Example: I believe that IP is a direct contradiction of nature, sacrificing the advancement of humanity and the world for selfish gain, and therefore is sinful.
Edit: pls do not downvote the comments this is a constructive discussion
Edit2: IP= intellectal property
Edit3: sort by controversal
Broadly speaking, I’m a Pacifist and believe any kind of military confrontation or military aid is bad public policy. The idea of collateral damage - civilian casualties taken in pursuit of military objectives - is fully immoral and should be broadly rejected. Military resources should be tasked first and foremost as disaster relief and recovery with the primary mission being the preservation of human life, rather than offensive missions to defeat or deter an opposition military.
Military reprisals (starting with the MAD policy and going down to retributive strikes in border disputes) are monstrous and should be ended. Military prisons should be closed and POWs immediately repatriated. Embargos, particularly those aimed at economically vulnerable nations like Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea, serve no useful purpose and should be lifted immediately. And the only offensive military action should be reserved for securing evacuation routes for refugees, with the bulk of resources dedicated to extending shelter and both immediate and long term relief to the refugees we accrue through these policies.
So, I’m genuinely curious - what do you think the US should have done during WW2?
I can tell you what we shouldn’t have done. We shouldn’t have turned away the 937 passengers of the St. Louis. It shouldn’t have done the mass arrest and internment of Japanese American civilians. We shouldn’t have sent Germany military aid in the form of IBM computers and Standard Oil. Hell, there was a laundry list of American government-backed big industry supporting German and Italian Fascists even after the bombing of Pearl Harbor
What the US should have been doing was enforcing the accords struck after WW1, implementing a Marshall Plan in Europe and North Africa and East Asia 30 years earlier, and providing immediate unconditional refuge to anyone threatened by a fascist government, rather than hot-housing them in fascist states until they either fled to the Middle East, Latin America, or Soviet Russia or got shoved into the ovens and gas chambers.
I was aware of some of this from reading “The Arms of Krupp” someone on Lemmy pointed me to, but not the extent on the US side. Great link tyvm.
And how, exactly, do you enforce the accords–the accords and reparations that directly led to WWII–without the use of military force?
For starters, you actually join the League of Nations you proposed at the end of WW1. Then you can open up trade and create large economic unions (the EU being a good example) that create business incentives that transcend borders and governments. Open borders, international business ties, and populations with international relations deaden the enthusiasm for interstate military conflicts in between neighboring states.
The single biggest deterrent to a US/China military conflict has been the degree to which American and Chinese people travel and do business with one another all the way across the Pacific Ocean. Arguably, the biggest deterrent to a Chinese naval invasion of Taiwan is the degree to which the two territories have productive and amicable trading and travel relations. By contrast, it was the indefinite sanctions on Iraq in the 90s that paved the way for full invasion ten years later and nearly triggered conflicts in Syria and Iran (which averted conflict in large part due to economic ties to France, Turkyie, and Saudi Arabia).
Military force does not enforce accords between states. The Peace Dividend does. And you can’t have a Peace Dividend without trade, travel, and strengthened diplomatic relations.
…Which doesn’t address the issue. How, EXACTLY, do you enforce anything without the willingness to use force? Have you seen NATO Peacekeepers? They rarely–if ever–use force, and as a result they are almost entirely ineffective at preventing shit.
Tends to, but the accords that ended WWI required Germany to pay absolutely ruinous reparations; even with open borders, international business ties, etc., the economic depression caused by that treaty would have laid the foundation for WWII. Moreover, I note that both the US and the EU had fairly solid trade ties with Russia prior to their invasion of Crimea, and that has done pretty much fuck-all to temper Putin’s imperial ambitions.
So, again: how do you enforce ANYTHING without being willing to use force?
Do you really believe that? Or is it maybe that the US always has a naval detachment close by, and has pledged to use military force to ensure that Taiwan remains free? Because China has certainly been ratcheting up their insistence that Taiwan is theirs, and that they intend to take it.
It does. It preempts the re-arming of Europe in the 1930s.
UN Peacekeeping has a Sexual Abuse Problem
Seems like they are all too eager to use force, just so long as it is directed at the vulnerable and easily exploited.
That depends on your point of view. The point of view of US lawmakers is that, by forcing people into “hunger and desperation” (quoting them) through imposed economic violence, they’ll bring about a change of regime. Of course, that’s absolutely disgusting, but it does serve a purpose, which in many instances worked (deposition of Mosaddeq in Iran, sanctions to Chile’s Allende…). I just disagree with the methodology and the purpose because I’m not Satan, unlike US policymakers.
Okay, yes, but it’s a bad purpose.
But, again, the Shah and Pinochet were bad dudes and elevating them to national office only really managed to secure cheaper-than-market-rate natural resources for a decade at the expense of tens of thousands of people’s lives. And then the end result was what? The Iranian Revolutionary Guard reclaiming Iran? The twenty year dictatorship of Pinochet plunging a valuable ally and trading partner into hyperinflation and social upheaval? Wouldn’t US firms paying market rate for oil and copper have been better for everyone in the long run?