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Comment by 99_00 | Hacker News Reader

What would happen if the US didn't support an evil regime?

It could collapse and be replaced by something better, or something worse. Or it could just be supported by another super power.

But you're right, fairy tales sound nice but aren't true.

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"If there's change, it could be worse." That is a terrible reason to support evil. And we actually did worse. We overthrew democratically elected governments to install police states because it was too "lefty" for our tastes. Iran, for example.

Agreed but the best route isn't a matter of choosing the right leader in other countries but staying out of other countries elective processes IMO. You can have voluntary diplomatic relationships of varying degrees, but this idea of influencing foriegn power players doesn't sit well with me. I'd rather their power came from local sources and therefore is incentivized to benefit the local population and local economic interests.

It's not just the US either, so much of the middle easts problems is the willingness for half or more of the countries to be proxies for the bigger states wishing for hegemony. Both sides end up losing more often then not. Just like Yemen and Syria.

A bit off topic but I often wonder what Iran or Iraq would be like today if they didn't engage in their awful war in the 1980s. They'd be much nicer places to live and most likely in far better economic shape and without the baggage of war (growing up with dead relatives/fathers and stories of violence as examples of greatness). But they would also have much larger militaries and I'm curious if their proxy wars would have just been even more prevelent then it is now.

> You can have voluntary diplomatic relationships of varying degrees, but this idea of influencing foriegn power players doesn't sit well with me. I'd rather their power came from local sources and therefore is incentivized to benefit the local population and local economic interests.

Think it through from the other side. You're in a small, relatively minor country without the ability to sway the whole world. Your economic interests depend heavily on a handful of more powerful neighbors. Are you going to sit on your hands as the local power coming from local sources trying to look after the local economic interests of your neighbors' local populations makes decisions that will impoverish your local populations through their local economic interests?

You might say "Yes! Yes I would, because to do otherwise is unethical!". However, I'd lay good odds that your local populations and local economic interests would prefer leadership interested in actively defending those local economic interests, even through foreign power players. I'd further hazard a guess that these preferences might find expressed in electoral processes.

There might be benefits and protection from some neighbours but the small countries are rarely left with much sway in the conversation. There will always be a compromise and I get the impression the vast majority of countries are too quick to take that compromise under the oversold promises of globalism.

I hope the pendulum swings back and countries still engage in global trade but put their own priorities first instead of making themselves vulnerable to the real power players.

We're speaking abstractly but I think this is the gist of recent developments in globalism, what people are starting to grasp after the full destruction of mercantilism in the last half century.

Having little influence and choosing not to use it is not generally preferable to using whatever little influence you have to most local populations acting as local sources of power in pursuit of their own local economic interests.

Concretely, I think you're advocating for a series of deeply sub-optimal locally protectionist local regimes. I'm having a hard time grasping how this is supposed to be better for everyone.

If the US had dropped Pakistan in 1971 and teamed up with the USSR to support India and Bangladesh, who would prop up Pakistan?

Saudi Arabia? They have money to offer and no much else.

China? It's 1971. China is in no shape to get into foreign adventures whatsoever. Even if they tried, the Soviets could always rattle some sabers in the Far East and scare them off.

If the US had completely abandoned Pakistan, it would not be able to use it as a proxy base for war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It would not be able to, in Zbigniew Brzezinski's words, be able to "give the Soviet Union its Vietnam."

You should not be moralistic in thinking about international relations, because that is not foreign policy makers think.

You should not use time travel when thinking about international relations, either. The question is about what the US chose in 1971. The Soviets weren't in Afghanistan until 1979.

That doesn't change the fact that exactly the reason that the US backed Pakistan was as a foothold near Central Asia to counter Soviet regional influence. The particular time and place at which that later became useful, obviously, was not predicted in detail at the time, but the concept of the need was.

Now, whether the cost of supporting that regime is justified by either its actual utility or the reasonably anticipated utility at the time the decision was made are different questions, but you can't really fully discuss the decision without considering its actual rationale.

True.

But at that time, the US had both India and Iran as friends. Having Pakistan as a friend to plug the gap between them seems like a less important goal, especially if it comes at the price of alienating India.

The thinking may have been something like: India isn't going to go into the Communist orbit even if we offend it, because of their border trouble with China. But Pakistan might. So it's more important that we keep Pakistan as a friend than to keep China.

Na, US didn't have India as friends. Specially because India started the Non Aligned Movement (basically we aren't choosing sides, we'll have relations with both US and Soviet)

Americans had the attitude that if you aren't with us, then you are against us. Plus India had a socialist economy

> If the US had completely abandoned Pakistan, it would not be able to use it as a proxy base for war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

You mean, we wouldn't be able to fund the radical Islamists that went on to found al-Qaeda and the Taliban, contributed to inspiring (and later more directly assisting) fellow Islamists elsewhere, including those who later became al-Qaeda in Iraq before becoming the Islamic State in Iraq (then the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, then simply the Islamic State.)

> You should not be moralistic in thinking about international relations, because that is not foreign policy makers think.

All decisions about priorities boil down, at their root, to moral preferences.

If the US had completely abandoned Pakistan, it would not be able to use it as a proxy base for war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Right, to use Pakistan as a tool in the Cold War, which was also a stupid and self-serving enterprise.

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