Quote:
Originally Posted by Crumpp
Study history, wars begin only because one side thinks they can prevail in the use of violence.
Peace is maintained through power.
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I would agree if you had said "through responsible use of power". Because otherwise, the peace that's good for me might be humiliating to you and when that happens and you have nothing to lose, you'll probably take up arms against me in ways that might be detrimental to you, but also hard for me to comprehend, analyze and counter. That's the main reason why the people in black PJs and flip-flops won in Vietnam, they didn't really have much to fear they would lose if they wouldn't back down, so they didn't.
The guy living the better life is the guy who has the most to fear.
As for counting on allies or disappointing them, my country has been on the allied camp through WWI, the Crimean landings against the Soviet revolution, WWII, a civil war, Korea (these last three as so close together in history that you can see we had some people fighting pretty much from 1940 until 1953) and all through the cold war.
As a reward for our loyalty we've been dealt a bad hand by allies as early as the 1920s and kept being dealt so up until today. I realize what you say about weakness provoking attack, because it's this weakness that has been brought upon my country by "allied" nations urging us to exercise caution and "coolness", back down from sovereign rights that are granted to all countries under international law, loaning us money that will supposedly save our economy but in essence making them profit and so on, while at the same time having to buy their weapons as a detterent to the problems they are co-responsible for creating, going in debt as a result and getting tossed to the international loan-sharks piecemeal.
We are expected to tow the party line and bleed for the cause, but neither the cause nor the reaping of rewards is ours. In fact it has gone so far that even what is ours by law is not ours anymore or will not be soon enough, all at the instigation of "friends" and "allies" and as the saying goes, with friends like that who needs enemies.
You don't have Iraqi or Afghani aircraft overflying inhabitted areas of your country daily while carrying a full combat load, nor do you have an "allied" but stronger nation telling you how to go about dealing with it. Well, we do have exactly that, it's just not Iraqi/Afghan aircraft but "allied" ones and the threat is daily, immediate and at a bomb's gliding distance from many people's homes. So, excuse me if i see the reaction of such a huge country as disproportionate to the threat, when the last time their mainland was ravaged by war was probably during the time of Abraham Lincoln and yet they spend all their time telling us how its best for us not to defend ourselves.
I don't know about Europe at large, but where i come from people don't just "hate the US" out of dogma. They just don't trust the US to tell us the truth anymore since the 70s, that's all. In a sense, we don't dread the time the US will abandon us but rather long for the time they will stop telling us how to do stuff, because the mild mannered would say they have already abandoned us 40 years ago and the not-so-polite would bluntly declare they are just using us or being downright hostile, even if covertly so.
EDIT: I think i should stay away from topics discussing politics from now on, i get sucked in way too easily and end up posting more in them than in the update threads