Does the world depend on the United States for security?

Great Debates
41

If I implied that I apologize, but there have been many many instances of Countries asking for our help. During the first Gulf War Kuwait specifically asked the US for military help as did Saudi Arabia. Which is the exact point that I am making. They wanted us there to save their countries and their way of life, but as soon as our human and dollar sacrifice was used to their benefit to meet their goals they want us out. My opinion is, it doesn’t work that way. If you want US soldiers and US supplies and money to help you fine, but don’t expect us to do your bidding and then to just walk away.

The US has, for the most part, tried to be on the side of right. Take the fiasco in Somalia in which we were asked to go into by the UN. You have a country that is tearing itself apart, famine happening and one warlord killing everyone he sees and controlling the food distribution. The US goes in (in conjunction with the UN) to feed hundreds of thousands who are starving to death. Yet, it seems that we were vilified for our military actions there as well. What were we supposed to do. Just keep dropping in millions of pounds and dollars worth of food so the local warlord could confiscate them and continue to let the very people we are trying to help starve? We took the initiative and actively sought to capture Adid. What we got for it was bashed by many in the world for using our “military power” for the means of the US. Our biggest problem there is we, like it seems we have done so many times since WWII, didn’t go in big enough and only did a half assed job.

What I have always found amazing about the United States is our tendency to turn a conquered country back over to it’s citizens. We didn’t make Germany or Japan a part of the United States. Instead after hostilities ceased, we feed, clothed and medically treated our enemies former soldiers and civilians. We then spent trillions of our dollars in order to help those countries rebuild and re-establish themselves. The truth is, the world needs a cop and that job has primarily fallen to the US. Even when NATO or the UN is “spearheading” an action it is almost always the US that supplies the majority of troops and equipment. And like any cop people hate you until they need you.
I

42

That’s what I’m questioning, right there - does the world actually need a cop? Does the US need to be that cop? Does everyone else want the US to be that cop?

43

More than a few people don’t think they need cops (or insurance or first aid kits, etc) until they need them.

44

You are a product of the US media. Probably cost a few hundred dollars in programming, worth a couple thousand as a water carrier.

45

That’s true enough, but it doesn’t really answer my question - does the world need a cop? A country is not the same as a private citizen, so your analogy does not translate.

46

When was the last time US troops were stationed in Israel, much less the last time Israel depended upon the US for its security?

47

The US aggression always seems to be when the bad guys hide behind, supposedly innocent people, who look the other way. Then these “innocents” yell when they are in harms way.

Kind of like in Chicago back in the 90s when the gangbangers would run to granny’s house and granny would refuse to call the cops. Then when the cops raided granny’s house she’d get on TV and cry how the cops are abusing her.

Of course she was old, but she could’ve called the cops at any time prior, seeing she clearly knows what’s going on.

That’s how the world views the USA. They want action. I mean all the Iraqis that died, are still better off without Saddam. All the Granadians, Panamainian and Lybians are better off. Yes, civilians died. You pay a price for getting rid of the bad guys.

Maybe things don’t get better but at least now there is hope. There is no hope where there is no action.

France, Germany, the UK are only regional powers and cannot act without the OK of the US.

Sure innocent lives have been lost. You can’t have a war without them. But I’m sure the women of Afghanistan are better off now than before

48

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
Well, go ahead - what are these risks, how are you quantifying them? Prove that the world has been more stable in the last 50 years (the years that include Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq I, Iraq II, Iran-Iraq, Afghanistan, DRC, Sudan, etc.)
[/QUOTE]

Well sure…that’s easy. Consider the two world wars that proceeded this time frame alone. More people died in either conflict than in all of the conflicts you named put together (and, of course, populations have risen sharply) . During that period maps were re-written constantly by the winners. Whole nations were erased and formed on the whims of the victors (mostly Europeans) in fact.

Since then, while those conflicts you mentioned weren’t exactly minor, you will note that Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, Iran, etc are still sovereign nations. They haven’t been parceled out to the victors. They haven’t been combined and reformed into entirely new nation states with entirely new borders, even though that was the prediction of some in cases like Iraq (which the US has finally pulled out the last of it’s combat troops from just recently…again, counter to the predictions of some).

So, I’d say that based on just about any metric the last 50 years has been one of the most relatively peaceful and stable periods in human history. And the US has had a non-zero positive influence on that fact.

So, do you yearn to go back to those good colonial days when your fate and your production went to which ever colonial power had the strength to force you to do their bidding? The death toll was, perhaps, less under those wise colonial masters, but I don’t think that’s everything.

Just for my own curiosity, since I’m getting mixed results when googling this, do you have a cite that the period since the '70’s was the most bloody in Africa for the past 100 years? Not that I doubt the assertion, especially in absolute terms, since the population in Africa is higher than it was 100 years ago.

You are certainly right that US hegemony hasn’t done much in or for ‘Africa’ (as a continent composed of many different nation states), since Africa has never been a high US priority, sadly. And your larger point is right as well…just because the world, overall (IMHO that is) has been more stable and peaceful doesn’t mean that everywhere on earth has been stable and peaceful. And that the US hasn’t been all goodness and light for everyone on earth either. I’m just saying that the positives outweigh the negatives, and that compared to previous time periods in history this one has been relatively peaceful and stable.

-XT

49

The sad truth is that the United States tends to only get involved when its own interests are on the line (anti-communism, natural resources, political obligations, etc). If anything, the US and the UN should do more to help guarantee basic human rights for everyone on the planet. It’s really sad that with all the military might the world has, we still have countries where the basic rights of people are trampled on every day. If we really believed that certain rights are inalienable, we should be helping people all across the globe secure these rights, and not just when it suits our own interest or is politically convenient for us. But it shouldn’t just be the US acting alone.

50

Security is more than just guns - it’s money, technology, diplomacy, and reputation. So long as the U.S. is a major world player, I suppose the answer is yes.

51

[QUOTE=drewtwo99]
The sad truth is that the United States tends to only get involved when its own interests are on the line (anti-communism, natural resources, political obligations, etc). If anything, the US and the UN should do more to help guarantee basic human rights for everyone on the planet. It’s really sad that with all the military might the world has, we still have countries where the basic rights of people are trampled on every day. If we really believed that certain rights are inalienable, we should be helping people all across the globe secure these rights, and not just when it suits our own interest or is politically convenient for us. But it shouldn’t just be the US acting alone.
[/QUOTE]

The US is a VERY blunt instrument and I think it would be a Bad Idea™ for it to get more involved in trying to right wrongs and solve other countries problems. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan as good examples of this.

Take, for instance what’s happening in Syria right now. What should the US do that it isn’t already doing? Send in a carrier battle group to blow the crap out of Syria? Send in troops? I think both of those would be bad ideas, even though I was impressed with Obama’s light touch (relatively speaking) with Libya and how we, as a country, handled that. But I don’t think we should be going out to right wrongs and solve problems, since that’s not what we do best. What we do best is to keep the threat of massive force out there so that countries don’t get ideas about regional expansion.

-XT

52

Uh Isreal has been the largest recipient of us “aid”(that means military resources) basically every year since it’s inception. They didn’t get nukes on their own either.

53

This is an insulting personal comment, and it’s inappropriate for this forum. You can insult other posters in the Pit, but not in other SDMB forums, and comments about other posters (rather than comments about their opinions or the arguments they make) should be used with discretion.

54

I think we play a key role in maintaining relations between many of the countries in Asia–which is where the bulk of humans live. So yes.

What would the world do without America? We give you your bread and circus and all we get in return is bitching and moaning about this and that. Sheesh.

55

Perhaps these figures for political mass murder in the 20th century from Prof. R.J. Rummel’s (University of Hawaii) website about democidewould be helpful here.

China (PRC), 1949 – 87: 76,702,000

USSR, 1917 – 87 : 61,911,000

Colonialism: 50,000,000

Nazi Germany, 1933 – 45: 20,946,000

China (KMT), 1928 – 45: 10,075,000

Imperial Japan, 1936 – 45: **5,964,000 **

China (Maoists) 1923 – 48: 3,468,000

Cambodia (Khmer Rouge), 1974 – 79: ** 2,035,000**

Turkey, 1909 – 18: 1,883,000

Viet Nam, 1945 – 87: 1,670,000

Poland, 1945 – 48: ** 1,585,000**

North Korea, 1945 – 87: 1,663,000

Mexico, 1900 – 20: 1,417,000

Russia, 1900 – 17: 1,065,000

56

I’m sure that all the dead Iraqis are grateful for the help.
As for the people of Panama, the people who died were merely sacrifices to Reagan’s hubris; Noriega was never a genuine threat to his own people. Similarly, the people of Grenada might have needed a different form of aid if we had allowed the socialist regime to wander into the wilderness, but the people of that time were not being oppressed. (Of course, if we had let them build their own airport, they might not have needed any aid, at all, especially since it was designed and built as the commercial airport proposed by Britain and not the military airport about which the Reagan administration lied.)

57

So kill count is paramount, then? Does it matter that a lot of that killing

I think it’s better to call those countries, not nations, but I get your drift. But maps have been rewritten plenty of times since then, too. Whole new nations sprung out of nowhere - Eritrea, Southern Sudan, the soup of -stans and -nyas derived from the former Soviet Empire…

Even so, that’s irrelevant. I’d argue that lines on a map are not a pointer to real stability - look at the DR Congo: while it has had the 4th or 5th bloodiest war this last century, its borders haven’t changed at all from being Zaire.

So, again, let me be clear - you are equating stability with whether borders or countries are unchanged? Do you have numbers to back that up - say, absolute areas unchanged in each period?

2 metrics =/= just about any.

This is still not a logical conclusion to draw from your metrics, since the major conflicts I listed usually have a US component. If the US were a positive influence, then it shouldn’t be associated with starting or arming or supporting most major conflicts in the last 50 years.

Look, I’m not saying I disagree that, if you look at the whole world, the last 50 years have been remarkably free of World Wars. Yay, go us! But “relatively peaceful and stable” is not the same as “peaceful and stable” by a long chalk.

No. That would be a strawman argument on your part. Just because I’m not agreeing that the US is the fount of all goodness (especially in Africa) doesn’t mean I want to roll back the clock.

You just need one figure, really: 3.5-8 million dead in one conflict - because this happened. The only thing to surpass that is the Congo Free state, and that ended just before 100 years ago. That’s only one of many - most of these are in the last 50 years. And sure, most of those don’t have the kill count of a Vietnam or Korea - but 200 000 year, 300 000 there, pretty soon you’re talking real casualties! And sometimes, I think, worse things than the Holocaust happen…say what you will about the Nazis, at least they didn’t eat the Jews :eek:

That’s not to mention the non-death-related bad stuff, like the mass rapes and the child soldiers…

and where, in all this, is the USA? On its Playstation, no doubt…

58

Not really, since the 3 biggest figures span the divide between the last half-century and the previous one (I’m assuming this given what I know about colonialism’s timeline)

59

Nonsense. America doesn’t care about stopping “bad guys”; we are “bad guys”. And we are perfectly willing to ignore or support other bad guys when it profits us, and overthrow good guys when we think it will profit us. We aren’t the cops going after gangbangers; we’re a rival gang protecting or expanding our turf. And granny isn’t complaining on TV and crying about brutality, because we shot her in the face when she complained about us raping her grandaughter.

No they don’t. We’re only heroes in our own minds.

No, they’re just dead. And the living Iraqis were better off under Saddam; more free, more prosperous, safer; and more of them were alive. Not because Saddam was a good ruler, but because were so much worse.

They aren’t. We just replaced a group of thugs who irritated us with a different bunch of thugs.

60

Are you arguing that the US doesn’t intervene enough? Do you think we should have gotten involved in the Second Congo War?