I wish that everyone in my country (the USA) would read this article.
War is big business and throughout history war has been the means for the rich to get richer.
Even if we have some economic malaise when the dollar becomes less relevant as the world's reserve currency, we have a lot going for us: geographic isolation and natural resources.
This article makes a small case about the military profit complex, but it's also ironic that according to the AP the "Chinese" have hacked their way into all federal employee's information: http://news.yahoo.com/union-hackers-personnel-data-every-us-....
How is someone in China reading about some Americans a "real" threat? When I think of a real threat, I think of a person with an intent to harm a U.S. resident or citizen, a plan to do it, and the means to launch a plausibly realistic attempt.
Remember when everyone was discussing how bad it is for the NSA to know everything, because they can do things like ride in at critical moments in someone's life, like a politician's, and blackmail them with releasing something unless it goes their way?
Same argument holds with China, or anybody who gets the data.
Plus, the ability of attackers is not bounded by your creativity or credulity, or mine. The question isn't whether you or I can come up with something interesting to do with the data, the question is whether anybody who gets their hands on it can.
For the most part, the data really is mundane and irrelevant, sure. I know some government employees I went to college with, none of whom are in any position to do anything all that interesting at China's behest. But it's that .1% percent of data on the movers and shakers, and the people who will be tomorrow's movers and shakers, that is very valuable.
(And I've got a bridge to sell you if you think the full range of the hacking has been revealed yet.)
Edit: Oh, hey, look what I found in my newsfeeds literally one minute later: http://www.wired.com/2015/06/opm-breach-security-privacy-deb... "Federal background checks, after all, are meant to suss out information that might be used by foreign enemies to blackmail a government staffer into turning over classified information. And that stolen information could be used for exactly that extortion purpose, says Chris Eng, a former NSA staffer and now VP of research at the security firm Veracode." They literally got their hands on the forms constructed to contain exactly the information we didn't want foreign governments could get.
I was referring to China's efforts to compromise systems in the US, not their (dismal) domestic human-rights record. The point: we shouldn't be collecting and concentrating the private communications of American citizens in a giant data center – it's provided no proven protective value, and is a huge glowing target for foreign espionage (corporate and/or governmental).
Its framing in the context of threats to the US. The CIA can do their job and attempt to catch foreign hackers, you don't need 800 billion of army, navy, and marines sitting around to do that.
>the CIA is not responsible for "catching foreign hackers". That is the FBI.
>the US military is roughly 1.5 million people. that is in total. .00375% of the US population
I know it is easy to think that america has a huge military, and that the CIA is some massive organization that functions as an all knowing entity, and that they do nothing. But you need to expand your information sources. Watching the news and 0dark30 does not adequately prepare one to understand how international relations work.
To make a parallel, if there is some tech company that has a small, highly skilled staff, would it be silly for them to spend ~22% of their gross total budget on having the best gear and training?
> the CIA is not responsible for "catching foreign hackers". That is the FBI.
The CIA is foreign, the FBI is domestic. They are both investigative agencies. If the hackers are operating out of the US for a foreign interest, they are in the domain of the FBI. If they are attacking from China, thats the CIA's business.
> I know it is easy to think that america has a huge military, and that the CIA is some massive organization that functions as an all knowing entity, and that they do nothing.
It isn't "think". The US spends 4 times as much as the next largest military, China, while having the same land area and a quarter the population. We have treaties and agreements that make us the military defense force of a quarter of the world, and we do about a third of the spending. While being 4% of the global population.
And of course the CIA is doing stuff. That is my point. You don't need the 800 billion dollar tumor to have a foreign investigations agency do their job protecting us from information threats.
> To make a parallel, if there is some tech company that has a small, highly skilled staff, would it be silly for them to spend ~22% of their gross total budget on having the best gear and training?
The staff you describe are only trained to stand in front of your competitors offices and block them from entering. They aren't adding value to the company, they are just eating its resources to threaten the competition. The 800 billion sunk into the DoD is producing a trickle of R&D results and innovation, but is not improving our GDP or producing goods or services of value to citizens.
The bigger question is why when you have a small, highly skilled staff (NASA) you regularly cut its budget when it has at various points in history produced incredible R&D returns for its cost.
The talk of need for separation of Church and State is one thing (and absolutely valid), but I think the largest threat to the world, indeed the largest threat the world has ever known, is the marriage between (American) State and (American) Industry. That's what the Snowden leaks have verified most.
> Future peace requires taking [Russia's] security concerns seriously rather than treating the country as an enemy that is always seeking to best us.
The problem with this is that Russia's security 'concerns' cannot be separated from their nefarious geopolitical ambitions. We can't win with Russia, give them an inch and they take a Crimea.
But this article is straightforward isolationism, a very old current in American political thought. The implied answer to your question is, 'So what? America is safe, that's all that matters'.
Reading this article, I understand that the author's definition of threat is quite extreme. A threat is not something that "has the potential to annihilate" but is rather "a thing that has the potential to inflict damages".
Dismissing any threats that has not a fully destructive potential as "not important" is sloppy, dangerous thinking.
There is two extremes to this spectrum, you will notice that both have a characteristic in common, they fail to differentiate and nuance threats.
From this fallacy, we can classify the two end of the spectrum as:
- The "paranoid", who genuinely end-up thinking that "the end justify the means" and propagate their hysteria to the rest of the group, effectively becoming the biggest threat to what they were trying protect.
- The "naive", who dismiss anything that has no fully destructive power as "trivial", effectively allowing threats to turn into actual damages, grow to become "fully destructive" (at which point it is too late) or cause a chain of events leading to destruction of what they were effectively trying to protect as well.
Let's not be fooled for a second by the "alliances" and "historical relationships" between the US and its allies.
Nation-States are engaged in a game for survival which is directly linked to growth and domination. A game-theoretic analogy would be the "non-cooperative" game, defined as "a game where players play independently and where any cooperation must be self-reinforcing".
There is exceptions to that rule but they are such of limited scope and impact that we can safely consider them negligible.
Since "Nation-States" lack a system of belief, they are free from the constraints that Humans self-impose onto themselves. A Nation-State will do anything to further its own interest, they are in essence, cold-blooded machines.
The author of this article is forgetting about the 195 other countries in the world who are also playing this game.
Obviously not all of them have credible chances to become big players but you can bet on the fact that all of them will fight tooth and nail for their part of the pie, no matter what it takes.
"Saying that the US has no threats is forgetting about the 195 other countries in the world who are aspiring to be as much powerful as possible."
I believe that this is exactly the way of thinking that is being criticized in the article. Very few of those 195 nations dream of removing the US from the position of world power, and even fewer are capable of it.
I have re-formulated my comment to correct some grammar mistakes etc...
I agree with you but I think I failed to convey the point I was making. It is very US-centric perspective, any country has to deal with rivalries and struggle for power. Depending on their size and existing power those struggles are fought at the local, regional or worldwide level.
It is hard to tell what you mean by "making an exit", but if it means that the US were to reduce its military spending to a tenth of its current amount for the foreseeable future - yes, I don't think it would hurt the US very much at all.
In fact, the money gained from such an action could be used to strengthen the nation against economic threats which currently are far greater than any military ones.
The point i was making is that the US, for all of its abundant faults, is not exceptional. Sitting on top of the pile does not make the pile disappear.
If the US withdrew as global police, I would hope the UN would step up the peacekeepers to fill that role. Thats what they are supposed to do at least.
Yes, I know they suck and are incompetent. They only get away with it because they have big brother US to back them up. If they actually had to do their job they might get their act together. Or maybe not?
I still don't see, in the absence of grotesque military spending, anyone going batshit insane with conquest. We still have the nuclear threat to keep people in line. Russia, for example, almost certainly does not fear a ground incursion from any European power or the US for aggressively annexing Ukraine / Georgia. Why would you waste money on that? You can economically cripple them. If they went insane and attacked a first world power they would see the immediate return of the nuclear threat.
And really, total annihilation and mutually assured destruction should be deterrents enough to stop anything radical, while our globalized economic system has bound everyone so much together that you do not need the threat of soldiers to wreck a country. Consider how China is being kept out of all these secret trade agreements because they have "overstepped their bounds" of those with the money and power to influence these negotiations.
That doesn't mean you don't have any military, but you don't need to spend the GDP of Turkey or Saudi Arabia every year on it, or try spreading ideology through imperialism, or have military bases in almost every country on Earth.
If your husband or wife were to make an exit from the world stage today, certainly there would be other partners that may wish to take their place... its no reason to live your life in paranoia in the present. Its also foolhardy to assume because someone would take your place when your gone that everyone of them are itching to do so now.
I think i see what you are saying, but you are comparing a single man in a world of ~7 billion actors, 99.99% of which are completely unknown to each other, and a single country in a world of 195 actors that are completely known to each other.
My counter: assuming you are good at what you do, if you disappeared today would someone else apply for your job tomorrow?
Obvious question - what are the roles the USA fills and what are the potentially (negative) consequences that could or would occur if someone else took over these roles?
*excellent question. This is something i am always searching out, as i used to be ardently opposed to the US's meddlesome behavior. One thing i have found, with near ubiquity in refugee and ex-patriot communities, is the US gives a physical, intellectual, and emotional space to the beleaguered and suppressed. Another contribution is our over-active dissent factor; many Americans disagree with America, and for the most part this is not only accepted, it is respected. These are somewhat ethereal, though.
The US Navy is a power unlike any the world has ever seen. The capability to move gross tonnage as well as incredible skill into disaster zones is unparalleled. It is completely a product of the very fear mongering the author of the article speaks of.
The space program is a titan, historically. It may be the US's single largest contribution to history. It is the wellspring of all of the greatest innovations of the late 20th century.
Europe's universal health care is completely contigent upon not having to field the requisite military for a nation/region of its size and prosperity. The US military maintaining a stable and strong presence in mainland Europe gave governments and citizens the space, physically and intellectually, to evolve their positions on human rights, healthcare,citizenship, and education.
Please understand, in no way do i feel the US is soley responsible for these things. Indeed, anything of value is by definition collaborative.
Also understand, the US is far from perfect. But their are a number of stupidities and conflagrations i would like to address.
>the US is racist as opposed to the World
This is complete melarky. The US is by fare the most advanced nation on the planet in terms of dealing with the integration of races and cultures. We have the most diverse governmental representation of disparate cultures and races. We elected a person of african descent ~40 years after the Supreme Court forced education integration.
>The US are warmongers
The US are pigeon hawks. There are undeniably warmongers among us, and unfortunately many of them do have positions of power, but as a society we are actually quite weak in terms of resolve. The war on terror has claimed so few American lives that were it in actual war our gross total deaths would be statistically insignificant.
The original question is a great one, and it is one i will keep asking myself and others.
As to the consequences, for the US? Not much. It would free up a lot of resources. But for the world, specifically africa, it would be devastating. Would China spend billions and send thousands to combat AIDS, Malaria, and Ebola? Would Russia maintain an active military presence with almost 0 potential of territorial or economic gain? It is so easy to criticize the person in front, but it is usually quite challenging to keep up, much less surpass them.
For my part, i would love to see India take the US's place in the world, but i believe there would be a struggle on the level of WWII between India and China before that would happen.
This meanders and it may be all horseshit, but i must reiterate how important this question is to me.
> Would China spend billions and send thousands to combat AIDS, Malaria, and Ebola?
China is already sending money and people in various countries of the world as foreign aid. A quick wikipedia search indicates [0] that their overall budget amounts to ~190 billion USD. The same page also explains that 45% of the budget goes to Africa. Take this with a grain of salt, because China's definition of aid isn't the same as what you'd expect (there's a huge component of trade behind the aid itself). As a comparison, the 2016 budget for USAID [1] is 22.3 billion USD.
So, yeah, if the US were to disappear, I'm 100% positive other countries would fill the place, and China would be one of them.
> The war on terror has claimed so few American lives that were it in actual war our gross total deaths would be statistically insignificant.
How inconsiderate. The war on terror made between 80 000 and 1.5 million casualties [2], and you say that's not warmongering ?
>China is already sending money and people in various countries of the world as foreign aid.
Granted, but their interest is ROI in the form of exclusive access to raw materials as well as exporting some of the devastating pollution that has all but wrecked their own country IMO. I am not saying the US government is some altruistic force for good. I am saying that the US citizenry has a consistent reputation for dispatching the most and most effective aid to developing countries and disaster regions around the globe.
>So, yeah, if the US were to disappear, I'm 100% positive other countries would fill the place, and China would be one of them.
Do you believe that if China replaced the US as the hegemon that they would not also export their totalitarian approach to Order as well? Ditto for Russia. The only country, IMO, that could replace the US as well as maintain the semblance of "a force for good" is India. I believe this because they too are a democracy. I am not a blind believer in democracy, but i do believe it is better then totalitarian governments.
>How inconsiderate. The war on terror made between 80 000 and 1.5 million casualties [2], and you say that's not warmongering ?
It is an interesting point, but the fact remains that the US has lost fewer troops in a 10+ year police action than are lost in single battles. I am not being indifferent to the casualties sustained by my countrypersons; i am trying to be objective about the risk/benefit thereof.
> I am saying that the US citizenry has a consistent reputation for dispatching the most and most effective aid to developing countries and disaster regions around the globe.
You should take a real look at what's happening in Africa. Here's the situation:
- African countries have been loaned money through IMF on the conditions that they reform their systems (both economical and political reforms) to better suit western ideals. There's a reason why we speak about neo-colonialism
- China comes in, says "Here's the money you need, and some more. You can do whatever you want with your economy and your politics. You just have to pay back and vote for us at the UN".
It's a massive improvements for these countries. At last, they get to do what they want. At last, they are considered as adults, not as children that can't have a country because big brother west does not like the rules. So, I'd say african countries much prefer China foreign aid than Western aid.
> I am saying that the US citizenry has a consistent reputation for dispatching the most and most effective aid to developing countries and disaster regions around the globe.
Absolutely not. Only the western countries want to export their democracy and individual liberties ideal to all countries. China on the other hand has demonstrated that they are not interested in changing other countries. Just look at chinese history. Also have a look at their current foreign policy: their number one rule is "no ingerence". This is the reason why they are so liked by atrocious regimes and disliked by our western countries: they don't do anything to stop human atrocities and we hate them for that. I have no reason to believe that this situation would change were the US to somehow disappear.
> Ditto for Russia
I don't have many elements to say it would be the same for Russia, but I'm inclined to believe the same thing: Russia also likes the "no-ingerence" mantra (provided it's not in their own country)
> The only country, IMO, that could replace the US as well as maintain the semblance of "a force for good" is India.
You seem to forget about all western countries that are not the US. Europe would be a far better "force for good" than any other country.
> I believe this because they too are a democracy. I am not a blind believer in democracy, but i do believe it is better then totalitarian governments.
If you still believe China is a totalitarian country, you should do well to read up on what's actually happening there. There is a huge difference between Stalin-level or Mao-level totalitarism and current China totalitarism. Sure, chinese people don't have the same individual liberties we have here in the west, but it's still not as horrible as you may imagine. In short, there's only one thing you can't do: ask whether the communist party is the best thing you can have for a goverment. If you don't, you're "free" to speak.
> the US has lost fewer troops in a 10+ year police action than are lost in single battles
I'm absolutely not questioning that: the US is so much at an advantage in any conventional warfare that its casualties are always low. What I was saying is that the US actually is a warmongering country because it goes to war on subjectively fallacious reasons, killing hundreds of thousands of people. The fact that they were efficient in doing so (ie low casualties) does not make them lesser warmongering.
> Europe's universal health care is completely contigent upon not having to field the requisite military for a nation/region of its size and prosperity. The US military maintaining a stable and strong presence in mainland Europe gave governments and citizens the space, physically and intellectually, to evolve their positions on human rights, healthcare,citizenship, and education.
This is a great point. I've read some articles this year on War Is Boring (https://medium.com/war-is-boring) specifically about how the UK military is scheduled to become a shell of itself, but the same can be said of all the european "powers." Gone are the days of Germany or France fielding 100 divisions.
Someday war will hopefully become a thing of the past. The earlier nation no longer have and see a need for a large military the better. I am from Germany and we just no longer have the need to have a strong army, surrounded by friends in a pretty stable region of the world. One could maybe try to argue that Russia could theoretically go completely nuts but then we would probably be screwed anyway.
Your country (which IMO will be what stops Russia's inevitable war to end EU dominance ((third time pays for all))) just began pulling 100 Leopard IIs out of storage. They will be rift in ~6 months and deployed in a year.
We (the EU) can afford to be care free because of the France, the UK and NATO in general. I hope too that war will be a thing of the past but I strongly believe that sovereign nations should have the capacity to defend their sovereignty from its enemies whether they are outsiders (hostile nation) or insiders (paramilitary take over).
>"In the Nation-States Game, you either win or die", it is a non-cooperative game
By definition of non-cooperative and cooperative[0] game, nation-states are playing cooperative game.
Also, nation-states are not atomic entities that can be considered "players".
Also, world is too complex to be described by rule-based model.
[0] In game theory, a cooperative game is a game where groups of players ("coalitions") may enforce cooperative behaviour, hence the game is a competition between coalitions of players, rather than between individual players
> By definition of non-cooperative and cooperative[0] game, nation-states are playing cooperative game.
I pondered using either of those concepts. The reason behind my choice is that while there is indeed a multi-level struggle for power where we have coalitions playing against coalitions, there is also some inter-nation rivalries that highlight the fundamentally non-cooperative nature of the "game".
The US weakening the influence of the French leader Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s for example is an example of such tension between members of a same "coalition". The US will first and foremost (legitimately) defend its own interests over those of its allies.
> Also, nation-states are not atomic entities who can be considered "players".
I disagree. The decision-making apparatus whether democratic or dictatorial of nation-states is similar to the brain of a player. See my third point.
> Also, world is too complex to be described by rule-based model.
I agree and it was not my intent to describe the world using a single rule-based model. That being said "non-cooperative games" fully capture, what is perhaps the most important property of our world's geopolitics.c
>The decision-making apparatus whether democratic or dictatorial of nation-states is similar to the brain of a player. See my third point.
Nation A is able to bribe government(decision-making apparatus) of Nation B to implement such measures that will reduce competitive advantage of Nation B. This scenario is possible, happened multiple times throughout the history and undermines the "brain" model. Also this scenario violates assumed rationality of players in game theory.
There's not even any point in arguing with it: you see me and mine as a threat because I exists. Or in your words: we "are also playing this game".
That's terrifying way of looking at the world. I know people that have survived wars and oppression that aren't anywhere near this paranoid, not even towards their former enemies.
You're projecting this on the mentality of individuals, I don't believe that's what is being referred to but rather nation states as agents on the international stage. It's not a comment on how people think but rather the behavior of states.
I think you got me wrong. I was referring to the dynamics of power between states not people. They are fundamentally different entities, and I agree that it would be quite a horrible society to live in.
Interestingly, I just watched an analysis [0] of foreign policies, and the speaker makes an excellent point: the USA is a privileged country in that it only had few "conflicts" on its soil:
- Independence War
- The war of 1812
- The Civil War
And then 9/11 happens, giving Americans this new feeling of being vulnerable, that threats to the USA are a real thing. But if you actually take a look at the US presence in the world and at how even physically isolated from potential threats it is, you quickly understand how overrated the threats are.
Isn't the same kind of thinking not just dominant in the US foreign policy, but also the same thing that explains much of it's internal issues?
From militarized police, the massive prison population to the proliferation of fire arms, doesn't it all lead back to seeing the world in terms of "threats"?
This is basically correct, but it's shaped by a few historic factors (note I don't necessarily agree with all of these, just putting them out there):
1 - The U.S. was almost constantly engaged in a domestic or near-territorial war of some kind from its founding until quite a few years into the 20th century. [1] During the time period the U.S. massively expanded, strengthened itself by defining borders and internally squashing various kinds of rebellions. Since then, the U.S. has basically been at war continuously. America is, believe it or not, a kind of warrior culture.
2 - The U.S. usually is able to claim some kind of victory out of most of its military endeavors. Thus military engagement is seen as a tempting, low risk, policy tool. The historic level of military success the U.S. enjoys is almost unprecedented in history. By selectively choosing engagements it knows it can win, the U.S. can continue the development of this legend.
3 - Domestically, Americans tend to think of our military actions as generally being benevolent in nature (e.g. stopping communism, fighting nazis, freeing subjugated peoples). The outstanding economic success of many countries who's soil we fought on and then built strong alliances with (Germany, Korea, Japan, France, etc.) feeds into this mythos. The post-war alliances we've formed help to "encourage us" to get involved.
4 - The modern state of the world's powers, an outcome of WWII, is one in which the U.S. is militarily uncontested by any power on the planet. The relatively few conflict deaths post-WW2 [2] seems to imply that U.S. military dominance brings peace, stability and prosperity and helps drive the notion of the Pax Americana [3]
5 - The failures and generally poor outcomes in countries under other major power's influences and policies feeds into this as well. For example, at one point a majority of the land-mass on the planet was engaged in Communism, under Russian control (as the U.S.S.R.) or influence. Despite access to tremendous natural resources (and short lived modernization programs), the Communist countries failed to produce economic successes and were often engaged in tremendously damaging internal conflicts.
6 - Pax Americana is viewed by Americans as a "good thing". Even though Americans don't view themselves as expansionist colonial powers, they view the expansion of the Pax via the export of American culture and influence as a good thing. This implies then that the current state of American dominance is a good thing, and that anything that even looks like it might be vectoring towards threatening that status quo (e.g. belligerent Russia, rising China, trouble on Allied borders etc.) needs to be aggressively halted or stopped.
American policy is generally framed as #6, with 1-5 as a supporting framework. If thought of on purely military terms, American military expenditures and actions can't really be rationalized. If thought of on terms of #6 they make all the sense in the world. There's a lot of self-filtering involved too. Americans ignore the failures and negatives surrounding military action, and the various excesses that come with pouring something like half of the government's discretionary funding into the DoD.
But the illusion of continued threats is one that we've created in order to continue on justifying with what we generally believe is a better world under our influence than the one that existed before.
You can hear most of this echoed when fairly sensible ideas like "maybe Americans should pull out of Europe and let the Europeans, who are economically and technologically able, to deal with defense needs for themselves" are floated. Responses (even from Europeans) are often along the lines of "no, European countries can't be trusted to cooperate well enough" or "remember the last time Europe was left to sort things out?" and so on.
This also ignores entire continents like Africa, where Americans just simply can't figure out what to do at all. Our national notion towards Africa is basically to just ignore the continent and work on Middle-East containment instead. These days when Africa comes up at all, it's usually in terms of growing Chinese influence.
> This also ignores entire continents like Africa, where Americans just simply can't figure out what to do at all. Our national notion towards Africa is basically to just ignore the continent and work on Middle-East containment instead.
Squeaky wheel gets the kick. Africa doesn't have a history of ramming planes into buildings.
The history of the US is not that rosy. We have always been a nation of criminals, robber barons, and capitalist mercenaries. It was only after WWII that the idea of being a benevolent super power came into being. After that war, the US stopped seizing territory and began to go about forming the structures of cooperative peace.
The question, as i see it, is which is better: small, consistent conflicts lacing the developing sections of the world, or large, sporadic conflicts wrecking the developed sections of the world?
In the nuclear age, full-out shooting wars between developed countries are a non-starter. Hence the 45 years of small-scale proxy wars between the U.S. and Soviet Union throughout Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The idea that a large scale conflict will inevitably lead to nuclear exchange is so silly. Most nuclear weapons are not strategic, they are tactical. Regardless, no one would nuke the property they are trying to occupy.
The reason their have been almost no real wars since the 1940s is because business interest has taken over control of every western government.
I know people think there is a ton of profit to be made in war, but the damages so heavily outweigh the benefits that i have a hard time believing that is the sole motivation for hawkish policies.
The last time the U.S was invaded was when Pancho Villa came from Mexico to the U.S to steal some horses from Texas. In, March 9, of 1916,Pancho Villa entered the U.S to kill some soldier in the city of Columbus and steal some horses, then in the next day Pancho Villa returned to Mexico to brag about it. That was the only time the U.S was actually invaded. Since 1947 the U.S "ministry of war" was renamed to "ministry of defense" and its "budget of war" was renamed to "budget of defense"... the name, is still a mistery to this day. What an irony, those countries that fear to be invaded, are actually the only ones that invade other countries. Regards
This article is poorly written. It provides no background or supporting references to bolster its claim. I find it frustrating in the extreme. Threats do not have to be overtly threatening. A person in the room that dislikes you and has a lot of money and time can be just as threatening as a person in the room claiming to have a gun at home and an aversion towards your faith/gender/culture.
I come from a place where people blindly believe the US is the best[sic] nation in the world. Anyone that disagrees is obviously some "egghead/pinko/etc" who can't appreciate the sacrifice of others. This, the opposite extreme, is a s frustrating as the words of the dullard who penned this piece. I confront it constantly in an attempt to represent the middle path. In my years of argument, discussion, and reassessment, i have come to realize that nothing is quite what it seems. To make absolute statements, for or against anything, is to place oneself in an inherently weak position intellectually.
The author shrugs at Russia's expansionist aggression, pointing out their economic weakness as a reason they are no threat to the US. The approach to China and Venezuela is similarly misguided. Threats != weapons. Europe's relative peace since world war 2 is largely because of the US being extremely security minded.
...but who knows. Maybe Russia bullying its neighbors is just as symptom of it being misunderstood. Maybe China steals technology and data because they are just in that adolescent "acting out" phase. Maybe the world is really a nice place and the US is ruining the party for everyone.
It is an editorial in the opinion section. agreed references help but ive always assumed words in the opinions section of papers can be regarded as just that
I've come to the conclusion that multiple world governments --working together and against each other-- are attempting and in some cases are able to manipulate the narrative of conversations on the internet to further certain political agendas.
I don't believe most of the crap I hear about teenagers leaving in droves to join ISIS all over the world, this is the red scare all over again. I'm also pretty sure twitter is one of the main social platforms used to manipulate the political/social narrative of the internet. More than half the accounts are probably fake, who knows how many fake "ISIS" accounts there are or even what countries government is making them. I also suspect twitter is being used as some kind of data hub for surveillance because of how fast it caught on in Arab countries and a lot of countries that aren't quite "western", then the western media started to push it in every news broadcast for a while as if anyone in America actually used it.
Surprise surprise! all the terrorists always have twitter accounts. I wouldn't be surprised if the next "home-grown" terrorist has a twitter account.
"Campaigns operated by JTRIG have broadly fallen into two categories; cyber attacks and propaganda efforts. The propaganda efforts (named "Online Covert Action"[4]) utilize "mass messaging" and the “pushing [of] stories” via the medium of Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube.[2] Online “false flag” operations are also used by JTRIG against targets."
ISIS exists because Islam has a jihadic tradition, and young, disenfranchised men are prone to violent actions. It's not like this is a problem specific to Islam - the Crusades were a similar exercise for christianity (where the Crusade wasn't an outright pirate raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Crusade), and China has historically had lots of rebellions when the population of angry young men gets activated.
First off, at no point did i say we should repeat the mistakes of Gulf II. That was an intellectual leap made by you.
Second, i was responding to how blase you seem to be about what ISIS is doing and what they are.
I do not know what should be done. My inclination is for volunteers from any country be sent in to keep the peace and pursue these fucking monsters. Not nation states, not governments. Volunteers.
And just to be clear. Smurf yes. The US should have a standing policy that if you melt people's faces or destroy priceless historical treasures because your stupid little book told you to, that we wreck shop. But that is childish and far fetched.
War is big business and throughout history war has been the means for the rich to get richer.
Even if we have some economic malaise when the dollar becomes less relevant as the world's reserve currency, we have a lot going for us: geographic isolation and natural resources.