A better way for USA to support that principle would have been not to invade the sovereign nations of Cuba, Philippines, Hawai'i, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Panama, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Serbia, etc. Those are just a selection of the invasions our leaders admit. There have been far more unacknowledged actions in various parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as violent actions that didn't include uniformed USA troops like when we paid Saddam Hussein to have a horrible war with Iran. Also there have been violent actions for which some local support could have been argued, such as when Suharto and his CIA handlers killed millions of people in Indonesia. Also we genocided American Indians for centuries. As soon as there weren't any more of them to kill, the exact same USA army officers were doing the exact same racist violence in Philippines. USA's existence is one continuous rejection of sovereignty.

Crackpot realists ITT will gleefully point to my list of USA military victims and crow about "victories" in "war". Many of these were "police actions" in which there wasn't even an opposing force, just civilian victims. That's not war. Also, although every one of these actions served the someone's interests, not one accomplished a military objective that benefited the average American. That's not winning.

That, again is ignorance.

I agree that no one is talking about "winning wars" in those instances. Because that is most certainly NOT the point.

The point is to contain authoritarianism. Yes, it is sometimes done badly and mistakenly.

But, overall, it has been somewhat successful. The major authoritarian governments have been somewhat constrained, and we have not seen any foreign power doing on US soil what is happening in Ukraine right this minute.

Without those consistent actions throughout the decades, it most likely would be happening, and being able to live without being shelled is a most definite benefit to every average American.

Another related item is that it is the US Navy that protects shipping lanes globally (and not the Russian or Chinese navies). This brings massive benefits to world trade, and massively lowers costs and prices for every American. Another benefit, every day, for the average American, and they literally don't even notice, it just 'happens'. You don't want to see what happens if these US actions stop, but you can look to East African waters a decade ago to get a hint. And then remember that that carp stopped when the USN got involved.

TFA claims explicitly, in the title, to be about "winning". I observe that the Pentagon doesn't have a recent track record of doing that. ITT that observation has been answered by novel definitions, references to WWII, appeals to sovereignty, and now you have appealed to anti-authoritarianism. Hold on to your history book, because our record in USA doesn't look too good on that either.

Here is a short list of authoritarian dictators whom USA supported for years: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Saddam Hussein, Mohammed bin Salman, Ibn Saud and the half-dozen other Saudi "kings", Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Hosni Mubarak, Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, Chun Doo-hwan, Mobutu Sese Seko, Sarit Thanarat, Suharto, Augusto Pinochet, Juan José Estrada, Manuel Noriega, Anastasio Somoza García, Luis Somoza Debayle, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Carlos Castillo Armas, Fulgencio Batista, Phoumi Nosavan, Hugo Banzer, Jorge Rafael Videla, Hissène Habré, Ferdinand Marcos, etc, etc, etc. As before, I have left out many. Tens of millions of innocent people died due to USA support for these authoritarian dictators, not to mention the hundreds of millions more who lived in fear and penury.

There is not a chance in hell that support for any of those awful men contributed in the least to USA not being shelled over any period of history. That has been guaranteed by our two giant oceans and two fairly large vassal neighbors. The more straws you attempt to grasp, the clearer the picture of USA militarism becomes.

I stipulate that USA navy defends shipping, except of course in those fairly frequent events in which battleships mistakenly run into shipping vessels while tooling around in the dark.

Yes, I fully understand that the US supported a long list of tinpot dictators in the pursuit of larger geopolitical goals, AND that life was not good under those dictators, AND that in some cases, nominally democratic leaders were undermined in favor of those tinpot dictators.

I'm making no "appeal to anti-authoritarianism", I'm simply restating the explicit goals of US policy, right up to this week.

Supporting those tinpot dictators was specifically to prevent expansion / pursue containment of larger and even more murderous dictators.

While the rhetoric was anti-communism, the reality, especially now, is that the "--isms" were irrelevant. It is literally the Free World vs Authoritarianism.

Geopolitics is extremely ugly. People get hurt and killed, in large numbers. At least those trying to defend and expand the areas under self-determination try to minimize it.

The case you need to make is not that people suffered under the US-propped dictators, but that they would have suffered LESS under Soviet or CCP-supported dictators. Compare Mubarak supported by the US in Egypt vs Assad supported by Russia in Syria. Without some specific situation, no sane and informed person would choose to live under Assad over Mubarak. Same for Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan in Korea who you mention supported, vs Pol Pot supported by China. Rising prosperity and protection from NK, vs abject poverty and killings of millions.

To say that decades of strong (and often extremely unsavory) containment policy had "not a chance in hell" of preventing attacks on US soil is to ignore that the US won the Cuban missile crisis, preventing nuclear missiles from being stationed minutes from our shores.

It is also to ignore what is happening in Ukraine this minute. Russian govt officials have in the past months clearly stated that not only do they think Ukraine has no right to exist, but neither do any of the previous Soviet sphere-of-influence states, out at least to Berlin. They will NOT stop unless they are stopped, and we are the only nation on the planet who can organize stopping it.

All of it was one flavor or another of bad. But a lot LESS bad than if it had not been done.

It is pretty clear that you are so focused on your litany of bad trees, that you are unwilling or unable to see the forest.

And back to TFA and the topic of "winning":

The fact of the matter is that if any person wants to live a self-determined life, and under a self-determined government, they must be better armed, prepared, and allied than the bullies or authoritarians who would otherwise take their lunch or their territory.

This basic fact was for decades ignored under what I call The Great Experiment, which was the idea that open trade & information flow would bring free markets and open democracy to the unfree world.

It failed. Completely and miserably. It only empowered the dictators.

Under that illusion, and as a result of lessons learned from press coverage of the Vietnam war, political will to fight wars as anything more than holding actions has been almost nonexistent. So, most actions did nothing more than hold, neither proving nor disproving the ability to "win".

Even in Gulf War #1, where the 5th largest military was wiped out in weeks, the US held back for a number of reasons.

But we must distinguish between political will and military capability. Just because a military hasn't been given permission to go all-out, doesn't mean it cannot.

You may not have noticed the confrontation in Syria last year when Russian-backed Wagner (iirc) did something stupid that called for a US response. The result was they had a lot of body bags and dead equipment, and zero US/coalition casualties. No the US Mil isn't perfect, and as with any huge organization, a myriad flaws can be found.

but looking more broadly, I'd notice that there are many of those types of incidents, and considering that every other military does whatever it can to avoid a direct confrontation with the US, I'd have to put my bet on the US Mil still being the most lethal - and able to "win" any confrontation.

What evidence is there where the US Mil has been actually outclassed by any other mil?

Conjecture and domino theory at best.

Many of the post WWII proto democratic governments in their infancy overthrown by CIA machinations had candidates that were no more socialist than, say, Australia.

Many wanted to throw off the yoke of pre WWII colonial rule by the French, the English, the Dutch, et. and establish their own governments for their own people without any obligation to the traditional order.

This was anthemic to both the US and post WWII UK governments who wanted Western hegonomy and in some cases stranglehold control over strategic Cold War resources.

The theory touted about was that if we (the US) don't stomp these independant governments before they grow, they'll end up freely and democratically trading with (say) Russia and China.

Ergo, we stage coup's and install monsters that take a cut from our resource companies.

Or, more recently, Venezuela. Hugo Chavez was (ostensibly) democratically elected, as was Maduro. The result is anything but democratic rule or prosperity for its people. Same for Orban in Hungary, or Putin, or literally even Hitler. Democracies often convert to autocracies. There's a well-worn playbook for it.

We should also look at the results. Zero of these tinpot dictators supported by the US were annexed by the US or any of the 'Free World' powers. The people under those regimes inevitably advanced towards self-governance and prosperity.

Would South Koreans really have been better off under the rule of the Un family vs Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan? North Koreans are literally dying in the streets of starvation, while just south of the DMZ, here is plenty.

Were the Iranians, especially women, better off under the Ayotollahs than under the Shah?

Are the Cubans really better off under the Castro regime than before?

Of course we can compare the world to some ideal and say "everything is sh#t". We must compare it to the real alternatives available.

I'm NOT saying everything was good, and some was very bad, but that does not make the US the worst of all possible worlds. That's reserved for the megadeath leaders like Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pot, Un, etc... If they are not fought at every turn, they WILL take over. As we can see in Ukraine, as well as Tibet, the Uhguirs (sp?), and China's explicit claims on Taiwan. They'll always fabricate some excuse for their next claim.

ZERO. Yes, autocratic rulers were deposed, and in some cases, 'democratically elected' rulers who were openly working with autocrats (USSR, CCP).

Was any of it done perfectly? No.

But fighting authoritarianism, and in some cases using our authoritarian to fight a worse one was done. I don't necessarily agree with it or disagree, in any particular circumstance, and we'd have to review each one case-by-case.

But none of the incidents you cite as "whataboutism" changes the facts of the one being discussed.

You even correctly pointed out that it was not for the oil. It was to uphold that principle. The same goes for Ukraine. And many of the others.

Geopolitics is an ugly game. But without pushing back, hard, on authoritarians, and building a world order based on forbidding violent taking of territory as Russia is doing in Ukraine (completely consistent with its history since the 1400s). There was a lot done badly, but that is no reason to not attempt to do it better. And leaving it to the Putins, Xis, and Uns of the world will damn sure make it worse in a hurry.

That seems like an odd condition to add, but I still think the answer would be non-zero if we were more successful in our invasions of sovereign countries. Hard to annex a country that you eventually give up even pacifying.

We are notably invading neither Russia nor the Ukraine.

Hawaii.

The point is that there was an age of empire, where it was accepted to take territory by force. It was pretty much that way since Alexander, Ghengis Kahn, through all of European history since the middle ages.

The point is that the era of empire by violent imperialist conquest is over.

While authoritarians want to continue acting like might-is-right empires, the democratic nations of the free world reject that concept

The free world understanding that it is unsustainable. The lands of previous empires are largely returned, India, most of Africa, Carribbean, etc.

Just because governments since the age of empire still retain continuity and the same name, that does not mean they are the same.

England, France, Germany, US, have rejected authoritarianism and empire, while Russia, and China still want to continue it.

Treating something that has the same name but is different is a falsehood.

(A caveat here is that there are authoritarian movements in all of the democratic countries, in no small part aided and fomented by the authoritarian govts as part of hybrid warfare, so it is possible for them to flip back.)

We still occupy Hawai'i, as well as the entirety of continental USA. We still occupy the eastern third of Syria, as Trump said and Biden hasn't contradicted "to steal their oil". The various nations we occupy in Africa invite similar explanation. We occupied Philippines for decades, as colonial masters, until Japan kicked us out, after which we reoccupied it. As observed above, that wasn't a different thing from the colonization of North America, because it was done in the same racist way by the exact same racist army officers. We maintain military bases all over, every one a direct threat to the host nation should they stray from our political line. For example, how successful can Korean reunification efforts be while our sword hangs above their heads? This isn't winning wars. This is terrorizing populations.

Over the decades we spent in Philippines we pioneered the sort of financial colonialism we codified at Bretton Woods. This has been extensively documented by economist Michael Hudson. After we trick a nation (i.e. pay off whichever corrupt locals we can maneuver into power) into signing up for this program, we oppress working people, extract resources, privatize public assets, and financialize the whole mess. Most of the surplus in the economy is exported to e.g. NYC and London. This is the real explanation for USA capitalism's "century of success". Our system can no more support itself without victimizing other nations than the Roman Empire could have thrived without slavery. As developing nations throw off our yoke (witness the "Россия" t-shirts worn in every nation in Africa), we'll have to organize very differently, or else the American 99% will suffer the same predations from the American 1% that were previously focused overseas.

In four thousand years, China has never fought a war on the other side of the world with a nation (or with a ragtag bunch of goat enthusiasts) that could never threaten the territory of China.

Oh, and revealing yourself as a complete fool citing anythign Trump says as if it were fact. Yikes.

And trying to claim that China is not expansionist despite it's post WW-II history? Yikes againb. Just look at the ACTUAL history in Korea, Tibet Uhigurs, "9-dash-line", Hong Kong, "Belt and Road Initiative" trying to take Africa, claims on Taiwan, and more. Again mistaking lacking the capability to project global power for the will.

I never disputed that the pre-WWII order was the Age of Empire, going back to times of Alexander, and that the Americas were basically stolen from the native populations, going back to Columbus.

That does not mean that things are the same, or that the Free World is not different from the Authoritarian regimes. I note that while you seem to love all these authoritarian regimes, you don't live there. I hope you're paid well for your trolling. Have a good day.

China discouraged Kim from invading RoK, and didn't come in on DPRK side until dumb-ass insubordinate MacArthur told them he was going to keep rolling across the Yalu. Well that went over about as well as NATO missiles in Donbass! Or Soviet missiles in Cuba! Belt and Road is simply a less abusive foreign investment regime than IMF/World Bank. Little wonder that it appeals more than what USA has on offer.

If you actually agree that American Indians have been robbed and genocided, why be so quick to designate a convenient time before which we shouldn't worry about robbery and genocide? If you don't actually agree about the American Indians, on which side of the line does our strikingly similar subjugation of Philippines fall? Maybe we shouldn't care about that either, even though it was in the 20th century? Maybe you want to move the cutoff line? That seems a common maneuver when discussing the conflict in Ukraine. We're definitely not supposed to remember e.g. 2019 discussions of Ukrainian Nazis. [1]

Recall we started talking about Pentagon's abysmal record of losing every war, then we moved to supporting sovereignty, then we moved to opposing authoritarianism, while you stipulated 'no one is talking about "winning wars"'. There was something about China empowering Pol Pot, which seems rather beside the point when it was USA that bankrolled him for years. [2] I forgot about him in my long lists upthread!

There is some bad news about your final goalpost relocation. The bitter end must be the idea that our current participation in the Ukraine theater of WWIII is in opposition to "authoritarianism". Unfortunately, our puppet in that region is every bit the authoritarian as previous ones in other regions. He is banning political parties, closing down TV channels, disappearing residents [3], and feeding battalion after poorly trained battalion into the meat grinder of Bakhmut. For current Ukraine leadership, it's more important to pretend that Russia even cares about holding this minor town than it is to attempt to preserve military strength. When politics trumps security and respect for life, that is authoritarian.

The late Barry Crimmins was occasionally asked the same cretinous question you pose: “Why don’t you go live somewhere else then?” Barry would reply, “Because I don’t want to be a victim of US foreign policy.”

I support your material analysis, even while rejecting its rude implication. Most opinions about war are motivated by money. Unfortunately, in USA popular media, war is very profitable.

[0] https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-us-military-proud-o...

[1] https://fair.org/home/action-alert-nyt-celebrates-neo-nazi-a...

[2] https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/polpotmontclarion049...

[3] https://jacobin.com/2023/02/ukraine-censorship-authoritarian...