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points by justinhj 15 hours ago | 0 comments

"we don't need military because we live surrounded by peaceful neighbours" yes and the world was once nonstop warfare among tribes. it's child like to think peace just arose magically and does not need to be protected

[–] vrganj 14 hours ago

You know what protects peace? Cooperation.

The countries of Western Europe used to be at a state of continuous war for literal centuries, horrible atrocities inflicted on one another.

They all had their fancy armies, and they were all tempted to use them. Gotta get your money's worth, y'know?

Then they founded the world's most successful peace project, the European Union.

No wars between members since.

This adolescent behavior of threatening gestures is counterproductive and only leads to more conflict.

More mature societies have figured that out already.

[–] rdiddly 13 hours ago

Why stop there? Include Russia in the EU. Surely they'll be impressed by your maturity and cooperation and be inspired to maturely cooperate. Then you can rely on them to protect you from the US, instead of the opposite situation that you've enjoyed for 80 years.

[–] vrganj 13 hours ago

I agree. The most painful mistake of European foreign policy in the last decades was not swooping up Russia in the 90s.

Again, the idea of "military protection" is overly primitive and simplistic. If we had integrated them in our system, we could've given them rule of law as we have done with many an applicant state (think other post-Soviet countries!) and nurtured peace through fostering mutual dependence.

We failed to spread the values of enlightenment and now we are paying the price.

The whole protection racket thing that's now exploding in our face would've been unnecessary and could've been avoided.

Violence is the language of the weak.

We've seen time and time again how ineffective it is, most recently when y'all tore up the deal the EU negotiated with Iran and instead went back to more primitive ways, with predictable results. Before that, in Afghanistan, where after countless dead the same group is in power again. When even is the last time your approach worked? WW2? Might be time to move with the times.

[–] rdiddly 12 hours ago

The times today are built upon yesterday's times. You can't arrive where you are without passing through where you were. Could the EU have even formed if it hadn't had a nuclear power protecting it from 1945 to 1993 and beyond? We'll never know. But I'm sure you would've had to waste money on an arms race with the Soviets, as the US did.

I'm explicitly not talking about all the Middle-Eastern misadventures here, I find those as baffling and unjust as you do. I'm only referring to defensive and deterrent effects of having a military, which as I said, is the true portion of the propaganda you pointed out. (Good propaganda is always partly true.) The assertion that it doesn't exist and that the US military is only for war crimes is demonstrably false, and to prove it you need only (as I said to someone else) try to fly an airplane into US airspace without announcing yourself.

Is it primitive and juvenile? Absolutely! It comports with those particular traits of homo sapiens, an ape species. Any country big enough, or rich enough, or strategic enough for some other reason, is a target for invasion by the immature and non-cooperative. Furthermore if all the countries of the world were to join in one big cooperative union (which they already do in the realm of trade and commerce to some degree), I sadly don't think it would take long for someone to betray it, the way Trump (Russian asset) is betraying it now.

[–] justinhj 5 hours ago

Amazing insight. If only you could go back in time and tell those early tribes that cooperation is all you need we could have saved millenia of warfare.