What's the role of the US?

[The Comrade]

so much postermodern idiot military logic here.


wars are over cause money!!!!!

[gla22]

I don't think countries worry about disrupting global markets as much as they are concerned with how total war between strong countries has so much uncertainty and is an incredibly risky venture in terms of the survival and continuation of the nation.

[The Comrade]

i don't think that was ever not a concern for countries going to war.

[exploited]

[gla22]

[broken robot]

(I don't feel like quoting a large bloc of text, this is my response to leviathan's post)

In terms of the India-Pakistan example, you haven’t disproved my point. India COULD have gone further, it didn’t. The US supported Yahya Khan who was in the process of massacring Bengalis, and it was India actually that helped put a stop to it and support the creation of an independent Bangladesh. Of course there were atrocities committed on all sides, in fact Bengali society is still dominated by these debates and trial of former military leaders, but the conflict itself was resolved through regional power rather than US imposition. Moreover, the 1999 conflict between India and Pakistan was a completely different case from the unique historical circumstances of the creation of Bangladesh, one that involved border skirmishes, which are far different from actualizable threats of full-scale invasion into Pakistan itself. Moreover Pakistani military establishment is riven by tensions between competing factions, some of which are Islamist, so clearly US military aid, as many policy makers weakly observe, isn’t holding the fort against the spread of extremism. In fact, it may simply be scaling it up and intensifying it with the flood of money and weapons to clientalistic networks within the Pakistani state.

Returning to the overall argument, you’re making the assumption that there is a strict separation between military, criminal, and terrorist networks and that the US helps contain the latter. In fact 1980s Afghanistan is a perfect example of US involvement in supporting and bolstering warlords and competing factions. Same can be said of Somalia in the late 2000s when the CIA was accused of giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to local Somali warlords to fight the Islamic Courts Union. In the case of the latter, pressure from Ethiopia coupled with US program of assassinations resulted in the rise of more extremist actors within the group, sidelining more moderate figures such as Sharif Ahmed.

In the case of Latin America, you’re right that the US provides billions of dollars to fight drug cartels (which are a product almost entirely of the US’s massive consumption habit), but this same military aid goes to competing factions within the state who arm their own private mercenary and paramilitary groups. Sections of the Colombian army and police forces, US allies in the drug war, for example, had long standing relationships with agrarian elites and landholders accused of committing massacres such as the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. The US’s interventions in these areas are extremely ambiguous and often times simply intensify conflict as a result of surplus of weaponry and money for competing groups and factions in weak states trying to take control of local supply routes for drugs, resources, etc.

In the Middle East, in the absence of massive amounts of military aid countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and others would be forced to respond to their domestic constituencies as opposed to the current environment of authoritarian repression and Salafist extremism. Israel would have to negotiate or at least would be under more pressure to find an acceptable resolution of the conflict in Palestine. The threats of 1967 and 1973 has shifted, Israel has achieved nuclear deterrence and like all actors it is not monolithic but deals with competing forces within its foreign policy establishment, same as Iran. Rhetoric aside, there are few good reasons to believe that these states wouldn’t achieve some sort of détente, as all types of rational social and political actors are wont to do in these sorts of situations. Overblown fears of global apocalypse don’t make good analysis.

In terms of regional hegemons such as China and Russia, again these are actors that must deal with competing internal class, regional, ethnic, etc. forces that shape their respective foreign policies, often reflecting a contradictory mix. To use Eric Wolf’s metaphor, the world isn’t a set of billiard balls simply smacking into each other. There are diverse connections at many different levels that cut within and across states and are part of a larger more encompassing order, one that has existed before the US and one that will certainly exist after it. Technology may change, organization of military forces, etc. but these are all part of larger dynamics in society that require sober analysis and not insistence on irrational mullahs, commies, or whatever other tired trope or cultural figure you might think has a finger on the red button.

The core problem though with your argument Leviathan is that it’s confusing different factors: either the US is based on realpolitik or it’s benevolent. If it’s the former, who’s to say then it’s any better than Russia or China? If it’s the latter, then that’s a belief that is contradicted by all the massive evidence that belies the reality of a very contradictory foreign policy based on a number of motives. Again, Perry Anderson has done a brilliant job analysing shifts in US national ideology and the reflection of these contradictions in the foreign policy and actions of the government. These are all part of world historical changes, ones that don’t require a metaphysical faith in the US’s ability to enforce world order. In fact in direct contradiction of the latter, all across the world governments are able to ignore popular and domestic constituencies given both pressure and support from the US. This is not to say groups within these respective nation-states would always develop the best or most stable policies for global order, but the current US-led intensification of conflicts across many parts of the world based on surplus of arms, underworld funding, global surveillance, etc. certainly isn’t helping the matter.

Finally regarding Keohane, I disagree, because we already have evidence of a world transitioning to a new order that questions the unchallenged supremacy of the US; an example of shifts in the international regime that don’t lead necessarily to its full-scale abandonment.

[The Comrade]

[broken robot]

[gla22]

[The Comrade]

pretty sure we've ruled out nuclear strikes and total destruction of nations as likely or realistic. in fact, that's what this entire thread has been about.