downsizing US military

[C0ckney]

It's obviously more complicated than that, but I'd hazard a guess that the US military played a role in ensuring a world economic system that is very advantageous for the US economy. Nothing assures us that absent a strong liberal democracy(ies) able to protect interests and each other that other powers might not change things to their advantage.

i'd say it has more to do with the fact that the US has a lot of land and natural resources and that in 1945 it was the only major country that hadn't been touched by WW2. these things would still be true if the US disbanded its whole military tomorrow.

It's been mentioned in this thread. The Soviets and pre-reform PRC weren't building workers' paradise.

this doesn't appear to be a reason for why the US military has saved millions of lives.

[regexcellent]

Alby seems to think that marines are the only troops that can sit on a boat and jerk off all day.

[molly bloom]

Protection from who?

From whom ?

Why, bad people.

[Dinner]

We're spending 40% of the global military spending. That's an absurd amount and we could do just fine with half that amount especially since another 40% is spent by allies. We need to stop spending money on junk the pentagon doesn't even want just because some Congressman got a bribe to include it in the defense appropriations bill. We can spend half that and still have such a strong military no one would want to mess with us.

[notyoueither]

i'd say it has more to do with the fact that the US has a lot of land and natural resources and that in 1945 it was the only major country that hadn't been touched by WW2. these things would still be true if the US disbanded its whole military tomorrow.

Yes, and the US military assuring the US of trading partners in Japan, SK, Germany, etc did wonders for places to sell the products of that land and those resources. Had the Comintern been allowed a free hand not so much.

this doesn't appear to be a reason for why the US military has saved millions of lives.

Yes, it does if you actually think about it and aren't simply being disagreeable.

[C0ckney]

Yes, and the US military assuring the US of trading partners in Japan, SK, Germany, etc did wonders for places to sell the products of that land and those resources. Had the Comintern been allowed a free hand not so much.

that's a fair point. although again, the ability to sell products has rather more to do with the money given or lent on easy terms to countries after world war 2 and the economic development which that allowed than troops or tanks. also it's time limited, as it was the threat of MAD which stopped the cold war from turning hot.

Yes, it does if you actually think about it and aren't simply being disagreeable.

i'm not being disagreeable. i'm trying to understand your point of view by asking you questions. your reasoning is very unclear to me and your answers to my questions have done nothing to clarify your position.

[notyoueither]

that's a fair point. although again, the ability to sell products has rather more to do with the money given or lent on easy terms to countries after world war 2 and the economic development which that allowed than troops or tanks. also it's time limited, as it was the threat of MAD which stopped the cold war from turning hot.

i'm not being disagreeable. i'm trying to understand your point of view by asking you questions. your reasoning is very unclear to me and your answers to my questions have done nothing to clarify your position.

What MAD? We're talking about a post-war isolationist USA with a small military as an alternate history. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of arguing the 'facts' of a global historical counterfactual. My opinion is that a lot more people would have ended up dead in the insurgencies, counter-insurgencies, revolutions, gulags, collectivisations, cultural revolutions, great leaps and killing fields than did due to the Cold War, but it's unprovable and pointless to argue.

[PLATO]

unprovable and pointless to argue.

Isn't this a requirement for a Poly debate?

[C0ckney]

What MAD? We're talking about a post-war isolationist USA with a small military as an alternate history. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of arguing the 'facts' of a global historical counterfactual. My opinion is that a lot more people would have ended up dead in the insurgencies, counter-insurgencies, revolutions, gulags, collectivisations, cultural revolutions, great leaps and killing fields than did due to the Cold War, but it's unprovable and pointless to argue.

we're talking about a statement which you made and that you can't seem to back up with anything more concrete than a vague feeling that communism is bad. as if it were a binary choice.

if i were to make a counter argument to your statement, i could back it up, by pointing to instances where american military intervention caused far more death and destruction, and made the lives of the people in those places worse, than would otherwise have been the case. two obvious examples would be vietman and iraq. or i could point to instances where proxy wars were fought between the US and the soviet union and where fewer people would have died and less destruction wrought if one or both sides had not been involved. angola is good example of this. or alternatively, i could point out where the US undermined or toppled (directly or through proxies) elected socialist or 'communist' governments and helped to install dictators in their place. there are a lot of examples, but i will limit myself to brasil, chile and nicaragua.

[C0ckney]

if you wanted to take some examples of where american military intervention has had positive consequences and saved lives, then you could have korea, and arguably, the former yugoslavia.

[notyoueither]

we're talking about a statement which you made and that you can't seem to back up with anything more concrete than a vague feeling that communism is bad. as if it were a binary choice.

if i were to make a counter argument to your statement, i could back it up, by pointing to instances where american military intervention caused far more death and destruction, and made the lives of the people in those places worse, than would otherwise have been the case. two obvious examples would be vietman and iraq. or i could point to instances where proxy wars were fought between the US and the soviet union and where fewer people would have died and less destruction wrought if one or both sides had not been involved. angola is good example of this. or alternatively, i could point out where the US undermined or toppled (directly or through proxies) elected socialist or 'communist' governments and helped to install dictators in their place. there are a lot of examples, but i will limit myself to brasil, chile and nicaragua.

Stop being disingenuous. I mentioned collectivisations, gulags, great leaps, cultural revolutions and killing fields.

This is more than a vague feeling that Communism is bad. It had dire implications to countries it came to in too many cases. Vietnam is a great example. Yes, a lot died. My position is that a lot more would have died as Communism spread though SE Asia and Oceania than died in conflict to contain it.

[Al B. Sure!]

Given their history, communist governments are guaranteed to be oppressive. Governments propped up by America have had an X% chance of being oppressive, with X less than 100%. I don't think that's an unreasonable statement.

[regexcellent]

It's not just being oppressive, it's also the economic system that is downright immoral to its very core by denying people their essential property rights.

[Al B. Sure!]

It's not just being oppressive, it's also the economic system that is downright immoral to its very core by denying people their essential property rights.

That won't be a compelling argument to Cockney.

[Felch]

Wasn't Cockney supposed to be another example of British conservatism, along with ken? Or am I just confused by his quoting Chesterton in his sig?