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Kathianne
12-13-2014, 09:51 AM
Two articles in the past few days has me pondering this again:

http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/12/06/4273844_victor-davis-hanson-a-large-war.html?rh=1


Victor Davis Hanson: A large war is looming

BY VICTOR DAVISHANSON
FresnoDecember 6, 2014



ReThe world is changing and becoming even more dangerous — in a way we’ve seen before.

In the decade before World War I, the near-100-year European peace that had followed the fall of Napoleon was taken for granted. Yet it abruptly imploded in 1914. Prior little wars in the Balkans had seemed to predict a much larger one on the horizon — and were ignored.

The exhausted Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires were spent forces unable to control nationalist movements in their provinces. The British Empire was fading. Imperial Germany was rising. Czarist Russia was beset with revolutionary rebellion. As power shifted, decline for some nations seemed like opportunity for others.

The same was true in 1939. The tragedy of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 was not that it had been too harsh. In fact, it was far milder than the terms Germany had imposed on a defeated Russia in 1918 or the requirements it had planned for France in 1914.

Instead, Versailles combined the worst of both worlds: harsh language without any means of enforcement.

The subsequent appeasement of Britain and France, the isolationism of the United States, and the collaboration of the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany green-lighted Hitler’s aggression — and another world war.

We are entering a similarly dangerous interlude. Collapsing oil prices — a good thing for most of the world — will make troublemakers like oil-exporting Iran and Russia take even more risks.

Terrorist groups such as the Islamic State feel that conventional military power has no effect on their agendas. The West is seen as a tired culture of Black Friday shoppers and maxed-out credit card holders.

NATO is underfunded and without strong American leadership. It can only hope that Vladimir Putin does not invade a NATO country like Estonia, rather than prepare for the likelihood that he will, and soon.

The United States has slashed its defense budget to historic lows. It sends the message abroad that friendship with America brings few rewards while hostility toward the U.S. has even fewer consequences. The bedrock American relationships with staunch allies such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and Israel are fading. Instead, we court new belligerents that don’t like the United States, such as Turkey and Iran.

No one has any idea of how to convince a rising China that its turn toward military aggression will only end in disaster, in much the same fashion that a confident westernizing Imperial Japan overreached in World War II. Lecturing loudly and self-righteously while carrying a tiny stick did not work with Japanese warlords of the 1930s. It won’t work with the communist Chinese either.

Radical Islam is spreading in the same sort of way that postwar communism once swamped postcolonial Asia, Africa and Latin America. But this time there are only weak responses from the democratic, free-market West. Westerners despair over which is worse — theocratic Iran, the Islamic State or Bashar Assad’s Syria — and seem paralyzed over where exactly the violence will spread next and when it will reach them.

There once was a time when the United States encouraged the Latin American transition to free-market constitutional government, away from right-wing dictatorships. Now, America seems uninterested in making a similar case that left-wing dictatorships are just as threatening to the idea of freedom and human rights.

...






http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/121214-730423-american-weakness-brings-back-russian-nuclear-aggression.htm


Back To The Future On Cold War, Thanks To Obama




Posted 12/12/2014 06:41 PM ET





Russia: Moscow has a new intermediate-range missile violating a nuclear arms treaty. Now the Obama administration may return cruise missiles to Europe in response. A new Cold War, caused by U.S. decline, heats up.

It sure was a great debate quip: "In the 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years."

President Obama in 2012 got laughs slamming his Republican foe for believing that "the biggest geopolitical threat facing America" was "Russia, not al-Qaida."

Speaking of the terror group that supposedly was destroyed by killing Osama bin Laden, who could have known two years ago that elements of "defeated" al-Qaida would, thanks to Obama's Iraq withdrawal, mutate into the terrifying, exorbitantly funded Islamic State?

But the Middle East is not the only part of the world on fire thanks to Obama's imposed U.S. power vacuum.


It turns out that mutated al-Qaida, old-school al-Qaida, soon-to-be-nuclear Iran and Vladimir Putin's ever-more-swaggering Russia are all vying for the title of "the biggest geopolitical threat facing America."

...

gabosaurus
12-13-2014, 12:12 PM
I have to doubt it. Sabre rattling is a time honored tradition among radical extremists. With the specter of the two Great Wars in the forefront, I doubt anyone will take that step again.
The greatest threat comes from those who relish military involvement. Too many hawks see the world as a chess board, with them moving the pieces. Being indirectly involved lessens the human losses that invariably result.

Kathianne
12-13-2014, 12:23 PM
I have to doubt it. Sabre rattling is a time honored tradition among radical extremists. With the specter of the two Great Wars in the forefront, I doubt anyone will take that step again.
The greatest threat comes from those who relish military involvement. Too many hawks see the world as a chess board, with them moving the pieces. Being indirectly involved lessens the human losses that invariably result.

I don't understand what you are claiming by the bolded sentence.

I appreciate the attempt to take on some discussion. I don't believe you really understand the differences between the general ideas regarding US power between the conservatives and the liberals. Moreso, I know that you're missing the differences over the past near decade and half.

Soft power is part of diplomacy and has its uses, unfortunately for the US it doesn't work as a deterent to those actors that want to destroy US or its allies. The current administration has put it at the forefront of foreign policy. Our allies either no longer are or do not trust us. Our enemies have been emboldened to pushing their fronts. Meanwhile the US rattles sabres while backing down and making 'deals' with the likes of Iran, which is going nuclear.

The Russians aren't rattling sabres, they are invading soverign states with impunity. They also have added new nuclear weapons against long standing treaties with US.

gabosaurus
12-13-2014, 01:17 PM
Putin is sabre rattling. He doesn't expect Obama to be Neville Chamberlain.
Trouble is, most Americans don't care about Eastern Europe. We have been conditioned to worry about Islamic fundamentalists. Putin knows this better than anyone.
I am not worried about a nuclear Iran at all. The Iranians enjoy baiting Israel. Iran knows full well that launching a first strike would be the end of their country. Iran wants concessions.
I am more worried about Israel than Iran. If Israel strikes first, they should be left on their own to fight their own battles.

Kathianne
12-13-2014, 03:22 PM
Putin is sabre rattling. He doesn't expect Obama to be Neville Chamberlain.
Trouble is, most Americans don't care about Eastern Europe. We have been conditioned to worry about Islamic fundamentalists. Putin knows this better than anyone.
I am not worried about a nuclear Iran at all. The Iranians enjoy baiting Israel. Iran knows full well that launching a first strike would be the end of their country. Iran wants concessions.
I am more worried about Israel than Iran. If Israel strikes first, they should be left on their own to fight their own battles.

It's not sabre rattling when a country is acting and Russia has been doing just that. Your repeating your point, doesn't make it fact.

Did you read either article?


...Russia: Moscow has a new intermediate-range missile violating a nuclear arms treaty. Now the Obama administration may return cruise missiles to Europe in response. A new Cold War, caused by U.S. decline, heats up.

It sure was a great debate quip: "In the 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years."

President Obama in 2012 got laughs slamming his Republican foe for believing that "the biggest geopolitical threat facing America" was "Russia, not al-Qaida."

...


Your certainty regarding Iran is interesting and illustrates the differences between preventing problems and having them require more force down the road:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66032/james-m-lindsay-and-ray-takeyh/after-iran-gets-the-bomb