The Military Thread

Well I suppose that'd be some sort of excitement for the day. Planes and helicopters fly over my house a lot but never any sonic booms. I'm jealous.

There is the small matter of the 3,000 British citizens inhabiting the Falklands suffering an occupation by a hostile invasion force.

edited 29th Oct '14 3:33:46 PM by pagad

I keep hearing from critics of the then Argentinian government that winning the war would have been as simple as cutting off the water, which they didn't. Either they went out of their way to fight the war militarily, or they specifically avoided harming the civilians. I'm completely ignorant of the details and completely insensitive of national sensitivities regarding that, so please forgive me if I'm talking out of my ass. I mean no offense.

Then again, when part of the territory of one country is annexed by another, seldom are the locals asked whether they'd be happy to change passports, jurisdictions, political systems, and so on. Rather inconsiderate, if you ask me. But every time I hear of the Isles, the local populations are treated as a non-factor. If they're mentioned at all, their relatively small number and remoteness to the Motherland are emphasized.

edited 29th Oct '14 3:46:02 PM by TheHandle

No it doesn't, I'm hoping they will grow out of it but still.

It wasn't about material resources if that's what you mean. But beyond prestige ideology came into it, the principle of self-determination as opposed to that of Global South strength and ability to throw of what was seen as a colonial power.

Prestige and proving oneself powerful both domestically and internationally defiantly came into it, but there was also the idealogical element of the British belief in self-determination and the Argentine junta's belief is expelling a European power from South America. On top of that there were classic Cold War elements, the USSR and China supported Argentina monetarily largely to spite the British and their allies while the Americans sat awkwardly on the sidelines trying to work out how to manage a fight between two groups that they claimed to be allied with.

I don't know what those people are talking about, the Argentine government wasn't defeated by the local people of the Falklands but by a military taskforce, inflicting additional harm to civilians wouldn't have done anything, well unless they'd rounded up and shot the entire inhabitance of the Falkland's the moment they occupied the place. And if they'd done that we'd have probably resettled the islands afterwards just out of spite.

edited 29th Oct '14 3:45:49 PM by SilasW

Fairly sure the Falkland Islanders had plenty of fresh water.

Correct RPG drills.◊

edited 29th Oct '14 3:48:31 PM by Achaemenid

Better than that Ukrainian instructor who thought it'd be a good idea to play with a live and loaded RPG inside a nice little auditorium.

Can't remember where the video for that was. Pretty sure nobody died.

I thought the USA had a general pro-decolonization and European-empire-dismantling policy, sometime enacted directly, other times less so?

edited 29th Oct '14 3:49:54 PM by TheHandle

Sure, but it kinda comes down to if the Falklands counts as a foreign colony or not. The British argument is that the islands don't, because the people there aren't colonial implants, they're the descendants of the descendants of colonial implants, just like the citizens of the US, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Israel, Argantina, Brazil and more. The Argentine argument is that that doesn't matter and that those people don't deserve the right to self determination.

It's kind of a sins of the father thing, you'll also notice that in the Spanish America war the Cuban people/government didn't want to be part of Spain anymore, the people of the Falklands like the current arrangement (the tune of 99.7% I think), so giving the Falklands to Argentina means overriding their self-determination.

edited 29th Oct '14 4:10:14 PM by SilasW

They aren't even "implants", since that implies they chased the natives away - the Falkland Islands were terra nullius until we took them from the Spanish. There were no native Falkland Islanders before we showed up.

Besides, given the armed forces junta-punted the invasion so hard it caused the collapse of the military government and the restoration of democracy in Argentina, they really should be thanking Thatcher.

edited 29th Oct '14 4:20:47 PM by Achaemenid

It is remarkably stupid. I think all they really wanted was a Xanatos Gambit:

• either an easy win against a big power, and hoped the UK would think 3000 folks weren't worth the expense of a military effort for, given how they treated their own citizens at home.
• or a loss would give them an excuse to maintain a military junta indefinitely.

Frankly, I'd say anti-imperialism is about self-determination, so they really don't have a leg to stand on in this case, when it comes to lofty motivations. As for base, materialistic, Realpolitik motivations... it didn't work out either way. They gambled with taxpayer lives and taxpayer money, and they lost.

edited 29th Oct '14 4:22:15 PM by TheHandle

True true, though I'd say that even if we had chased natives away it would be A: not the Argentine government who could claim the land (seeing as Argentina is made up of colonial implants from Spain) B: be past the use by date on the claim same as it is for Mexico to claim California, Native Americans to claim the entire US or the Welsh to claim England (after all the British are just Anglo-Saxon colonial implants who displaced the natives).

There are still legit colonial actions going on today, the British Indian Ocean Territory is a prime example of one, seeing as we kicked out the natives in the '60s.

It was option one, they honestly didn't think the British would care, the same way we didn't care when they put some guys on South Georgia (an island nearby to the Falklands that lacks a permanent population). Keep in mind that retaking the Falklands was also considered impossible militarily, you're looking at running a taskforce down the entire Atlantic Ocean with nothing but a few tiny islands along the way to support it, once they had the islands the Junta kinda figured they'd won, after all, Who Would Be Stupid Enough? to try and take two small islands of an entrenched enemy at the other end of the planet?

edited 29th Oct '14 4:32:51 PM by SilasW

Anyone who thinks we invaded Afghanistan for the oil is just silly. We invaded for the heroin, obviously.

Now, Germany, we definitely went to war with them for their oil. Their oil and their fine German-engineered ball bearings.

Canada has oil don't they?

Lets hit them, they'll never expect it.

I've heard that argument to, apparently the US went it to gain control over heroin production, not to reduce it, but because it wanted to make loads of money, and For the Evulz obviously.

Why add For the Evulz when Pragmatic Villainy is enough?

German ball bearings are amazing. But you know what else is amazing? A very large number of engineers in Germany are not Germans. Still, at the decision level, it is enforced that all top executives are German by blood.

Germans are weird about nationality.

Seeing as they didn't actually explain why the US would want to increase the supply of drugs into the US I'm assuming their answer would be For the Evulz.

Oil, gold, diamonds, uranium. . . America's hat also doubles as her pantry.

I read that as "panties" the first time around and was very confused.

Nah those are Mexico.

And, Canada is the hat? Or, is that The Beard?

Again. See the Dan Drezner Articles I linked (can't repost, on phone). If the US had gone into Iraq for oil you'd expect US oil companies cleaning up. Instead it's the Turks, the Chinese, even the Iranians who came out ahead, who lead the US in investment in Iraq. It is very hard to argue that someone kicked down the door to a cave of treasures for the purpose of robbery if they proceed to leave the treasure mostly alone for others to take.

Give us Americans some credit for knowing our own motives. Sometimes we do things that seem stupid because we made a stupid choice, not because we're secretly evil geniuses.

The US is helping out the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain keep Iran off their backs. As the Daily Show pointed out, a Chinese firm got the contract to handle Iraq's oil. Afghanistan has resources it's just that pesky Taliban cuttin' off headz.

Yeah, yeah before 9/11 it was "America is helping the Taliban to build a pipeline for their natural gas". After 9/11 it was "America is invading to build a pipeline to steal their natural gas." No pipeline has yet to be built.

Thanks to fracking and increased production the US is overtaking Saudi Arabia in oil.

Yes the US has a lease on bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, but we're paying those governments. We've sold MRAP's to Bahrain, THAAD to the UAE (in fact next year the UAE-ians will be on post here training). Oh and yes the UK and a few other governments are there. Imperialists don't write checks, nor do they cut their forces across the board. Most of the forces in the Middle East will be Naval, Air forces and Air Defense (PATRIOT and THAAD).

or do that prefer to be called UAE-ites?

The same can be said of several other places throughout the world such as South America and Africa. Our relationship with Middle Eastern oil has more to do with a fairly complex and carefully established understanding in terms of principles of negotiation, not simply the physical quantity of oil that region has.

Then again, I think it's a little dumb that we still violently insist on using fossil fuels, but whatever.

As for the political-semantic debate about war economies, when you have a nation that has roughly 57 percent of federal spending allocated to defense - a figure that dwarfs many other nations of comparable economic output - then Handle's initial assumption doesn't seem so silly, however inaccurate the details may be. It's true that many of our recent conflicts were not fought just for oil or that federal defense spending is as large as it is because military spending is inherently and historically expensive.

However, I don't think we should just totally lose our shit when someone understandably yet incorrectly believes that there are nefarious individuals in our private and public enterprises who orchestrate or intentionally perpetuate these conflicts. It's really not preposterous to suppose that war, as a by-product of nation building and wealth acquisition, is going to attract people who have a propensity to be dishonest, greedy and lacking in moral aptitude. As the saying goes, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

edited 29th Oct '14 6:01:10 PM by Aprilla

If there were people trying War for Fun and Profit they suck at it. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

At a national level I'd say you're right, but individual private companies are another matter. Though I will admit that I don't know that much on the subject, I need to look into it more.