# Is the American way of life either directly or indirectly a hindrance to other countries' ways of li **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 3, 2011, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-american-way-of-life-either-directly-or-indirectly-a-hindrance-to-other-countries-ways-of-li/566275 "2011-01-03T22:29:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2011, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-american-way-of-life-either-directly-or-indirectly-a-hindrance-to-other-countries-ways-of-li/566275/21 "2011-01-04T22:23:40Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > I am willing to bet, however, that having the US massed at their borders played at least a small role in North Korea’s descent into a paranoid regime obsessed with military buildup. I’m absolutely not in any way saying that the US didn’t do the best they could (I don’t know enough about the subject) but I think the cause-effect thing there was pretty obvious. I think your admission that you don’t know enough about the history of the region is a bit of an understatement. The North Korean military is larger than South Korea’s by almost two-to-one. > [@](#): > > North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world. It has an estimated active duty military force of up to 1.2 million personnel, compared to about 680,000 in the South. Military spending is estimated at as much as a quarter of GNP, with up to 20% of men ages 17-54 in the regular armed forces. North Korean forces have a substantial numerical advantage over the South (around 2 to 1) in several key categories of offensive weapons–tanks, long-range artillery, and armored personnel carriers. The North has one of the world’s largest special operations forces, designed for insertion behind the lines in wartime. > > North Korea’s navy is primarily a coastal navy, with antiquated surface and submarine fleets. Its air force has twice the number of aircraft as the South, but, except for a few advanced fighters, the North’s air force is obsolete. > > The North deploys the bulk of its forces well forward, along the demilitarized zone (DMZ). [Cite.](http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2792.htm) North Korea was set up essentially by the Soviet Union ([cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_North_Korea)) and the primary reason they are paranoid and military-obsessed is because they invaded South Korea with the approval of Josef Fucking Stalin, one of the greatest mass murderers of all time. And were driven back (thank God). The military build up and subsequent economic downturn was driven by NK’s desire not to be dependent on China and the USSR. From the Wiki article > [@](#): > > North Korea’s desire to lessen its dependence on aid from China and the Soviet Union prompted the expansion of its military power, which had begun in the second half of the 1960s. > [@](#): > > How would you expect them to have a nice happy friends-with-everyone path to development when they have a gun pointed to their heads? Actually I think you have it the wrong way around - North Korea is the one pointing the gun at everyone else, and have been for the last sixty years. Your notion that this has anything to do with the American way of life is more than slightly questionable. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![godix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/278dde/32.png) [@godix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/godix)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2011, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-american-way-of-life-either-directly-or-indirectly-a-hindrance-to-other-countries-ways-of-li/566275/22 "2011-01-04T22:45:02Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Or try it this way- can you imagine an alternate future that is any worse than what they have now? Can you picture a worse path they could be on? Yes, I can imagine an alternate world that’s worse than what we have now. In this alternate world, South Korea would have been taken over by the North and run just as poorly as North Korea is. Which actually is quite likely to have been the outcome if the US didn’t get involved. Somehow the idea of preventing a dictator who starves his people from taking over other nations and starving them as well doesn’t strike me as a bad thing… ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-american-way-of-life-either-directly-or-indirectly-a-hindrance-to-other-countries-ways-of-li/566275/23 "2011-01-05T00:06:23Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > North Korea was set up essentially by the Soviet Union ([cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_North_Korea)) and the primary reason they are paranoid and military-obsessed is because they invaded South Korea with the approval of Josef Fucking Stalin, one of the greatest mass murderers of all time. And were driven back (thank God). So why didn’t other Soviet satellite states turn into paranoid military-obsessed dictatorships? Mongolia, for example, is now a relatively decent place with a somewhat functional democracy. Turkmenistan had a leader that was nearly as insane as Kim Jong Il, but it’s not threatening to destroy the world any time soon. The transition out of Communism has been difficult for most post-Soviet states, but nobody is anything at all like North Korea. Something specific in North Korea’s development led to it being as obsessed with the idea that military force as it is. I wonder what that could be… Let’s try another thought experiment. We lost in Vietnam and generally got out of the region. Vietnam went through some pretty terrible times, but is now generally agreed to back on track despite still identifying as “Communist.” How would Vietnam’s development have been different if the US had maintained a massive permanent military build up on it’s borders? Do you think it would have been more or less likely to integrate into the post-Communist world system? Would it be more or less likely to invest heavily in its military? Would it pose more or less of a threat to its neighbors? I’m not saying America did the wrong thing. I’m pretty sure we did the best thing that we could think of, given the threat to South Korea. I’m not saying I support “Joseph Fucking Stalin.” I’m not supporting North Korea in any way shape or form. Saying that we had a role in the making of the modern North Korea seems pretty self-evident to me, and I think you are jumping the gun to start screaming “OMG you don’t know how bad Commies are they are the worst thing on Earth why do you hate America?!!!” Acknowledging complexities is not the same as approving of Communism. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-american-way-of-life-either-directly-or-indirectly-a-hindrance-to-other-countries-ways-of-li/566275/24 "2011-01-05T00:26:57Z")
Let’s take this hijack to [another thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13317437#post13317437). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-american-way-of-life-either-directly-or-indirectly-a-hindrance-to-other-countries-ways-of-li/566275/25 "2011-01-05T04:44:40Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > OP, is your intuition all you have in favor of your position? Seems like it at the moment. **Curious** that you are willing to even take a position on the issue based on intuition alone, but suit yourself, I guess. You misspelled “unremarkable.” ---
**Author:** ![dasein47](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@dasein47](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasein47)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2011, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-american-way-of-life-either-directly-or-indirectly-a-hindrance-to-other-countries-ways-of-li/566275/26 "2011-01-06T04:34:31Z")
Wow, post it and they will come. All of these possible answers to my odd question have their merit (though I’m no logician nor do I have much background in economics micro or macro). I am inundated right now with reading and teaching amidst the innate, chaotic onslaught that is the new year/quarter, hence my delay in replying. (I am working on my PhD in Latin American Literatures and Cultures, which somewhat pushed me further towards this question.) I can’t say that I really have a fully formed position on this yet, though I am in the process of pulling together some sort of cohesive worldview. I just finished Born in Blood and Fire, a concise history of LatAm in order to get a good overall, quick 'n dirty history of it before really embarking on this degree. Those poor countries have basically been raped, pillaged, decimated time and again since the Spanish “discovered” them in 1498. Between the enslavement of the indigenous to colonization to neo- and post-colonization, especially these last two until the present, well, the US government hasn’t exactly been friendly to them. Take Guatemala in the early 50s, Costa Rica in the mid-50s, Guatemala again in 60, Ecuador and Brazil in the early 60s, then Uruguay, Chile, Guatemala (again), Bolivia in the mid-60s. The list goes on until the present day. The US military and CIA intervened in all the above (a total of over 50 worldwide since WWII), either helping directly to manipulate elections, directly acting in coups, disinformation, torture, terrorism, et al. I am astounded to what our government is capable of, and am repulsed when people say unabashedly that we are the sole force of good on this planet. In this sense, I can’t see how our way of life --here meaning "democracy a la our federal government-- does not hinder others, especially when coups, disinformation, murders go onto to skew the outcome of elections that are supposedly democratic to begin with. If a country wants a radically left populist, then, according to democracy’s wishes, they should have it. That is simply not been possible. Even if you think that Sadamm was an awful dictator and our removal of him was a good thing, well, at what cost? On a simpler level, if we consume 25% of the world’s energy resources, and that 25% is the largest single nation-state contributor to greenhouse gases and thus the country that most contributed to warming the globe, then, indirectly, our way of life most definitely curtails others’, especially those who live in coastal towns and London and much of northern Europe. I don’t know that exact stats but if what I have written above is true, then I cannot see how all this hyper-consumption that drives our extraordinarily high lifestyle can’t be called in for a bit of blame. Anyway, that’s where I’m coming from, and am certainly open to other ideas, many which appear as replies. I hope to have the time to read through some of them this weekend. Cheers. dasein47 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-american-way-of-life-either-directly-or-indirectly-a-hindrance-to-other-countries-ways-of-li/566275.md?page=1)