooky experiments just for laughs, but as I said, please try them out on a small island, or even better, a hippy farm, without human rights abuses, and without lying about the results.
Most of my generation have barely any hope of ever paying off a home. Two generations ago a man my age who wasn’t well on his way to that goal would have been a complete failure. I’d gladly trade some GiB of RAM for a real house of my own, one I could raise a family in. We have a lot of cheap fancy toys now, but the actual necessities of life are increasingly out of reach for most people. That’s not progress, that’s failure.
Quoting Paul Edwards
“Capitalism” is not synonymous with “free market”. I never said anything against a free market. The social experiment that’s failing the world is the concentration of capital ownership in increasing fewer hands. That destroys the freedom of the market.
If you can’t even differentiate capitalism from a free market you’re not educated enough to be participating in this conversation.
Quoting Paul Edwards
They have actually, but then literal fascists destroyed it almost immediately. Funny thing that.
40 years ago personal computers were not a significant factor in most people's lives. Granted, the 1970s had seen significant progress in portable calculators. In 1971, our college library had a very impressive adding machine that used an electronic visual display. We kept it in a locked room. By 1976 we had card-reading calculators that were pocket sized, and they sat on a table in the library. We had access to a shared off-site mainframe computer (using a phone modem). Faster internet speeds were a bigger benefit than more RAM and faster CPUs. Of course, having all three is nicer than watching a B&W TV with an antenna. But in its day, remember, the B&W TV was a pretty big deal.
I happen to like technology, but tech stuff isn't what gave me a sense of quality-of-life. What did that was having enough money to exploit the opportunities of living in a big city (after growing up in Podunk). During the next 40 years I had the opportunity to watch as more and more people were finding it just a little harder every year to make ends meet, and maintain what they considered a nice lifestyle. After 40 years, the decline is significant.
No, it isn't that most people are starving or wearing ragged clothes. What you see are more people in a household working to maintain 'x' level'; you see more household debt; you see more rising balances on credit cards; you see rents rising beyond what a single occupant can afford (hence more adult roommates); you see large portions of the population unable to save for retirement. You see more deficits all over the place.
This lamentable state of affairs isn't due solely to capitalism. After all, people were doing much better during the post-WWII capitalist economic boom, which came to an end in the 1970s (triggered by OPEC's oil games). Lots of factors came into play, but one of them was neoliberalism and greed on the part of the ruling class, which decided that they needed more gold -- much more.
Ok, I'm not against doing something to address such issues, but I don't know how to solve that problem.
Note that under capitalism, sometimes monopolies form, which requires government intervention to break up the monopoly. For some reason the US government hasn't addressed the problem of Microsoft and IBM having respective monopolies. For decades I have been trying to address that problem myself, and you can see the result here. Maybe if you have any programmer friends who also dislike capitalist monopolies you can send them my way.
Perhaps in the long run the Chinese and Russian foreign policy is the smarter move; they are not investing much in military capabilities to project power across the globe. tTe USSR has recently experienced imperial overreach so Russia understands better what and how it got there. Possibly Russia and China are just waiting for the (inevitable?) decline of the US Empire.
I'd expect a forceful demand from China for Taiwan to rejoin and for the Japanese to handover the Senkaku Island followed by a full scale attack by China on Taiwan and occupation of the Senkaku Islands, the day the US is no longer the dominant super power. I don't think they'll go further than that. Could we do something about that and should we? How many deaths would a war cause compared to letting it just happen? Who would be involved? What's the risk this escalating into WWIII?
It would be good if people could see that it's Pax Free World rather than just an American venture. And this is already known by the name "Democratic Peace Theory" which can be found in Wikipedia. To that we need to add an aggressive campaign (preferably led by the likes of Tunisia or Iraq) to democratize the world while we are still in a strong position to topple assorted dictators.
Have you considered that corporate capitalism is actually the problem? Resulting, quite recently, in shifts to authoritarian leaders in "democracies" like Bolsonara, Trump, Victor Orban, Mateusz Morawiecki and the destruction of the Hong Kong democracy. This has only been possible with monied interests being either complicit (HK, Trump, Bolsonara) or acquiescing to it. In HK all the parliamentary seats appointed by "business" are pro-China, because that's where the money is. And granted the US stopped being a democracy some time ago and is already a full-blown plutocracy. Reagan was probably the nail in that coffin.
As Daniel Kelemen described:
Each one of those "leaders" of "democratic" countries are following this playbook and are in essence autocratic. They are not qualified to spread democracy to begin with. The more important point though, is that democracies don't seem to be able to survive under the pressures of corporate capitalism. So you are willing to murder millions of people - there are after all only 72 democracies in the world - to implement a system that will destroy itself as long as we continue to pursue corporate capitalism.
The democracy index only measures the following though:
The first thing to note is that the countries higher on the list are welfare States with strong social and governmental institutions and strong socialist political movements. And although all of them have their share of populist, authoritarian political players, those don't garner more than 20% support. If we want democracies to survive, they should be non-capitalist, social democracies.
The influence of big business is obvious. In HK 90% of voters voted for pro-democracy MPs. A clear majority over the Chinese appointed MPs but because the business appointed MPs voted pro-China, voters got shafted.
The US it's obvious for local influence by aflluent Americans on policies (see why the US is a plutocracy). And here's some conclusion with regard to influence by big corporations on foreign policy.
Once this is fixed we can start thinking about spreading democracy.
So you've gone from not being able to tell the difference between good and bad, to not being able to recognize the greatest force for freedom in the world since Pearl Harbor, even on a per-capita basis, as a democracy.
Again, I don't know how you manage to cross the road safely. "That's not a car, it's a squirrel".
I don't engage you because you're not qualified to take up my time, on this particular subject. On other subjects I remain open minded.
Yes, Russia only has enough nuclear weapons to destroy modern civilization in just a few minutes, an act they've come close to doing by accident at least a couple of times (as has the US), so why worry about them at all, as Russia couldn't possibly be any kind of major world level threat.
YEA!!!
Yea, Russia only has a big pile of hydrogen bombs they can deliver anywhere in the world in just a few minutes. Definitely a small fry little bit of nothing country.
At least one member is noticing how you consistently avoid explaining Putin's vast wealth to us.
https://www.newsweek.com/how-rich-vladimir-putin-us-senate-wants-know-russia-president-net-worth-1331458
Is that a US plot too?
And again, what you don't get, or aren't capable of getting, is that Putin's wealth is just the tip of the iceberg. Putin sits on top of a vast system of patronage with every level kicking a percentage of money stolen from the Russian people up to the next highest level.
And if you should shine a light on this vast theft, you mysteriously find yourself poisoned by some Soviet era chemical weapon.
You have to begin contributing here properly. I'll accept what you say about Putin's wealth if it makes you happy, but for the purposes of this discussion I don't really care about it. That Putin is a ruthless opportunistic silovarch (half siloviki, half oligarch) surrounded by others of the same kind is a point I have made myself, but right now I don't see the significance.
So please, just calm down and discuss things like a grown-up. There are other contributors to the thread who I disagree with but whose posts I wouldn't dream of deleting. You're not in that category so far.
Feel free to explain why I should bother. In my view, I'm showing the appropriate level of respect for this thread.
Quoting jamalrob
Don't accept what I say, learn it for yourself. Everything I'm saying is only a few clicks away on Google.
Could you perhaps link us to the discussions where you do care about it?
There is no conflict between Russia and the West. There is a conflict between the Russian regime and the West.
Quoting jamalrob
Increasing authoritarianism is a highly predictable property of gangster despots.
:rofl:
Read the Princeton study.
Read what I wrote. It's totally accurate.
Because you and they should be reading MY research, which concludes that the US is the greatest force for freedom in the world, even on a per-capita basis, and is one of the world's great democracies. At the same time you can learn to distinguish cars from squirrels so that you can cross the road safely.
The same thing preventing you from reading my research?
I remember reading a study done that concluded that imperialism was extremely expensive from the host country's point of view and the policy of imperialism didn't really make sense economically. It could really only be made sense of from a matter of national pride. I'm sure I could dig up the study if you like, but if you think about the costs of maintaining all those soldiers overseas and facilities it's got to be extremely expensive.
Historically speaking the US has not been anywhere near the level of imperialism when compared to the European powers. We briefly experimented with it as a matter of national policy in the Phillipines in the 1890s but I just don't recall America having the desire or stomach to maintain these colonies. Just to be clear when we're talking about imperialism in the traditional sense we're talking about colonies.
Define imperialism. Some political science theories look at the ability to project power over territory which doesn't necessarily mean it has to be part of the sovereign territory of a country.
You'll need to be specific about which bit you didn't understand. I know it's good stuff because it was good enough to flip a Russian, after months of debate, and much anguish from him as his worldview was shattered.
Our liberal democracies are not ceasing to be democracies. That's a failure to distinguish cars from squirrels. We're not going to get anywhere if you can't recognize a democracy right in front of your nose.
My knowledge of war is fine too.
I took a different path through life, deriving these things from first principles, so you might be confused by the way I express things. But it's all perfectly sound. So long as you accept the axiom that women have the right to not be raped, anyway. If you insist that that is debatable then the rest of what I have derived is also debatable, and we just need to meet each other over the barrel of a gun.
Yeah, the definition is going to be the contentious point in these kinds of discussions. I would ask these political theorists to define what they mean by "power" - if they're including soft power, then I feel like virtually all decently powerful countries would qualify as "imperialist" under this definition.
:up: :100:
(Of course, the right seems to increasingly realize the obviousness of this, and are now openly attacking democracy as “mob rule” in opposition to capitalist “liberty”).
"Canberra, Australia (CNN)Australian elite forces allegedly killed 39 Afghans civilians and prisoners unlawfully in an environment where "blood lust" and "competition killings" were reportedly a norm, according to a long-awaited official report.
...
The Australian Defense Force's (ADF) four-year inquiry into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan alleges that some patrol commanders, who were treated as "demigods," required junior soldiers to shoot prisoners to achieve their first kill, in a process known as "blooding." The report presents what it says is "credible information" that weapons or handheld radios were then sometimes allegedly placed by a body to make it seem like the person had been killed in action."
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/18/australia/australia-afghanistan-war-crimes-report-intl-hnk/index.html
"...the sadistic behavior detailed in Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba’s fifty-three-page classified report, including the sodomizing of a detainee with a chemical light, offers “an unsparing study of collective wrongdoing and the failure of Army leadership at the highest levels.” Those implicated, among them employees of a private military contractor who apparently had no training in the handling of prisoners, claim they were following orders from their superiors, who urged that prisoners be “softened up” in order to extract information."
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/horror-abu-ghraib/
https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/taguba.pdf
I doubt if imperialism (meaning, colonies under the control of the 'mother country') didn't make sense economically. On the one hand, the colonies serve as suppliers of raw material (fiber, ore, wood, foodstuffs, etc.) and on the other hand as a market for finished goods.
Smart imperialists use local forces to control the colony -- like the British did in India. Colonialism is extractive--pulling out wealth from the land and the people. Nice colonialists (I suppose the British qualify) didn't too-crudely shake down their colonies the way bad colonialists did (Belgium would qualify). Sure, there was prestige in having colonies. King Leopold II in Belgium had colony-envy, and felt much improved after he had the Congo colony to screw over. But wealth is the point, not prestige.
I would guess that the initial stage of establishing a colony might not pay off; that seems like a normal investment situation. But in the American colonies, the colonists were expected to begin producing ASAP. And they did. Lumber and tobacco, for instance. England didn't need tobacco but they liked it (as billions have), but they needed a new supply of high quality lumber for ship building and construction. The American colonies didn't make a lot on their own, so they bought a lot of stuff from England.
Marxists will describe the outgrowth of capitalism as a form of imperialism.
To build off this, not only did colonies have an ambiguous relationship to the long term economic success of host nations, but many of the most prodigious colonizers fell far behind nations with little to no colonial experience.
Spain and Portugal fell significantly behind the rest of Western Europe despite early colonial expansion, only making up ground with "catch up growth," later. France hit the peak of its cultural, economic, and military dominance vis-a-vis the rest of Europe prior to it's major colonization efforts. The wealthiest, highest functioning European states, the Nordics, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, etc. had fairly limited or no colonial aspirations. Meanwhile, Russia exerted and still exerts control across a huge amount of natural resources in Central Asia, and later held sway over Eastern Europe, and remains a low functioning and poor state.
The classic image of South America, Asia, and Africa dug up, and North America and Europe covered in plunder seems to ignore that economic growth in Europe much more the cause of colonization than vice versa.
Meanwhile, it's arguable that decolonization after WWII was done in part due to moral concerns. Of course said moral concerns blended with security concerns, since there was a strategic element to seeming morally superior to the Soviet Bloc.
Those that are the wealthiest now have had to focus on maintaining a competitive export oriented industry. They have to compete on the open global market, not to rest on their laurels and have income from raw materials from the colonies take care of the government finances.
Colonies seem at first to be an economic blessing, but are more of a curse in disguise. First of all, the raw materials give an easy income stream which doesn't go into investment into the colonies, but usually make few people rich. Also the populations of colonies have been a great market for the industry of the colonizer without outside competition. And third, the costs of hanging on to the colonies has been enormous. One regiment living in the barracks of the mainland isn't much, but have that regiment stationed on the other side of the World and costs are totally on another scale. Then fight an insurgency there and the costs are dramatic.
(The real cost of Empire. Notice how high the defence spending is and how large the military is prior to the 1960's.)
x% GDP on military spending doesn't translate too well to its effect on the long term differences in total GDP per capita between colonised and coloniser countries though does it?
Really? The wealth of the British Empire grew out of the global trade they helped create. They didn't start out wealthy.
The colonized and the colonizer are quite different, typically. With exception of perhaps prior colonies like Canada, Australia or the US. I was thinking about the difference between First World countries that a) had colonies and those that didn't have them. And especially those that did fight against the freedom movements in their colonies (UK, France, Portugal) and those that didn't do much (perhaps the Netherlands). War is a costly endeavor, which is why now days European powers typically fight wars through NATO.
Typically defence expenditure over 5% means that a lot of wealth and prosperity is sacrificed to defence. 10% of GDP (and over) to defence means these times that basically the country typically is at war. And naturally if there is universal conscription with military service being over 2 years, that will have an effect on the economy also. If the society is totally put to serve the war, the percentage can go as high as 50%, which Great Britain put into the war effort in 1945. But that means severe rationing.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/01/04/america-first-is-only-making-the-world-worse-heres-a-better-approach/
Errr... No. This is the second black page in Dutch history together with its slave trade. We viciously shot Indonesians, who of course had no guns, when we first colonised it. Then we denied them independence by going to war against them from 1945 to 1949, which war to this day we still refer to as "the policing action".
And then there's the Boers...
When attending a Far East history course in the university, much importance wasn't given to Dutch repression of the Islands when talking about the independence of Indonesia. Usually it doesn't compare with wars like the French had in Vietnam or the British in Malaya. Seen more as a hopeless endeavor from the start, which didn't do much. More emphasis was given to the fact that Sukarno waited for the Japanese to bless their independence, but didn't get it as Japan surrendered and then quickly made the proclamation.
Anyway, I've come across many who think that the most respectful, "nicest" colonial power were the Dutch. Let's say compared to your neighbors (the Belgians in Congo and the Germans in Namibia). Perhaps your historical PR department has done an excellent job! And don't you have some nice islands still in the Caribbean, so doesn't that make you still a colonial power?
Quoting Benkei
Well, people who were themselves put into concentration camps hardly aren't the first choice for moral condemnation in my view.
I was thinking "wealthy in comparison to the people they colonized." The English were vastly more advanced technologically, economically, and organizationally than the Powhatan for example, who had been ravaged by European diseases and we're isolated from the trade in technology and ideas in Asia.
By the time the English colonized India, they were vastly more organized and wealthy on a per capita basis, which led to a qualitatively better military.
When Europeans first got to Asia they had limited inroads off the coast because they're technology and doctrine wasn't exceptional compared to Asian cultures, only their shipbuilding. Centuries later, you had the US easily forcing Japan to open up with a skeleton force because the gap had grown.
The US doesn't have an empire in that sense, and probably never will. I think when we whine about American imperialism, we've just totally forgotten how devastating a real empire can be.
-Joe Biden
I hope you’re ready to bow to your American overlords. Though, as history attests, suspect incompetence beneath a veneer of grandiloquence.
You see, nobody wants to fill in the place that the US left during the Trump years, as that would inevitable lead to a power struggle like what we can already see happening with the "allies" of the US in the Middle East.
There Turkey is flirting with Russia, Saudi-Arabia trying to take away the leadership position of the Arab states from Egypt and Israel doing extensive diplomacy with Russia understanding that now they have Putin as their neighbor. Saudi-Arabia among some states is hopelessly lost in a quagmire in Yemen and the GCC partners nearly went to war with one of their members. And all these allies being on separate sides in Libya. So that's great leadership!
Yes, the Middle East is a perfect example what happens what happens when alliances fall apart. In fact, there's a history of alliances that simply have become meaningless that the US first created. Presidents like Trump, who actually didn't know that the UK has a nuclear deterrent itself, will inevitably lead to thing collapsing.
Like CENTO or SEATO...
But that doesn't matter for you! You'll surely remind us again about the "peace process" of small GCC states (and Sudan) having diplomatic relations with Israel!!!
Would anyone like to make bets as to how long this will last under a Biden admin? A PF betting pool, perhaps?
Ah, so 2057 then.
You suspect a lot of things and make many predictions. But I have yet to see one come true.
You’re right, none of that matters to me. The idea that the US should not leave the Middle East to the Middle East because Turkey might flirt with Russia is absurd. This kind of globalist fear-mongering is what held us there in the first place.
That isn't absurd at all, if you would think of it.
But apparently you don't think as it doesn't matter to you, which is quite clear.
Yes, when the US leaves some area the US leaves some area. That’s the entire point.
If that is the case I blame short memories.
American imperialism in its Manifest Destiny form in North America wasn't particularly more benign than any European project.
Arguably the only difference is that disease and then demographic replacement washed away the cultural memory of that era.
If the US wasn't imperial as it annexed land across North America, was Russia not an imperial power either?
And don't think it won't have consequences.
You see, if the US simply disregards it's leadership and "goes home", it will simply be regarded as a somewhat bigger Canada. Canada is a big industrialized economy also, you know. One of the G8 countries. Yet nobody cares or knows what the Canadian prime minister says, few know who he or she is, actually.
And that is the reality for the US if it retreats out from the international stage, something that Americans would actually hate. You simply would be as other countries looked at the US prior to WW1 (and perhaps prior to WW2). A rich country, but not the most important player in the global scene.
Trump and Trumpism is the best example just why it's a pure delusion that the US would be OK with the stance of being just a "bigger Canada". Trump's rhetoric, MAGA, his insistence to beef up the military, and his actions on the World stage do make it perfectly clear that the US isn't willing to lose it's status and role enjoys.
The US never ruled the Iroquois Nation. They just took over and absorbed the population
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sure. They ruled central europe.
The US needs not lose its “status”, nor must it remain absent from world affairs while retreating from the mess of its former interventionist policies, which arguably exacerbated the problems to begin with. Afghanistan and Iraq were deadly mistakes. And, as critics of Trump’s foreign policy often fail to mention, until Trump came along ISIS was marauding across the land with near impunity. No amount of hopey-changey rhetoric or Biden’s finger-wagging could stop any of that.
Does their expansion into Central Asia count? Tajiks, Chechens, and Uzbeks were their own peoples, so I would argue that those are obvious examples of colonization. What about the, admittedly sparsley populated areas of Siberia?
Here I find myself thinking that Russian colonization was different from other nations, but why? Reflecting on it, the only real difference I can see is that the US and Russia were contiguous with the large areas they colonized, and eventually demographically replaced and assimilated the people on the land they claimed.
However, historically it's hard to draw a distinction from England in South Africa, or Belgium in the Congo, with the actions of these two "in the moment," aside from having those cases not be colonization because: "well it was contiguous land and they kept the land."
Same goes for the Ottomans and Seljuks. They invaded and colonized most Arab lands, but we generally don't call them colonizers, not do we speak of the Arabs as colonizers in North Africa. Maybe colonization has an element of faliure to keep the land to it? You have to not replace the native culture?
It also seems like a loaded term politically. Only European nations "colonize," an aggressive, morally condemable act. China in Tibet, the Ottomans, those seem less morally loaded, despite happening in the same time period.
Anyhow, the US did rule over semi-soverign nations within its borders, over the course of their long push West. If the British, French, and Spanish were imperialists in colonizing the coasts of North America, than the US was in its push westward.
Another interesting question, is Western Europe becoming a colony for peoples from Asia and Africa? Obviously Europeans aren't subject to imperialism, but colonization isn't necessarily imperial, it's settlement. France, the UK, and Germany will have populations that are a majority non-European in descent by around 2080, so a major wave of settlement. Or is the movement of peoples post globalization a different concept?
You don't notice just how illogical you are.
Firstly, retreating from the mess Bush and the neocons made was the reason for Al Qaeda to morph into ISIS/ISIL (as the US military aligning with some Sunni insurgents was winning the war against Al Qaeda with the "Sunni Awakening" was a great success, no thanks to US politicians).
And FYI, Operation Inherent Resolve was started during the Obama years in June 2014 and Trump just inherited it in a situation where already ISIS had lost huge chunks of land and was being pushed back, hence to say the "until Trump came along" that nothing had been done is simply flatly false.
But the real illogical part is your idea that the US won't lose its "status" by withdrawal. What "status" you just have in mind? Sure, the US can withdraw from many parts of the World, but that simply means that it isn't then a Superpower. If you leave, well, you don't have a say. You aren't an ally to be trusted, hence countries will adapt to a new situation in a post-US environment. There has been enough of discussion of what would happen if the US would leave NATO to understand that simply then Europe would form a similar defense pact without the US.
If the US leaves Africa -> France and others (China etc.) reclaim it
If the US leaves the Middle East -> the power struggle is already quite visible there
If the US leaves Europe -> Likely an EU dominated pack with Britain will be tried to be formed, but Russia will get a huge influence over Eastern Europe (Finlandization of place like Poland?)
If the US leaves Far East Asia -> Countries there (Australia, Japan, etc) adapt to Chinese dominance
If the US leaves (alone) Central & South America -> don't be suprised of Latin America's new ties with China.
(Flags to the replace the Stars & Stripes)
We've all seen how this plays out with the example of the UK. If you read let's say pre WW2 literature, the British Empire seems as this huge power having tentacles all around the World. Then especially after Suez, it wasn't anymore the player in Middle East or anywhere. What it just tried to do is to push for weapon deals to wealthy Arab countries. And didn't have even the deterrence (as it didn't have any flat top aircraft carriers) to keep an Argentinian junta off from trying to take British soil.
What was interesting was the response from former CIA director John Brennan about it. And as with the previous assassination then openly done by the Trump team (at the Iranian general, which got Iran to fire missiles into US bases), this seems to be the choice of Trump how to do things.
The perils of being in the Iranian nuclear programme:
There is zero evidence to support this fantasy because Iran has refused to offer any.
(see here)
And of course as the Trump administration inherently leaks, this was for everyone to notice:
See:
Trump asked advisors for options to attack Iran's main nuclear site just days after sacking his Defense Secretary
Trump asked for options for attacking Iran last week, but held off
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1IB08E
"Knowing that a Biden victory is a strong possibility, Israel may decide to act in its national interest and attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure sooner rather than later, before Biden could be in office to stop it."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/will-israel-strike-iran-639911/amp
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpeck/2020/11/24/b-52-bombers-just-sent-a-message-to-iran-dont-build-nuclear-weapons/?sh=1ca1413531f7
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/25/pentagon-purges-leading-advisors-from-defense-policy-board/
"The US has carried out an air strike targeting Iran-backed militias in Syria, in the first military action undertaken by the Biden administration."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56205056
If you just mean that based on the opinions he makes clear in the podcast, he would support the air strike, then I think you might be right. Dean is especially hostile to the ambitions and foreign actions of Iran, and approved of the Americans' assassination of Qasem Soleimani.
Have a look at a leftist truthteller. Jimmy Dore supports Bernie. And peace. You know, just like you used to, before Hillary warped your sense of humanity. "You" meaning anyone who supports what Biden did today and objected when Trump did the same thing in 2018. Like Jen Psaki, who tweeted criticism of Trump's bombing of Syria on the grounds that they're a sovereign country. Guess that's no longer operative.
Now that the bloodthirsty liberals are back in power this is only the beginning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10w4MhIEr7Q
Quoting Benkei