One of the ways the military sells itself is that serving allows people to learn skills and stuff that help them get a job afterwards. Sort of like an apprenticeship, really. So it's always had some attraction for people whose prospects might otherwise seem somewhat bleak. On the other hand, the military also generally wants to reject entry to people who have capability or attitude deficits, who, naturally, often tend to have relatively poor prospects.
Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
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It's supposed to be on the contract you sign when you enlist and it not being there when promised means you're getting scammed and/or someone fucked up. Yeah, I'd be pissed too.
I mean, in general, people who join the military at 18 can be driving a mutli-million dollar tank or crewing a multi-billion dollar warship within a couple of years. I was a Nuclear Reactor Technician, so me and a bunch of other people in our 20s were responsible for making sure the nuclear stuff doesn't go too nuclear and sink a Nimitz class Aircraft Carrier. It's kind of the nature of the beast.
Arguably, some jobs are more dangerous then others, for sure. The guy whose job it is to load the bombs on the F-18's before a mission has an arguably more stressful and dangerous job then the guy who loads up the vending machines 3 times a day, and then the lots of jobs in between. There's different expectations of how dangerous your service is going to be based on your role.
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If it were territorial gain, then Russia should have attacked years ago, when Ukraine was at its weakest, especially from 2004 onward when the U.S. was manipulating it leading to regime change.
There is also no point to reclaim Ukraine because Russia has a lot of natural resources. OTOH, NATO was expanding from the 1990s onward, moving closer to Russia.
It only started a few weeks ago, when Saudi Arabia dropped the dollar for oil trade.
It has everything to do with the invasion. Read my previous messages connecting the Triffin dilemma to military expansionism.
Right. The fact that you can't see connections explains why I repost links and give the same points each time.
Go over my previous messages. If there's anything you didn't understand, quote it and I will explain it to you.
Population aging is being mitigated by immigration.It's unfunded liabilities are in large part the result of an ageing population, because that part of spending will need to increase above current spending to cover the demographic change.
It's current debts are due to willful borrowing without bothering to cover it through revenue. However, I would draw your attention to the following graph, which shows debt repayments as a percent of GDP (national debt only):
Federal Outlays: Interest as Percent of Gross Domestic Product
Graph and download economic data for Federal Outlays: Interest as Percent of Gross Domestic Product (FYOIGDA188S) from 1940 to 2023 about outlays, federal, percent, interest, GDP, and USA.fred.stlouisfed.org
The debt is much higher now, but the cost to service it is not, because interest rates are much lower. The same principle applies to non-governmental debt too. The mortgage:income ratio of households has increased, but because the ability to service the debt is vastly higher when interest rates are lower. This is why borrowing is associated with low interest rates.
Your view of economics does seem to be mercantilist, that debt and trade deficits are necessarily bad. But this is simply not true - or more specifically, it depends on circumstances, and the current circumstances that the USA is in, it is not a problem.
The U.S. can't cover it through revenues because it's been experiencing trade deficits since 1976.
The cost to service it is rising because the debt is piling up:
That's what an amateur is: he's weaker compared to a pro.
The U.S. is a pro when it comes to this because it's the most warmongering country in the world:
and its own universities conclude that, together with former President Carter.
In addition, it's also the top arms dealer of the world, according to SIPRI, FAS, and others.
Ukraine is a sovereign country but it was manipulated by the U.S. as part of the latter's projection of power:
Ian Traynor: US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev
Analysis: Ukraine, traditionally passive in its politics, has been mobilised by young democracy activists and will never be the same again.
www.theguardian.com
In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia | John Pilger
John Pilger: Washington's role in Ukraine, and its backing for the regime's neo-Nazis, has huge implications for the rest of the world
www.theguardian.com
Bill Clinton’s Role in the Crisis Over Ukraine
The militarization of American foreign policy has evolved over the past thirty years. Ironically, this took place in the wake of the dissolution of the
www.counterpunch.org
Don't ever underestimate that latter point. There is very good reason why the U.S. has been warmongering for decades, is the main arms dealer of the world, and has the largest military budget in the world:
US defense budget speeds toward $1T
www.manilatimes.net
It needs to do that to maintain over 900 military installations worldwide used to coerce other countries.
The US Has Military Bases in 80 Countries. All of Them Must Close.
US bases are wreaking havoc to the health and well-being of communities across the world.
www.thenation.com
Without seeing this as complex and nuanced, you will only conclude that the U.S. is doing all this in the name of "freedom and democracy," that it didn't do anything to Ukraine, and that it is helping Ukraine with no strings attacked. Don't kid yourself. The same war machine and rich bankers that wrecked havoc in places like Iraq have the same plans for Ukraine.
That's the type of argumentation that's absurd: take something that's not connected to my arguments and then argue that I would make that connection. That way, you characterize me as crazy.
In relation from that, I read that most Americans are not fit to serve in the military due to one or more of the ff. problems: poor health, mental illness, obesity, drug abuse, unwanted pregnancies, alcoholism, poor test scores, and criminal records.It's important to remember that most of the military's day-to-day is carried out by people younger than 27. This covers junior enlisted through junior NCOs as well as junior officers. A 21 year old who enlisted at 18 has fully trained and settled into their career, and it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for an intelligence service member (this airman's job) to have and require access to classified information. The real question and issue is less why did this airman have access to the info and more how was he able to remove it from the secure systems it resides in without triggering red flags; major gaps evidently need to be addressed there.
6 facts about the U.S. military and its changing demographics
The demographic makeup of the country's active-duty force has changed over time, and those changes tend to reflect trends in the broader society.www.pewresearch.org
Even More Young Americans Are Unfit to Serve, a New Study Finds. Here's Why.
The updated figures paint a picture of what is currently plaguing military recruiters in many of the service branches, with a shrinking pool of potential service members available to them.
In addition, I read various surveys revealing that most or large numbers don't want to serve, don't want their loved ones to fight, don't want to send troops, and now want more aid going to them than to Ukraine due to failing infrastructure, poor employment, rising debt, banks failing, high prices, low savings, and now real estate in trouble.
Add to that the point that most can't even identify Ukraine on a map:
34% of Americans Can Find Ukraine on a Map
Voters who can identify Ukraine on a map are more likely to back stronger policy responses against Russia, according to a new Morning Consult poll.
morningconsult.com
which was also the case years earlier when the U.S. was manipulating Ukraine:
Even more reposting the same nonsense with the same links again.
Well, that is what the ignore list is for.
Well, that is what the ignore list is for.
Yes, naturally. Getting involved in conflict is related to a country's power and global reach. Countries seek to control the environment around them: securing trade, resources, protecting allies, etc. As a general rule, the more of the world that a country is involved with the more it risks being drawn into conflict, and the more powerful it is, the more it has the ability to intervene militarily.
As a result, just because the USA is the country most involved in conflict, it does not follow that US nonintervention would necessarily result in less conflict, because any vacuum will be filled by other states' power. For instance, Russia could be "given" Ukraine, but it would not stop there. Once Ukraine were secure in its sphere, it would move on to new countries to spread its influence over, by hook or by crook. Without US military deterrent in the Pacific, China would almost certainly aggressively start to assert dominance over the Far East, with its military a key component.
One could even consider that the presence of a supreme global power like the USA may actually reduce conflict globally, because it forces potential belligerent minnows to consider the ramifications of the supreme power's disapproval. The cost of this is that supreme power has to get its hands dirty instead; of course, it also tends to benefit the supreme power, who can pressurise countries to do things the way that they want.
Yes, we supported people to campaign effectively and win a democratic election. How naughty of us! Russia, meanwhile, has been happy to support just stuffing the ballot boxes.
Let's have a look at some of what Russia's been up to in Ukraine:
Ukraine-Russia relations
Explaining the two countries’ intertwined histories, the armed conflicts in Crimea and the Donbas region, and disputes over gas supplies.
www.chathamhouse.org
Russia’s longstanding problem with Ukraine’s borders
Over time it has become clear Russia is unwilling to settle its borders with Ukraine and acknowledge its territorial integrity as an independent state.
www.chathamhouse.org
Do you think Russia has a right to subjugate Ukraine, and that the Ukrainian people don't merit rights and self-determination? If the Ukrainians don't merit these, why should the Balts, Poles, Georgians, Kazakhs have them either? Where would Russia stop? Why would it stop? Would the world be a better place if we just let countries like Russia take what they wanted? Do you just think weak nations should be sacrified and thrown to wolves, just so long as we aren't remotely wolf-like?
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Which you are. Because you are the one who keeps repeating that usa=russia ("we have two russia or two usa"). You're making the equivalence between growing spheres of influence and military territorial conquest, between democratic regimes (electoral government changes and free press) and dictatorships (forbidden dissenting media, jailed/murdered political rivals, regime permanence), between the very content of the proposed models (a democracy decent enough to be reproached being "woke/pc" in the eyes of fascists, and a nationalist homophobic regime that is supported by all the world's totalitarianisms).
By doing so, you simply normalize the russian regime and its war of annexation. And yes, you have to be reminded what this regime means, even if you do not give a damn about the massacre of the ukrainian population and its perpetrator.
Can you explain the bit about President Carter again? I missed it the first 48 times.
Russia literally attacked and seized territory from Ukraine already 8 years ago.
"They have lots of stuff already so therefore they must not be trying to get more stuff"? That's what you're going with? Someone should have told that to... uhrm, all the European empires. And the US.
Good lord but this is weak.
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You believe that the trend towards growing trade with China and India started a few weeks ago?
In each case, you haven't demonstrated any legitimate connection. You've vomited the same few links over and over and over again-- while failing to understand what they say (Kennan), or making arguments that aren't supported by them ("the global south supports invasion").
Then you've endlessly waffled about how countries in the global south have been shifting trade away from the US. And somehow equated the Russian invasion with that global trend, insinuating its all part of the same attitude shift, despite the fact that the global south overwhelmingly condemns the invasion-- and despite the fact the invasion has fuck all to do with why Turkey wants to trade more with China. And despite the fact Russia is in the global North, a successor to a plundering European empire just like Britain, France, Portugal, Spain etc.
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"The Ukraine can only ever exist as a puppet of the US regime, and Ukrainians should want to die rather than allow themselves to exist that way."
Swap out "The Ukraine" for whatever country next ends up on Russia's ever-expanding borders.
Moldova is next. Members of Russia's government have already been saying that should be the next target for invasion. And they already have an occupying insurgency in Transnistria to use to justify it as "self defence".
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And rich individuals.
Yes but, listen. The west is expanding its political and commercial networks through negociation. When you think of it, isn't it worse than expanding state borders through genocidal conquest ?
Also that the west-supported neo-Nazi coup constitutes such a choosing, and that a country that regularly bans television stations and political parties is meaningfully capable of "choosing its own destiny". In practice what you support is Ukraine 'choosing' subsumption into the west at the cost of its probable annihilation and the risk of global thermonuclear war.
Blind or not, those complexities have been minimized at every turn (to a frankly tedious degree). This thread has instead been home to fantasist rambling about the irrelevance of concerns about NATO beside what is framed as Russia's imperial ambitions (which are simultaneously mocked because the enemy must be both too strong and too weak).
Russia chose its own interests over those of Ukraine; Russia's invasion has been selfish and immoral in that respect. But that selfishness and immorality is predictable and normal given the context of US global empire. It is predictable because of the threat that empire poses to Russia as well as the US's history of violently enforcing its will and destroying other countries by invasion, assassination. It is normal because this sort of invasion is how the United States reacts even to non-threats like Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Russia's actions are justifiable in terms of its own security, sturdy guarantees of which likely would have stopped this war before it started-- they've literally been talking about this for decades and, contrary to the western war propaganda, it has dominated their more recent statements. The United States and its hapless 'allies' chose to pursue a course of unrelenting hostility to its predictable conclusion; were the people of Ukraine consulted on that? And the United States got what it wanted: a war, and the best kind of war-- one in which the battlefield is very far away.
Its funny that those against American imperialism paradoxically take the stance that America should embrace Russia as a partner in Imperialism and divide an unwilling Europe between them. America forcing Ukraine, and possibly the rest of eastern Europe to submit themselves to a Russian dictatorship is a breach of those countries sovereignty. Its America and Russia jointly subverting the will of both the peoples and the institutions of those nations. Of course this approach also has the added benefit of flattering Russia, allowing it to pretend to be an equal to the US and a superior to Europe rather than a dismal backwater who's entire state resolves around a finite resource.
So is American imperialism justified if it helps Russia feel like an Imperial power again?
So is American imperialism justified if it helps Russia feel like an Imperial power again?
This remains hysterical delusion. Repeating the line ad nauseum, without ever providing a solid reason for why the description should be accepted (and always simply ignoring the reasons it doesn't apply) isn't compelling to anyone here.
Parliament voted unanimously to remove him from power after he could not be reached. Including his own party. That's the legal process in a parliamentary democracy
when the HOS abdicates responsibility.
And you're not going to get past the fact that incorporation into Russia was and is dismally unpopular-- and you're the only one that wants Ukraine to be forced to follow dismally unpopular national policy, even if it means dictatorship/invasion/massacre.
In short, you believe that speculation about a possible future threat to Russia from Ukraine is enough to justify invasion/annexation/massacre/regime change. Same old paranoid shite the US trotted out to justify intervention a dozen times before.
Why does this Russian defensive concern take such precedence over any other country's defensive concern, then? You have Russian defensive concern-- and you want us to accommodate it to the point of allowing Russia to invade/annex/slaughter. And then you have Ukrainian defensive concern-- and you want us to... well, completely disregard it, treat is as utterly unimportant and outweighed by Russia's concern.
Why? Why treat one as so overridingly important that it outweighs the same right for any other country? Is it solely that Russia has nukes, so they must be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, nothing short of genocide, out of fear that they'll unilaterally destroy the world if they're not?