Hacker News Reader

Comment by mark_l_watson | Hacker News Reader

While the article is probably correct about a partial withdrawal of the US from the world stage, it is leaving something out: in the USA, the military industrial complex is the largest 'special interest' lobbying the government. We spend almost as much on military as the rest of the world combined.

As a US citizen and taxpayer, I am reluctantly for a multi-polar world. The reluctance comes from what I expect to be some chaos as the world shifts to a multi-polar world.

View on HN

>The reluctance comes from what I expect to be some chaos as the world shifts to a multi-polar world.

As a fellow taxpayer, I just want to point out that another way to look at ROI on our military industrial complex is global stability safe for commerce which leads to things like being the world's reserve currency, having our debt viewed as the safest global asset class, etc. It strikes me as foolhardy to want to give this up, even if nothing lasts forever.

Edit/addition/afterthought: There are other ways to pare back military (and all special interest) spending and influence- which is a worthy effort- without abdicating a global leadership role.

I almost fell off my chair. First of all, every operation the US army did so far was the cause of destabilisation. While the military industry is a huge business alone, it's causing harm everywhere else. The US traded stabile far east for oil (Afghanistan), now they are creating conflict to find a cause to grow the military economy.

>every operation the US army did so far was the cause of destabilisation.

The 20th & 21st centuries have seen thier share of blunders but our NATO partners and allies in Asia seem to still want an active United States presence. The post WWII liberal order hasn't been perfect but many would argue it was headed in the right direction, generally.

If the U.S. military reach and capability were 1/10 of what it is, I think we should expect destabilization to have come from other actors in the last 65 years.

I agree that in the past, we did receive a reasonable ROI for military expenditures. However, I don't think we can hang on to that, given the wider use now of other currencies for international trade. One solution for preserving influence and saving money would be an accurate accounting of where our tax dollars go: there is a lot of money that 'goes missing', some on legitimate black projects, but likely most is simply stolen or otherwise misappropriated.

> ROI on our military industrial complex is global stability safe for commerce

I am not sure if this is the case in the long run. However , I have never seen ROI calculations when it comes to something like the use of military apparatus. IMHO, the amount of collective hurt that has been generated by military interventions might backfire in numerous, unpredictable ways. At the end, a small number of people profit (e.g. those who finance successful military operations), while soldiers, victims of war pay the price for hegemony status.

I think a little chaos from the transition won't be nearly as bad as the bizarre paternalistic "we know best" puppet master horseshit that the USA is known for. Not to mention the mountains of bodies created in the process.

I just hope people start questioning whatever institutions they are part of more and more, government, private or other. Trump is not on your team, neither is Facebook, neither is your employer, neither is your school. Stop looking for meaning there.

You may understand why you are wrong if you do a quick inventory of countries that are independent, and politically and economically stable, because of United States. For example, ask yourself what distinguishes Venezuela from Columbia; North Korea from South Korea; Syria from Jordan; Somalia from Kenya. Intervention doesn't work all the time, it sometimes go spectacularly badly. Sometimes just the possibility/threat of intervention is enough to stabilize a fragile nation.

I agree with questioning everything, I disagree with the second part of you last statement. We cannot go at it completely alone, we need institutions to fight for things as blocks. I think it be better to get more engaged.

Lets not reverse thousands of years of Civilization.

The US does not represent 1000 years of civilization

America is sort of the Byzantine British Empire

How does the "military industrial complex being the largest 'special interest' lobbying..." change this? Do you mean that because the complex is always pushing for more military spending that the US will not have a chance to back down on the world stage?

The article did compare the spending of the US military to the spending of the UE so that comparison was drawn at least on a smaller scale.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com