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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
There's a major assumption in your post, Jovian, and that's that having one country have the projection power ample for covering the entire globe is a desirable thing in the first place, either for us or any other country.
Team America: World Police was not a documentary, and the last two wars serve as good (but far from the only) examples of the US screwing up a problem because they funded really big hammers and thus saw problematic foreign countries as nails.
Japan's a big boy, it can take care of itself. North Korea is by all signs vastly underequipped, undereducated, starving and kept on life support by China strictly as a political boogieman puppet. South Korea's been prepping for a possible NK invasion scenario for years - they're ready to steamroll on the word 'Go.' As for Somalia, you can shoot down pirates all you like, but unless you resolve the problems underlying the infrastructure of the country - namely, that there isn't much of one - then there will always be more pirates. Like so many other things, it's just not something that you can fix by just shooting all the bad guys until they go away.
I don't advocate total military isolationism, but playing the part of global police force is neither beneficial to the countries being policed nor, ultimately, sustainable for our country as other nations continue to become competitive with and/or superior to us economically.
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.![]()
That's a major false dichotomy.
Most liberals don't hate military spending. We hate wasteful spending that that fuels a bloated military-industrial complex, and is rife with unnecessary waste and taticool.
Honestly, why do we need a Fighter that preforms ALL THE COMBAT ROLES and is also stealth, with massively expensive stealth coating?
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Doesn't Japan have not much in the way of military, since it is restrained by their Constitution? Also, the whole North Korea thing isn't really due to fears of NK winning, but more that they will do massive amounts of damage before they inevitably fall. That, and I think that some of the nations the Us protect actually like the status quo. No, not all, but if they really do want the US to help in their defense, then it is our obligation to do so.
edited 3rd Mar '13 6:58:10 PM by Lascoden
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I actually agree with you. I don't think that we should be the global police force — but I also don't think that we should give up our position as the world's greatest military power. Quite frankly, there's a hell of a lot to be said for being the biggest fish in the pond. Obviously that power can be abused — like it was in invading Iraq — but just because the possibility of abuse exists is not an argument against having that power in the first place. If it was, then we'd never let anyone have authority over anything.
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False dichotomy between what and what? I just said I want to have an intelligent conversation about the issue, rather than "you'll never touch our military budget!" vs "slash the bloated Pentagon slush fund!". As far as the F-35, the idea is that one design with three variants, sharing most of its parts between them, would be cheaper than having three different designs with three separate supply chains. Stealth is included because stealth is essentially required to be competitive as a next generation fighter — and it deliberately doesn't use expensive stealth coating for the most part, precisely because it's very expensive.
Japan does has a significant military, it's just constitutionally forbidden from having an offensive military, which means they can't have things like aircraft carriers, which are useful for force projection rather than defense.
edited 3rd Mar '13 7:04:43 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Japan spends a SIGNIFICANT amount on its military, only beaten by other major players like the United Kingdom, Russia, China or, of course, the US. The constitutional clause we forced on them just means that they have to preface it with the polite legal fiction that 'but it's for self-defense only, we promise.' Of course, as we've seen from our own wars, you can pretty much frame any kind of aggression as self-defense if you really want to.
We could cut our spending in half and still have a HUGE lead over the second biggest spender, China. Sure, there's room for intelligently-targeted cuts over blind slashing, but when we have such a huge lead to begin with, it's more than a little disingenuous to behave as though we're in danger of being overtaken in military force any day now if the liberals have their way.
edited 3rd Mar '13 7:06:32 PM by Karkadinn
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.![]()
You're acting like both sides are equally at fault. Far as I can see, most republicans don't want to touch military spending, and most democrats just want to tone it down (smartly), not scrap it utterly.
Shit like the flying Humvees would be nice to never be attempted ever. And I find it pretty silly we tend to put more a priority of the military than Education, Healthcare, and Infrastructure.
edited 3rd Mar '13 7:12:54 PM by DrTentacles
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We also have a hell of a lot more area to cover. China doesn't have anything like our global military reach. Again, I don't have anything against the idea of military cuts in general. But what I want to hear from the people advocating them is what they'd like to see happen instead of what's currently happening. What do you want to cut, and what alternative for the military are you proposing?
I haven't mentioned Republicans vs Democrats at all. I don't actually know what the Democratic stance on military spending is — mostly because it's political suicide to suggest funding cuts for "our troops". I think that's stupid too, but I was mostly responding to sentiments I've seen here of "why does the military get all this money?", rather than anything on the national political stage.
edited 3rd Mar '13 7:10:51 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
x4 If they have low power projection, wouldn't that mean they would be at a major disadvantage when it comes to a counterattack? Or is North Korea close enough for that not to matter? I'm reading about their arsenal, and it seems like they lack a lot of the stuff you'd need to launch an invasion, such as bombers, ballistic missiles, and marine forces/equipment. So, they could defend against an attack, but they couldn't go for the source.
@Jovian: I am, personally, suggesting that we scale back our international interests. The details of my proposals are for a different thread; think Noam Chomsky for a general idea. I will note that we can mothball five carriers and still own the seas.
Conservative pundits
wrote propaganda
for the Malaysian government
.
Gin McCarthy is said to be the new head of the EPA.
Don't get your hopes up
. Her oversight of the Rad Net monitors really damages her credentials in my view.
Back on the "Republicans are corporate shills" meme, Krugman notes that
Rick Scott, while taking a "principled stand" against Obamacare, seems to be only too happy to take Medicaid expansion funds as long as he can channel them through his buddies, the private insurers.
Bring back the evil geniuses of the Republican Party. I'm tired of the evil idiots.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.I'm seeing a theme of mainstream media figures starting to grudgingly admit that their continual pronouncements about the need for "compromise" are simply unrealistic, and it's not the Democrats who are at fault. Let us hope it continues.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"If the Cult of Centrism is abandoned by the 2014 elections...oooooooo-eeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
edited 4th Mar '13 8:23:57 AM by RadicalTaoist
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.Greenmantle: Mmmhmmmmm. I find your implication both strategically unrealistic and rather insulting to the Japanese. Where is this assumption that the US has the moral high ground on imperialism coming from?
Regardless, if there's popular will for it, you can frame any act of aggression as 'self-defense.' Weapons of mass destruction, assassinations in South America, Bay of Pigs, et cetera. The constitution is not what's stopping Japanese aggression: the will of the Japanese people is.
For sake of contrast, our constitution, you may notice, does not stop blatantly unconstitutional acts as long as said acts are not too terribly unpopular. That's why we get away with torture and denying people trials.
edited 4th Mar '13 8:34:12 AM by Karkadinn
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.What were you thinking I was implying? My implication was that the Japanese might, if they had to, get offensive weapons (even possibly Nuclear Weapons) if the US was forced withdraw from Japan*.
I was not implying that the Japanese re-enact World War II in the present day.
They haven't. It's just that a total withdrawal from foreign bases is something that could create utter chaos, and destroy what is left of the United States' image abroad. The more I see, the more I lean towards Type 2 Eagleland.
edited 4th Mar '13 8:38:23 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnChaos of what sort? The U.S. presence abroad is already massively drawn down since the end of the Cold War. It's not like the world is relying on us for regional security anymore. U.S. bases are a supply of local funding and sort of an advance staging area should we need to shift our troops to a particular region, but nobody expects them to fight a war all by themselves.
We don't want to shut them down all at once; that would be disruptive in many ways, but a gradual reduction is something that's been going on for years and seems likely to continue.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"there is a difference between withdrawing unpopularly-placed troops from places where they serve no productive purpose and isolationism, the latter of which you will note I specifically said I was not advocating.
And I seriously fail to see why we should give a shit about another first-world country wasting money on getting nukes as long as the US continues to have them. If anything, Japan would be the LAST country on the face of the earth to use the damned things, given their history.
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed....but might a sudden shutdown happen, if this goes on?
Truthfully, I'm getting totally muddled right now; I don't know what my thoughts are on the subject, other than the US is in the long-term, committing suicide. I need to get my thoughts straightened out.
Keep Rolling OnFrankly, I'm no longer sure that the world would miss us if our presence abroad were to suddenly vanish. But even so, that's not going to happen. Even in the case of a full shutdown of the government, something that even Republicans have relented on
, emergency funding would continue to support our current military engagements. We wouldn't just pack up the troops and send them home.
Essentially, the GOP is folding or is in the process of folding on every issue save one: taxes. They are holding onto "never raise taxes" in much the same way as a drowning man holds onto a piece of floating wood.
Edited to add: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_bases#Overseas
As for how fast we could pack up? I would be surprised if the Pentagon didn't have plans to do it in a matter of weeks — they have plans for literally everything.
edited 4th Mar '13 8:58:28 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Hypothetically speaking, how quickly could we pack up the troops and go home from our Cold War and Persian Gulf bases with a minimum of disturbance?
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.Also, on nuclear weapons: frankly, if I were in charge of a country that had nukes, I wouldn't want other countries that did not already have nukes acquiring them. The nuclear club is small and very exclusive, and all the members know and more or less trust each other not to blow up cities at random. Mutually Assured Destruction is still a very real thing, even if fingers are no longer hovering over the Big Red Button in the same way as during the Cold War, but it only works if everyone plays by the same rules.
North Korea is an outlier, but their leash is held by China.
I don't have any real objection to Japan getting nuclear weapons, although given their historical (and very justified) terror of them, I'd be surprised were it to actually happen. Japan Takes Over the World is no longer a thing that anyone seriously believes.
edited 4th Mar '13 9:51:36 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Here's the thing about defense spending: it's a microcosm of government as a whole. You've got funding for basics like bureaucracy and the cost of continuing operation of the organization. You've got personnel costs like salaries and benefits. You've got various procurement programs for R&D and other things that will provide a benefit in the future, but nothing immediate, and its value is difficult to gauge. People who call for cuts to the military budget remind me of people calling for small government. There's undoubtedly areas of waste that could be trimmed, but "starving the beast" isn't the right answer.
In the case of military programs, you have to look at what you're getting rid of if you cut the program. Is the F-35 development costing way more than it should? Absolutely. So we should look in to how to fix that (or else, keep it from happening again with similar programs in the future) rather than saying "you know what? Fuck F-35s." Because if we don't get any F-35s, then we're going to have to do something else with our aging aircraft fleet. We can either a) buy F-35s, b) buy more F-15/16/18s, or c) not buy anything and let our fighter force dwindle. There are obviously costs and benefits to each, but what I'd like to see is an actual discussion of those, instead of one side yelling "We must not touch our defense budget! What, do you hate America?" and the other screaming "Get rid of bloated military budgets! What, do you need a nuke between your legs to get a hard on?"
edited 3rd Mar '13 6:28:32 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.