Get America out of NATO
05 Jan 2017, 9:28 am
Korin wrote:
UN first.
UN is long past its usefulness.
It wants global world government
UN is long past its usefulness.
It wants global world government
Maybe that bad idea deserves a thread of it's own.
Why does the UN exist? So there is some mechanism for hostile nations to engage diplomatically without resorting to war. It's a response to World War 2.
It's often annoying and always highly dysfunctional, but not having it when the stuff hits the fan somewhere would be a heck of a lot worse. We know, because it used not to exist and very bad things happened. Since it was created, that level of war has not happened.
There are more nuclear states than ever. The next time India and China or India and Pakistan or Israel and any one of its hostile neighbors really gets into it, having the UN as a forum for solutions that don't involve global thermonuclear war will still be useful.
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05 Jan 2017, 1:22 pm
Jacoby wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Georgia might be debatable but Ukraine isn't, it is very firmly European.
There are considerably more than two conflicts here. I won't deny that Abkhazia and South Ossetia are complicated situations but if the US was occupying an analogous territory then you'd be criticising the imperialism and say that you shouldn't be being the world's police. Same if Georgia invaded Chechnya. There's a clear hypocrisy by both the far left and particularly the far right when it comes to Russia's foreign policy.
It's hard to hold a legitimate referendum when you're occupied by a military power with a vested interest in that referendum. While I support Crimean self-determination, there needs to be a clean referendum.
(I'd also like to see international recognition of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria as well as other de facto states, but Russian imperialism makes that harder)
There are considerably more than two conflicts here. I won't deny that Abkhazia and South Ossetia are complicated situations but if the US was occupying an analogous territory then you'd be criticising the imperialism and say that you shouldn't be being the world's police. Same if Georgia invaded Chechnya. There's a clear hypocrisy by both the far left and particularly the far right when it comes to Russia's foreign policy.
It's hard to hold a legitimate referendum when you're occupied by a military power with a vested interest in that referendum. While I support Crimean self-determination, there needs to be a clean referendum.
(I'd also like to see international recognition of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria as well as other de facto states, but Russian imperialism makes that harder)
Ukraine and Georgia are strategic pivot points which the US and it's NGO's poured billions into fomenting these conflicts, George Soros played a big role in all of this. I feel Russia's action in both were in rational responses to aggression. It's more the imperialistic ambitions of the US and the NWO being projected onto Russia, I feel when you learn the context of these situations this becomes very clear. I believe in self determination and staying out of the domestic affairs of other countries, it is our playing around trying to overthrow governments that causes so many of these problems to begin with.
There's a possibility that some of what you are saying is true for Crimea, but nothing you have said bares any relevance to Abkhazia, South Ossetia, or Transnistria. I don't really expect anyone to know much about these conflicts as they happened a long time ago and are quite obscure (although of course South Ossetia caused some people to worry that Russia was invading the state of Georgia) but it would be nice if people would recognise the limits of their knowledge.
If you believed in self-determination then you wouldn't support Russian imperialism. It's strange that asking Poland to join NATO or offering Ukraine better trade deals constitutes imperialism but not troops storming the Supreme Council of Crimea. I would argue that such a definition is useless. Criticise the US if it gets unduly involved with the affairs of other countries, but do the same for Russia too. Putin decided to invade Crimea long before the referendum took place.
Talk of the NWO as a shadowy cabal immediately discredits someone. What exactly would US NGOs have to gain from funding a Russian occupation of an unimportant slither of Moldova? Why would a currency speculator who these days seems mostly interested in electing socially liberal District Attorneys be interested in causing territorial disputes when the Soviet Union collapsed? Could you enlighten me as to the occasion when a Western government decided to overthrown the Abkazian government or get Georgia out of Abkazia?
17 Jan 2017, 12:24 am
One of America's biggest johns--oops, sorry, meant "allies"--is concerned about Trump's comment calling NATO "obsolete":
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/16/germany- ... emark.html
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"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
17 Jan 2017, 11:55 am
Johns?
Is the idea that the US is a hooker and nato members are customers?
If so, that analogy makes no sense.
Of course they are worried. NATO has been instrumental in preventing a major war in Europe for many decades. Anyone who knows much about the last one appreciates that. Anyone who paid attention during the breakup of Yugoslavia and saw how rapidly things went bad will also appreciate the peace that NATO has helped preserve.
Consider that both the US and the U.K. have opposed the creation of a European defense force. Why would that be?
The end of NATO means Germany back in the game as an independent great power. Not everyone thinks that's a great idea.
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03 Feb 2017, 4:15 pm
Another reason is that America's dominant position makes it hard to convince Americans they should learn from other countries, like for metrication and health care. It causes the thinking to go like this:
"America is the greatest country in the world, so we must be doing something right. Europe, etc., are not: they've got no credibility. There's a reason they're not the greatest. We shouldn't be taking lessons from a bunch of losers."
Because of this thinking, as long as America remains dominant, we will not be able to convince enough people to fully adopt these policies. At most, we'll get half-arsed measures like Obamacare and "voluntary metrication".
So what's the solution? Remove America's dominance. One way of accomplishing that is to leave NATO.
_________________
"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
09 Feb 2017, 12:51 am
A reason why staying in NATO is bad for Europe: Many Americans have no respect for Europeans because of their dependence on us for their defense. Americans see European men as weak, ineffectual, effeminate.
Many Americans suspect Europe's welfare states are the cause of this dependence, so many of us see it as something we would be better off not adopting here, so we can maintain our strength and independence. If we adopt European-style social welfare, then that would mean things would get easier, making American men soft like European men, goes the implicit view (not often verbalized). And if American men become soft, then who will protect the West from invasion by Muslims and other "outsiders"? many Americans ask.
Basically, it leads to Europe getting no respect from Americans, and it presents to Americans a distorted view of the effects of social policies. The solution to this problem is to get the US out of NATO and out of our defense role in Europe.
_________________
"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
12 Feb 2017, 9:59 pm
Adamantium wrote:
beneficii wrote:
You need to distinguish the establishment elite of America and the ordinary American. It may work great for the former, but my concern is for the latter, and so I still stand by my points above.
Yes, it sucks that Americans keep supporting their own oligarchy, despite all the tools at their disposal to effect peaceful change in their own government, but is NATO really an issue there?
Would the average American citizen from the 99% somehow gain from the dissolution of NATO? What would be gained and what would be lost? What does NATO do that impacts the lives of ordinary citizens?
NATO sets standards for interoperable equipment. This means they have standards for things like cartridge (shell) size, cargo pallettes, refueling probes, runway lighting, radio procedures and naval signals. This allows commanders of joint forces to assign units from any NATO country to operate with units from other NATO countries to make better use of their operational specialties. This allows aircraft from different nations to take fuel from tankers launched by other nations.
NATO units regularly train together and in the process iron out communications issues so that they can operate together effectively in multination missions. This means the US doesn't need to assign units with every needed capability for an operation if that capability exists in local NATO forces. That means the US spends less, not more, on those operations.
Those operations are important because they secure the shipping routes to our major trading partners. Europe is the US's primary export market, rivaled only by the combined exports to China, Korea and Japan.
Those exports mean jobs for Americans, not just profits for the 1%.
Americans also like to buy a lot of European goods.
People take for granted the security that NATO has provided, and forget that that security is what allows them to carry on buying and selling stuff internationally. We wonder how it happens that other, less fortunate areas have problems with piracy, forgetting that the reason we aren't plagued with those problems is what we get with NATO.
What would happen to US workers if our trade with Europe was disrupted? America or Europe are the primary trading partners for every other region on earth. If something seriously disturbs the European/American economies, the whole world will suffer. US workers would suffer greatly.
Securing our major trade routes is not just a gift for the 1%.
These ideas about NATO being a drain make no sense economically. More than that, there is some sort of implied relationship between US participation in NATO and US defense spending. Anyone who thinks that disbanding NATO would result in changes in US defense spending has no idea how defense procurement works in the US.
I'm going to have another go at this, after reading Johan Galtung's book.
I would say that our dominant position in the world does not help the homeless man on the streets, does not help the black single mother who works 60 hours per week to support her children, does not help the autistic adult who is struggling to get adequate support, and does not help the working 50-something coming down with an illness who lives in a state that didn't expand Medicaid while having too low of an income for healthcare subsidies and their job doesn't offer health insurance, and so can't get coverage.
In fact, Galtung in his book The Fall of the US Empire,...And Then What? looks at the situation in Britain and France post-imperialism and mentions that the material condition of ordinary citizens in those countries has improved. He mentions that imperial structures favor an elite group that exploits all the rest; ordinary citizens in the center territory are not necessarily favored (pp. 184-185):
Quote:
However, the curious thing is that not many people seem to be nostalgic about the imperial past inside Britain or inside France either. From the point of view of the proletariat this is not strange:
They actually have a materially much better life now than during the heyday of imperialism, in spite of the circumstance that imperialism was not Britain or France exploiting the colonies, but the elite centers of Britain and France (helped by certain centers overseas) exploiting all the rest. In fact, what happened was probably an example of what has been mentioned above: Liberation processes are contagious; decolonization stimulated further steps in the direction of welfare states (which had as an immediate consequence a shared worker interest in the maintenance of socio-economic expansion abroad), ultimately also touching off the many revolts of the national minorities inside the West.
They actually have a materially much better life now than during the heyday of imperialism, in spite of the circumstance that imperialism was not Britain or France exploiting the colonies, but the elite centers of Britain and France (helped by certain centers overseas) exploiting all the rest. In fact, what happened was probably an example of what has been mentioned above: Liberation processes are contagious; decolonization stimulated further steps in the direction of welfare states (which had as an immediate consequence a shared worker interest in the maintenance of socio-economic expansion abroad), ultimately also touching off the many revolts of the national minorities inside the West.
Basically, our political structure is set up to exploit. It's set up to exploit the single mom mentioned above, as well as the 50-something, and it's likely exploited the homeless man already; while hoarding the gains in a favored group, so the autistic person and the 50-something can't get help. It seems the end of imperialism might bring about an end of these domestic structures of exploitation also, bringing me hope.
In fact, what I've been seeing lately makes me even more hopeful. For example, the entire senior management of the State Department resigned not long after Trump took office, taking away the people that have played a huge role in the US taking the lead in the world:
http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... gns-report
In addition, in the latest North Korea missile crisis, Japan seems to be taking on a leadership role while the US is taking on a more secondary support role (video has both English and Japanese):
http://www.fnn-news.com/news/headlines/ ... 49641.html
In this area, I am glad Clinton is not in charge, and instead we have in charge a team who is apparently content with letting some major regions we've had interest in like Europe and East Asia take the lead in resolving their issues themselves, with the US sliding back into more of a support role. I think in the medium term, this can radically reshape the face of our politics for the better, as the imperial structures once and for all are taken down.
After this, it seems like we will enter a reconciliation process, where we reshape our relationships with other countries; this will likely also lead to reconciliation at home, which might finally bring help for the people in the examples I named above.
_________________
"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
13 Feb 2017, 12:31 pm
beneficii wrote:
I'm going to have another go at this, after reading Johan Galtung's book.
I would say that our dominant position in the world does not help the homeless man on the streets, does not help the black single mother who works 60 hours per week to support her children, does not help the autistic adult who is struggling to get adequate support, and does not help the working 50-something coming down with an illness who lives in a state that didn't expand Medicaid while having too low of an income for healthcare subsidies and their job doesn't offer health insurance, and so can't get coverage.
I would say that our dominant position in the world does not help the homeless man on the streets, does not help the black single mother who works 60 hours per week to support her children, does not help the autistic adult who is struggling to get adequate support, and does not help the working 50-something coming down with an illness who lives in a state that didn't expand Medicaid while having too low of an income for healthcare subsidies and their job doesn't offer health insurance, and so can't get coverage.
Two things--the pro income inequality and anti collective insurance attitudes that drive a lousy healthcare system are not caused by NATO or other US military partnerships and it's untrue that the great wealth that America's dominant position has given it has not benefited black single mothers, autistic adults and others at the bottom of the economic system.
The dominant position the US took after World War 2 and maintained through the Cold War and beyond has made America a wealthy country. This has helped people of all kinds to get by through much of that period. In the last two decades, we have seen the investor class using their financial power to push policies that greatly increase inequality and this results in all manner of social ills, but there is no doubt that Americans at all levels of society have benefitted from the enormous wealth in the country.
This is why we have so many economic migrants wanting to come here, even though the positions open to them are generally in the lowest economic tier. Where would you rather have bad health care, the US or El Salvador?
beneficii wrote:
In fact, Galtung in his book The Fall of the US Empire,...And Then What? looks at the situation in Britain and France post-imperialism and mentions that the material condition of ordinary citizens in those countries has improved.
The material condition of ordinary citizens in Britain and France improved because of American protection and financial aid. The "European Recovery Program" (AKA the Marshall Plan) saw the injection of $120 billion (in 2016 dollars) to create conditions for peaceful democracy to flourish in Western Europe. Britain and France received the largest shares of that money.
beneficii wrote:
Basically, our political structure is set up to exploit. It's set up to exploit the single mom mentioned above, as well as the 50-something, and it's likely exploited the homeless man already; while hoarding the gains in a favored group, so the autistic person and the 50-something can't get help. It seems the end of imperialism might bring about an end of these domestic structures of exploitation also, bringing me hope.
There is no reason to suppose that the condition of exploited workers or vulnerable populations would improve in a contracting, isolationist economy. On the contrary, there are many reasons to suppose that wealth and power would remain just as concentrated in the hands of a few oligarchs and the people you are discussing would be told that they are the losers in a darwinian social struggle and should expect nothing more than extinction.
beneficii wrote:
we have in charge a team who is apparently content with letting some major regions we've had interest in like Europe and East Asia take the lead in resolving their issues themselves, with the US sliding back into more of a support role. I think in the medium term, this can radically reshape the face of our politics for the better, as the imperial structures once and for all are taken down.
I doubt we will see anything of the kind. General Mattis doesn't seem on board with such a reckless approach to the balance of nuclear states.
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13 Feb 2017, 5:52 pm
Adamantium,
Neither I nor Galtung calls for isolationism.
You seem to posit a false dilemma: Either dominate the world, or become isolationist.
I think there are more options than that.
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"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
Jacoby
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13 Feb 2017, 6:25 pm
Maybe we can keep NATO if it can be modernized in it's purpose, the way for it to maintain it's relevancy I think is by the incorporation of Russia as part of part of security apparatus rather than it's target.
I reading just now how Russia may involve itself in Libya where the US again supports islamist militias which have created a fertile recruiting grounds for ISIS. The problem of Libya can be solved with a Russian and Egyptian component, it was Obama's naive support for the Muslim Brotherhood which have brought so much terror to these lands and soon this will be designated a terrorist organization as it already has been in much of the Middle East.
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