I'm glad that we learned from this and took measures to prevent the US government from carrying out any more abhorrent secret operations on its own citizens. All the extra accountability and transparency that's been woven into our institutional frameworks since this was discovered makes me much more confident that it won't happen again.
Because most people believe torture works. They believe we shouldn't do it because it's "bad", rather then the reality which is that it's ineffective at information extraction.
Same problem with WMDs: people tend to think there's just tons of chemical and biological weapons which would definitely immediately win wars, and we don't use them because for some reason dying by a bullet is "better" then dying nearly instantly from nerve gas - like that makes a difference.
The reality, again, is that they don't actually work (specifically: they are ineffective against military forces in achieving military objectives, but very effective against civilians who are unlikely to have counter-measures on hand and/or too uncontrollable to be create a useful strategic advantage).
EDIT: Like to drive the point home, in Zero Dark Thirty - which the CIA got to consult on - the line is that a prisoner broke under enhanced interrogation...and while it's true Bin Laden was located by intelligence from a prisoner who was tortured...they didn't get the intelligence from the torture. All the information which was useful was found by regular interrogation before they tortured them.
> Because most people believe torture works. They believe we shouldn't do it because it's "bad", rather then the reality which is that it's ineffective at information extraction.
I think most of those people believe torture works AND is also justified to prevent "greater evil", because that's how it is being presented repeatedly in media.
It's still a quite popular trope in TV series that the protagonists "were forced to take drastic actions" to prevent "the bad people" from executing their plan.
They sometimes feel torn about doing it, but in the end it is portrayed as necessary and effective in stopping whatever threat...
I see this "torture doesn't work" claim around sometimes and personally I have a hard time accepting it. If you ask me something I don't want to tell you, I won't tell you. But you start tearing out nails (or even threaten to do so) I'll spill all the damn beans I can to make you stop.
Confessions, sure. But what about location of military bases? Obviously torturing people to make them admit to crimes is just horrible, and sure torture in general is pretty horrible.
But if you capture a soldier and want to know where his friends are, what their plans are etc it's probably worth a shot. You can often verify information and ask followup questions etc. I'm not saying it's the moral thing to do, I'm just saying I think it'd have a non-zero success rate. Maybe even a pretty high success rate. And honestly if I was Ukrainian I'm not sure I'd have any moral obligations to torturing some Russians either. As far as I'm concerned when a nation attacks another they forfeit any kind of human rights. If they wanted to stay safe they could have stayed home.
If you torture the soldier, at best he is providing you the information you can verify and nothing else. At worst he is providing you incomplete/wrong verifiable information. There are only limited studies on this, but consensus of intelligence experts is that it is an ineffective method
In contrast, if you convince the subject to give up information voluntarily, it may provide you not only the location of the military base, but also much more valuable information about the base and its content, and information you didn't know to ask for.
"Come on. We already know you're the Easter Bunny, your friend next door already confirmed it. All this can stop immediately, we just need you to admit it and tell us how you did it"
> The reality, again, is that they don't actually work (specifically: they are ineffective against military forces in achieving military objectives, but very effective against civilians who are unlikely to have counter-measures on hand and/or too uncontrollable to be create a useful strategic advantage).
Chemical weapons absolutely work - if you are the first mover, that is. In France, even a century after WW1, many of the notorious battle fields that saw immense use of chemical weapons and hundreds of thousands of deaths are "zone rouge" [1], completely unsuitable for human activity, to this very day. And there's enough stuff that can't be filtered even by the best gas masks... irritants that are so strong they force enemy soldiers to take off their masks, even while knowing that they'll die from the other toxins in the air.
They only got banned because no one wanted to see a repeat of WW1... but human memory is short and now, as there's barely anyone alive from that time any more, we're seeing an erosion of the standards. Something like Assad using chemical weapons against his population should have warranted an immediate and complete invasion of the country and a prosecution of everyone involved.
But you just explained exactly the problem: they work as a first strike. They work as a "surprise we're doing it". But they don't create a tactical military advantage...however they will absolutely massacre nearby civilian populations and non-combatants.
Zone Rouge isn't full of chemical shells, it's full of everything - just general unexploded ordnance. Chemical shells in WW1 also did not cause "hundreds of thousands of deaths" - the highest estimate is about 90,000 deaths and 1.3 million casualties[1]
Same story with the use of chemical irritants: while they worked on the gas masks of the time, they don't work today and they weren't particular efficacious. And you've identified again, the obvious problem: clouds of chemical gas in the air will affect your own troops just as much as the enemy.
Which loops around to the basic problem: two military's can have a fun chemical weapon exchange on the battlefield, and accomplish basically nothing when properly equipped: with appropriate counter-measures the shells don't do anything, they leave people, equipment and fortifications intact.
But the wounded? Nearby civilians? Anyone downwind who wasn't properly informed friendly forces are deploying chemical weapons? The weather changing unexpectedly? They're all going to be wounded or die from that. They are tactically ineffective compared to conventional weapons versus any force prepared to face them, and they are sufficiently easily produced that they do not represent a substantial advantage. Not to mention other basic problems - like your own munitions stores now not just exploding, but exploding and releasing a fast moving, possibly persistent toxin - or worse, being damaged and slowly leaking your VX nerve gas into a cloud which takes out your logistics base and the frontline guys rotating back, and then leaves all your stores intact for the enemy to retrieve when they turn up later and it's dissipated.
From an European POV: America has a cultural problem with violence and generally the concept of them showing dominance over others, plain and simple.
Guns, the amazing fact that bare nipples in a TV show can cause a national scandal while it's no big deal at all if a kids show like the Simpsons can contain absolutely ridiculous amounts of violence, gore and other highly problematic behavior, not just bending but outright stomping over rules being commonplace in virtually all major police (e.g. Law & Order, NCIS, Cold Case) and medical (e.g. Dr. House) shows and movies, "rolling coal" on bicyclists and road rage in general being a thing...
Torture being accepted so widely as well also ties in with what makes the US penal system so unique among Western ones - everyone else has switched their penal system to rehabilitation and prevention (i.e. try your best to make sure that felons don't commit more crimes in the future), whereas in the US you don't just have stuff like ridiculous prison times or being released with no assets, no help, no nothing after a lengthy prison stay, it's widely accepted to the point of being the butt of jokes that you get raped in prison ("don't drop a soap bar") or that you have to deal with massive overcrowding, roaches, mold in food... in any civilized society, the courts would intervene immediately for such reports, but in the US? Nothing has changed there in decades, partially of course because the US political system is dysfunctional, but IMHO more because people accept inhumane treatment of people who "have done something wrong, so deserve it".
And to add on the 9/11 thing: the US is already a deeply traumatized nation at its core. Stuff like MKULTRA, the Vietnam war or the 1st Iraq war never got addressed and dealt with as a country in a healthy way - and completely forget about the even older stuff like slavery or the discrimination of e.g. Japanese-Americans during WW2, there's more than enough politicians in power who do everything they can to repress even teaching about that! 9/11, Afghanistan and the 2nd Iraq War, the multitude of financial crises since then - that also didn't get dealt with.
How can anyone expect healthy attitudes from a society that never allowed itself to heal from its past?
King Leopold II established his brutal fiefdom in the "Congo Free State" in 1885 .. school shootings in the US and mass shootings from Las Vegas Hotels, etc are all rather this decade.
You have a stale point, Europe has moved on from colonialism and hasn't engaged in the home soil atrocities to the extent embraced by the US.
I'm not sure what I think about it, but I have heard the statement that "Hitler didn't do anything that the Empire[0,1] hadn't done before him; his mistake was in not realising one was supposed to limit that kind of activity to brown people".
[0] or others: let's give Leopold a hand, everyone.
[1] Having been reminded by the recent unfortunate fall of an imperial cosplayer: I have lost an image that was floating around the innrnetz, of a stormtrooper in a locker room, half in (or is it half out?) of uniform, sitting dejected on a bench with their hands facing us and I M P E clearly tattooed on one set of knuckles, with the other set reading R I A L.
I’m sorry but this is rather stupid. Europe has done incredible damage to the world that persists to this day. Until they address this damage, it absolutely is not a stale point. Assuming you are European, do not attempt to weasel your way out of your debt to the world.
I get what you’re getting at but you’re engaging in whataboutism. Just because parts of Europe also did damage to the world does not mean we get to ignore or dismiss what this person is saying especially when it’s pretty on the nose. Firthermore (and I don’t really think it matters regardless), this comment or could be from some small European country that did nothing major and you’re accusing them of a cognitive dissonance that may not exist.
With the exception of the Brits (whose deconstruction from its Empire days keeps fucking stuff up to this day, just look at Israel/Palestine or Pakistan/India), we have learned from our mistakes.
I'm not foolish enough to claim we're perfect - far from it, especially when it comes to restitution towards former colonies and looted art from there - but at least we recognized how and where we fucked up, and we're teaching our children about that in school. We don't skip over the horrors of WW1, we don't skip over WW2 and what led up to it, we don't skip over the various genocides committed on European soil. We acknowledge and own the stuff that our ancestors did.
In contrast, as I mentioned, more and more American schools outright ban books and teaching about its problematic past, or (like MKULTRA) it isn't taught about at all.
So what mistakes do you believe you have learned from? From here, it appears you have very much retained your paternalistic European attitude toward other cultures which you deem to be less learned or morally inclined.
While you scratch around for an answer, you might also like to remind yourself that European countries maintain undue influence in their former colonies to this very day.
Look, they are comparing Europe to the US, the current hegemon, and criticise that the US does not include it's history of violence and abuse in its curriculum to the same extend as they do in Europe.
I honestly don't think your comment addresses this criticism at all. You seem to look for reasons why the US shouldn't be criticised to start with, which sort of strengthens the point op made.
> From here, it appears you have very much retained your paternalistic European attitude toward other cultures which you deem to be less learned or morally inclined.
Well, the current issues that the US face are so large they are hardly to ignore here. Y'all's regular occurrence of mass shootings even makes national headlines in our media, and we see the cultural issues seeping from US-made media (both entertainment and social media) into our societies. We don't have a real answer to that other than regulation though.
> While you scratch around for an answer, you might also like to remind yourself that European countries maintain undue influence in their former colonies to this very day.
Fair point, France does have its issues in Africa, but at least the colonies are their own independent nations (and do exercise that right, as we've seen the last few months).
American GOVERNMENT. 99% of Americans have never tortured anyone at all and don't ever want to, so I'd hardly call it an obsession. I guarantee if Europeans were pulling their own weight in "world defense of democracy" there would be lots of Gitmo and Faluja incidents as well, toxic masculinity is alive and well in ALL militaries and this is what happens when they aren't supervised 24/7 against it, especially when it's mixed with war fatigue.
If anything we (and by we I mean the CIA) learned how not to mind-control people, and moved on to more effective and subtle means of manipulation through the media.
Not really. I've listened to most of that podcast's episodes and noticed a pattern (AFAICT). He leaves out a lot of relevant information anytime the CIA is involved in a story.
The levels of corruption in Russia are crazy high and easily visible to everyone - nobody I know who has been there would claim otherwise, and various stats confirm that.
If you’re of a different opinion, I’d love to see any sort of proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that :)
Who cares? Do you honestly think things are much different in the US or Europe? It's just more corporate corruption that doesn't leak through society where you suddenly find yourself having to openly bribe a cop for a traffic violation. It's also not like anyone really cares about corruption or Germany would've long been penalized for not having implemented a EU ratified anti corruption law.
If anyone in the West actually cared about corruption we wouldn't be sending billions in cash and military equipment to Ukraine.
Yes, they are much different in Europe. We have a direct comparison in Poland - over the last 20-30 years the levels of corruption almost equalised with western countries and it’s like night and day.
And I’m speaking both about corporate and government corruption.
Have you been to Russia? Do you know people that live there? Did you speak to them about corruption? (asking about anecdotes, because stats don’t appeal to you I understand)
When's the last time you were forced to pay a bribe? How often have doctors, cops, city officials, ladies at the DMV and other people in power explained how they cannot help you despite a completely valid request, and at the same time, made a suggestion that there might be other ways to solve your problem?
What you call "petty bribery" are vast networks where people at every level squeeze citizens for bribes, take their cut, and pass the rest upwards to their superiors. People who run the country are the bosses of various bribery chains whose influence depends on the depth and width of the corruption network. They are like competing mafia families: military mafia gets money by skimming contracts and squeezing people for bribes to get their children out of forced conscription; legal mafia gets money by selling verdicts; etc.
It's funny that you mention corporate lobbying. In a truly corrupt place, companies are treated no better than citizens. Companies are squeezed for bribes too, and if they resist, then companies get raided and taken over. Owners get imprisoned on made up charges (or, ironically, for past bribing that they are unwilling to continue) and new owners are installed, usually members of the same corruption network, such as children of officials. In places like Russia, the equivalents of governors and congressmen are all owners of factories, oil terminals, ports, banks and other major businesses. They just steal the companies. It is impossible to run a successful major company without being one way or another a piggy bank for the corruption networks, permanently at risk of losing it all in illegal takeovers. (I recommend Bill Browder's books if you'd like to know more.)
The western world has so little corruption that an average citizen or company never experiences anything like this.
I don't know, there aren't many countries that imprison more people per capita than the US, including historical countries. There are also lots of political prisoners, secret courts and that kind of stuff.
In terms of winning elections, it maybe is better to simply only have two parties that are propped up by oligarchs' money and offer pretty similar politics but different coloured flags. That way you don't have to imprison any opponents to start with....
It'd be remiss to pass that by without noting there were something like 100 frivolous court cases launched against Trump around the time his poll numbers visibly overtook Biden's in an ongoing attempting to get him knocked out of the race. There is still hope that they weren't coordinated through the White House, but the gap to somewhere like Russia isn't as comfortably wide any more on that front.
Not too remiss. Probably the most remiss aspect is a lack of citations and use of loaded terms like "frivolous". Even granting your interpretation, the gap between this and the persecution, imprisonment and effective assassination of Navalny is extremely wide indeed.
Lobbyism is legal corruption in my book. See what AIPAC has paid senators (over 10 million for Biden over his whole carreer), and that the US gives money to Israel (whom in turn pays AIPC for it's work). That means that, in a way, americans pay to corrupt their own politicians... legally!
Yes this is what I was getting at. I thought this was a common enough sentiment that I didn’t need to spell it out, but no one seems to have understood what I mean.
And sure, your example is politically charged right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Another example is universal healthcare. This is popular amongst the general population but powerful lobbies keep it at bay. This has extreme life and death consequences for Americans! It’s legal corruption with serious consequences.
Yep. Actually I hadn’t even thought of pro-Israel donations to Biden until you mentioned it, but you’re right we heard all about Russian interference.
OpenSecrets lists the figure as $4.2m since 1990, but that is still the highest amount for anyone listed and clearly a great deal of funds. (And I suspect there are multiple ways to classify money as “pro-Israel”)
And yeah, you’re getting downvoted but what you’re saying is nominally accurate, just uncomfortable for people to face, and we’ve quite effectively been trained to dismiss those thoughts.
I don’t think anything politically is ever beyond repair, and I’m in favor of change, but it’s going to take a lot of work and it’s going to require broad-based grassroots efforts to get anywhere.
I think it’s fair to say that the covert illegal activities of the US government probably exceed that of any other country by any reasonable measure.
And we also manufacture and ship weapons all over the world, including to horrible regimes like Saudi Arabia. We are currently about to ship over $1 billion in weapons to a country actively perpetrating a genocide.
So yeah, you’re right. It’s not even close. It’s much more extensive. We are however more concerned with hiding those activities. We’re a “democracy” after all.
Russia, Iran and China match or outdo the US in all of these. I'm no fan of the US at all, but to claim that they are worse than those countries is absurd.
The five largest weapon manufacturers are all from the US [1]. The US army is bigger than the next ten-ish armies together by budget [2] (I eyeballed that one).
The US has a rich history of propping up extremist to take over democratically elected governments and supported the killing of millions of civilians.
And they gave amnesty to some of the worst criminals from Germany and Japan after WW2 in order to give them jobs after the war to make use of the "knowledge" these criminals gained during their crimes.
Honestly, I can't see any country competing with the US on this one. Even if there would have been intent, they would still lack scale....
> The five largest weapon manufacturers are all from the US
The question is not the absolute value of exports, but how much is exported to problematic regimes, and how this compares to the other countries I mentioned.
The US's most problematic exports are to Saudi and Qatar - due to the likely human rights violations in Yemen - and Israel - due to the same in Palestine. Collectively, in 2022 this was around £3 billion in arms exports [0]. That's the most recent data I can find. The vast majority of the remainder is to countries like Japan or Ukraine, who's military activities are much more justified.
Iran's most obvious problematic arms exports are to Russia, which is prosecuting an illegal invasion of Ukraine. It also exports arms to Sudan and North Korea, and funds Hamas in Palestine and Houthi rebels in Yemen. A major difficulty here is that international sanctions force a lot of the deals to be done covertly. Russia, for example, is struggling to pay for anything in cash and is known to have resorted to paying in gold. However, leaked documents from hacks into the Iranian Revolutionary Guard servers suggest that Russia has recently paid around $1.8 billion for Shahed drones alone from Iran [1]. I admit that leaked docs are hardly the most verified source of information, but if they are anywhere near accurate, then Iran is absolutely funding global atrocities at a rate comparable to the US.
> The US has a rich history of propping up extremist to take over democratically elected governments
Agreed, but look also at Russia's activities in Afghanistan, Belarus, Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea, Moldova... . Look at what China has done to Hong Kong, and how it funds oppressive regimes in Latin America and Africa.
Sorry but I find your criticism quite misleading. For one, the countries you labelled as problematic aren't the only ones on the list, so the $3b is vastly understated. The list includes sells to 58 countries, so I don't think that you can claim, as apparently implied, that the US is more ethical in how it sells weapons.
Russia would currently pay a premium, so Iran selling $1.8b (assuming the leak is ballpark accurate) would translate to what at market rates?
But most importantly you ignore the shear difference in size of the US military activity. Russia and China together wouldn't be able to do the same damage if they put all their resources together and only focused on it. The size of the US military operations (as shown above) is absolutely unmatched (bigger than the next 10 biggest countries roughly)
----
EDIT: Looks like the US has a 40% share of global arms exports, again more than the next 8-ish countries together. Number two for instance is France with 10%. [0]
----
The US has propped up and supported extremist regimes for over a century, something neither China nor Russia nor any other country can claim.
Extremist regimes include the worst historical outliers like Nazi Germany, which relied heavily on US exports to undertake the holocaust (IBM) and had very friendly industrial relations before '41. There was also strong support for the Nazi party amongst industrial US leaders in particular (e.g. business plot).
Of the Allied forces, the US went into war the latest (only after Japan and Germany declared war on the US) and gave generous amnesty to some of the worst murders from both Nazi Germany and Japan.
No other country on earth can claim anything like this.
Please don't minimise the crimes of the US by trying to compare them to other countries when the scope is so extremely different. The US has been at perpetual war nearly every year since the last 120 years or so and has done quite horrible experiments on their own population... it really would be good to start having a conversation about it.
> For one, the countries you labelled as problematic aren't the only ones on the list, so the $3b is vastly understated.
I've addressed this. The absolute value is neither here nor there. What matters is how much is exported to problematic regimes. The vast majority of the remaining exports are to countries like Japan, Norway, Ukraine, UK, Australia, Poland... . These countries by and large use the weapons for legitimate defense purposes. Perhaps you can find another billion by adding in the UAE and Bahrain, and a couple of others but by the time you get down to Thailand it's comparatively peanuts per country.
> Russia would currently pay a premium, so Iran selling $1.8b would translate to what at market rates?
Perhaps. Who knows? Happy to look at any further data on this that you can pull out. Even if it's significantly less, we're talking about a single shipment of drones to one country. Iran's overal arms exports will be dramatically greater than this, and includes other exports to Russia as well as exports to problematic regimes or organisations like North Korea, Sudan, Hamas and Houthi rebels.
> The US has propped up and supported extremist regimes for over a century, something neither China nor Russia nor any other country can claim.
This is a tricky comparison since China and Russia haven't existed in their current form for a century. But look, China and Russia are extremist regimes. They oppress minorities, brutally shut down protests, tightly control media and the internet, have cults of personality, conduct sham elections, etc... . The Soviets have been supporting extremist regimes in other countries for virtually a century - look at Afghanistan, Cuba, Angola, Mozambique, and the Congo. And as I said in my post, Russia is right now explicitly propping up Belarus, Chechnya, Moldova and many more. China's activity in the Korean war allowed the formation of North Korea and China continues to be one of the few countries that supports it through political and economic backing. Let me repeat this for clarity: North Korea, arguably the most oppressive regime in existence, would not be able to exist if it were not for the support of countries like China and Iran.
> Of the Allied forces, the US went into war the latest (only after Japan and Germany declared war on the US) and gave generous amnesty to some of the worst murders from both Nazi Germany and Japan.
> No other country on earth can claim anything like this.
China is prosecuting ethnic cleansing of its Uyghur population, including forced sterilisation and labour and other abuses. Several organisations and nation states regard this as a genocide. It's going on right now. It also killed 15-55 million of its own people by implementing the "Great Leap Forward" in 1958-62. The Soviet Union caused a man-made famine in Ukraine that killed around 4 million people. Do you think any of the perpretators of either of those have gotten just retribution to this day? Forget about amnesty - their governments have actively supported these acts.
> Please don't minimise the crimes of the US by trying to compare them to other countries
Putting in context is not minimising. I maintain that the US is far from alone in the scale of its unethical behaviour, and nothing you've said is compelling otherwise.
Your point here about selling to non-problematic countries is really moot. As shown, the US does 40% of arms trade by revenue and counts over 100 countries as their client. They are selling to everyone that pays. They also never have claimed to have anything like a "responsible selling of weapons" policy.
Re holodomor and the great leap forward:
These disasters were caused by the attempts of the SU and China to industrialise rapidly. As such, a somewhat more reasonable comparison would be to compare it to the death and disaster caused by the US industrialisation, which I again suspect will outnumber the rest given the much longer timeframe.
Comparing holodomor and the great leap forward with say the US treatment of Unit 731, slave trade, the multitudes of war waged directly or the decade long direct support of murderous gangs throughout the Americas doesn't make any sense, since the death of the deaths of holodomor/glf were not the intended outcomes (I'm not excusing the actors here as I think absent of intent is not sufficient to omit blame) compared with the plentiful examples of US wars, policies and actions where deaths were absolutely the intended outcomes. Let's remember Albright reminding us "that we think it is worth it".
> They are selling to everyone that pays. They also never have claimed to have anything like a "responsible selling of weapons" policy.
This is incorrect [0]:
> no arms transfer will be authorized where the United States assesses that it is more likely than not that the arms to be transferred will be used by the recipient to commit, facilitate the recipients’ commission of, or to aggravate risks that the recipient will commit: genocide; crimes against humanity; grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, including attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such; or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law, including serious acts of gender‑based violence or serious acts of violence against children.
> ... a somewhat more reasonable comparison would be to compare it to the death and disaster caused by the US industrialisation, which I again suspect will outnumber the rest given the much longer timeframe
I was giving a counter-argument to your point that no other countries actions compares to the US giving amnesty to perpetrators of genocide. The fact is that both China and Russia did worse: they actively supported genocides against Uyghurs and Ukrainians.
Yeah I suspect this person is immersed in western news and just hears all about “the bad guys”, but I wonder what the USA looks like to someone in those places.
I appreciate your sharing of links. I didn’t have the energy to dig up a bunch of data, but the note about military expenditures supports the point nicely.
As shown in my other answer, neither have you shown that the points matters. The scale of the US weapons program and military which outsizes any other countries definitely still supports the main point made.
That some parts of the world appreciate the US activity has no bearing on criticism from parts of the world that do not appreciate it, as I'm sure you'd agree.
> I think it’s fair to say that the covert illegal activities of the US government probably exceed that of any other country by any reasonable measure.
Not even close, and I say this as a citizen of a developing country that has seen its fair share of superpower influence operations. The covert illegal activities of China and Russia equal or surpass those of the US in most regions. There are Russian operatives committing sabotage on European industrial facilities, and the country has an entire private army (Wagner, now rebranded as Africa Corps) that has been conducting dodgy activities all over Africa for decades now. The recent string of military coups in the Sahel clearly have Russian influence involved, given how quickly Wagner/Africa Corps rushes in immediately after.
There are increasing reports of Russian and Chinese influence operations designed to sway my country's next national election, including the emergence of an entirely new political party which espouses extreme traditionalist and anti-Western views and somehow has endless funding for rallies, advertising, and other campaigns all over the country. It was discovered a few years ago that the computer and telecommunications systems that China generously donated to the AU Parliament were riddled with surveillance equipment. There are many more examples out there.
>And we also manufacture and ship weapons all over the world, including to horrible regimes like Saudi Arabia. We are currently about to ship over $1 billion in weapons to a country actively perpetrating a genocide.
Yes, and the US deserves criticism for that, but by and large the US is a lot more selective about who it sells to and what it sells them than Russia and China are. In fact, it's because of concerns about the consistency of US munition supplies that Saudi Arabia (and the UAE) have invested substantially in setting up their own bomb, missile, and other armaments factories so they're less reliant on the US. The US retains the right to refuse weapons that it sees as pursuing policies it disagrees with, so it has for instance in the past agreed to provide surface to air missiles or air to air missiles but paused the delivery of aircraft bombs.
Nearly all of the weapons driving wars in Africa are Russian and Chinese, with a sprinkling of Iranian, Turkish, Emirati, and those of a few other small players, and they never block any shipments over human rights concerns. The genocide happening right now in Sudan is not driven at all by American or even Western weapons, and the flow of weapons hasn't slowed down despite the existence of sanctions.
It's good to hold the US to a high standard, but it's silly to let that turn into a belief that it's uniquely terrible among the world's nations. That's far from accurate.
> There are Russian operatives committing sabotage on European industrial facilities
After the NorthStream was blown up by the US (they even announced it), which constitutes as the biggest act of industrial terrorism EVER, I do not know if I believe you that Russia is "more evil".
> it's silly to let that turn into a belief that it's uniquely terrible among the world's nations
Not saying that they are uniquely terrible, I'm saying that they constantly want to remind everone that "rules based order" is so important, but when it comes to MKUltra or Gitmo they have no rules for themselves at all. It about the standard they set themselves and then only apply it to other countries.
>After the NorthStream was blown up by the US (they even announced it), which constitutes as the biggest act of industrial terrorism EVER, I do not know if I believe you that Russia is "more evil".
While the US must be considered a suspect in the Nordstream demolition, it is by no means clear that they did it, and they certainly did not 'announce it'. There are several other plausible suspects, along with various bits of circumstantial evidence pointing in other directions, but no conclusive evidence of any party's involvement.
Do you really think Europe would've sat by meekly if they had solid evidence that the US did it?
>Not saying that they are uniquely terrible, I'm saying that they constantly want to remind everone that "rules based order" is so important, but when it comes to MKUltra or Gitmo they have no rules for themselves at all. It about the standard they set themselves and then only apply it to other countries.
Superpowers are going to do superpower things. For those on the receiving end, the US comes closest to actually respecting the rules-based order most of the time, which is as a result of it not being run as a dictatorship and having a relatively free, open, and transparent society with a free press. It's obviously far from perfect, and things like the invasion of Iraq were a blatant abuse of power, but it's often the best chance of a win-win for populations rather than just leadership.
Ask Russia and China's neighbours how much they appreciate those countries' 'might makes right' approach to international conflict, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's takeover of territorial waters belonging to the Phillipines and other countries.
> Do you really think Europe would've sat by meekly if they had solid evidence that the US did it?
What would their options be? Their military is tiny compared to the US. Another data point is that they did sit by meekly when they had solid evidence that their leaders were taped by the US. Merkel, Chancellor of Germany at that time, didn't even shrug....
EDIT:
> Ask Russia and China's neighbours how much they appreciate those countries' 'might makes right' approach to international conflict, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's takeover of territorial waters belonging to the Phillipines and other countries.
The difference is that the US doesn't limit it's meddling with territory to its neighbours. They takeover globally when needed (Iraq, Afghanistan, South America, Libya, Syria, etc....)
> What would their options be? Their military is tiny compared to the US. Another data point is that they did sit by meekly when they had solid evidence that their leaders were taped by the US. Merkel, Chancellor of Germany at that time, didn't even shrug...
Do you think Europe’s only response was a military one?
If Europe was so scared of the US and willing to obey every move it makes, explain what happened over Iraq when even France and Germany opposed the US at the UNSC.
As for the spying revelations, they were met with a shrug because those countries do or attempt to do the same to enemies and allies alike too. It’s part of the game.
> The difference is that the US doesn't limit it's meddling with territory to its neighbours. They takeover globally when needed (Iraq, Afghanistan, South America, Libya, Syria, etc....)
What? Russian forces are in Syria in large numbers as we speak. Their Africa Corps is in nearly a dozen African countries, and they’ve helped launch coups across the Sahel, far from their own borders. There are Russian troops helping to sustain an illegal enclave in Moldova which doesn’t even share a border with Russia.
China, too, has become involved in conflicts and influence operations far from its own borders, including in Africa. Chinese ‘private’ security companies, which in actuality have clear ties to the state, are all over Africa and asserting ever stronger control over resources.
In any case, it’s irrelevant: It’s just as wrong to break international law when illegal stealing territory from your neighbours as it is to break international law further abroad.
The US at least had an unambiguous right in terms of international law to enter Afghanistan and Libya, complete with UNSC authorisations. What legal right do Russia and China have for their recent aggression and annexations?
To start: an army is not only there for military response but also for threat of attack and denying defense. So I don't really see your point here. Europe bent over since they are weaker strategically, not because they are doing the same. Do you have any evidence for Europeans spying at the same scale?
And just to clear up the other part: France and Germany were punished for their response to Iraq by the US. They also didn't do it again.
Re Russian forces in Syria. Yes they are in Syria. Are you really saying that the Russian army has a similar scope to the US army? The Russian army tries to actively invade the poorest country in Europe and gets a bloody nose. You really can't compare the two countries here, since the US is in a different category, financially (as shown above) and also by experience. Same counts for China. Saying that those armies do things too isn't really saying much.
Re rights:
The US meddles in Afghanistan since the 70s. They have no rights there and particularly not in Iraq. They also had no rights to support the murderous Pinochet government, Islamic terrorists all over the world, murderous lunatics in the Philippines or central America. They had no rights to support Nazi refugees. Yet they still did all of this and more.
Re Chinese security companies with ties to the state:
Blackwater? Halliburton? All the other companies? The economy of the States is hopelessly centralised and couldn't be tighter with government. You might want to say the companies own the government.
>To start: an army is not only there for military response but also for threat of attack and denying defense. So I don't really see your point here. Europe bent over since they are weaker strategically, not because they are doing the same. Do you have any evidence for Europeans spying at the same scale?
There are many, many avenues open to states that don't include military force or the threat thereof. In the case of the spying scandal, for instance, Germany created a parliamentary committee into the issue, made public many embarrassing details about the US's role, and summoned the US ambassador for a diplomatic dressing down. They also increased oversight of the Operation Eikonal agreement and made it more restrictive. Given the relationship that exists between the two countries, that's enough.
>And just to clear up the other part: France and Germany were punished for their response to Iraq by the US. They also didn't do it again.
Oh please, punished how? By getting some nasty comments from Congressmen? Neither country had any ill effect from it, and in fact came out stronger.
>Re Russian forces in Syria. Yes they are in Syria. Are you really saying that the Russian army has a similar scope to the US army? The Russian army tries to actively invade the poorest country in Europe and gets a bloody nose. You really can't compare the two countries here, since the US is in a different category, financially (as shown above) and also by experience. Same counts for China. Saying that those armies do things too isn't really saying much.
In Syria Russian forces did have a larger scope than US forces there, with more personnel deployed and more aircraft deployed long term. There's a reason most of the world expected them to conquer Ukraine with ease. China, meanwhile, has built a Navy and Air Force that are beginning to rival those of the US in terms of numbers and capabilities.
>The US meddles in Afghanistan since the 70s. They have no rights there and particularly not in Iraq. They also had no rights to support the murderous Pinochet government, Islamic terrorists all over the world, murderous lunatics in the Philippines or central America. They had no rights to support Nazi refugees. Yet they still did all of this and more.
Way to go ignoring what I actually said and pretending I said something different. Also, if you're going to use examples dating from decades ago, there are plenty of similar Soviet and Chinese examples to draw on. I intentionally limited my discussion to the post-Cold War era.
>Blackwater? Halliburton? All the other companies? The economy of the States is hopelessly centralised and couldn't be tighter with government. You might want to say the companies own the government.
Not nearly the same, we're talking about what are de facto state-owned enterprises with a CCP presence on their boards. Moreover, Blackwater? Seriously? They were so damaged by the bad publicity they (rightly) got over Iraq that they had to rebrand and are a shell of their former selves.
