old salt wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 2:30 am
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 4:06 pm
kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 12:49 pm
I did read it. I just don't get why you're so impressed by the numbers.
I guess we should be excited because 8 of 16 countries facing an actual REAL military threat from a superpower neighbor with a whackjob dictator decided to finally take defense spending a little bit more seriously?
Yay?
We have been asking countries to spend their own money to defend themselves for years. The threat is real, on their doorstep, and we have gotten a 50% participation rate. That tells you all we need to know about the mindset of the freeloaders. These countries sure have selective memories about WW2. I guess the only thing that sticks out is: "The US will come and save us."
Fascinating how you've become so captured by the current far-right wing zeitgeist.
Serious question:
Were you
always an isolationist/defeatist?
Salty may have voted for Buchanan in the GOP primary (or might not have, but he cites him now); did you?
Or did you think that Reagan's view of the world and America's role in it made sense? HW's ?
Tougher choice, did you vote for Gore or even Kerry over W?
Obama over McCain???
You refuse to consider that conditions change over time. We all took a peace dividend after the Cold War. Our EU allies took a bigger dividend & they didn't maintain a global presence. 9-11 forced us to re-arm. Our NATO allies didn't get serious about it until Putin invaded a neighbor. They have 3 decades of under-investing to catch up on. We can't afford to carry this disproportionate share of the common defense much longer.
Taking this narrative initially as gospel, the clear answer is that the allied West is indeed increasing their "proportionate share of the common defense". That's definitely happening even as we increase our own capacities.
What you (and a whole lot of isolationists) are ignoring of course, is that for 7 decades the US constructed this global imbalance for our own purposes, and we have profited immensely from this position.
You won't get any argument from me that it is good that some/many of our allies are beginning to invest more in important capacities and are increasingly contributing more and more. Yes, this is because of a shock to the zeitgeist with the invasion of Ukraine.
It is important not only for the defeat of the Russian menace, but also because a much more serious challenge could well emerge with China...we should do all in our collective power to prevent that becoming hot, both because of the demonstrated costs of aggression repelled, but also through soft power competition that enables 'larger pie' rather than "zero sum" logic.
What I somewhat disagree about is the statement "9-11
forced us to re-arm"...no, the decisions we made to invade Afghanistan and especially Iraq demanded that we increase production...as we used up existing supplies. We were not "forced" to make those decisions in response. In retrospect, those decisions were not wise, (especially Iraq) despite their seeming exigency at the time.
If you'll recall, unlike the response to the invasion of Kuwait in which we were joined by our allies in a multilateral effort, the decisions made with regard to Iraq were made unilaterally. And unlike the HW decision to repel and punish Iraq swiftly and then step back, the W decision was disastrously mired in notions of regime change and nation building. While appealing in all sorts of ways, the realities on the ground did not support that decision. So we paid a huge price. Yup, those who disagreed did not.
Finally, I do not think we want our leadership position in both hard and soft power to erode to the point that we no longer have real leadership. So, while we should welcome our allies' contributions, it's important that we provide the stability of our own ongoing leadership.
This is all the more important if we are correctly identifying the threats from an ideology of autocratic rule, especially with China's rise, in competition with the ideology of democracy, human rights, and international rule of law.
Trump's erratic and hyperbolic thrashing around dramatically eroded our soft power influence and created a level of distrust in the US that we hadn't seen from many of our allies in decades, perhaps ever since 1945? Even during Vietnam...which was largely opposed by our allies.
Leadership requires steadiness, with a commitment to multilateralism as well as preeminent hard power capacities.