View Topic

Inspired by a USA Today article from a few weeks ago that I've been sitting on. The page has a lot of fascinating infographics that show the expanding cost and influence of the US military throughout the world, especially after WW2 and 9/11. Would it surprise you that the "War on Terror" has touched 85 countries in the last 3 years? Or that the US military has some kind of presence in just about every country in the world? Or that the US spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined, including China? Then you might want to check out the link.

All this fuels a long-running debate over what the appropriate role of the US military ought to be in this day and age, some of which is touched on in the article. Some say that having the military spread out all across the world is costly, wasteful, and ill-suited to combat the modern issues of cyberwarfare and the rise of China. Others point out that it allows the military to quickly pivot to just about any crisis throughout the world and better offer aid and assistance to countries in need. There actually are countries in the world that covet a US military presence, particularly in Asia and Eastern Europe, if only because they're seen as a deterrent against potential aggressors.

So what say you? What are your thoughts here?

We need to slash our military budget by 90%, effective a decade ago, for all the reasons you've already stated.
Those countries that want a US military presence just don't want their own bloated militaries, which in some cases is laudable and in other cases is just an excuse to save their budget money by spending ours. The purpose they want served - a sword of Damocles to sit above the head of any regional aggressor - could be best served by funding and enshrining a standing UN military (rather than UN peacekeepers being seconded from extant national militaries) - but of course, the Great Powers don't want that because that might mean the UN Military could intervene when they're fucking around.
Still, slashing the US military budget 90% (and thus, by proxy, the combined NATO military budget by, like, 80%) would go a long way towards persuading the nations of the Earth that maybe that's a worthwhile trade after all, which might finally result in the end of the pointless fucking militarization of our planet, and the resulting pointless pollution and economic waste military forces create simply by virtue of existing (let alone training), to say nothing of the final demise of the worst element of capitalism of all, the military-industrial complex, one of the few industries that literally thrives on human suffering (the other being the prison-industrial complex).

Semi-relevant recent Johnny Harris video:

How would a UN military even work when the Big 5 can just veto any action taken?

The General Assembly can technically circumvent a Security Council deadlock via Uniting for Peace resolution, but the amount of political will necessary for that makes it very unlikely without the backing of one of the other P5

How would a UN military even work when the Big 5 can just veto any action taken?

I think such a scenario as the UN having its own standing mìlitary implies that the veto has already been abolished.

Abolition of veto is fantasy though, there's no way the P5 will be willing to relinquish that via a UN Charter amendment

Abolition of veto is fantasy though, there's no way the P5 will be willing to relinquish that via a UN Charter amendment

I mean, so's a UN military? I don't really understand how one is more believable than the other...

I would think that UN standing army is slightly more attainable than veto abolition, even if both aren't likely in the foreseeable future. We are seeing gradual progress like R2P doctrine, growth of rapid deployment capabilities and persistent advocacy and proposing for a UN Emergency Peace Service. Whereas there is pretty much no progress for limiting the veto, only changing it from a public rejection into a behind-the-scenes negotiation and premature rejection.

Yeah a UN army defeats the purpose of militaries really.  I definitely am not pro militaries, but I do think it is dumb to just assume the world will behave without a big stick to make sure it does.  Like the United States or not (and as an American I tend to like US) you can't deny that the overwhelming power of the US military has kept the world at peace since WWII. 

And the time that we *might* have disarmed was after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  But there's no way that's going to happen now with China building ships at the rate they are. 

Also I'm not going to trust a UN that has Saudi Arabia on it's women's rights committee and China on its human rights one.  If every country was a vibrant democracy, and the UN representation was proportional, I'd be far more willing to.  But seeing as neither of those is true, I'm uncomfortable giving the UN enough power to do.... well, anything. 

Also hmm... that youtube video has.... umm,well, lots of overcounting.  Like that entire cluster in the Indian Ocean is just different "names" for Diego Garcia.  Which is tiny.  Also hahaha KEF is true. 

Yeah forward basing may not be popular, especially in Japan, but that's the only way the logistics of being able to send 25,000 soldiers to literally anywhere in the world in 48 hours poassible *shrug*.

I just don't see us sacrificing that sort of capability while China is as scary as it is.  Maybe in 20 years when they run out of 20 year olds, but not now

Nah, there will always be the next threat. This is just the loop we've been caught in, now.

Like the United States or not (and as an American I tend to like US) you can't deny that the overwhelming power of the US military has kept the world at peace since WWII.

As an American who tends to despise the actions of the US government, I do deny that, unequivocally, because our nation has spent 227 years of its 244 year history at war.
I point at all the nations our country has invaded essentially on the grounds of 'what are you gonna do about it?' as examples of how the world has very much not been at peace, because the US has all these guns and bombs and tanks and want somewhere to use these fun little toys it's developed, ideally somewhere far away and filled with brown people, but if not we'll settle for brown people in our own cities, whether it be through the militarization of our police, or literally by bombing our own fucking people.
The last war China fought was 40 years ago with Vietnam; the last war the US fought was halfway around the world, and has been ongoing for the last 20 years. One of these countries is rather more obviously a threat to global peace, and it's not the one that CNN and Fox, who disagree on everything except who we should go to war with next, can both agree on.

Also hmm... that youtube video has.... umm,well, lots of overcounting.  Like that entire cluster in the Indian Ocean is just different "names" for Diego Garcia.  Which is tiny.  Also hahaha KEF is true. 

Not sure how he arrived at that visualization, I went and cross-checked with the latest version of the spreadsheet that he used as his main source and Diego Garcia is only listed once, with only 1 base counted. (The overall count is directly taken from the spreadsheet, so despite those weird differences in his actual map the numbers seem to be right.)

As an American who tends to despise the actions of the US government, I do deny that, unequivocally, because our nation has spent 227 years of its 244 year history at war.
I point at all the nations our country has invaded essentially on the grounds of 'what are you gonna do about it?' as examples of how the world has very much not been at peace, because the US has all these guns and bombs and tanks and want somewhere to use these fun little toys it's developed, ideally somewhere far away and filled with brown people, but if not we'll settle for brown people in our own cities, whether it be through the militarization of our police, or literally by bombing our own fucking people.
The last war China fought was 40 years ago with Vietnam; the last war the US fought was halfway around the world, and has been ongoing for the last 20 years. One of these countries is rather more obviously a threat to global peace, and it's not the one that CNN and Fox, who disagree on everything except who we should go to war with next, can both agree on.

The difference between US interventions and crap post WWII has been the fiddly nature of them and politicans deploying troops willy nilly into any country that sneezes at them the wrong way.  I'm not defending that. 

What I am defending is the undeniable fact that US bases curtail Russian and Chinese territorial aggression.  And while China's last war was with Vietnam, they also have signalled that they're more than willing to continue wars of territorial aggression, especially considering their conquests of Tibet and Xinjiang were rather (c 1960) recent. 

Also, I just fundamentally disagree with you on China there.  If you look at the rhetoric coming out of Beijing, the amount of authoritarian nationalism rivals even Berlin in 1933.  They want to invade Taiwan, they're building an army to invade Taiwan, and their obsession with physical fitness in upper school age boys is certainly not something that is "normal."  You can say what you will about the modern United States.  Systemic racism critiques of the USA are certainly valid.  But there isn't a systematic extermination of minority thought and ethnicity in the USA—that does exist in China, there's no denying it. 

I recognize it's in vogue to say that the USA is the worst, but the reality is, we're not any worse than anyone else would be in our position, and we try our best.  I'm not a major fan of the political classes forcing the military to invade various far flung places, but the forward basing strategy has deterred far more wars than Washington has managed to start in the 70 years since its implementation. 

Also hmm... that youtube video has.... umm,well, lots of overcounting.  Like that entire cluster in the Indian Ocean is just different "names" for Diego Garcia.  Which is tiny.  Also hahaha KEF is true. 

Not sure how he arrived at that visualization, I went and cross-checked with the latest version of the spreadsheet that he used as his main source and Diego Garcia is only listed once, with only 1 base counted. (The overall count is directly taken from the spreadsheet, so despite those weird differences in his actual map the numbers seem to be right.)

Yeah I was really hoping he'd literally give us a geographic footprint, like total area or something which would actually be quite cool to see/visualize.

Also hmm... that youtube video has.... umm,well, lots of overcounting.  Like that entire cluster in the Indian Ocean is just different "names" for Diego Garcia.  Which is tiny.  Also hahaha KEF is true. 

Not sure how he arrived at that visualization, I went and cross-checked with the latest version of the spreadsheet that he used as his main source and Diego Garcia is only listed once, with only 1 base counted. (The overall count is directly taken from the spreadsheet, so despite those weird differences in his actual map the numbers seem to be right.)

Yeah I was really hoping he'd literally give us a geographic footprint, like total area or something which would actually be quite cool to see/visualize.

I suspect that that may have been his intent in terms of visualizing footprint, just when zoomed out to the world scale you wouldn't be able to see it so he expanded out their borders as dots with wider spread than they are in reality. Would be interesting to see a more responsive visualization along those lines that increased geographic accuracy as you zoomed in.