02-27-2017, 02:01 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2017, 02:04 AM by Warren Dew.)
Quote:[Someguy; quotation system getting wonky]
Capable of seizing AND holding? We've had quite a bit of difficulty with the latter ourselves, what makes you think the Russians are so much better at it?
The fact that Russia has had no trouble maintaining control over all of the areas they've seized, including eastern Ukraine, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia. They seem to be better at it than we are.
What's your idea about when to start worrying about someone bent on world conquest? After they're done? I'd prefer to nip it in the bud, thanks.
Quote:Quote:I think you have a distorted view of what the Cold War was like.
The Cold War was not a time of high military commitment on the part of the US. In fact, the balance of terror from relatively cheap nuclear weapons meant that the requirements for conventional military capability expensive both in terms of money and lives was limited to relatively small, contained engagements.
The end of the Cold War greatly reduced the threat of global nuclear holocaust, but the downside was that it substantially increased the scope for conventional conflicts that would previously have been subsumed into the largely peaceful nuclear balance between the US and Soviet spheres. It's no coincidence that within a couple years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US was invading Iraq.
Oh yes, the Cold War was characterized by comparatively limited engagements like Korea, Vietnam, and an enormous build-up of conventional forces on either side of the Iron Curtain. Nothing like the mass carnage of Iraq or the rest of the GWOT.
There were a lot more people killed in wars we participated in in the decade after 1990 than in the decade before 1990. Millions of people were killed in the two Iraq wars and by the intervening sanctions. I grant that most of those killed were not Americans, but that was, if anything, because we devoted more military power to fighting, not less.
I grant that there was more combat earlier in the Cold War. I'd argue that was part of the learning process, before we learned how to do it right under Reagan. Still, averaging the Korean War and the Vietnam war over the 45 years of the Cold War gives a death rate in the 100,000 per year range, no higher and possibly lower than in Iraq alone after the end of the Cold War.
As a tangent, I would also like to note something not generally acknowledged. We won the Cold War, just as much as we won WWII. Total military and civilian deaths on all sides were an order of magnitude lower in the Cold War than in WWII, despite the existence of far greater destructive power. From a cost benefit perspective, we did a much better job on the Cold War than we did in WWII, or in the wars we've had since the end of the Cold War.
Quote:Quote:However, when the Cold War ended, the opportunity arose for the US becoming the hegemon for a global system of maritime commerce.
Is THAT when that started? I'm sorry, I was young, I apparently missed the enormous buildup of US naval forces during the 90s.
Yes, seriously, that's absolutely when that started. At the beginning of the 1990s, the US navy was only on a par with the Soviet navy, so obviously we didn't meet the requirements for being the maritime hegemon. After the end of the cold war, the US navy rapidly got to the point where it was four times larger than the Russian navy, which was the next largest navy. A buildup is not the only way to gain hegemonic power; defeating rivals works too. Cool infographic here for other readers (not you, you'll consider it a flawed source):
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military...fographic/
Being a hegemon requires both absolute and relative power. During the Cold War, we had the absolute power, but not the relative power. It was only with the end of the Cold War that we got the relative power as well. We didn't build more ships, but our navy became four times as strong relative to the closest rival, and twice as strong relative to the rest of the world combined.
Quote:Quote:So we have a choice. We can accept the responsibilities of being a global maritime hegemon and facilitate a prosperous system of global commerce which we can turn to our own advantage to whatever extent we are willing to. Or, we can allow the world to balkanize into less prosperous regions, allow ourselves to devolve to the level of other regional powers like China and Russia, and likely set ourselves up for a subsequent period of interregional warfare as the global regional system shakes itself out.
Oh my God, The Stupid, it burns!!
We already accepted the responsibilities of global hegemon, decades ago. That's why we have ships in the Black and South China Seas in the first place. The material underpinnings of our national power have been decaying for years (particularly in relative terms), which is why I am recommending that we quit while we're still ahead, shore ourselves up, rather than go through the usual cycle of hegemonic war and decline that all previous hegemons have undergone.
So why should we give up when we're ahead? Why not enjoy the hard won benefits for a few centuries before the decline sets in, rather than volunteering for immediate degredation to a second rate power?
Quote:Quote:It doesn't cost us anything to be the global maritime hegemon. Yes, we spend the direct monetary system benefits on military power, but so what? Military power isn't a bad thing, especially if it's free.
Yup, our defense budget is negligible. Especially those supplemental wars we have been engaged in almost continuously for the last couple of decades. They basically pay for themselves.
As you already agreed, we get substantial payment for our services in the form of an inflation tax on dollar reserves, that defrays related costs.
If by supplemental wars you mean Iraq, I don't agree that was required for our role as global maritime hegemon. That whole fiasco started with an elderly Bush wanting to relive the glory days of his WWII youth by warring against dictators with moustaches. Then the sins of the father were visited on the son in the form of the moral bankruptcy of sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of children, and W had to finish what his dad started.
I would hope that in the future we can use subtler but more effective balance of power methods to achieve our goals. For example, we have a nice three way balance in the middle east between Turkey, Iran, and the arabs, but Iran has been getting too strong for a while now. Supporting Turkey in the Islamic State is the perfect solution, and the Trump administration seems to have figured that out. We'll have to invest some treasure in the form of air support, but substantially less than we would with boots on the ground, and Turkey can supply the bulk of the blood.
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Quote:As for trading assembly line jobs for higher value knowledge worker jobs in financial services, health care, and the associated information technology, why is that a bad thing?
Oh sure, that's what everybody is doing right now, right? There's been no fall-off in workforce participation, no stagnating of median incomes (adjusted for inflation) or surge in debt. The economy is booming, right? Everybody just shifted right into the new value-added positions with no disruption.
The falloff in workforce participation is largely due to ill considered overgenerosity in welfare programs. For example, food stamp benefits were already more than adequate and were inflation adjusted, but Obama pushed through an additional increase anyway. He also expanded eligibility so that a family of 5 making $90k per year living in a million dollar house could collect food stamps. He made it really easy to get onto SSDI and in general made it more profitable for many Americans to get on the government dole instead of working. That problem is easily fixed by saying, "okay, you're right, Democrats, we've recovered from the recession, so we can return to prerecession welfare policies now."
There's a smaller component from the baby boom cohort entering retirement. The best way to fix that is likely to increase the retirement age gradually to 70. Hey, if Trump can work at a tough private sector job until age 70 before retiring to a cushy life on the government dime, the rest of us can too, right?
As I've discussed in other posts, the stagnation in median incomes dates to about 1970 and is pretty clearly traceable to easy immigration policies. Slam the door on immigration and labor regains its bargaining position relative to management, and wages will start going up with productivity again. Overall the economy is doing fine; the problem is that all the benefit is going to billionaires and not workers. Stop letting the billionaires import cheap labor and that problem is fixed.
The surge in debt is largely due to massive increases in the deficit in the early Obama years; the deficit has been declining ever since the Republicans took control of the House and should soon be down to sustainable levels.
Quote:Quote:Abandoning the world is not the solution. Doing a better job of making sure more of the benefits of global free market commerce flow to us and not just to the rest of the world is.
Yup, there are no intermediate states between what we are doing and total autarchy. We're either invading Iraq and moving naval forces into the Western Pacific or we are enabling Hitler and sticking our heads in the sand. Got it.
Actually, I am advocating an intermediate state. Geographical realities dictate that we can be a global maritime hegemon, but not a complete global hegemon. We don't need to invade Iraq but we should patrol the western Pacific. We shouldn't enable Hitler but we can contain him without resorting to all out war.
What intermediate state are you advocating? How is it different from total autarky?
Quote:Quote:Parallels aren't necessarily exact repetitions. Putin has been slower and more constrained in his aggression because the US has been more constraining than Britain was in the 1930s.
Is that why? Do you have actual evidence to support that, or are you just going to make a claim about what you believe to be true and if I ask back it up with the first thing you find on Google?
Quote:There's little doubt he would have taken over the rest of Georgia had the US not demonstrated backing for the Georgian government.
Really? 'Murca scared him off?
Yes, really. Unfortunately I've nothing from RT or TASS to convince you, though. I do have a Russian language source, but it's a translation of something written by a Georgian defense minister, so I guess that's a no go too.
Quote:Quote:And let's not forget that the Ruhr was German and Austria and the Sudeten were majority German if you consider Crimea to have been majority Russian. Even Danzig was "a longrunning historical part of the" German state.
And had he confined himself to that I doubt anybody would have really cared.
And it's our job to confine Putin to that. We've been doing a barely adequate job of it so far, but if we slack off, we're likely to get into trouble. We need to keep doing it until the Russian government collapses financially; then we might have to save his behind somehow. Offering him a cheap way out of Syria might be a good start on that.
Quote:Personally, I am a lot more worried about us precipitating a world war then the other way round.
I'm worried about that too, but that's not a reason to ignore the chance that Putin will start one. It's just a reason to make sure we don't start one either, for example by not electing Hillary Clinton, who wanted to respond to Russian internet packets with physical bombs.
Quote:Quote:Again, I advertised a source on what "probably" happened, not proof, and that's what I gave you at the link. Friedman is pretty accurate on this stuff, as evidenced by his having founded both Stratfor and GPF, which people actually pay for, unlike the stuff from people here.
I am actually a subscriber to Stratfor, and have been for years now. George Friedman is always interesting to read, even if you should take him with a grain of salt (as you should anybody, really). I was just looking for something a little more substantive.
If that's what you have, well, I'm not really sure it adds anything to what was already reported in the press. But thanks for making the effort.
Out of genuine curiosity, what other sources have you seen that reported Flynn getting kicked as a result of conflict with Tillerson and Mattis?