02-27-2017, 12:09 PM
Quote: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.
The only territory that they have actually seized (the Crimea) is the only one you've left off that list. The rest are basically rebellious areas that they've been propping up. And the Crimea was taken with minimal violence. This leads me to suggest that the reason they haven't had the same trouble is that they haven't actually been holding areas against their will.
I mean, where was this supposed expertise during their occupation of Afghanistan in the 80s?
Quote: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.
Begging the question. I have yet to see the evidence that they are in fact bent on world conquest, rather than, as Mike phrased it, "rounding off" the edges of their sphere of influence.
Look at all of the military actions and invasions we have made in the last couple of decades. Are we "bent on world conquest" as well?
Quote: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.
The "decade before"? Wow, talk about cherry-picking your date ranges to prove a point.
You were discussing the Cold War as a whole, not the brief period under Saint Reagan, during which he descended from Mount Rushmore bearing the Constitution in stone tablets written by Jesus himself.
Estimated Korean War deaths were between 1 and 2 million, estimated total deaths in Vietnam were similar, and I have yet to see an estimate for violent deaths in the course of the Iraq War that exceed a few hundred thousand (from the Lancet, I believe). Gulf War only had a few tens of thousands, and excess deaths (mainly among children) for the period between the two due to sanctions have been estimated at a few hundred thousand. So, maybe a million for the total two decade period in Iraq, half of them indirectly. And of course I haven't factored in later deaths from Agent Orange and unexploded munitions from Vietnam, or any of the other indirect ways which we destabilized countries and caused people's deaths during the Cold War.
Quote: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.
So you want to average out two wars, where regular troops were deployed for maybe 11 years, over the course of 45 years, to get your 100,000 per year. Whereas Iraq, where we were involved on and off for 20 years, for a total of about 1 million deaths, comes out to about 50,000 a year.
Even when you fudge the numbers as badly as you have, you still come up to only about 50%. Don't think this is the direction you want to go.
Quote: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.
No, the USSR lost. Gorbachev et al toppled the USSR, not Saint Reagan. It's difficult to take you seriously when you just say dumb things.
Quote: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.
That's actually a perfectly valid source. Good job, you're learning.
The Soviet Navy was primarily geared towards guarding its bastions in the Barents Sea and other places. The US Navy started patrolling the global commons during the 1940s. The US' position as global maritime hegemon dates from then.
Quote: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?
Because we don't actually have centuries. I don't even think we have decades.
Quote: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.
And forces up the value of our currency, damaging our industrial sector. There is also the opportunity cost from the things we haven't bothered to spend money on because too much of it goes into the defense sector. Come on, guy, everybody knows there ain't know such things as a free lunch!
Quote: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.
Sorry, I don't think our leadership views it that way. They seem to have a very expansive definition of what hegemony requires.
Quote: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.
Up to a point, I don't have a problem with this sort of thing. I am much happier using the military (mainly the Navy and Air Force) to secure the Western Hemisphere (particularly the northern part of it) and then playing balance of power among the various regional entities.
I just don't think that's what we have been doing.
Quote: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."
That's funny, workforce participation actually peaked in 2000. Goddamn Obama!
Quote: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?
Depends what kinda job you do. Deskwork? Sure. Construction, not so much. And the falloff in workforce participation is equally reflected in the 24-54 cohorts as well. We can't blame it on aging Boomers, as much as we might like to.
Quote: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.
1973, I think, and the big wave of immigration occurred somewhat later. I agree that it is a factor (and it is interesting that all of the liberal scum so adamant that nothing can be done to address the deplorables' concerns because all jobs are going to be automated away are equally insistent that we need to bring in unlimited numbers of unskilled labor from the Third World in order to do all the jobs we "won't do"), but I don't think it is the full story. Competition from foreign imports, the oil crisis, and changes in tax and regulatory policy were much more salient causes in the 1970s, when this started.
Quote: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.
This is childish. The big surge in US debt started under Reagan, and again under GWB with the GWOT. Republican congresses have a good track record of holding down spending when Democrats are in office, under Republicans they tend to splurge.
Quote: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?
I'd simply like to move it back a little further. Arm the Poles, put troops there if they like (they seem to want them), but don't try and push NATO into Ukraine. Prop up the Japanese, the Taiwanese, the Philippines from the outside, but don't put US forces inside the First Island Chain. Work out accommodations where reasonable (Crimea falls in this category, I believe), and if not have other people do as much of the bleeding as possible. Get out of the Middle East (there is no risk of Great Power forming there, and they all hate each other and will happily kill each other with little to no encouragement), reinvest in US infrastructure and industry, let the Europeans start getting anxious enough to pay for their own militaries, avoid direct conflicts with nuclear powers, etc.
Just some thoughts.
Quote: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.
That's cute. Yes, Russian or Georgian sources would both require more than perhaps a little skepticism, considering that they were the two active participants and have an incentive to spin events to their credit. Hard numbers from neutral sources are preferable, where possible.
Quote: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.
If he's that stupid we can shore up the NATO countries (though really the rest of the Europeans should be kicking in more, since it's their asses), let him push into Ukraine, and let him bleed money and lives for a while.
Of course, judging by recent history, he seems to be pretty good at limited interventions with defined goals. Rather a bit better than we have been, recently.
I blame Boomers.
Quote: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.
Yeah, we really dodged a bullet with that one. That was my primary reason for getting off my ass and actually voting for Trump. I actually voted for Nader in 2004. Whichever anti-system candidate had the best chance of winning got my vote. I was in training to go to Afghanistan in 2008, and in 2012 I was in NYC and saw no point. The wailing and gnashing of teeth from the smug cunts in the entertainment/info-tainment industry has been a nice bonus as well. Every time I have started feeling down over the past several months I have gone on Youtube and watched recaps of election night coverage and instantly felt better. The Young Turks' meltdown, Miley Cyrus crying, and the people streaming blankfaced out of HRC's headquarters with the principal refusing to come out have been my particular favorites.
*sigh*
I don't think we should have ever extended NATO guarantees to the Baltic countries in the first place, they are not really defensible if push ever came to shove, unlike, say, Poland. But while that guarantee exists I suppose we are stuck with them, and that is where we should draw the line.
As for the rest of Ukraine, well, not really our problem. If Putin wants to make it his problem, he's welcome to invest the time, money, and blood into it, and we'll see what happens.
Quote:Out of genuine curiosity, what other sources have you seen that reported Flynn getting kicked as a result of conflict with Tillerson and Mattis?
I think I saw it on theHill.com, maybe somewhere else. I knew that reading the Friedman bit I was like, "I've already heard this elsewhere". I suppose I could try to dig something up if you really liked.