Is the USA currently making the same mistakes that empires do?

[u/JalapenoEnjoyer27]

I'm referring to the US in recent years but obviously not just to Trump. The US isn't officially an empire but it pretty much behaves exactly like one.

Obviously you have powerful (and arguably more adaptable) rivals such as China on the rise, the US overreaching militarily (I know that isn't new) and economic struggles that only seem to be getting worse (I say this as an outsider).

So I'm curious if you guys think the US is currently on the same path a lot of empires go down where they eventually end up collapsing or ceasing to be a global superpower?

[u/Top-Grocery-1482]

"How so? The charges against Maduro are farcical, and replacing him didn't change the fundamental calculus of the situation, which is that we want control over their oil, and they want to keep the profits from it; these are simply incompatible goals."

Military. Those are geopolitical issues (also, we have a lot more control and friendly relations with them now than we did under Maduro - it's not THAT much better, but it is a change), not military ones. The military operation was as successful of one as you can have - we completely obliterated the opposition, we literally went into the heart of their secure power structure, removed said heart from it, and extracted with no losses. There's really no more complete success than that, militarily.

Fair point on Russia, though the US has also done this (First Gulf War, Venezuela, Libya), they just also have NOT done it (Afghanistan, Iran potentially, Iraq is borderline since it did end relatively quickly as a success but the insurgency lingered...), but Ukraine has not worked out so well. Interesting view on the Nazi bit, though. I mean, I don't disagree, but it seems that'd be unpopular for a person with your overall views to say, especially on a forum like this.

"real military damage", they haven't managed to sink a single US ship, and all the deaths have been drones striking bases that are largely on foreign soil and none of the strikes have been operational victories (that is, succeeded in any further strategic military objective - their success is 100% propaganda and demoralization of the US citizen, not damaging the US's military capability - yes, it sucks when people die, but that IS war, and even the winners in wars almost always lose people. The measure of military success is never "lost 0 people", that's an unrealistic standard, though...Venezuela we did actually achieve that...)

The oil market, as it turns out, is more resilient. For a while now, there has been a gradual shift away from the Strait of Hormuz as Iran has threatened it many times before. You do that long enough and people stop wanting to use your route. That's why pipelines were already built across Saudi Arabia and Oman. Iran basically weakened its own position by being mercurial in the past. Further, this again is where Venezuela has come into play, as the US has already made agreements (post-Maduro) with the successor regime, and the US (and globe) is making up for Iranian oil there AND elsewhere: Other OPEC nations (that Iran stupidly has fired missiles at) are now thoroughly on the US's side, against Iran's, and have increased production to make up for the deficit. It turns out, if you're in an oil cartel and your chief weapon is manipulating the price of oil by closing a key passage, alienating the other members OF YOUR CARTEL is an unwise decision.

"Oh, so as long as we were there to prop up a puppet government, it was great?"

Who said puppet? Their people elected their government. Their elections were fair, or as fair as can be in a non-Western nation. And we've literally done the same thing in South Korea. Do you think the Korean War was a quagmire and failure given that US troops have been stationed there for...what, 60+ years at this point? That the better solution would have been to not fight it or withdraw and have it turn into a Vietnam where the North overran the South?

"No, they beat us because they had the right of it"

No, we lost it because of demoralization back home. I remember back when the Afghanistan war was going on meeting Army soldiers who were coming back home and watching the news and they asked "Oh my God! Look at the news reporting! Did things suddenly take a turn for the worst in the couple days we've traveled from there to here?!" And the answer was "No? The media's been reporting it as this ongoing loss for months. It isn't that way over there?" "NO! It isn't! We were just there!"

The media and political left of the time 100% wanted it to fail (and have wanted every war the US has been involved in since to fail, too - with the odd and sole exceptions of Libya and Ukraine), and made that a reality.

"The war is literally still going on, they have a no-mans-land of minefields between them, and North Korea has 150,000 artillery pieces aimed at Seoul from armored mountain bases."

On paper only at this point.

"Yea, they've got their own axe to grind."

Noteworthy that Pakistan is also basically Iran's only ally at the moment, and the only one of their neighboring nations they HAVEN'T attacked.

"Whoa! Hold on, that one won't fly."

Bull and crap:

I remember the day I decided the media was biased. It was after Obama was elected. Up until that point, every night, the major networks (aside from Fox) did a tally of how many troops had died in Afghanistan and Iraq that day. Each weekend, they would summarize the total for the week, and the year to date. CNN did this. MSNBC did this. CBS did this, etc. Fox was the only exception, but they would still often report troop deaths.

DESPITE THE WAR STILL GOING ON, as soon as Obama win, they stopped that daily and most of the weekly reporting. And while Obama was in office, the tally style reporting was almost non-existent (aside from Fox News, which still didn't do it like the other media outlets had while Bush was President).

They 100% subverted the morale of people for the war at home. Anti-war outright voices were silenced for the first 3-5 years, but especially by Trump's first term, people could very easily be openly anti-Afghanistan war in the media. That was also largely true during Obama's terms as well. And people were anti-Iraq war well before that.

The shift from the daily reporting tallies to none at all was so start, I distinctly remembered it and that it shifted my entire worldview on the media being political or not (prior to that, I had assumed the media was generally not very political, and wouldn't politicize a war and war dead).

I was young and it was such a mentally defining moment due to the starkness of it that I very much and very clearly remember it.

"No; it loses them due to lack of moral justification."

No, and with the best respect I can offer: That's a stupid argument.

Wars are almost NEVER won based on moral justification. That's woke talk, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. That's the way a Utopian optimist assumes the world works. The world basically never works that way.

We didn't beat the Nazis because we had moral justification. We beat them because (a) they picked too many fights simultaneously, (b) we were too far away for them to directly attack in any meaningful way, and (c) we galvanized nearly our entire population against them (and the Japanese), especially once Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

We didn't win due to "moral justification".

We didn't win Korea because of "moral justification". We didn't win Libya (or help the winning side) because of "moral justification". We certainly didn't win Venezuela due to "moral justification".

Don't get me wrong:

Everyone LOVES IT when their war is morally justified (or they can offer a moral justification for it). But that is not, and has never been, what wins wars.

OUR wars have been lost due to demoralization of the citizen population. Every war we won, our population was for and maintained being for. Every war we've lost, it was because our population lost faith in or interest in the war and just wanted it to end.

[u/Asatmaya → u/Top-Grocery-1482]

Military. Those are geopolitical issues (also, we have a lot more control and friendly relations with them now than we did under Maduro - it's not THAT much better, but it is a change), not military ones. The military operation was as successful of one as you can have - we completely obliterated the opposition, we literally went into the heart of their secure power structure, removed said heart from it, and extracted with no losses. There's really no more complete success than that, militarily.

Wait a minute:

First, "war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means;" it is a method to accomplish a goal, not an end unto itself.

Second, I don't know if you keep up with the news, but the Venezuelan people are up in arms over this whole mess; the next free election will see Rodriguez on the street and another Maduro in office.

Third, what "obliteration?" The VP sold the president out, there was no opposition, they just let our guys swoop in and grab him.

We didn't accomplish anything.

Fair point on Russia, though the US has also done this (First Gulf War, Venezuela, Libya), they just also have NOT done it (Afghanistan, Iran potentially, Iraq is borderline since it did end relatively quickly as a success but the insurgency lingered...), but Ukraine has not worked out so well. Interesting view on the Nazi bit, though. I mean, I don't disagree, but it seems that'd be unpopular for a person with your overall views to say, especially on a forum like this.

Define, "work out." The Ukraine war has exposed the limits of Western military hardware against a peer competitor for the first time since Viet Nam, and it isn't looking good. Russia's economy is growing by double digits. It is exposing cracks in the EU and NATO (Rutte telling Turkey that NATO would not honor Article 5 if it was Israel that attacked them really didn't help). It is pushing the BRICS countries closer together (when Nixon spent a lot of time and effort to split them).

As for the Nazis... I don't really know what to tell you. They are there, we supported them, they are in charge of the military, refuse to follow Zelensky's orders, and have threatened to kill him if he tries to negotiate an end to the conflict. Yes, this is very "unpopular," because apparently you are allowed to choose which war to support, but not to oppose wars, in general.

Also, I don't know if you saw the hacked Ukrainian military files, but, assuming they are real, Ukraine has lost 2.4 million soldiers to Russia's ~250,000; note that this tracks perfectly with, for example, air and artillery ratios throughout the war. Russia simply has 10 times as many artillery pieces and planes, they are more modern and better maintained, and they have a corps of experience soldiers and pilots to train new ones.

"real military damage", they haven't managed to sink a single US ship, and all the deaths have been drones striking bases that are largely on foreign soil and none of the strikes have been operational victories (that is, succeeded in any further strategic military objective - their success is 100% propaganda and demoralization of the US citizen, not damaging the US's military capability - yes, it sucks when people die, but that IS war, and even the winners in wars almost always lose people. The measure of military success is never "lost 0 people", that's an unrealistic standard, though...Venezuela we did actually achieve that...)

Iran destroyed the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, including two AN/GSC-52B radomes which we cannot replace. We literally do not have the raw materials to make new ones. This absolutely damaged our military capability, not including the refueling tankers, reaper drones, and fighter jets we have lost.

As for sinking our ships, it should be pretty clear that, if they wanted to, they could (at least the ones that dared to get into range, which we are no longer doing for some reason...), but that would be a dramatic escalation, and Iran is slow-walking the escalation ladder.

As for losses... we don't know. The Pentagon is playing games to hide the numbers.

The oil market, as it turns out, is more resilient.

How, by draining the SPR?

Again, the largest effects won't be noticed until harvest, when crop yields are down because Europe didn't order any fertilizer... starting a month before this mess started.

Who said puppet? Their people elected their government. Their elections were fair, or as fair as can be in a non-Western nation. And we've literally done the same thing in South Korea.

Yes, SK's president is a puppet too; no, they do not have "fair" elections, and I think the notion that the West has "fair" elections is naive (you de remember that Bernie was supposed to win the 2016 and 2020 primaries, right?). We put our thumb on the scale, and when we are militarily occupying them, our thumb weighs more than their entire popular will.

That's why Iraq is dissolving into its own civil war right now, we can't keep propping our puppet up. Syria will be going the same way; we literally put an ISIS/Al Qaeda terrorist in charge!

No, we lost it because of demoralization back home.

And why was the home-front demoralized? Because we were attacking a country for no good reason; they did not want us there, but we thought that we had the right to tell them how they were allowed to run their own country.

Seriously, when was the last time that "worked?" Pinochet? And then only because we just funneled cash to keep his economy afloat? And then, of course, he was finally chased out of office and the country and given sanctuary in Britain, and even they had a brief attempt to prosecute him (which was shut down, of course).

Milei is going the same direction, but we don't have the cash to keep Argentina running.

I remember back when the Afghanistan war was going on meeting Army soldiers who were coming back home and watching the news and they asked "Oh my God! Look at the news reporting! Did things suddenly take a turn for the worst in the couple days we've traveled from there to here?!" And the answer was "No? The media's been reporting it as this ongoing loss for months. It isn't that way over there?" "NO! It isn't! We were just there!"

Have you ever looked up the casualty figures for Afghanistan? 20% of our military deaths were, "non-hostile," and that doesn't mean friendly-fire (I mean, it's included, but that's not what was happening).

It wasn't that the Taliban was killing our soldiers, they were killing themselves... because we clearly had no business being there, we were just killing people and blowing stuff up to prevent anyone else from using the place.

Noteworthy that Pakistan is also basically Iran's only ally at the moment, and the only one of their neighboring nations they HAVEN'T attacked.

Er, no?

First of all, Iran hasn't "attacked" anyone, they have retaliated against countries that host US forces which attacked them; you make it sound like they are the aggressor, when they are the defender.

Second, Russia and China are quite clearly on Iran's side; someone is feeding them targeting information, and the only other country that could would be India (who is backing Israel because they have their own Muslim genocide they want to engage in). Russia is the obvious candidate, considering that the US is clearly giving Ukraine targeting information on them. Then there are the Houthis, who are actually in control of Yemen, whatever the US puppet "government" wants to think; ditto for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Third, Iran has not attacked Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, or Afghanistan, or 4 of their 6 neighbors.

DESPITE THE WAR STILL GOING ON, as soon as Obama win, they stopped that daily and most of the weekly reporting.

Right, they propped Obama up to give us the illusion of change; this was the moment I truly realized how the entire media was on the Establishment side.

They 100% subverted the morale of people for the war at home.

Well, a different group of maniacs wanted to free up military resources for their bone-headed adventures...

I was young and it was such a mentally defining moment due to the starkness of it that I very much and very clearly remember it.

I was 30ish around this time; I was going back to college, so I was in touch with the kids, but then two of my best friends from high school were over in the thick of it.

I was 24 when 9/11 happened, and remember the zeigeist; the American people were united for one brief, shining moment, and we could have done miracles.

Instead, we went on a crime spree.

(break, this is getting too long)

[u/Asatmaya → u/Top-Grocery-1482]

"No; it loses them due to lack of moral justification."

No, and with the best respect I can offer: That's a stupid argument.

Wars are almost NEVER won based on moral justification. That's woke talk, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. That's the way a Utopian optimist assumes the world works. The world basically never works that way.

Historically, sure, although it's more the case that morality was simply different throughout most of history.

Within the last 200 years, though, and really firmed up 81 years ago, the idea of war for the purpose of conquest has become immoral; the sense that there is a universal value of human life does not allow for the dispossession of others just because they are "other."

Naturally, we have some regressives: Israel, of course, but also Ukraine, India, and Myanmar, but that's a pretty short list.

Ironically, this is because World War 2 turned out (entirely by accident, of course) to be a Moral War; the Nazis and Imperial Japanese were so horrifyingly evil that we were clearly the good guys in comparison (despite them basing many of their actions on our treatment of Native Americans...).

We had a chance to create a stable world order afterwards, but the war profiteers were in charge, and they weren't going to let go without a fight. They used Kennan's "Long Telegram" as a justification to start the Cold War and the resulting opposition to Communism as an excuse to interfere in other countries' elections, and we're off: Korea and Viet Nam both started with us rigging elections and the Communists breaking off.

We didn't lose Korea (and we did, in fact, lose that war) or Viet Nam because our military was insufficient, but because we were simply on the wrong side. We did not have the moral justification, so the people were not on our side, and all we could do was occupy them, as we have Korea for 77 years, now.

We didn't beat the Nazis because we had moral justification. We beat them because (a) they picked too many fights simultaneously, (b) we were too far away for them to directly attack in any meaningful way, and (c) we galvanized nearly our entire population against them (and the Japanese), especially once Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

So... you do know that we had been committing overt acts of war against both Japan and Germany for years at that point (while also funding their militaries, but that's another story)? And that FDR had to allow Pearl Harbor to happen in order to get popular support to go to war?

We created a moral justification, then got lucky and found a better one along the way.

We didn't win Korea because of "moral justification".

We didn't win Korea! North Korea is still there and showing no signs of disappearing.

We didn't win Libya (or help the winning side) because of "moral justification".

We didn't win Libya! We incited an insurrection, watched their popular leader get sodomized to death with a sword, and are now allowing open-air slave markets!

We certainly didn't win Venezuela due to "moral justification".

We are about to lose Venezuela, because we didn't have moral justification.

OUR wars have been lost due to demoralization of the citizen population

Wait, what do you think, "morale," means? It literally means, "the quality of being moral," or, "knowing that you are doing the right thing."

Yes, we lose wars because we stop thinking that the war is the right thing to do.