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International Interventions and their comparability

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Ultimatum Disasturbator from The Wiggle Room (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#176: Jan 29th 2019 at 4:06:03 PM

Confession,I no idea they had nukes untill just now

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#177: Jan 29th 2019 at 4:06:42 PM

Sure but if you’re about to be destroyed anyway by a government toppling intervention who cares?

That’s what nukes exist for, they take toppling your government off the table, sure you can still loose territory or come out on the wrong side of a war, but total government destruction via either regime change or annexation becomes impossible because of the nuclear threat.

[up] That’s fine, people learn things, plus they’re not one of the nuclear Five so even people who know about them wouldn’t know.

Edited by Silasw on Jan 29th 2019 at 12:07:29 PM

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
eagleoftheninth Shop all day, greed is free from a dreamed portrait, imperfect Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Shop all day, greed is free
#178: Jan 29th 2019 at 4:11:51 PM

Nuclear weapons prevent wars.

Nuclear deterrence will work forever.

There will be no accidents.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jan 29th 2019 at 4:18:50 AM

One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
Ultimatum Disasturbator from The Wiggle Room (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#179: Jan 29th 2019 at 4:14:50 PM

> Nuclear deterrence will work forever.

Until we need another deterrent

Edited by Ultimatum on Jan 29th 2019 at 12:15:04 PM

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
raziel365 Anka Aquila from South of the Far West (Veteran) Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
Anka Aquila
#180: Jan 29th 2019 at 4:36:56 PM

Or until nuclear weapons can be rendered useless. Somehow.

Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.
HailMuffins Since: May, 2016 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
#181: Jan 29th 2019 at 4:46:31 PM

Pretty sure that will only happen when they invent something worse.

Looking forward for the Anti-Matter bomb deterrants!

Ultimatum Disasturbator from The Wiggle Room (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#182: Jan 29th 2019 at 4:50:23 PM

Well after Nuclear,there's biological or Chemical threats.

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#183: Jan 29th 2019 at 4:51:50 PM

Anyway, should we intervene in Venezuala?

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#184: Jan 29th 2019 at 4:59:42 PM

“We” meaning the US is going to be a solid no due to both the lack of a current imidiate need, the lack of local calls for it, the lack of a U.N. mandate and the fact that the Trump government can’t be trust to run so much as a lemonade stand.

If things get worse there may well be an argument for the Lima group to do something.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Shin Megami Tensei IV
#185: Jan 29th 2019 at 5:02:11 PM

Outright invasion is out of the table, definitely.

[up] I hope, "we" (My country is the one giving the name of the Lima's group) must do something and not screw it further.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jan 29th 2019 at 8:03:58 AM

Watch me destroying my country
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#186: Jan 29th 2019 at 5:03:11 PM

Anyway, should we intervene in Venezuala?

No, we should not.

The US history in the region means that any possible intervention would have massive legitimacy issues and as such should only be considered in the most extreme cases.

Compounded by the fact that the current US administration is both highly incompetent and highly PR-unfriendly, Trump hardly provides the kind of leadership necessary to make a South American intervention anything approaching viable.

Short of extreme circumstances (i.e Maduro aligned forces attempting to engage in mass murder) the costs would almost certainly outweigh the benefits.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
Ultimatum Disasturbator from The Wiggle Room (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#187: Jan 29th 2019 at 5:04:26 PM

At the moment mere threat of US support is hopefully all they should being doing if nothing else

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Shin Megami Tensei IV
#188: Jan 29th 2019 at 5:04:51 PM

Yeah, Maduro, as much annoying is saying this, isn't "bad enough" to need a outright coup.

[up] Oh the threat is a good thing, USA having acknowledged Guiado already is a help.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jan 29th 2019 at 8:05:58 AM

Watch me destroying my country
Ultimatum Disasturbator from The Wiggle Room (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#189: Jan 30th 2019 at 4:13:02 AM

Yeah,but if you make threats people will expect them to act on it ,there's no use in issuing empty threats

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
math792d Since: Jun, 2011 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#190: Jan 30th 2019 at 6:22:20 AM

Kinda tangential to the subject, but I'm kind of sick of everything that's going wrong in Afghanistan being attributed to "Graveyard of Empires, duh". It's a tired Orientalist meme that pundits use as a crutch to avoid addressing the specific failings of the current intervention at the expense of all the historical nation-sates that managed to keep the country stable for centuries at a time - not to mention the Mohammed Daoud Khan government, which came close to a true democratic reform before the Saur Revolution happened.

I know this was a while back, and as someone who's used that argument before (mostly in a very pithy way), I can definitely see that. To me, it had less to do with any unique quality of Afghanistan's people, and a lot more to do with the way its cultural history has presented an obstacle for foreign empires that have failed to comprehend that cultural history.

Historian and sociologist Michael Mann talks a lot about this in his book Incoherent Empire, talking about American empire and interventionism in the 20th and 21st century, talking about how an ignorance of Afghan internal politics led to a lot of civilian casualties early in the conflict from faulty intelligence and American troops being all too happy to drop ordnance on targets picked out by local guides giving faulty information. Propping up the Northern Alliance warlords and giving the impression that they would be the ones to found a new Afghan government also inflamed existing internal tensions. After all, the Taliban didn't come out of nowhere.

But yeah, I can definitely see how the pithy 'Graveyard of Empires' thing is racist and Orientalist, and I'm going to stop that going forward in conversations about Afghanistan, but I thought I'd give some context as to where I, at least, got the perspective from.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
eagleoftheninth Shop all day, greed is free from a dreamed portrait, imperfect Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Shop all day, greed is free
#191: Jan 30th 2019 at 6:37:11 AM

Thanks. Thing is that the current fragmentation of Afghan society and infrastructure didn't come out of nowhere - it's the end result of four decades of non-stop warfare. The belief in some circles that pre-war Afghanistan was a liberal paradise is equally misguided, but it wasn't like every shepherd in the country was carrying an AK before the Soviets marched in. It's just that after spending such a long time without a functioning government, it's safer and easier to withdraw into a fortified in-group than to reach out across ethnic/tribal lines and risk getting stabbed in the back.

One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
math792d Since: Jun, 2011 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#192: Jan 30th 2019 at 6:45:26 AM

Yeah, when you see that kind of social breakdown and local warlord rule starts to become the norm, that regionalism can become exceedingly hard to overcome. Civil strife is nasty like that.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#193: Jan 30th 2019 at 10:17:48 AM

IIRC, Afghanistan was a reasonably peaceful country once, even had a king.

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
HailMuffins Since: May, 2016 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
#194: Jan 30th 2019 at 10:30:31 AM

You go back far enough, you can say that of nearly every country that ever existed.

Problem with Afghan is, it has been so long since it was anywhere near stable or peaceful that a significant portion of its population don't know what it is like to not live under the authority of a bunch of warlords.

Zarastro Since: Sep, 2010
#195: Jan 30th 2019 at 2:06:16 PM

Afghanistan used to be a fairly decent place for women (at least for the region) too. Many of them worked in the bureaucracy before the Taliban took power. They then send the women home, and replaced them with unqualified men, which both impovished the women and the state.

Oruka Since: Dec, 2018
#196: Jan 30th 2019 at 2:28:07 PM

Regarding interventionism, let's all please strive harder to hold our leaders accountable and obtain information from a variety of sources on what 'our' interest in intervening, what the options available are and what their cost is, and which decision satisfies our values the most.

Not our 'public' values, as in 'child labour is bad', but the values we actually live out, as in 'these shoes say they're fair trade, but is that worth the significant markup to me, personally'?

This represents a tremendous effort, I sincerely think so and empathize. We are tired and overwhelmed and busy and we'be only got so much time to expend on the issue.

However, people's lives are on the line, and we're spending resources on ending them, having them ended, or letting them end, that we could use more efficiently in other ways.

The USA has a particularly active interventionist history in Central America and the Caribbean. The results speak for themselves. The US can do better. Together, we can make it so.

On the matter if biased sources, unfortunately there's hardly such a thing as an unbiased source. There's sources that operate at the center of a certain Overton Window, but that's not the same as being unbiased, at all. The closest you can get is compiling statistics, empirical evidence, and citations. The good thing about such sources is that, even if the compilers draw their own interpretation and frame things their own way, you can do the same thing as well.

Personally, if someone here showed an interview of, say, a right-wing militia in Latin America done by the most biased interviewer possible, say, Alex Jones, I would still presume that the interview would contain useful information, though perhaps not in the way that the people in it might hope for.

That the US is not primarily altruistic in its motives is patently obvious. It wouldn't merit mentioning if not because of the sheer volume rhetoric that government sources, politicians, and centrist, established, respectable media, perpetually reaffirming the fundamentally good intentions of the exemplary, exceptional nation. A good nation which only accudentally stumbles into complicated situations by honest mistake, which it cannot extricate herself from responsibly, and must see through to the end.

It could, potentially, be that. It could be the world police, and be the kind of police that helps folks and risks their life for a rather small fee, rather than the kind that takes bribes, uses the mob to break protests and silence dissidents, and shoots ni**ers if they so much as sneeze.

Cops are often family people. At the end of the day, they answer to their children. If the children demand a cop that puts the common good first, they could get it.

But if the children want, first and foremost, a cop that will get back home at the end of the day, a cop that feels no obligation to protect others at their own risk, a cop who will not let his job make orphans of his children...

Well, I hope the kids understand that some would suggest that their parent do go back home at the end of the day. And stay there.

eagleoftheninth Shop all day, greed is free from a dreamed portrait, imperfect Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Shop all day, greed is free
#197: Jan 30th 2019 at 3:03:46 PM

Someone is already putting boots on the ground in Venezuela.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jan 30th 2019 at 3:08:04 AM

One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
Oruka Since: Dec, 2018
#198: Jan 30th 2019 at 3:08:16 PM

Ugh. Not another Syria, please.

Edited by Oruka on Jan 30th 2019 at 3:09:27 AM

Ultimatum Disasturbator from The Wiggle Room (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#199: Jan 30th 2019 at 3:11:13 PM

Yeah that's not sending in ground troops way to mislead people,thats old news at this point

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#200: Jan 30th 2019 at 3:29:20 PM

I have to second Ultimatum, it's not in good form to give such a vague and misleading description.

Wagner are not Russian regulars, they're specifically deniable meatshields used to soak up casualties at less cost than proper soldiers. Not to mention that it wasn't even clear you were talking about Russia, for a moment I was worried the US had deployed troops.

But yes, that's arguably good news in that it means that Maduro doesn't trust local forces to do it. Hopefully, that weakness will lead to his position collapsing further.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jan 30th 2019 at 6:31:45 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang

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