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The Pentagon doesn’t need $886bn. I oppose this bloated defense budget | Bernie Sanders
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Politics
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I would argue that having only one nation in charge of policing the world's stability is incredibly unstable. Its like having a table with only one leg. If that leg suddenly fails the whole thing topples over. The whole world would benefit more from a more distributed system than relying entirely on one nation.
Of course that also means they'd have to start getting their own hands dirty, and risking the lives of their own citizens for world stability, which doesn't seem particularly likely at this point.
More to the point, other countries would have to start spending money on their militaries. Most NATO countries don't even meet the purported spending goals, and that's just for the single goal of deterring Russia. Many countries benefit a lot from America's military spending, both by being able to utilize the peace and by being able to save their own money.
Whether or not this is a good or fair state of affairs is a different question, but there are a lot of reasons why things are this way.
hey i never said it was “fair”, but the US does benefit significantly more from global stability than anywhere else… its not like they do it for selfless reasons
Well, China is spending money to expand itself. You're right about Nato though, they just want the US to do it all for them and then be the scapegoats too
Why do you think “globalists” is a scare word these days? The idea of centralizing any decision making globally would impact profits in the US.
Of course you don’t want a one-world authoritarian government, but I think the world could benefit greatly from a more organized way of distributing food for one thing.
Non-rhetorical question: Would people worried about "globalists" care if it was the US that was in charge of the globe?
Yeah probably, I don’t know though. I’m not one of them.
I think that being mindful of global fascism rising is important, but I don’t believe that any and all decision-making on a global level is that.
Also, that if a person is feverishly pro or anti globalism that they haven’t thought too much about it.
What other countries? The only global power that is a near peer of the US with respect to military power is China.
There are geopolitical reasons that the US is in the position it is, and while a distributed system might be nice, unless the underlying geopolitical realities change, the US is stuck at the top
nervously watching the US go through all the stages of a collapsing empire