Yes, 79 years ago. No US politician has proposed attacking anyone with nuclear weapons since maybe the 50s. So… who has? Hmm, Russia. maybe we could discuss that.
“Look they shot that hostage an hour ago, they’ve only been menacing everyone in the room with a gun since then. I think you’re overreacting here guys.”
Yes, of course, 10-12 different countries don’t have nuclear weapons and the Russians of course do not have nuclear armed submarines and dead-man hands ready to retaliate. Only the BAD United States.
Yes, of course, 10-12 different countries don’t have nuclear weapons and the Russians of course do not have nuclear armed submarines and dead-man hands ready to retaliate. Only the BAD United States.
It seems as though you’re saying you agree with the post and you recognize that US foreign policy and militarization is incredibly dangerous and deadly. If you think they’re all bad, then that means you agree that the US is bad. The only thing indicating that you disagree is the fact that the tone of your writing comes across as if you think the point you’re making is some kind of epic comeback.
But since the subject of the post has nothing to do with Russia’s nuclear policy or the policy of any other state, you’ve simply invented an assumed position so that you have something to be mad at. You’re boxing with a ghostly apparition of your own making and pretending that counts as a victory.
That’s fine. I’m not a huge fan of US foreign policy. What I question is the endless “Russia and China are fantastic but you know who is really bad?? Definitely the United States” theme I’ve been seeing.
Damn, well if that sentiment is so common then you should have been able to find a post where your reply was actually relevant instead of coming onto this post and inventing an argument to have with yourself.
The meme is so off base and bizarre that I’m not sure what you think we should be discussing. US liberals have fought for broad nuclear disarmament. Maybe you confused them with conservatives?
Ah, I see why you’re confused. You’re using the US politics definition of liberal and not the more widely accepted geopolitical definition of liberal.
Republicans and Dems are both fairly standard liberal capitalist parties when placed in the context of political alignments around the world. Liberalism doesn’t mean “pays lip service to social justice,” even though that’s usually all that’s required to be classified as a liberal in the context of US politics. Rather, liberalism is the governing philosophy that capitalism grew out of. Liberalism gets its ideological roots from the works of enlightenment era philosophers such as John Locke, who conceptualized human rights primarily in terms of property rights and property relations. The right to subsistence was the right to work your property and earn a living from it, freedom was the freedom to do what you wanted with your property and to have final say over voluntary agreements involving your property, and so on. This way of conceptualizing human rights as property relations was the inspiration for the liberal revolutions that supplanted feudal monarchies and replaced them with liberal governments. These revolutions were led by the property owning classes who garnered the support of the public with the promises of governments that were based on inalienable human rights and freedoms. Those promises were satisfied using the liberal definition of human rights and freedoms which conceptualized those things primarily in terms of property rights, which in effect created governing institutions by and for the property owning classes with very little if any representation for those who own insignificant amounts of property and who had to get by through selling their labor instead of working their property.
That definition of liberal, which identifies liberalism as the governing philosophy that capitalism relies on to function, is the definition that is still used in most of the world. Conservatism and progressivism are two strains of thought that attempt to resolve the contradictions of liberalism in different ways, but they are still both solidly liberal philosophies. Progressivism see the failures of liberalism to live up to ideals such as all men being created equal, and tries to rationalize the staggering inequality that capitalism produces as simply being a failure to live up to the promise of equal opportunity. So the progressive will attempt to remedy this by fighting for things like affirmative action and equal treatment under the law, but will never touch the core principles that capitalism rest on to address these problems. Similarly the conservative will notice this failure to live up to the ideals of liberalism and ascribe those as personal failings. They will deny discrimination or other social and political factors for inequality, and claim that it is the individual that is failing to live up to those ideals. That those who are successful did so through merit and deserve their place. The conservative staunchly defends the core tenants of liberalism, and attempts to block, hinder, or roll back the progressive’s attempts to achieve the ideals of liberalism through legislation. In both cases the rights enshrined through property ownership are beyond the acceptable bounds of political debate. The authority and rule of property ownership is absolute to both of these flavors of liberal.
The US is a liberal capitalist state. It is arguably the liberal capitalist state of the modern day, maintaining a gargantuan and globe spanning military empire and foreign policy apparatus which it uses to enforce liberal capitalist relations around the globe. Throughout the Cold War (and even earlier to a lesser extent through policies like the Monroe Doctrine) the US has used that military empire to topple governments and force through liberalization policies, equating “Freedom and Democracy” with free markets that are opened up to international trade so that the business interests of the property owning classes could be protected and international corporations could enter into and dominate those markets, stripping the natural resources out of those countries for dirt cheap prices and shipping them back to the imperial core countries to be processed into consumer products. This foreign policy agenda, this protection and expansion of property rights and the rights of property owners at any and all expense, has continued more or less unchanged for generations at this point regardless of whether a Dem or a Republican is in office. There might be some Dems who pay lip service to anti-war and anti-imperialist sentiments, but their actions speak far louder.
Ohhhhhh. Okay we are dealing with a misunderstanding of what liberals are.
Liberalism is a broad ideology, most US politicians are liberal in both parties, although there are some Republicans who are not. It’s the ideology of ‘free market’ states usually. You can not be a liberal by virtue of being a fascist, or by being to the left of liberals like an anarchists or a communist.
You’re ignoring their value as a deterrent, I know this because several others have brought this to your attention already. One nation used nukes on another. Other nations developed them explicitly as a deterrent. Luckily for us, so far, the deterrent has worked.
But still, the actions of the other people in the room, to return to my analogy, are a rational response to a rogue state with a superweapon it was clearly willing to use on civilians.
So, back in reality, yes, the US use of nuclear weapons ~80 years ago was not a good or moral decision. If you want to criticize people who have discussed using them since then, it sure as fuck isn’t “libs”.
I mean we debated using them on Korea and Clinton apparently threatened them with nuclear weapons behind closed doors. To say nothing of our constant exercises using nuclear bombers to make our threat to them clear.
But again. We used them against another nation. Other nations developed the same weapons explicitly as reaction to deter their use. Proliferation was a response to US policy, we don’t get to act indignant that other people drew their guns on us when after we shot someone in front of them.
And while we have thankfully been deterred from attacking people with nukes since they got them, we have killed millions of people in the interim in other unjust wars. Wars sanctioned by people like Joe and Hillary and JFK. America’s threat to the rest of the world is very obvious to anyone paying attention.
First strike policy. No US politican needs to “propose” anything so long as that doctrine is in place, it’s already a constant threat to any country that dares question US hegemony.
And what the Russians are saying is “If you nuke us we’ll nuke you back” which is an entirely different thing.
Nope, that’s not what they said. Obviously people here are not discussing anything in good faith, so it’s fairly useless, but Russian state media said if NATO interfered with their illegal and immoral massacre in Ukraine, they just might have to use nuclear weapons. Show me where the US said that.
That’s actually US policy and what I questioned. US POlicy is “If you nuke us we’ll nuke you back”. Show me where US has proposed first strike nuclear attack other than 80 years ago. And yes, the strike on Japan was immoral and unnecessary, but it’s not like Japan was being super cool either.
Yes, 79 years ago. No US politician has proposed attacking anyone with nuclear weapons since maybe the 50s. So… who has? Hmm, Russia. maybe we could discuss that.
“Look they shot that hostage an hour ago, they’ve only been menacing everyone in the room with a gun since then. I think you’re overreacting here guys.”
Yes, of course, 10-12 different countries don’t have nuclear weapons and the Russians of course do not have nuclear armed submarines and dead-man hands ready to retaliate. Only the BAD United States.
It seems as though you’re saying you agree with the post and you recognize that US foreign policy and militarization is incredibly dangerous and deadly. If you think they’re all bad, then that means you agree that the US is bad. The only thing indicating that you disagree is the fact that the tone of your writing comes across as if you think the point you’re making is some kind of epic comeback.
But since the subject of the post has nothing to do with Russia’s nuclear policy or the policy of any other state, you’ve simply invented an assumed position so that you have something to be mad at. You’re boxing with a ghostly apparition of your own making and pretending that counts as a victory.
That’s fine. I’m not a huge fan of US foreign policy. What I question is the endless “Russia and China are fantastic but you know who is really bad?? Definitely the United States” theme I’ve been seeing.
Damn, well if that sentiment is so common then you should have been able to find a post where your reply was actually relevant instead of coming onto this post and inventing an argument to have with yourself.
The meme is so off base and bizarre that I’m not sure what you think we should be discussing. US liberals have fought for broad nuclear disarmament. Maybe you confused them with conservatives?
Ah, I see why you’re confused. You’re using the US politics definition of liberal and not the more widely accepted geopolitical definition of liberal.
Republicans and Dems are both fairly standard liberal capitalist parties when placed in the context of political alignments around the world. Liberalism doesn’t mean “pays lip service to social justice,” even though that’s usually all that’s required to be classified as a liberal in the context of US politics. Rather, liberalism is the governing philosophy that capitalism grew out of. Liberalism gets its ideological roots from the works of enlightenment era philosophers such as John Locke, who conceptualized human rights primarily in terms of property rights and property relations. The right to subsistence was the right to work your property and earn a living from it, freedom was the freedom to do what you wanted with your property and to have final say over voluntary agreements involving your property, and so on. This way of conceptualizing human rights as property relations was the inspiration for the liberal revolutions that supplanted feudal monarchies and replaced them with liberal governments. These revolutions were led by the property owning classes who garnered the support of the public with the promises of governments that were based on inalienable human rights and freedoms. Those promises were satisfied using the liberal definition of human rights and freedoms which conceptualized those things primarily in terms of property rights, which in effect created governing institutions by and for the property owning classes with very little if any representation for those who own insignificant amounts of property and who had to get by through selling their labor instead of working their property.
That definition of liberal, which identifies liberalism as the governing philosophy that capitalism relies on to function, is the definition that is still used in most of the world. Conservatism and progressivism are two strains of thought that attempt to resolve the contradictions of liberalism in different ways, but they are still both solidly liberal philosophies. Progressivism see the failures of liberalism to live up to ideals such as all men being created equal, and tries to rationalize the staggering inequality that capitalism produces as simply being a failure to live up to the promise of equal opportunity. So the progressive will attempt to remedy this by fighting for things like affirmative action and equal treatment under the law, but will never touch the core principles that capitalism rest on to address these problems. Similarly the conservative will notice this failure to live up to the ideals of liberalism and ascribe those as personal failings. They will deny discrimination or other social and political factors for inequality, and claim that it is the individual that is failing to live up to those ideals. That those who are successful did so through merit and deserve their place. The conservative staunchly defends the core tenants of liberalism, and attempts to block, hinder, or roll back the progressive’s attempts to achieve the ideals of liberalism through legislation. In both cases the rights enshrined through property ownership are beyond the acceptable bounds of political debate. The authority and rule of property ownership is absolute to both of these flavors of liberal.
The US is a liberal capitalist state. It is arguably the liberal capitalist state of the modern day, maintaining a gargantuan and globe spanning military empire and foreign policy apparatus which it uses to enforce liberal capitalist relations around the globe. Throughout the Cold War (and even earlier to a lesser extent through policies like the Monroe Doctrine) the US has used that military empire to topple governments and force through liberalization policies, equating “Freedom and Democracy” with free markets that are opened up to international trade so that the business interests of the property owning classes could be protected and international corporations could enter into and dominate those markets, stripping the natural resources out of those countries for dirt cheap prices and shipping them back to the imperial core countries to be processed into consumer products. This foreign policy agenda, this protection and expansion of property rights and the rights of property owners at any and all expense, has continued more or less unchanged for generations at this point regardless of whether a Dem or a Republican is in office. There might be some Dems who pay lip service to anti-war and anti-imperialist sentiments, but their actions speak far louder.
Ohhhhhh. Okay we are dealing with a misunderstanding of what liberals are.
Liberalism is a broad ideology, most US politicians are liberal in both parties, although there are some Republicans who are not. It’s the ideology of ‘free market’ states usually. You can not be a liberal by virtue of being a fascist, or by being to the left of liberals like an anarchists or a communist.
You’re ignoring their value as a deterrent, I know this because several others have brought this to your attention already. One nation used nukes on another. Other nations developed them explicitly as a deterrent. Luckily for us, so far, the deterrent has worked.
But still, the actions of the other people in the room, to return to my analogy, are a rational response to a rogue state with a superweapon it was clearly willing to use on civilians.
So, back in reality, yes, the US use of nuclear weapons ~80 years ago was not a good or moral decision. If you want to criticize people who have discussed using them since then, it sure as fuck isn’t “libs”.
I mean we debated using them on Korea and Clinton apparently threatened them with nuclear weapons behind closed doors. To say nothing of our constant exercises using nuclear bombers to make our threat to them clear.
But again. We used them against another nation. Other nations developed the same weapons explicitly as reaction to deter their use. Proliferation was a response to US policy, we don’t get to act indignant that other people drew their guns on us when after we shot someone in front of them.
And while we have thankfully been deterred from attacking people with nukes since they got them, we have killed millions of people in the interim in other unjust wars. Wars sanctioned by people like Joe and Hillary and JFK. America’s threat to the rest of the world is very obvious to anyone paying attention.
First strike policy. No US politican needs to “propose” anything so long as that doctrine is in place, it’s already a constant threat to any country that dares question US hegemony.
And what the Russians are saying is “If you nuke us we’ll nuke you back” which is an entirely different thing.
Nope, that’s not what they said. Obviously people here are not discussing anything in good faith, so it’s fairly useless, but Russian state media said if NATO interfered with their illegal and immoral massacre in Ukraine, they just might have to use nuclear weapons. Show me where the US said that.
Could you actually show what you’re saying here, it would help your case if you provided an example of Russian officials saying something concrete.
That’s actually US policy and what I questioned. US POlicy is “If you nuke us we’ll nuke you back”. Show me where US has proposed first strike nuclear attack other than 80 years ago. And yes, the strike on Japan was immoral and unnecessary, but it’s not like Japan was being super cool either.
That’s actually what Putin is saying.
Whereas the US: “Current U.S. policy does not restrict the president’s ability to order a nuclear strike for any reason at any time. The military may reject an order that is perceived to violate laws of war, and there are legal concerns about the role of Congress authorizing the use of force, but as a matter of broad understanding, the president can launch nuclear weapons when and if s/he chose to.”
Ah yes, for a very honest interpretation of international events I often turn to Putin’s statements.
Out of curiosity what source do you think would be a better representation of Russian policies regarding the use of nuclear weapons?