If the think tanks ran everything there would be no war at all, just a race for extracting minerals, creating products people didn't need and finding markets for them, and like, skinning otters and bludgeoning defenseless animals. How bad is that really compared to all-out nuclear war?
Why? Because they just want to maximize profits which is inherently peaceful because <repeat points from the article>? I don’t know what assumptions you’re using.
Invading Iraq or trying to create democracy in Libya or getting Finland to join NATO is, basically, some attempt to create stability at a distance - as misguided and chaotic as the results may be. Engaging in actual, direct war the way Putin has would be unthinkable; it would be like taking your pants off at a dinner party.
[edit] I should clarify that the invading Iraq part of the above statement was meant as a bit of jest; obviously that was precisely what Putin has done.
[edit #2] the article's flaw isn't that it (rightly) locates the source of both peace and war in the profit-making capacities of companies and governments; the flaw is in its fanciful belief (and the subject of the piece) that this has somehow led to a neutered military situation of which the present Russian losses are proof. They are no proof, and the situation is more dangerous and ambiguous than ever, partially as a result of the ongoing neutering of one of the three important millitaries in the world at the hands of the most powerful alliance. Wish that it were not so, but this destabilizes what had up until now been a grouping that was mostly driven by profit.
Libya was unfortunately in earnest, but for exactly the right reasons.
We didn't seek to conquer it, occupy it, or annex it. We did seek to support a popular uprising against a vicious dictator [edit: Something that we've unfortunately over-promised and failed to deliver on too many times, e.g. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Kurdistan, Hmong people, any war where the Pentagon seizes on a "third way"], but we did that based on a doctrine that security for ourselves needed democracy abroad, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. Let me make the alternative case for a second: Helping democratic movements in the ME/NA was a misguided proposition, as obviously the region has zero history of popular governance and the only actual alternative to authoritarian rule there on the ground is, and has always been, hardcore 7th century Islamism which is among other uglinesses and human rights abuses, deeply unfriendly to us. And therefore it was a fool's errand to overthrow any dictator in the ME, because they were the ones keeping the street quiet.
Okay, now that I've made that case, here's the case for helping overturn Qaddafi and try for Libyan democracy: He was murdering his own people. He had done, and he would do it again. And given the climate, his state would become again a breeding ground for terrorism as it had been in the 70s and 80s.
Personally, I think it was stupid, but I don't think it was wrong in the sense that Russia invading Ukraine was wrong - precisely because I don't think propping up a dictatorship is morally valid, the way Russia was propping up Ukraine before 2014 and the way it still does in Belarus and all the former Soviet states.
What I'm saying is that the moral decisions are frequently poor strategic decisions, and they rarely work in concert, but the failure of one doesn't nullify the other; nor do our strategic failures provide justification for the moral failures of others. If something is wrong then replicating it would also be wrong, no?
> [edit: Something that we've unfortunately over-promised and failed to deliver on too many times, e.g. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Kurdistan, Hmong people, any war where the Pentagon seizes on a "third way"]
It’s like there is no need to even compose a reply. This philosophy is absurd on its face.
But I’ll just say that the US has supported dictatorial “regimes” (instead of overthrowing them, or fomenting a popular uprising).
(What if the US was in fact a capable superpower and not a bumbling, idiotic giant who whoopsies all of its attempt to to good? Because the war aims had nothing to do with spreading democracy.)
US foreign incursions have always needed the support of the population, and therefore been scattershot and bumbling. What makes the US a relatively free country for individuals is also what makes it a lackluster great power in terms of formulating long term, coherent strategies that it's capable of carrying out. One could say it has always had a short attention span baked into it. This has been good for some places (Canada still exists after 1812, Europe isn't living under the 3rd Reich, Taiwan is... well... it is) and produced mixed results in others (our own Southern states are still a racist train wreck 130 years after reconstruction, Libya is a bunch of guys running around with scimitars, etc). The fecklessness sucks, but the overall inability to fully commit to domination is probably a good thing on the whole for the world. Consider the opposite... a US with a government and foreign policy unmoored from popular attitudes and free to prosecute any and all imperial wars without internal resistance or dissent or risk of power changing hands every 4 years.
> US foreign incursions have always needed the support of the population, and therefore been scattershot and bumbling.
I don’t know whether you are blaming the populace for these wars or saying that they sabotaged them enough so that they didn’t become worse.
But in any case the difference between a nominal democracy and an outright authoritarian state isn’t that. The difference is that while an authoritarian state can just say that they want the oil and the resources of another territory, a nominal democracy has to at least somewhat pretend to be different and somewhat noble. Exactly because it has a very limited form of democracy.
And so you get people who unironically, completely sincerely, present the narrative of the US as a bumbling but loveable, kind of amnesiac, tries its best to be good, Destroyer Of The Third Reich, good ally to the good guys native-killing settler-colonial Taiwanese (they make chips?), oh we tried our best in Iraq except scratch that that was just in jest because no serious person could deny that that was anything less than an aggressive and unjustified war, but all the dictators we helped actively was just because they were better than the alternatives, except Gaddafi he was a piece of shit so Libya being a shithole and objectively worse off is okay because we tried our best fuck those scimitar barbarians.
Because that kind of narrative actually matters in a (nominal) democracy.
> Consider the opposite... a US with a government and foreign policy unmoored from popular attitudes and free to prosecute any and all imperial wars without internal resistance or dissent or risk of power changing hands every 4 years.
Yeah, then Congress would probably increase the military budget for the fifteenth time in a row (unlike now). Then being at war and continuing to dig into wars would probably be a “bipartisan issue”, no matter whether the power changes hands to Pepsi or Coke every four years (unlike now). Then the US military would probably be larger than a lot of of other nations combined (unlike now). Then the US military would probably have tons of bases around the world (unlike now). Then there would not be consequences for politicians and public servants who commit war crimes (unlike now). Then Barack Obama saying “we tortured some folks” would probably just be a meme-gaffe of no consequence (unlike now). Then the laughably anti-International Community American Service-Members' Protection Act would probably become a thing (unlike now).[1]
