US Govt Spending habits tangent

[Diogenes]

When I said I would reduce military spending, you started hitting me with questions about which geopolitical conflicts I would stop. What you didn't say was "I agree, there's heaps of pork in the military budget that could be cut".

As it's been borne out, your "reduce military spending" and my "reduce military spending" are not the same. I agreed there was pork.

And again now when I said "To me the US military budget seems excessive" you replied "Global power projection is expensive". You didn't reply, "I agree, a lot of it is pork that could be cut without damaging military readiness."

Since Europe is not up to the task of global power projection, someone has to do it. I also agreed there was a lot of pork to be cut.

Not overly. But Russia has been doing a poor job of that right from the start. US aid seems to be causing the Ukraine to win the war, but to me it's not very clear what would have happened without US aid. Would Russia have won, would European aid to Ukraine been sufficient, would a stalemate and negotiated settlement have been reached (e.g. dividing Ukraine in half).

Who came to the aid Ukraine during the Crimean annexation? How would dividing Ukraine in half be a good thing?

The US can have it's own ideological obsessions, but it shouldn't be interfering with things happening in Chinese territory to further them, just as it shouldn't have invaded Vietnam, just as the CIA should have tried to do 80 different coups during the cold war, many of them against democratic governments that were 'too left' for the CIA's liking.

Vietnam was originally a French problem that we got involved with. If the CIA didn't do a lot of things, the world would be a better place today, like not toppling the Iranian democratic government or making the US generally hated south of the boarder, except by illegals.

Obama's agreement allowed nuclear power in Iran. I support nuclear power generally. It's a good solution to prevent climate change. There was decent intelligence suggesting all Iran wanted was nuclear power and they weren't aiming for nuclear weapons, and the treaty was all about making sure the world could be sure that they weren't refining their nuclear plant fuel further into nuclear weapons.

First, it wasn't a treaty as those require going through the Senate. I support nuclear to in regard to climate change. I don't support Iran having nuclear anything. The idea that Iran wouldn't use nuclear material for weapons is incredulity par excellence. The idea that you think there was "decent intelligence is also laughable.

I can't say I understand this post. You sentences don't seem to be connected.

What do you have against entities writing reports about what risks they are facing from climate change?

The WEF and the ESG system are bad.


I understand New Zealand has less to deal with so it can focus on cow burps and Maori relations. Its main significance is probably access to the Antarctic. New Zealand is like the Shire in that it's relatively disconnected from the geopolitics of the rest of the world. ~5% of New Zealanders are of Chinese and ~27% of NZ exports go to China. Your positions are practically expected.

[Starlight]

As it's been borne out, your "reduce military spending" and my "reduce military spending" are not the same. I agreed there was pork... I also agreed there was a lot of pork to be cut.

I'd say there's big overlap. We both agree on reduction of pork. Whether we agree on any particular intervention I regard as largely irrelevant in the general scheme of things.

Since Europe is not up to the task of global power projection, someone has to do it.

I don't agree that 'someone has to do it'. The world existed for many a century before anyone was doing it.

How would dividing Ukraine in half be a good thing?

How is thousands of people dying in the fighting a good thing?

Generally I tend to think that when there are multiple bad options, the one that preserves the most lives should be taken.

Vietnam was originally a French problem that we got involved with. If the CIA didn't do a lot of things, the world would be a better place today, like not toppling the Iranian democratic government or making the US generally hated south of the boarder, except by illegals.

Generally I think we should learn from history that interventions are on the whole terrible ideas. Rarely is an intervention successful. Rarely does it end up not causing huge lots of lives.

So I think people who say "the situation is bad in X, therefore we have to intervene" are failing to consider the pros and cons properly because they are not considering that the intervention might make it worse not better. In most of such situations I would say "yes, the situation is bad, that's unfortunate. We know from experience that intervening militarily is likely to make it worse, get lots of people killed, and not fundamentally fix the problem. Instead of spending huge money on a failed military intervention, maybe we can use some of the money we've saved by not intervening, in a more positive way, to improve the lives of the people in the bad situation?"

New Zealand is like the Shire in that it's relatively disconnected from the geopolitics of the rest of the world.

NZ is convenient quite far geographically from much of the conflict in the rest of the world. So, too, is the US, being conveniently located on a different continent to most of the world's conflicts. You guys can just enjoy your isolation, you don't have to be all up in the faces of the rest of the world, having your military stationed 10 miles off the Iranian border, having your military bases set up all around 'enemy' countries.

~5% of New Zealanders are of Chinese and ~27% of NZ exports go to China. Your positions are practically expected.

NZ has generally found it convenient to play the interests of China and the US off against each other in order to be largely left alone by both. Both are major trading partners but we don't view ourselves as aligned with either one.

[Starlight]

"I'm fine with giving half of Ukraine to people who made ethnically cleansing them an explicit goal of the invasion, and letting them consolidate their gains so they can invade again."

Not sure what you're talking about with regard to ethnic cleansing.

~humanitarian and strategic genius Starlight

I am indeed a humanitarian. If the US was spending the same money on food and medical supplies for those who needed it, rather than weapons to enable people to kill people, I would support it.

He'd sell another 23 million people to a different totalitarian regime because USA BAD.

I think history has shown that interventions fail more often than not. My dislike of interventionism is rooted in the observation that they seem to get people killed and don't seem to work. How many times does the US need to waste trillions helping people kill people in order to achieve nothing, before people understand that it's a waste of life and money?

We recently saw the US failure in Afghanistan front and center as it was revealed that killing thousands and spending trillions over 20 years had achieved... nothing.

I feel like you have to be a special kind of stupid to see all these failing interventions that lead to so many pointless deaths and think "you know what we need more of? Things like that!". I would like to learn from history and stop with the doing of stupid interventions that kill thousands and leave the world worse because of it.

[Darth Executor]

Comparing Afghanistan with Ukraine or Taiwan is pants on fire stupid. I'm amazed this actually needs to be explained. Then again you don't even seem to understand why Russia is at war so I suspect your knowledge of any of these conflicts is basically non-existent.

Not that you need specialized knowledge to just chant USA BAD.

[Starlight]

because USA BAD.

People in this forum tend to wrongly perceive my relatively-normal-from-an-international-perspective negative view of US actions on the world stage as being some sort of supercharged level of anti-US animus. It's really not. It's just that people in this forum seem to generally not understand how the rest of the world generally see the US's actions.

Gallup did a poll a while back of people in 65 countries, asking who they saw as the biggest threat to world peace. The plurality of people in most countries, including in numerous US allied countries, answered: The US. That's right, most people, even in US-allied nations, see the US as the biggest threat to world peace. Why? Because the US is constantly doing military inventions and starting military conflicts where it doesn't need to.

Here's a map of those poll results where each country is covered by the flag that people in the country said was the biggest threat to world peace:



As you can see, across most of the world, including numerous US allies such as Australia, South America, Western Europe, most people think the biggest threat to world peace is the US.

So please stop with the 'Starlight is totally mental for thinking the US's numerous interventions are bad and generally wanting to see less of them' type rubbish. Starlight is just an average international observer telling you what average people in the rest of the world actually think.

[Starlight]

Comparing Afghanistan with Ukraine or Taiwan is pants on fire stupid.

"This intervention is totally different! It Definitely Won't be like last time".
How many times will you fall for the same scam line?

Then again you don't even seem to understand why Russia is at war

Russia is at war because Putin is insane, paranoid, has an undue fear of NATO, has delusions of grandeur about historical Russian greatness and restoring it, and was surrounded by yes-men who lied to him saying invading Ukraine would be super-easy and barely an inconvenience and over in a couple of days.

[Darth Executor]

That map is from 2013 and US is number 1 at... 24%. Of mostly uneducated third world hicks and butthurt communists/islamists.

Not that it has any relevance to the specific issues of Ukraine and Taiwan. Turing Afghanistan into a nation of obese Big Gulp slurpers (stupid) is a completely different issue from helping two countries fend off a foreign invasion in conventional wars. Compare 1st with 2nd Iraq war. One was the defense of a friendly country and went very well. The latter was an attempt to occupy and transform a society where many people did not want the US there (went poorly, although many parts of Iraq are much better off than they were under saddam, some are much worse and the region is arguably worse off)

[Darth Executor]

"This intervention is totally different! It Definitely Won't be like last time".
How many times will you fall for the same scam line?

Were Yugoslavia and Gulf War scams?

[Diogenes]

I don't agree that 'someone has to do it'. The world existed for many a century before anyone was doing it.

Global power projection is relatively new. Before the Europeans decided to conquer the world, policing was regional. The Mongol and Roman empires could be considered policing by conquest.

How is thousands of people dying in the fighting a good thing?

Russia could stop invading any day. Of course, likely Western influence of colour revolutions weren't helpful. Given Putin was once a Young Kwader of the WEF and Zelensky is part of the WEF system, I wouldn't be surprised if the invasion is a pretext for radical global change. Russia is still holding back a full scale effort.

Generally I tend to think that when there are multiple bad options, the one that preserves the most lives should be taken.

I would agree appeasement saves lives, technically.

Generally I think we should learn from history that interventions are on the whole terrible ideas. Rarely is an intervention successful. Rarely does it end up not causing huge lots of lives.

The CIA doesn't learn.

So I think people who say "the situation is bad in X, therefore we have to intervene" are failing to consider the pros and cons properly because they are not considering that the intervention might make it worse not better. In most of such situations I would say "yes, the situation is bad, that's unfortunate. We know from experience that intervening militarily is likely to make it worse, get lots of people killed, and not fundamentally fix the problem. Instead of spending huge money on a failed military intervention, maybe we can use some of the money we've saved by not intervening, in a more positive way, to improve the lives of the people in the bad situation?"

I would agree intervention rarely works, though sending money is equally pointless. The US shouldn't have intervened in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Lydia. Ukraine is more just a continuation of an influence struggle which I would agree Ukraine should have been left alone decades ago.

NZ is convenient quite far geographically from much of the conflict in the rest of the world. So, too, is the US, being conveniently located on a different continent to most of the world's conflicts. You guys can just enjoy your isolation, you don't have to be all up in the faces of the rest of the world, having your military stationed 10 miles off the Iranian border, having your military bases set up all around 'enemy' countries.

I'm sure the South Koreans are happy that the US got involved on the Korean Peninsula. There are people named after Bill Clinton and Tony Blair thanks to involvement in Kosovo. The Middle East is different. The US and UK never have intervened in Iran nationalising oil. The only successful Western intervention in the ME was the establishment of Israel.

[Starlight]

Were Yugoslavia and Gulf War scams?

The NATO intervention in Yugoslavia seems to have managed to hurt the very people it was trying to help. The Albanians that NATO was trying to save from ethnic cleansing of, got killed off when protective forces had to withdraw from the area due to the NATO bombings. And on top of that, for those Albanians left in the region, NATO bombings had destroyed infrastructure in the region and left radioactive munitions there. Not great for them.

The Gulf War was a piece of stupidity in that its cause seemed to be that US diplomats had signaled to Hussein that the US wouldn't intervene in the region if he took Kuwait. Then when he did, the US supported lies being told at the UN about children being killed in hospitals, and eventually decided to intervene. If the US had been clear all along that they would or wouldn't defend Kuwait, the entire fiasco could have been avoided.

[Starlight]

The only successful Western intervention in the ME was the establishment of Israel.

I'm okay with much of your post, but this caused me to do a spit-take. The establishment of Israel has caused 75 years of war in the middle east. About the only way you could class it was 'successful' is that Israel still exists. It caused a huge and unnecessary loss of life.

I'm a little bit Jewish in genetics, and I think they would have been much better to dedicate some space in the US to the creation of a Jewish nation. The middle east was always going to be a disaster if they put a Jewish nation there, especially since Britain had promised the exact same land to Palestinians for a Palestinian state.

[Diogenes]

Were Yugoslavia and Gulf War scams?

Both Gulf War were scams. The US propped up Sadaam when he was a convenient proxy against Iran.

[Darth Executor]

The NATO intervention in Yugoslavia seems to have managed to hurt the very people it was trying to help. The Albanians that NATO was trying to save from ethnic cleansing of, got killed off when protective forces had to withdraw from the area due to the NATO bombings. And on top of that, for those Albanians left in the region, NATO bombings had destroyed infrastructure in the region and left radioactive munitions there. Not great for them.

The idea that the albanians would be better off if NATO had let the Serbs ethnically cleanse them is insane. Almost as insane as the idea that Russia should be allowed to occupy any part of Ukraine.

Kosovo became and stayed independent and Serbia's ethnic cleansing campaign ended. You can cry about it and pretend otherwise but the war was a MILITARY success.

The Gulf War was a piece of stupidity in that its cause seemed to be that US diplomats had signaled to Hussein that the US wouldn't intervene in the region if he took Kuwait. Then when he did, the US supported lies being told at the UN about children being killed in hospitals, and eventually decided to intervene. If the US had been clear all along that they would or wouldn't defend Kuwait, the entire fiasco could have been avoided.

Not true. Iraq falsely thought they had been given a signal. They were obv mistaken. The MILITARY operation was a complete success.

Even if the US had mistakenly given them the wrong signal, that would be a diplomatic failure, not a military intervention failure. The actual military intervention expelled Iraqi troops and freed Kuwait.

[Diogenes]

I'm okay with much of your post, but this caused me to do a spit-take. The establishment of Israel has caused 75 years of war in the middle east. About the only way you could class it was 'successful' is that Israel still exists. It caused a huge and unnecessary loss of life.

I'm a little bit Jewish in genetics, and I think they would have been much better to dedicate some space in the US to the creation of a Jewish nation. The middle east was always going to be a disaster if they put a Jewish nation there, especially since Britain had promised the exact same land to Palestinians for a Palestinian state.

Palestinian nationalism was mainly due to the waning influence of the Ottomans. It's more about self-determination of the people living there than some kind of cultural identity like anything similar to First Nations. I would agree with Meir in that there was no such thing as a Palestinian. Modern Palestinians have no tie to the history of the region. The Romans only changed the name due to a Jewish revolt. And speaking of Meir, not even the US has had a female leader, least of all Israel's neighbors. Israel is also much more tolerant, especially to the LGBT community. Their Speaker of Parliament is gay.


As for loss of life, Israel's enemies have constantly denied their right to exist. The aggressor in the various conflicts varies.

[Diogenes]

People in this forum tend to wrongly perceive my relatively-normal-from-an-international-perspective negative view of US actions on the world stage as being some sort of supercharged level of anti-US animus. It's really not. It's just that people in this forum seem to generally not understand how the rest of the world generally see the US's actions.

Gallup did a poll a while back of people in 65 countries, asking who they saw as the biggest threat to world peace. The plurality of people in most countries, including in numerous US allied countries, answered: The US. That's right, most people, even in US-allied nations, see the US as the biggest threat to world peace. Why? Because the US is constantly doing military inventions and starting military conflicts where it doesn't need to.

Here's a map of those poll results where each country is covered by the flag that people in the country said was the biggest threat to world peace:



As you can see, across most of the world, including numerous US allies such as Australia, South America, Western Europe, most people think the biggest threat to world peace is the US.

So please stop with the 'Starlight is totally mental for thinking the US's numerous interventions are bad and generally wanting to see less of them' type rubbish. Starlight is just an average international observer telling you what average people in the rest of the world actually think.

South America isn't an ally of the US, as South America is mainly leftist and still unhappy with US interventions down south.

German was in transition to a coalition with socialists.

The Swedes and Finns are leftists. Perhaps if Russia threatened them they'd like the US

Nobody likes the US until it's their skin on the line.


But I don't think you're mental, you're an average international observer. Good thing Americans care more about soft/hard power projection than what people thought of the US.

2013 would have been right after the disastrous intervention in Libya.