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DesideriScuri -> RE: What would the world be like without U.S. interventionism? (5/10/2014 11:16:35 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML
What would the world be like without U.S. interventionism?
This question was raised in a documentary I viewed recently.
Laying aside our 19th Century and early 20th Century adventures in imperialism, our late 20th Century interventions have been of two sorts: humanitarian intervention (Kosovo where we acted and Rwanda where we did not) and protective intervention (Kuwait, southern Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, etc.) Intervention has cost us lives and treasure. We have military troops stationed throughout Europe and in some Middle East nations. Also in Japan, Korea, and in the straits of Taiwan. We safeguard the sea routes to transport oil from the Middle East to Japan, China, and Europe. (The U.S. is actually a minor consumer of Middle Eastern oil.)
We are currently the world’s only super power. Many people in the world despise us for being bullies while others seek our protection. And mostly those nations under U.S. protection spend very little of their GDP on military defense. The American military budget is twice the amount of the next three or four military forces combined.
What would the world be like if one day we elected a president and congress who brought home all our troops and decided to spend a portion of our defense budget on badly needed infrastructure improvement? Would the nations of the world sort out their interests peacefully? Do we have a responsibility to maintain Pax Americana on a worldwide basis? Do we have a greater, overriding responsibility to reducing our national debt and providing a social safety net for our own people?
Your thoughts????
It's a very interesting question, Vincent.
Whose responsibility is it to maintain our infrastructure? Is that a Federal responsibility? Have our gasoline tax dollars gone towards road/bridge/infrastructure maintenance (each level of government adding taxes should have some sort of reason for the tax, right? I mean, we don't increase the gasoline tax to cover Medicare/Medicaid expenses, right?), or somewhere else? Granted, at this point, we aren't going to get any wasted tax dollars (defined in this specific case as gasoline tax dollars that were spent on things that had nothing to do with maintaining roads, streets, bridges, or other structures that would incur wear, tear, and damage due to vehicular use) back, and government doesn't positively produce money (taxation is negative production because it takes it away from consumers), so the taxpayers are going to end up getting fucked for these repairs. But, not doing something about the waste of tax revenues and going ahead and doing the needed maintenance isn't enabling the irresponsible behavior.
Would other nations settle their disputes peacefully? Some would and some wouldn't. I do think there would likely be more disputes settled non-peacefully. Would that violent dispute resolution impact us materially here in the US? Probably not likely all that much. Obviously, Israel would be in trouble. I think the world would devolve back towards the "old" days of war and conquest. It wouldn't devolve all the way, but I do think there would be a step back. At this point in World development, the US can defend itself and might only lose some outlying territories that are furthest away, but I'm not sure we'd see much of a change here. Other countries are are currently the (or a big part of) de facto military for would have to increase their military spending, but I think many of those countries would be able to protect their own borders relatively well. It would be the smaller, less developed nations that would be more likely to see increased violence and warring conquest, imo.
Do we have a responsibility to maintain world peace? If that's what the world wants, why not? But, imo, it shouldn't come solely at the cost of the US taxpayer. How we would charge, though, would be nuts, as those who don't want us to be World Cop wouldn't want to pay, and/or there would be an awful lot of "free riders" to it. Shouldn't this have been where the UN went? Shouldn't the UN have been the mediator for disputes between or among different countries?
We have a social safety net in America now. We have a responsibility to the US taxpayer and future generations to fix our profligate spending and burgeoning national debt.
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