What if the US did nothing?

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Warren Dew
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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by Warren Dew » Wed Aug 21, 2013 7:35 am

Cormac wrote:
Rum wrote:
Cormac wrote:
Rum wrote:Quite. I think Mistermack wears rose tinted glasses regarding the reality of communism as it has so far manifested itself. I am a socialist and a liberal, but I can only accept it in terms of an evolutionary/developmental process, backed up by a sense of social justice. There is sadly no escaping the fact that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian organisation which chose to try to reach its goals by whatever means it felt it could, including the oppression of its people and the abandonment of any values associated with individual liberty.
This is a familiar refrain these days.
Your point? It is clearly a matter of fact.
I wasn't criticising.

I do see that happening everywhere these days, and it has been the common refrain for all authoritarian governments as they seek to garner more power, and seek to have the people conspire in their own oppression.
I take it by "authoritarian governments" "these days" you mean "France, Germany, Brussels, and the U.S.".

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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by mistermack » Wed Aug 21, 2013 11:34 am

Warren Dew wrote: You mean like they did with Czechoslovakia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pac ... hoslovakia
laklak wrote:Then there was the Hungarian incident...
Fail for both of you for the same reasons. A determination to keep what they've already got hold of doesn't indicate an intention to expand. The USSR thought that they needed those states as a buffer, and had no intention of allowing a chain reaction to begin. That's totally different to wanting to expand into western Europe.

Also, the US had no effect whatsoever on either of those incidents, so the proposition of the OP is unaffected. It actually illustrates what I said. The US did nothing, and got the result that they wanted anyway.
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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by Rum » Wed Aug 21, 2013 11:39 am

Now you are getting plain silly.

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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by Cormac » Wed Aug 21, 2013 11:41 am

piscator wrote:Rum's killin' it in this thread. Bravo!

I think it's easy to gloss over how badass the Red Army was. They broke the Blitzkrieg by laying low until the tanks passed over, then belt-grabbing the Wehrmacht and pitfighting man on man like cornered rats. This not only took the German tanks, and planes, and guns out of play for fear of slaughtering too many of their own, but it relied on the strengths of a pissed off peasant army to do their worst.
Both Josef and Little Nicky were total stone killers who personally blew the heads off of more people than we'll probably ever know, and Europe represented a shitload of money just sitting for the taking to them. The only thing that stopped them from doing the obvious was the Allied armies in their way and their fears of a reverse Napoleon's retreat.
That, and there was that 4-year gap before they got the Bomb that took their inertia...so they chose a more roundabout approach to Universal Socialism. Hence the Cold War.
By the end of the war, weren't the Red Army regarded as having the toughest and best infantry in the world?

(Of course, their tactics of simply pouring men onto the battlefield and seeing which ones survived probably helped...
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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by mistermack » Wed Aug 21, 2013 11:45 am

Rum wrote:Now you are getting plain silly.
Rum, Rum, Stinky bum. :Erasb:
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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by Rum » Wed Aug 21, 2013 3:51 pm

I don't know how old you are but I suppose if you didn't live through a period when the idealists amongst us realised that the USSR wasn't going to establish universal socialism of a kind that the young liberal and progressive intelligentsia had hoped for then it is possible to look in hindsight with rose tinted glasses at the old Soviet Union and a missed opportunity, thwarted only by the eveil capitalists of the USA.

When it was clear that they were heading down the 'wrong' path many fled the old Communist party (I was briefly a member) and joined all sorts of fringe 'liberal' leaning communist or socialist organisations. This was in the 60s and 70s, but as early as the late 40s the writing was on the wall as far as many were concerned. 1984 (written in 1948 and published in 49) is, for many, a satire on what the USSR was becoming.

The truth is that the USSR was heading for totalitarianism the day Trotsky was killed and Stalin 'won the day'. Stalin created the bureaucracies which effectively ruled and sometimes terrorised its population. Stalin was a bad guy - period and I have never seen any attempt to rescue his reputation. It simply isn't deserved.

Russia tried to implement socialism in pretty much the worst possible way for my money. That included the option of imposing its own system on those it could effectively invade or take over.

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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by Warren Dew » Wed Aug 21, 2013 5:06 pm

Rum wrote:I don't know how old you are but I suppose if you didn't live through a period when the idealists amongst us realised that the USSR wasn't going to establish universal socialism of a kind that the young liberal and progressive intelligentsia had hoped for then it is possible to look in hindsight with rose tinted glasses at the old Soviet Union and a missed opportunity, thwarted only by the eveil capitalists of the USA.
I knew you were old, Rum, but I didn't know you were born before the Russian Revolution!

Seriously, I think it just takes a variable amount of time for people to realize that Communism produces a dystopia rather than a utopia, even after that fact has been established. Granted it may be more difficult to realize now that the Soviet Union is no longer there to serve as an example.

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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by Warren Dew » Wed Aug 21, 2013 5:08 pm

mistermack wrote:Also, the US had no effect whatsoever on either of those incidents, so the proposition of the OP is unaffected. It actually illustrates what I said. The US did nothing, and got the result that they wanted anyway.
The result that the U.S. wanted was for nations like Czechoslovakia and Hungary to become free, which was not what happened although it did eventually happen decades later. It would never have happened had the U.S. been isolationist throughout.

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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by Rum » Wed Aug 21, 2013 5:16 pm

Warren Dew wrote:
mistermack wrote:Also, the US had no effect whatsoever on either of those incidents, so the proposition of the OP is unaffected. It actually illustrates what I said. The US did nothing, and got the result that they wanted anyway.
The result that the U.S. wanted was for nations like Czechoslovakia and Hungary to become free, which was not what happened although it did eventually happen decades later. It would never have happened had the U.S. been isolationist throughout.
To be fair they wanted to get rid of the buffer zone/forward positions should the Ruskies ever decide to roll their tanks across the borders.

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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by mistermack » Wed Aug 21, 2013 6:22 pm

I don't know where people got the idea that I support communism, or that I thought Stalin was a great guy. I never have.
There are some serious straw men being demolished there.

I just argued that the American policy didn't have much input into the change of the USSR. It was internal.
Just as it has been in China. Nobody can claim that pressure from the West made any difference to China.
Except the pressure of watching successful economies grow and living standards rise, while you own stagnate.
The Russians and the Chinese weren't blind. They could see what was working, and what was failing. That's where change came from.

If the US had done nothing except defend itself, it wouldn't have fought the disastrous Vietnam war. The cold war would not have been so cold.
If they hadn't backed Israel to the Hilt, it wouldn't exist now. And a good thing too. The US is hated round the world, because of Vietnam, and Israel. It's international position today would be unrecogniseably better, if it had just done nothing on those two fronts.
If they hadn't supported Israel, Iran might still be ruled by a Shah. It was hate for the US because of Israel that tipped the balance there.
If they had done nothing about Afghanistan, the Russians would have been in there for many more years, but with the same result. The appetite in Russia for foreign adventure would be even less now.
And the Taliban wouldn't have grown to the movement that it is today.

The only success story of US foreign policy, has been keeping Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in line.
But that's been at the price of huge injustice in those countries.
And whoever ran those countries, they would need to sell their oil to the West. So it's impossible to say that it would have been worse, without US interference.

As far as the middle east goes, no interference is by far the best policy. No matter who wins or loses, they are all as bad as each other.
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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by Seabass » Wed Aug 21, 2013 6:59 pm

mistermack wrote:I don't know where people got the idea that I support communism, or that I thought Stalin was a great guy. I never have.
There are some serious straw men being demolished there.
Don't worry Mack, I know it's all about your seething contempt for Americans. :tup:
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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by mistermack » Wed Aug 21, 2013 7:34 pm

Seabass wrote:
mistermack wrote:I don't know where people got the idea that I support communism, or that I thought Stalin was a great guy. I never have.
There are some serious straw men being demolished there.
Don't worry Mack, I know it's all about your seething contempt for Americans. :tup:
It's a long time since I had a seething anything.
There are plenty of Americans who I admire. But you're right, there are plenty that I have contempt for. Mainly gun-lovers, death-penalty lovers, selfish capitalists, and rabid Christians.

But other countries have plenty of those. And those people aren't all bad.
Anyway, I've got contempt for lots of Brits too. Wankers.
Wish I was German.
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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by Seth » Wed Aug 21, 2013 7:38 pm

mistermack wrote:Where would the US be now, if it had done nothing internationally since WW2 ?

ie Not fought in Vietnam, not supported Israel, not supported the Shah, never armed the Contras, not been bothered by Russia going into Afghanistan, etc etc.

What if they had just sat there, and kept themselves well-defended, and did fuck-all?


I personally think they would now be much richer, stronger, and more popular and influential.
Their own policies have dragged them down. How hard can it be to just do nothing?
Why put the cutoff at WWII. Why not ask where would Europe and the rest of the planet be if the US had stayed out of WWI and WWII? The US likely would have been just fine. The rest of you would have been fucked though.
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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by mistermack » Wed Aug 21, 2013 7:44 pm

Seth wrote: Why put the cutoff at WWII. Why not ask where would Europe and the rest of the planet be if the US had stayed out of WWI and WWII? The US likely would have been just fine. The rest of you would have been fucked though.
You've excelled your previous heights, for dumb posts there.

The US did stay out of WW2, until the Japanese attacked them, and Hitler declared war on them.

I'm not going to suggest that they should have surrendered.
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Re: What if the US did nothing?

Post by Seth » Wed Aug 21, 2013 7:56 pm

mistermack wrote:I don't know where people got the idea that I support communism, or that I thought Stalin was a great guy. I never have.
There are some serious straw men being demolished there.

I just argued that the American policy didn't have much input into the change of the USSR. It was internal.
It was internal only because the United States kept the USSR in check during the Cold War, which prevented it from taking over all of Europe, and which, due to Soviet pretensions of dominating the world caused the Central Committee to spend all its treasure trying to build a mighty military force that could challenge the US. Reagan killed the USSR with the Star Wars ballistic missile defense program that was never even started because the mere threat of being able to destroy Soviet nuclear missiles threatened to shift the balance of power so much that the Soviets became increasingly paranoid about a US first strike and bankrupted the nation trying to respond militarily.

The internal change occurred because the people of the USSR finally got fed up with the Central Committee's profligacy and waste that was destroying the Soviet economy. It began on the fringes, in places like Poland, and spread to other satellite states that began agitating for political and economic freedom from the burden of supporting the Central Committee's paranoia.

But the direct cause was the crumbling economy, and the crumbling economy was directly caused by Reagan's brilliant chess game of brinksmanship and political savvy that in essence drove the Soviet leaders into catatonia.

Just as it has been in China. Nobody can claim that pressure from the West made any difference to China.
Baloney. You misunderstand the "pressure" on China. There we use ECONOMIC pressure to erode away the foundations of Maoism. And the "pressure" is that China had to become a capitalist society in order to get the business it has from the west. Yes, China has a lot of power right now, but if they get out of line all the US has to do is repudiate its debt to China and ban import of Chinese goods and it will fall apart.
Except the pressure of watching successful economies grow and living standards rise, while you own stagnate.
The Russians and the Chinese weren't blind. They could see what was working, and what was failing. That's where change came from.
Exactly. Marxism wasn't working so they are shifting to Capitalism. QED
If the US had done nothing except defend itself, it wouldn't have fought the disastrous Vietnam war.
Wasn't really a disaster. We only lost 54,000 odd soldiers and the good news is that it served to stimulate the public into changing (to some extent) how we go about military intervention. As a result we have an all-volunteer professional army that is the best military the planet has ever seen. When allowed to actually do it's job as it's supposed to, our military dominates any battlefield and does so with incredibly small casualties. Unprecedented in fact. No soldiers on earth are safer and more likely to survive combat that US soldiers. No soldiers on earth are more likely to die on the battlefield facing US soldiers than every other military on the planet.

We kept the Soviets at bay during the Cold War. If we hadn't, the Soviets would have rolled right over West Germany and all the rest and made all of Europe into satellite Communist states because none of the countries of Europe have EVER been prepared to take on the military might of the Soviet Union.
The cold war would not have been so cold.
If they hadn't backed Israel to the Hilt, it wouldn't exist now. And a good thing too. The US is hated round the world, because of Vietnam, and Israel. It's international position today would be unrecogniseably better, if it had just done nothing on those two fronts.
If they hadn't supported Israel, Iran might still be ruled by a Shah. It was hate for the US because of Israel that tipped the balance there.
If they had done nothing about Afghanistan, the Russians would have been in there for many more years, but with the same result. The appetite in Russia for foreign adventure would be even less now.
And the Taliban wouldn't have grown to the movement that it is today.
Good God you're ignorant of history.
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