International Interventions and their comparability

Nonsense, to act as if Russia is not the enemy is delusional and counterproductive if you oppose Reaction or care about the existence of democracy.

Either we oppose their influence and methods or we accept the victory of Reaction because that's exactly what Russia wants. Selfish short-sighted reactionary regimes that do not oppose Russian influence.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Feb 15th 2019 at 12:54:33 PM

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

Im with oruka here that the whole "we should intervine if we are doing it right" sound weird because it have a "we may blunder over and over agian but give us another change, we will do right this time" sound questionable, as there is infinitive amount of time you can do that be fine with it expecting the right answer.

Granted, right now im pro intervention because here in venezuela is the only way to get up of chavimso, is funny my parent who were chavistas now want the other countries to help.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

If your two options are “do nothing and it definitely turns out bad” and “do something and it maybe turns out bad” that maybe beats definitely every time. As Silas pointed out earlier in the thread there are more than a few examples of the US doing it right as well.

As far as the Russia topic, I’m just going to say that I find it interesting they always seem to be brought up as an alternative of sorts to the US in these conversations. Their track record with international interventionism is absolutely appalling.

Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 15th 2019 at 10:18:05 AM

They should have sent a poet.

"Oh thank goodness the Kremlin decided to step in and fix things!" - Said pretty much no one.

About the only statement less likely to be heard is "Oh thank goodness Beijing saved our asses!"

Edited by M84 on Feb 16th 2019 at 2:23:25 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised

We probably should have stayed out of it. If another country - even an ally - did the same to pressure us into getting rid of Steve Mnuchin, Andrew Cuomo or any other corrupt official, I'd at best be uneasy about another country puppeteering us like that despite being glad the corrupt official is gone.

Do we know for sure that this represents the views of at least a good majority of Ukrainians? I'm sure right-wingers would have done similar protests for the impeachement of President Hillary Clinton.

Edited by SandersSupporter on Feb 15th 2019 at 10:25:22 AM

When your country is in the end of said intervention and the only answer is "well, we didnt do well, maybe next time!" sound like very awfull confort and is bordering in priviliage of those who never suffer it.

Edited by unknowing on Feb 15th 2019 at 2:27:55 PM

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

If you Google "imperialism definition", you literally get "a policy of extending a country's power and influence through diplomacy or military force." If you want to argue that this particular case was good imperialism, fine, but it fits the literal definition of the word "imperialism."

All noble causes, but I think history shows that we'd be unlikely to accomplish them even if our government actually shared those goals, at least without backing from a more competent international organization be like the UN.

No, it isn't. I'm no fan of Russia, but this is exactly the kind of thinking that once brought us to the brink of nuclear war.

By that logic, I could claim that you want the US military to kill more civilians. About five days before the comment I'm now responding to, you said innocent people were going to die whether we intervened or not. Now you're back to implying that only non-interventionism leads to innocent people dying. Which is it?

Of course they are, but the the former is something we'd eventually have to do if we toppled Assad, the latter is something we're doing in Syria now, and both are things we seem to really suck at. I'm not aware of any time either worked after the nation building in Japan and Germany.

Again, a deeply flawed comparison. In fact, that may as well be a non-sequitur. The US has nowhere near the corruption problem the Ukraine has. The situations in the two countries are not comparable at all, and attempting to draw a line between the two is nonsensical.

But, let me just touch on what “staying out of it” would have been in this context. The US wasn’t paying hard cash, they were withholding previously agreed-upon loan guarantees. Many organizations (the EU, IMF, World Bank, and a few more) provide loan guaranty to Ukraine due to the situation it’s currently in. These were agreed upon as part of a program to keep Ukraine’s economy running and its government functional, having it be a working state with positive rule of law is not just a benefit to the people living there but a benefit to all of its neighbors and allies. When you say we should just “stay out of it” you’re advocating for a policy of zero assistance for allies. Now, last I checked, that kind of defeats the purpose of the whole “allies” thing entirely, so now I’m forced to wonder if you support total isolationism, which would just be silly.

Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 15th 2019 at 10:49:07 AM

They should have sent a poet.

I’ll try and dig out my old intro to IR textbooks when I’m next at my parents, but suficant to say like most terms in a scientific field (yes social sciences count) the everyday dictionary definition isn’t the best when getting into field specific details.

I mean yeah, and? Sorry are you under the impression I don’t want the US to act with the UN and bring it alongside it when acting? Thing is part of getting the UN alongside is showing the UN that there is someone willing to do some of the heavy lifting.

Yes msot of the time we need the UN as part of interventions and state building, but the UN often needs guiding to get it to provide help.

I mean yeah, and wanting to beat Germany and Japan is what bought us to a war that ended with the use of nuclear weapons. Yes we need to be carful, yes we need to avoid escalating, but there are times we shouldn’t just stand by and let bad actors hurt innocents.

I mean that’s not the end goal of what I’m advocating but is a consequences, yes I believe it is acceptable for the US to have more civilian blood on its hands if it results in a reduction in the amount of civilian blood spilt.

Neither, you’ve misunderstood my positon, which is that civilians will die whatever happens, by acting we can reduce the amount of civilians who will die total. Yes that means we become directly responsible for more deaths than if we stand idly by and let someone else do the killing. I find a civilian death just as horrible if it’s caused by the US directly or by a dictator who the US is letting murder people because it doesn’t want to get this hands dirty.

Kosovo, East Timor, Bosnia, Croatia, the African Union in Somalia (not the failed US attempt), France in Mali and the Ivory Coast. Some very good preventative work was done in Macedonia to.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

I'm not sure what metric you're using, but there's a Princeton study that says the wealthy are the only Americans who have an impact on policy. Granted there have been studies that claim to rebut it, but I'm not sure who's right. The point is that for what it's worth, the US may be a lot more corrupt than you think. Certainly Hillary was corrupt, but that's a different discussion. In any case, I'm not sure what the level of corruption in a country has to do with whether another country should try to puppeteer the corrupt country's decisions. In most cases I'd argue that's another form of corruption.

My real point, however, is that protests don't prove anything if you don't know how much of the non-protesting population agrees with the protesters.

I meant staying out of the situation with the prosecutor by just giving the money unconditionally.

So we were threatening to let Ukraine's government become non-functional and its economy collapse if it didn't bow to our will? You're REALLY not helping your case.

So first I'm supposedly pro-Russia and pro-Assad and now I might be in favor of never taking sides in the world at all? I guess you're having trouble keeping your strawmen consistent.

Edited by SandersSupporter on Feb 15th 2019 at 3:05:20 AM

I thought we all agreed that handing out money to corrupt, repressive governments is a bad thing to do in principle?

Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)

Anyone who told you that is an idiot or a liar, because this is not something that can actually be measured in the way they claimed.

[Hence all the rebuttals]

Isolationism and being pro-Russia are not mutually exclusive things. Russia wants to encourage America to be isolationist, and I suspect a lot of isolationists are in fact, pro-Russia.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

The far left and, to a slightly less extent, the far right of U.S. politics have been useful idiots for Russia for quite literally decades. Right up to today.

Fair enough.

I was under the impression that we were acting alone in Syria. Am I mistaken? Anyway I'm split on whether we should even act alongside them or just stay out of our way since everything I've read and heard UP TO THIS POINT (see below) suggest that the US hasn't been able to do anything right militarily in other countries post-WWII.

Aside from the fact that we didn't have much choice since they attacked us first, Japan didn't have nukes of its own so there was no risk of two countries wiping out the whole world like there was in the Cuban Missed Crisis.

Are there statistics showing that we've killed less people than would have been killed without us? I'm not asking in a snotty or challenging way; I genuinely want to see the evidence.

Thanks. I'll research those.

Edited by SandersSupporter on Feb 15th 2019 at 3:41:25 AM

Okay, but I'm neither of those and also not pro-Assad. Whether it's the times Bush supporters accused opponents of the Iraq War of being pro-Hussien or pro-terrorism, Bill Maher slandering defenders of Islam or Muslims as "the regressive left" and defenders of attrocities committed in the name of Islam or Archon slandering me as pro-Russia, pro-Assad or isolationist, strawmen and smears are what you do when you don't have a real argument.

@eagleoftheninth: Depends on things like whether we can ensure the money isn't being used to keep the corruption and repression going and whether the consequences of not giving the money would be worse. Archonspeaks was implying that Ukraine would become a failed state with no functioning government or economy at all if we didn't give Ukraine.

Third world governments are a very entitled bunch.

"FUCK YOU EVIL BANKERS/WESTERNERS"

"NOW PLEASE GIVE US MONEY AND LET US USE YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE AND ASSETS OR ELSE OUR ECONOMIC ILLITERACY AND CORRUPTION ARE YOUR FAULT"

Ah, so you’re pro-corruption. I suppose you also support unconditional aid to Israel and Saudi Arabia?

Your insistence that any argument leveled against you is telling, especially when you’ve spent the last three pages advancing blatant Russian apologia and isolationist rhetoric. Your position is morally untenable, you’ve somehow backed yourself into a corner where your few options are either not assisting allies or handing money directly to dictators and criminals.

Now, it’s funny that you’ve been crying about strawmen only to bust out a strawman this blatant. I believe that’s called projection.

Either way, this is a particularly ridiculous strawman. First off, “bow to our will” isn’t exactly a good way to describe what happened here. We weren’t demanding they sack their entire government, we were demanding they agree to an anti-corruption framework already agreed upon by numerous international bodies, including the UN. Second, you must have been asleep for the last few thousand years, as this is one of the most basic transactions of foriegn policy. Offering something in exchange for another party doing something happens every day in politics all around the world. If you object to it on some moral level, this situation in Ukraine should be the least of your worries.

But again, that you even brought this up is fairly suspicious. The only places you really see this as a talking point are either outright Russian mouthpieces, or from outright regressives and isolationists. I haven’t once seen it brought up in good faith, now included.

Wait a minute...are you saying there should be conditions on our aid? Like, requiring a country to meet human rights or anti-corruption standards before helping them? Why, that sounds like forcing them to bow to our will. They should be able to keep the corruption and repression going using our money, as you said it would be better off if we just stayed out of it.

Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 15th 2019 at 7:05:14 AM

They should have sent a poet.

Ghanaian economist George Ayittey made a good case in "Indigenous African Institutions" that foreign aid and loans without heavy conditions are actively destructive to developing countries because the corrupt local governments and strongmen either suck it up via graft or they use it as a fund to maintain their own power and inefficient systems, empowering the wrong people and stunting growth. They then ask for more aid or complain when more aid isn't given, before selling it to their population as external forces being at fault rather than them for the inevitably terrible conditions that follow aid being cut off. Now his point was for Sub-Saharan Africa countries specifically, but the principle applies more broadly as well.

Edited by Kamiccolo on Feb 15th 2019 at 8:57:47 AM

That was a big problem in the Middle East as well. Aid meant to rebuild local infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan vanished into the hands of corrupt local politicians in the blink of an eye.

They should have sent a poet.

French artillery officer deployed to Syria launches harsh criticism of Coalition tactics, faces disciplinary measures.

Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)