This quote from the CEO of Palantir (Alex Karp) haunts me.
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> “I actually am a progressive,” he said. “I want less war. You only stop war by having the best technology and by scaring the bejabers — I’m trying to be nice here — out of our adversaries. If they are not scared, they don’t wake up scared, they don’t go to bed scared, they don’t fear that the wrath of America will come down on them, they will attack us. They will attack us everywhere.”
At any point in time there are probably many competing ideologies, even ones that are based on strength. For example, "speak softly but carry a big stick" is based on strength, but is pretty different than "they must wake up scared".
The issue with the "scared" approach is that all it takes is one country with that ideology for escalations to occur and everyone else to adopt that mindset.
The worst version of Si vis pacem, para bellum. There is an element of truth, but the reality is when one has overwhelming military over other, they also tend to use it and cause wars. See USA / Irak.
> The Roman month Februarius was named after the Latin term februum, which means "purification", via the purification ritual Februa held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar.
> The name of March comes from Martius, the first month of the earliest Roman calendar. It was named after Mars, the Roman god of war, and an ancestor of the Roman people through his sons Romulus and Remus.
I only knew memento mori from the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds E01S04 episode title.
And I didn't know the Latin of the other phrase being discussed here... but I'm just a high school dropout blue collar worker, so I guess it depends at least to some extent who you associate with.
So if you're interested in Latin you might also find it noteworthy that some object to the translation of the phrase as If you want peace, prepare for war and argue that it was more likely understood as If you want peace, prepare for strife at the time, meaning that the Falcons in Roman politics often did the "so let's send in our boys there to clean up" thing which Rome in fact often did, whereas the Pigeons (doves?) in favor of a diplomatic or otherwise more civil way of conflict resolution found themselves too often in a position where they had to justify themselves and convince the other side with substantial arguments to keep them from exercising the unquestioned default option of the Empire which was, then as now, military intervention.
> There is an element of truth, but the reality is when one has overwhelming military over other, they also tend to use it and cause wars. See USA / Irak.
I actually don't have an issue with the idea of the Iraq war per se. Deposing dictators is always a good thing, dictators have no right to exist.
The problem I have with the Iraq war was the completely botched execution, from start to finish. The start was based on the infamous WMD lies, the plans didn't include any concept on how the country should be run after the war, how to prevent warlords fighting over scraps, how to make sure democracy comes in and stays afterwards, and while the departure wasn't as bad as Afghanistan it wasn't clean either.
The problem with your thinking is that there was never a non-botched execution for the Iraq war. If you understood this before the invasion, it was very easy to be against the war.
> The problem with your thinking is that there was never a non-botched execution for the Iraq war.
I don't buy that for a second. There is always a way to wage war and plan for the future of the invaded country afterwards. The Allied Forces have shown that this is both possible and sustainable with how they treated Germany post-WW2.
I've been thinking about this for a while, in terms of WW2 with Germany, and especially with Japan. A completely alien culture (mind you, from both sides, I'm not exotizing Japan so much as emphasizing the limited contact pre WW2) that felt diametrically opposed to our very way of life, we waged total war, both sides committed atrocities and then the US dropped the two biggest bombs ever dropped in war on civilian populations, dismantled their government, and to this day have restrictions on their military. By all rights they should hate us bitterly, but our nations and our people quickly became close allies, friends even. Americans love Anime and romanticize Japanese cultural institutions, such as the baths, their transit, the technology and urbanization of Japanese cities. Japanese people love Jazz, and baseball, and there's just a lovely mutual respect and cultural cross-pollination between two cultures that, while more similar than they were in WW2, still have many differences.
I know every situation is unique, and I think one of the advantages is that there was so little shared history, so little room for preexisting animosity, so both sides could say "Yeah, that was an unfortunate time, but we've realized our mistakes and get along now." But it still gives me hope for other seemingly intractable conflicts.
Germany and Japan were drastically different. They had a homogenous population, and their government structure could be used almost as it was with a new political system. In Germany, for example, many ex-nazis kept their position in society.
Iraq on the other hand is a state whose lines were drawn by a colonial rule and contains diffenrent populations. Saddam ruled using a minority ethnic group as the ruling class, which created an internal ethnic tension that was not possible to solve with an outside intervention.
In western Germany the denazification stopped very early despite our legends about 'nazi hunters' (the Mossad being the only agency that kept doing the real work), but it lasted two decades in east Germany, and no ex-Nazi kept their positions.
>Deposing dictators is always a good thing, dictators have no right to exist.
Oh yeah right, because those North African and middle eastern countries are doing so much better off now after the west spend decades and trillions to replace the Taliban with ... a different strain of Taliban. Such an improvement that was.
So then when are you also gonna declare war on North Korea, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Syria, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia to free those people from their dictators? Second time's the lucky charm. Or third, Or fourth. Or 128th, depending when in time you start counting western military interventionism abroad.
Clearly shows that he does not understand the concept of cooperation, not outside of how a mob cooperates. He probably considers the Marshall Plan a failure.
Yes, strength isn't unimportant. But if that's your only approach you're part of the problem, not part of the solution. May he reap what he saws, preferably with as little collateral as possible.
The problem with using strength as your main tool of "cooperation" is that it can only gets worse. If one keep beating their partners, they will become enemies as soon as the bully gets weak enough.
Yep. This is the type of a psycho, that start all the wars.
If history teaches us anything, as soon as some country gets a superior war tech, it immediately leads to them using it to destroy whoever they see as their enemies. And what really stops wars is when their main adversaries have the same power to destroy if being attacked.
Mutual deterrence is what was keeping us from WW3 for several decades. But the recent and growing idea of USA that they can break from this stalemate and crush anyone with overwhelming strength is what makes WW3 closer and closer by the day.
2) violence or the threat of violence used as a weapon of intimidation or coercion
a regime that rules by terror
especially: violent or destructive acts (such as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands
It doesn’t seem to be forced or compelled speech, as I didn’t see him blinking Morse code, but I’m not trained in recognizing that per se and those kinds of signals are not settled science either. It was a weird thing to hear him say, so I wonder why he said it. Maybe it’s an outsider shtick? I think he genuinely believes that he’s on the left. Total information awareness is a form of peace through superior firepower, so maybe he thinks the ends justify the means? It’s a conundrum.
I mean he is absolutely not progressive and that was purely just some bullshit he said to the media. This is a far right private enterprise backed by Peter Thiel that is building a civilian surveillance and control apparatus with your tax dollars. Thats the actual truth of the matter.
No. They’re all terrorists. All states, all nexuses of control, can be defined as terrorists, if we broaden our definition of terrorist to include states and all their apparatuses. In particular, with reference to the state’s effective monopoly on legal violence.
But, amongst those options, you should have the intelligence to choose the least bad.
“The United States is the world's biggest terrorist”, is IMHO almost a meaningless claim. It is true, arguably, but in that case it is irrelevant.
Based on this interpretation, the US is far from the worst powers in our world. In fact it is above the median.
IMO one of the primary ways the US terrorizes is by bombing with impunity. According to its own record keeping, the US has dropped 337000 bombs in the last 20 years, or 46 bombs per day.
Can you imagine living in one of the countries that the US keeps bombing? Every time you hear an airplane you have to think if you're about to die, or someone you know is about to die, or a school is about to be blown up, or a water treatment facility.
>Can you imagine living in one of the countries that the US keeps bombing? Every time you hear an airplane you have to think if you're about to die, or someone you know is about to die, or a school is about to be blown up, or a water treatment facility.
No, I can’t imagine it. I’m not even capable of imagining it. I agree it must be terrifying, and soul-destroying in the long term.
It's suicidally naive not to pursue military supremacy. Your enemies will.
What are you going to do when they appear on your shores to begin the slaughter, enslavement, rape, and pillaging? Write an angry letter? Start an online petition?
Can't really understand if this is the boutade of a 13 years old COD player, but: lots of countries don't have military supremacy nor enslavement and pillaging on their shores. There are LOTS of shades in between which you obviously don't get.
Although I upvoted you, it's a variable that you control only to some extent. At some point you will have an enemy that is irrational, power-hungry and unwilling to negotiate.
This is true, which is why Europe is now back to spending on defense, but you also have to consider the incentives here. Power-hungry people can use threats only if their populace can be whipped up by them. The fact that its largely impossible to gain approval in France by threatening Germany with invasion is a large part in why peace in Europe is so persistent.
This is hardly historically true. What actually happened was Europe was devastated by two industrial total wars which is what led to this circumstance.
And then in the aftermath faced a Russia which promptly seized a whole bunch of Baltic states.
Or to put it another way: up till this year Canada was not planning it's strategic defence strategy with the US as a possible threat actor.
The ones doing what you are describing here especially lately are the western powers with millions and millions of dead each decade in wars over resources not ideology or safety. It’s about money and power resulting in thousands of dead children, women and civilians - lately in palestine via israel. It’s creating terrorism not safety - so your argument is backwards - it’s the military industrial complex keeping the war going. And to use the ‘it’s for safety’ is extremely sinister and has been debunked continuously by everyone with even the slightest interest in geopolitics.
I think it's not about the truth in that message, but rather how the message is delivered, and how the kernel of truth is planted into what context.
For example, the same message could be told by referring to respect instead of fear.
"I want less war. You only stop war by having the best technology so much that earns the respect of your adversaries. If they don't respect you, if they don’t respect the might that your army can summon, you. Instead of going along with you, they will attack you at the next opportunity"
The issue is that by introducing hyperbole, the meaning changes completely. Take the two statements:
1. I want peace.
2. a) Therefore I need to be strong enough to deter any attack.
2. b) Therefore I need to be so strong that all my enemies fear me.
2. a) is sound. Nobody attacks if they believe the cost is higher than benefit. ("Believe" is doing heavy lifting here, most wars start when countries belief about cost/value is misaligned)
2. b) is incompatible with 1. Either you believe that a stronger party does not necessarily attack weaker parties, thus peace could also be maintained without supremacy, or you believe supremacy leads to wars, but then your own goal of supremacy cannot be in the name of peace.
Unless, of course, you're a race supremacist, who believes you're so much wiser and more moral than anyone else that only you can be trusted with unchecked power. An idiotic and immoral position to take.
Wrong. 2b is compatible with 1. You can have peace without military supremacy, for a time at least. But you can guarantee peace with military supremacy. That's the difference.
You are at your enemy's mercy without it. They may conquer you on a whim, and there's not a thing you can do about it.
I would much prefer that military supremacy in the hands of the wise and moral, there's nothing idiotic or immoral about that (indeed, the opposite is idiotic and arguably immoral).
Although I agree with you in principle, after having seen what Putin is doing in Ukraine, I believe the original message would reach the target better than yours.
To add to the confusion, you can have military intelligence assess your potential target and still fail miserably just like Putin failed in his blitzkrieg. So a little bit of saber-rattling might serve a purpose, I guess.
Out of curiosity, which country in the world is going to "begin the slaughter, enslavement, rape and pillaging" of:
- The country already having the largest army in the world, whose internal military branches are larger than most armies in the world ?
- The country that has a ocean to ocean control of its land, with east and west being fundamentally impossible to attack ?
- The country that is surrounded north and south by either allies, or third world countries struggling to even maintain peace within their own borders ?
- The country that is already going down some of the fastest descent into fascism history has seen ?
And how exactly that relates to Palantir, whose goal is not to provide vision algorithms for bombing brown people in the middle east, but to straight up build a file about their own citizens that would have made the Gestapo drool ?
The vast majority of countries that can afford a solid military already do, and neither is at threat of whatever bullshit you're making up here. Even local tensions like Pakistan and India, Thailand and Cambodia are being handled with incredibly small portions of their militaries, despite some pretty deep hatred. The countries that cannot, either have agreements with other powers in the region, or indeed get attacked by a military so overwhelmingly strong for them that even putting 100% of their GDP into it would not suffice.
I'll tell you what "pursuing military supremacy" does though: as it stands, the vast majority of the world sees the United States as a threat, with ever renewed imperialistic needs and aspirations. The United States is always just a single dip towards madness away from being the greatest danger that currently exists in the world. And now, they are suppressing internal protesters. But hey, if you're looking to rediscover how 9/11 was like and why it happened, pop off I guess.
might as well use it then right? I mean think about it if there was only 1 country on the whole world. Then we would be safe. I mean we would still need to use the military equipment on the people. Anything else but absolute control over everyone would be suicidally naive.
1 country in the world won't make you safe from wars. There's a reason why military was and is separated from police. Just think what's going to happen when your soldiers start to kill citizens.
1 country in the world tend to degrade to dystopian regime, and it was researched by multiple books authors, and actually a modern day USA is a good example of a regime on the path to dystopia.
> I mean think about it if there was only 1 country on the whole world. Then we would be safe.
This is the logic behind the old-style Jihad. Also the Chinese emperors used the same argument when conquering smaller kingdoms.
Unfortunately, what happens in practice is that even in one Islamic country Sunni vs Shia terrorists attacks happen. And in the case of China, the price you pay for superficial peace are Uighur concentration camps, Tibetan self-immolations and so on.
You then have that option, yes. Usually it's not worth it - even the "winners" of a war suffer massive short-term loss of soldiers and resources, and create long-term enemies - but it's a nice option to have.
There are stickers everywhere in my city against NATO. They say "food not weapons". As though the Ukrainians could defeat the Russians with pickles and ham. Left-wing idealism is grounded in denial of reality.
There's a right-wing (or rather far-right) anti-NATO but it's much more confidential. Anti-NATO in Europe is typically found in communist and revolutionary movements.
> “I want less war. But I really really really like having lots of money, like Scrooge McDuck swiming pools of money. If some children half way around the world have to get blown up for me to bathe in fresh $100 bills every day, so be it."
Russia only dared invade Ukraine because the US under Obama didn't do shit when Assad violated the "red lines" of using chemical weapons and barrel bombs against civilians or when the "little green men" took over Crimea and Donbas. And it's not Obama alone for what it's worth, Trump was just as bad in cozying up to Putin, and us Europeans didn't care either.
The secret to the relative period of peace after WW2 was that everyone was mightily afraid of getting smacked hard by the US. The first cracks obviously started back with Vietnam, but the actual erosion of the US hard and soft power was the clusterfucks in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It sounds silly, but the cold war was a nice period of peace. Both sides were prepared and knew what’s coming. So peace was inevitable. When opponent gets weak war happens. Sounds even sillier, but strong and ready armies are warrant of peace.
Tell that to the Vietnamese, the Afghan, the Cuban, the korean, ... And arguably you might include a lot of eastern european country.
Just because the confrontation didn't happen in the country that were "enemy" didn't mean they didn't cause wars.
There is another alternative : two country not being powerful enough that they can wage a proxy war by using less powerful country. The issue is not the military power, it is the imbalance.
> Exactly, people have a "non-event bias" they can't fathom thing that didn't happen because of the preceeding things that had to happen to prevent it!
> The formal fallacy of affirming a disjunct also known as the fallacy of the alternative disjunct or a false exclusionary disjunct occurs when a deductive argument takes the following logical form:
A or B
A
Therefore, not B
If the news is good, then there's no other newsworthy events to cover, so the good news must rule the day.
> 1. (journalism) A time when media organizations publish trivial stories due to the lack of more substantial topics.
> 2016, W. Lance Bennett, chapter 5, in News: The Politics of Illusion, 10th edition, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 136:
> > Perhaps you have seen a television news program on a slow news day. In place of international crises, press conferences, congressional hearings, and proclamations by the mayor, the news may consist of a trip to the zoo to visit a new “baby,” a canned report on acupuncture in China, a follow-up story on the survivor of an air crash, or a visit to the opening of baseball spring training in Florida.
If the news is bad, coverage of it will be minimal to nonexistent. Why? No news is good news, after all.
> In propositional logic, affirming the consequent (also known as converse error, fallacy of the converse, or confusion of necessity and sufficiency) is a formal fallacy (or an invalid form of argument) that is committed when, in the context of an indicative conditional statement, it is stated that because the consequent is true, therefore the antecedent is true. It takes on the following form:
> Subversive affirmation is an artistic performance that overemphasizes prevailing ideologies and thereby calls them into question. Simultaneously with affirmation, the affirmed concepts are revealed, and artists distance themselves from those concepts. Strategies of subversive affirmation include "over-identification", "over-affirmation" and "yes revolution".
Or just don't invade, kill, rape their womens? Trust me if you don't terrorise othe nations they won't attack you.
And if you are speaking about what you guys did and doing in Palestine or any other Muslim nation trust my they aren't afraid of you, they just raise people who despise you and you will cry in future when they attack you at your homes.
>You only stop war by having the best technology and by scaring the bejabers — I’m trying to be nice here — out of our adversaries.
That's haunting indeed to the naive minds who imagine the world must run on political correctness, rainbows and unicorns, but that's not how the real world works or has ever worked, and nobody can say that he's wrong though just because he's not sugar coating it. You only have peace if everyone is scared of you. Why do only small guys get bullied and not the tall muscular jocks? Why does Russia bully the EU and not the US?
Being pacifist doesn't assure you any peace if you're weak, as eventually, inevitably, someone hungry and greedy will build their strength to come for your lunch and you'll have to defend it if you want to keep it, as per human history in the last infinity years. Ask Belgium or NL how their pacifism worked out in WW2 in face of the Nazi army.
He should have just said: "Better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war" if he wanted something that sounds nicer.
>This paranoid attitude leads to an arms race that will destroy liberty for everyone.
You are free to give up your arms first in a race for world peace. Lead by example. Now do you think US, China and Russia will then follow you or will they just say thank you while they take your lunch and let you starve?
>This fake fear is the veiled language of conquest.
The fear isn't fake because the conquest isn't fake either. The entire societies, borders and economies we live in today have been agreed upon through violent conquest and you need to be capable of violence to defend or change them. Humans are greedy, tribal creatures, and conquest has been at the core of human behavior since time immemorial, and it's not going away just because you want to be a hippy.
it would be a good argument if America didnt claim to be a moral beacon. Dont forget, nagasaki and hiroshima were bombs dropped on women and children. You might be able to convince me that women were part of the Japanese war effort, but theres no reason ill accept for nuking children. Why does no American ever feel shame about cooking a few hundred thousand civilians alive?
> You only have peace if everyone is scared of you.
How does your theory explain the 30 European nations that have been at peace with each other for decades? Is Poland simply too afraid of Lithuania due to Lithuanias military supremacy? Does France not invade the Netherlands because the Dutch army can field so many tanks?
>How does your theory explain the 30 European nations that have been at peace with each other for decades?
How much of a percentage is those decades of peace out of the 200k year existence of the entire human race that has been defined only by war and conquest? You're cherry-picking the one exception the proves the rule.
Secondly, peace amongst EU countries was due to the US world nuclear power having established occupation of Europe after WW2, and then EU countries have allied together not out of fondness for one another (which doesn't exist even today), but out out necessity of survival, since that was the only way they could stand up to USSR threat. The enemy of my enemy is my friend basically.
Thirdly, conquest is at the core of EU too, except it's bureaucratic, political and economical, not military. Just because you don't see bullets being fired, doesn't mean the spoils of the economic pie doesn't get split up between victors.
I agree that the EU used political, economic and bureaucratic means of power projection and also that it is for the first time in history that that is the case.
From that follows, I would argue, that the EU is the first society that has evolved past crude violence and is the example for the world to follow.
> How much of a percentage is those decades of peace out of the 200k year entire existence of the human race that has been defined only by war?
This makes the peace they enjoy even more impressive, no?
> And secondly, EU countries have allied together not out of fondness for one another (which doesn't exist even today), but out out necessity of survival, since that was the only way they could stand up to bullying from US, Russia and China.
This is so inaccurate it would take an article long comment to refute. Maybe you should avoid explaining the history of places to others online if you clearly do not live in them.
> Thirdly, conquest is at the core of EU too, except it's bureaucratic, political and economical, not military.
This is why sovereign countries join the EU by their own volition, clearly!
>This makes the peace they enjoy even more impressive, no?
No. "One bloomed flower does not mean it's spring" - saying from my country.
>This is why sovereign countries join the EU by their own volition, clearly!
Willingness or necessity? If I'm a small weak country and I want to sell something to make money, and the only way is to succumb to the rules of the largest trading block in the world, do I really have a choice? You know the saying, "if you can't beat them, join them". Even Norway and Switzerland still succumb to most EU rules even if they're not members and they might not like all those rules but they have no choice but to play ball if they want to maintain trade and prosperity.
>Maybe you should avoid explaining the history of places to others online if you clearly do not live in them.
OK, I'll stop it here and never answer you again since you're being needlessly petty and not wailing to argue in good faith.
> If I want to sell something and the only way is to succumb to the rules of the largest trading block in the world, do I have a choice?
Gee, I wonder how they became that largest trading bloc in the first place without being large enough to be the largest trading bloc.
> OK, I'll stop it here and never answer you again since you're being needlessly petty and not wailing to argue in good faith.
I cannot argue with someone living in a parallel fantasy world. You bring in claims about how EU support is not anchored in the populace which is just entirely fabricated. I cannot argue with this because I cannot argue within the hypothetical world of your lies where your arguments make sense because the reality on the ground is just entirely different. Visit the EU, talk to real people, you might be surprised on how they view the world and there place in it.
On a scale, how much do you trust your fellow countrymen from the bad parts of town not to rob you? Then how much do you trust your politicians not to lie to you? Then how much do you trust other countries' politicians not to invade you?
There's your answer right there.
Trust only works locally throughout family and closely knit communities, but globally trust is like fiat currency, on a large global scale it is completely worthless on its own, without any higher form of enforcement through violent means to defend and enforce the relationship where the winner dictates the conditions and everyone else has to follow.
Countries don't trust the US government, but they trust and use the USD because they trust the US will do everything militarily to protect it. That's as far as trust goes.
That's only been observed for small, close knit communities (regardless of race etc before the pitchfork activists come out). You're never ever getting that for the whole world. Some things (not all) are just a conflict of interest. There's no solution except one with a winner and a loser.
You know, you increase trust also by arresting actual criminals
So when the police is happy to fine you for any technicality while people are free to do drugs on the streets (due to bad policy) this brings trust down - like in SF
The laundering of data on US citizens into the private sector, and overseas, through this company is truly horrifying. Especially how fast it happened, and how little say we had.
It makes sense to have information on your future adversaries. I mean ICE already act as Trump's brownshirts, it makes sense that they would expand their power base to other services.
While I do believe its important to replace legacy and bloated tech in the military to make it more efficient (esp less costly), I doubt the ROI will be able to make up for it/ will be hard to measure effectively considering how hard it is to conduct fully transparent audits. Even if they say that the new agreement would consolidate existing software contracts and lead to “significant cost efficiencies across mission-critical programs.” Also what happened to reducing the gov. deficit?? Very confusing
This is the GOP playbook! Cripple government institutions, privatize operations to their richest friends, gain positions with related organizations when the political careers dip.
