Your point was about trust tho. How can somebody trust Russia after they turned out to be unreliable? What i’m asking is, how is this not an even more valid question toward the US and instead we give for assumed our uncodnditional allegiance? Seems like a relationship more similar to that between vassal and overlord.
Maybe i don’t, but what i learned in these years of studying history and military history tends to conflict to people’s opinion when it’s based on very strong feelings and not much more.
I disagree with a lot of your claims that are at the base of the conversation, like the relationship bretween Russia and China (which have an actual military alliance and it’s not a hidden thing) or the state of the battlefield in Ukraine, which is not as flowery as you make it and Ukraine finds themselves in a very critical condition, despite western media focusing on their very succesful strikes inside Russia, which i agree make appear as if Ukraine is in a much stronger position than they actually are. Still, I do appreciate that nobody called me “Putin’s bot” yet, it’s a great improvement over reddit.
I see your point, but i don’t think that alone is a reason strong enough, or nobody should have any trust in the USA as well. On the exact same premises.
it doesn’t need rearmment for someone to want what the others have.
I guess you mean military power here. How do you achieve that without rearming?
who would otherwise become a victim
This is the assumption that i’m challenging. Obviously, to make people accept spending billions in rearming there must be the threat of becoming a victim dangling above our head, hence the constant scaremongering about Russia attacking a NATO country any moment. Before were the Soviets, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam or Korea… at moments it’s China, sometimes it’s Iran. There is constantly an enemy to defend from, which justifies military spending.
And to that, I’d answer yes
And this scared instinctive reaction, which ignores any other factor that isn’t pure and irrational fear (pumped and justified by the state apparatus of every single NATO country) is how the weapons industry is laughing their way to the bank, while we leave in fear because of yet another enemy at the doors.
This is not true. The maginot line was easily avoided by the German and any war historian will tell you that it was a stupid and stupidly expensive idea. In no way it was a threat to the German invasion.
The goal is to show the other side that you are willing to fight and at best a war is impossible to win for them.
So they need to show that they have both the means and will to defend themself. Hence more military spending, moving soldiers closer to Russia and so forth.
And so forth, right. You are proving my point. What’s the “so forth”? Russia feels more threatened and feel forced to rearm themselves. Europe sees russia rearm themselves and say “they are getting stronger, we need to rearm even more”. Does anybody expect Russia or anybody else to say “Hey our enemies are rearming themselves, better stop producing weapons and start diplomatic relations instead!” Did this ever happen? Does anyone expect it to happen? No, but we have countless proofs of the opposite happening. This is WWI all over again. I wish people would study history to see that the things they are saying are not new, they were said in past and the results were always disastrous.
Is any of the people who praise the rearming have an idea of what happens in case of war with Russia? Did people forget that they are in a military alliance with China, Iran and N. Korea? How do you think a war in this situation will look like? Do you think the world will survive it?
So what’s the end goal? Start a war to stop a war? Arms race have very often ended with war. The cold war ended because the Soviet Union disintegrated from the inside, using it as an example of a “succesful” rearming race feels intellectually dishonest, especially when we have countless of examples of arms race ending in war.
What you are saying is misleading from many pojnts of view:
Exactly. We know very well that 1st world war started because europe was in full rearming, but some powers felt that war was inevitable and was better to do it sooner than later.
War is not a video game or a movie. You are banalizing an extremely complex subject.
This is a bit naive. War and conflicts are way more complicatee than “one lunatic in the world”. Conflicts have always a reason. We can agree with it or not, but believing it’s all caused by one monster leader that it’s followed blindly by the people is just a very common propaganda point, which has been used for the last >2000 years and in basically every conflict we knoe about. One of the main reason armed conflicts happen is because each side feels the other one is rearming. This becomes a circle and a spiral that it’s hard to stop, especially when the arms industry has such ppwerful lobbies.
“If you want peace prepare war” right? Now let’s look how many years of peace the romans had in their entire history thanks to this doctrine.
This is an incredibly dangerous way of thinking. This kind of mentality allowed two world wars to happen. Stop looking at geopolitics like if it was a football game. It’s not the politicians dragging us into war, it’s common people giving for assumed war is inevitable. You all will be the world’s distruction once again. It’s really insane how humans have the tendency to repeat history despite having knowledge of it.
Aren’t the weapon provides bu the US already paid by the EU?