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KevinNash sort of indirectly brought up hegemony in the Ron Paul thread, and I figured it was a broad enough topic to get its own thread.
In response to him, then:
Let me lay it out for you, as calmly as I can.
The United States controls the single largest amount of force in history. We are unparalleled. No one else even comes close. There is not a single nation with a single warship on the same level as a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, or an Ohio submarine. No one has a B2-calibre bomber. Not to mention our sizable nuclear advantage.
The mere fact that we are the overwhelmingly dominant military power in the world prevents war. Everyone in every nation on earth knows that the United States can, if they choose, end a given conflict unilaterally, simply by blowing up everyone involved. As such, conflicts tend to remain relatively small and regional. It prohibits policies of forced annexation (read also: conquest) absolutely.
Hegemony is naturally stable. Stability, on the nation-state scale, is desirable above all else. Hegemony is achieved through military superiority.
Simply put, we are the world's policeman. And we can never, ever stop.
This is not a position we enjoy. Do you not believe that the United States would rather spend the hundreds of billions of dollars the military is budgeted on something more useful? On feeding our poor, on curing them of their ailments, of providing them with shelter? Of course we do. The people of the United States, even its politicians, are not callous men. We have homes and children and families. We see the poor and sick on our streets. But because of our unique position, the money must be put elsewhere. We must maintain our forces.
Power - true power, military power - is not like economics. It truly is a zero-sum game. When one player gets weaker, others get stronger. The United States, by and large, is benevolent. It does not exercise its power for territorial advantage, and never overtly for economic gain. Those who would gain power through our disarmament may not be as conservative in its use as we are. Therefore power must be maintained, for the good of the world.
It does not matter whether or not you asked for it. It does not matter whether or not you like it. It does not matter whether or not you agree. It is the only solution that guarantees stability and sovereignty, on the gross scale, for every nation.
Does the United States occaisionally do bad things to maintain its power? Yes, it does. We have done horrible things in the past, things which were often foolish. The United States did, and continues to do, dishonorable things. But again, this is not out of choice. We are very much bound to history, to our place in the world. The only responsible use of this power is to maintain it, and to use it as rarely as possible.
This is the way of the world. It is the truth. It is not comfortable, and it is not pretty, for anyone. But it is what it is, and we cannot step back, for if we do, another may take our place, and they may not be as gentle as we have.
Bugger me, you've been reading a lot of realism. I'm mostly sympathetic to the realist stance, apart from a few things in your post.
One, bear in mind that militarily the US has only been a hegemon for less than 20 years. The Cold War was a competetive, bipolar system. You seem to be bleeding the edges slightly, as a lot of people do, suggesting that the Cold War, and even the influential role the US played in the two world wars suggests hegemony. This really isn't true, and the behaviour of all parties involved during those periods doesn't indicate a hegemonic system.
As such, to argue that you can 'never, ever stop' is false - as far as we know, this is a transitional period. It is quite likely that a new bipolarity will emerge with challengers such as China.
Secondly, there is the standard realist fallacy of argument. Namely: 1. The reality of the world is X. 2. Therefore you must act in accordance with that reality....which 3. Ensures the world is like X.
I don't really have a solution to that, and as I said, I'm sympathetic to the argument that we should act according to the facts. The question is thus: who says what X is?
3. You mention hegemony and economics. Actually there are quite a few political economists in the last 50 years who have applied realism & hegemony to global economics. Read Krasner, Hegemonic Stability Theory for a primer. I have a book with it in somewhere if you want the reference.
Power - true power, military power - is not like economics. It truly is a zero-sum game. When one player gets weaker, others get stronger.
Then tell me why militant Wahhabist Islam has risen as a credible and serious threat to hegemon power, despite the fact that it lacks a centralized economy, military force, or leadership and cannot be said to have "power" in the sense you are using the word.
And this is almost right, but from the wrong perspective.
First, militant Islam isn't a credible and serious threat to hegemon military power. There is no chance whatsoever of militant Islamists defeating US military force given the will to maintain that force indefinitely. There is no chance whatsoever of militant Islamists perpetrating more than the most superficial of attacks against the US, compared to the potential retribution the US could unleash. Yes, this includes 9/11. And 7/7 in Britain. The effectiveness of Islamic insurgency relies on influencing (and they hope, ultimately breaking) the political will of the US, not challenging her power. This is common to most all insurgencies, as the dictum goes; insurgents don't win wars, occupations lose them.
Second, even if they did break the political will of the US, they would not have neutered her power. The moment they came from underground and tried to exert power of their own, they would be vulnerable to US economic, military and allied power. This has been demonstrated, for example, with Hamas in Palestine, who under the weight of sanctions led by the US, have lost a promising position leading the PLA, reduced to infighting and self-annexed in the Gaza Strip. The effectiveness of militants relies on being impossible to target as an enemy - if they are successful in exerting their own power, they now now out in the open: they would control countries, populations, have economic resources, etc: all of these the US could exert power against.
Militant Islam could only be said to have successfully challenged US power if they gain from it: at the moment, they are gaining politically and the US are losing politically. But the US aren't losing in their capability to project power (in fact, they are learning about counter-insurgency extremely fast, which arguably increases their power), only their will to do so.
Third, the role of Hegemon does not need to be filled explicitly by one individual political actor. The role of the European "balance of power" and the associated "great game" between Britain, Russia, France, and later Germany ensured stability and a general lack of large scale conflict for about fifty years. That's not unlike what we have today.
Cough.
One, there were plenty of conflicts, just they paled compared to WW1, and many of them occured in the colonies, so aren't really in the historical consciousness in the same way. But lots of people died. Rather depends on your definition of 'large scale', which usually means 'in Europe'. Two, there were plenty of near conflicts which nobody ever hears about. Louis Napoleon was on the brink of war with Britain before Cobden-Chevalier was signed in 1860, which sorted that out; but they were so close that fleets had been massed, draftees raised and leave cancelled on both sides. Three, the relations of that period (mid to late 19th century) led specifically to the clusterfuck that was WW1, so to argue that the "balance of power" 'worked' is somewhat disingenuous. It's a bit like saying that the League of Nations worked because we have the United Nations today.
Also, arguably during significant parts of that time, Britain was a hegemon. But that really depends how many factors you are working in - they were certainly an economic hegemon from the mid-19th century up until 1913.
Oh, and if the hegemon isn't a single political actor, it isn't a hegemon. re: French, British, German etc budding imperialists fighting over the colonies. That's hardly peace and stability unless you are European. And even then, you had better prepare for mud and machine guns.
Your argument that the Catholic Church was the hegemon of Europe during the Middle Ages is based on the period from 1418 to 1517?
What?
Even during that period wasn't France busy invading all of its neighbors?
Also - balance of power promoted arms races and continual trials of strength that repeatedly threatened to erupt into a general war - and then did erupt into a general war worse than anything the world had seen up to that point.
I can't say I care for stability that rests on constant cynical maneuvering within a structure of pervasive instability.
I'm pretty sure he's referring to 1054 and the Schism between eastern Orthodox Xtianity and the Papacy, but to be honest, your point holds even better using that as your starting point, what with the Guelphs and Ghibellines kicking the shit out of each other for a lot that period. The papacy certainly liked to act like it was a hegemon, but the Holy Roman Emperor de jour generally had similar ideas.
I'm basically stating a truism with regards to the nature of discovery and spread of information and pointing out how it might be used to promote an illusion of benevolence.
The key word here is "might."
Your initial post suggested a position of factual belief that the United States uses propaganda to promote an "illusion of benevolence." There was no "might" involved. Now that it seems there is, I have far less of a problem with your stance. Yes, it is an entirely possible situation that the blurring of information promotes an illusion of benevolence.
Yet it's also the case that there are plenty of things that our government does at home and abroad that actually ARE benevolent (as I said before, largest numerical donor of foreign aid in the world). You can even throw American NGOs (The Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, etc) into the equation and see that while we have some tremendous assholes, we've also got some of the nicest people the world has to offer.
Power - true power, military power - is not like economics. It truly is a zero-sum game. When one player gets weaker, others get stronger.
Then tell me why militant Wahhabist Islam has risen as a credible and serious threat to hegemon power, despite the fact that it lacks a centralized economy, military force, or leadership and cannot be said to have "power" in the sense you are using the word.
And this is almost right, but from the wrong perspective.
First, militant Islam isn't a credible and serious threat to hegemon military power. There is no chance whatsoever of militant Islamists defeating US military force given the will to maintain that force indefinitely. There is no chance whatsoever of militant Islamists perpetrating more than the most superficial of attacks against the US, compared to the potential retribution the US could unleash. Yes, this includes 9/11. And 7/7 in Britain. The effectiveness of Islamic insurgency relies on influencing (and they hope, ultimately breaking) the political will of the US, not challenging her power. This is common to most all insurgencies, as the dictum goes; insurgents don't win wars, occupations lose them.
Second, even if they did break the political will of the US, they would not have neutered her power. The moment they came from underground and tried to exert power of their own, they would be vulnerable to US economic, military and allied power. This has been demonstrated, for example, with Hamas in Palestine, who under the weight of sanctions led by the US, have lost a promising position leading the PLA, reduced to infighting and self-annexed in the Gaza Strip. The effectiveness of militants relies on being impossible to target as an enemy - if they are successful in exerting their own power, they now now out in the open: they would control countries, populations, have economic resources, etc: all of these the US could exert power against.
Militant Islam could only be said to have successfully challenged US power if they gain from it: at the moment, they are gaining politically and the US are losing politically. But the US aren't losing in their capability to project power (in fact, they are learning about counter-insurgency extremely fast, which arguably increases their power), only their will to do so.
"But! But! Tur'rists!"
One thing to add is that the Bush Cabal's handling of the events post 911 (and probably even pre-911 if the reports of the Bush being warned of possible attacks in the summer of '01, and the exiting Clinton admin's warnings about Al-Qaida being a force to keep an eye on, are true) were botched spectacularly in an effort to seize and hold onto political power.
Instead of telling the American People that the only thing to fear was fear itself, Bush and his cronies told us that there were snakes in every blanket and monsters under every bed. That and he told us to go shopping. In doing so, every time a political or diplomatic hurdle came up in our country (utterly no solid evidence of WMD, a laughable connection between Saddam and Osama, the fairy tale about the Iraqis greeting us with flowers) they pulled the "911! 911! Be afraid of the tur'rists!" trump card that stifled any rational conversation from taking place between the irrational "sheep" quotient of our population, and the idiot redneck "git r done!" crowd as well. Throw in the ad-hominen attacks on our allies who had the audacity to call them on their obvious bullshit ("Freedom Fries" anyone?) and you have a recipe for greed and disaster.
In short, Bush took a problem that could have been easily dealt with via targetting of actually Al-Qaida havens and rigorous regional diplomacy to get the locals on our side (which was actually working in Afghanistan), and decided "Fuck it! They're brown and Muslim in Iraq and have oil! The majority of the populace is stupid and will buy it! This will be easy!" Which is what has led us to our current debacle.
A retarded/complacent if not complicit press aided them too.
In other words, the American government made a mountain of a molehill and now we're fucked.
EDIT: I still don't think Iwas clear, we gave the militants a fuck all lot more power then they would have ever had normally, so our case is somewhat special. Bush's black and white view of "diplomacy" ("With us or against us!" - Ugh.) didn't help win any allies among the Arab populace either.
Your argument that the Catholic Church was the hegemon of Europe during the Middle Ages is based on the period from 1418 to 1517?
What?
Even during that period wasn't France busy invading all of its neighbors?
Also - balance of power promoted arms races and continual trials of strength that repeatedly threatened to erupt into a general war - and then did erupt into a general war worse than anything the world had seen up to that point.
I can't say I care for stability that rests on constant cynical maneuvering within a structure of pervasive instability.
I'm pretty sure he's referring to 1054 and the Schism between eastern Orthodox Xtianity and the Papacy, but to be honest, your point holds even better using that as your starting point, what with the Guelphs and Ghibellines kicking the shit out of each other for a lot that period. The papacy certainly liked to act like it was a hegemon, but the Holy Roman Emperor de jour generally had similar ideas.
In that case I would disagree that the Catholic Church acted as any kind of hegemon. More like a feeble version of the United Nations.
I'm basically stating a truism with regards to the nature of discovery and spread of information and pointing out how it might be used to promote an illusion of benevolence.
The key word here is "might."
Your initial post suggested a position of factual belief that the United States uses propaganda to promote an "illusion of benevolence." There was no "might" involved. Now that it seems there is, I have far less of a problem with your stance. Yes, it is an entirely possible situation that the blurring of information promotes an illusion of benevolence.
Yet it's also the case that there are plenty of things that our government does at home and abroad that actually ARE benevolent (as I said before, largest numerical donor of foreign aid in the world). You can even throw American NGOs (The Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, etc) into the equation and see that while we have some tremendous assholes, we've also got some of the nicest people the world has to offer.
What does NGO stand for? Non-governmental organization.
Non. Governmental.
Of course the USA has some nice people. Germany had nice people too during the Nazi regime. That doesn't mean anything, as it's not your people who are directing your military. It's your leaders, who aren't always acting on behalf of the population because they can hide their crimes behind the guise of "we cannot reveal that information because it's a matter of national security!"
Now, of course, everyone knows that it's not really a matter of national security; nobody gives a damn about 95% of the stuff that is held back from the public with that excuse. But you can't really argue with the president on it; not only does a direct channel of communication not exist, even if it did, he wouldn't care about what you think.
Let me ask you a very simple question: How can you believe that the government is benevolent when they are refusing to reveal information on their various torture tactics? Answer me this, and you're free to go.
ege02 on
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No-QuarterNothing To FearBut Fear ItselfRegistered Userregular
Let me ask you a very simple question: How can you believe that the government is benevolent when they are refusing to reveal information on their various torture tactics? Answer me this, and you're free to go.
Don't forget the cowardly Congress for not forcing them on it despite it being, you know, they're fucking job.
Your argument that the Catholic Church was the hegemon of Europe during the Middle Ages is based on the period from 1418 to 1517?
What?
Even during that period wasn't France busy invading all of its neighbors?
Also - balance of power promoted arms races and continual trials of strength that repeatedly threatened to erupt into a general war - and then did erupt into a general war worse than anything the world had seen up to that point.
I can't say I care for stability that rests on constant cynical maneuvering within a structure of pervasive instability.
I'm pretty sure he's referring to 1054 and the Schism between eastern Orthodox Xtianity and the Papacy, but to be honest, your point holds even better using that as your starting point, what with the Guelphs and Ghibellines kicking the shit out of each other for a lot that period. The papacy certainly liked to act like it was a hegemon, but the Holy Roman Emperor de jour generally had similar ideas.
In that case I would disagree that the Catholic Church acted as any kind of hegemon. More like a feeble version of the United Nations.
Feeble? The Catholic Church had far more power and authority than the UN will ever have. Hell, ignoring their absolute dominion over kings for a second, how many Crusades did they send out against the Muslim world, exactly?
Feeble? The Catholic Church had far more power and authority than the UN will ever have. Hell, ignoring their absolute dominion over kings for a second, how many Crusades did they send out against the Muslim world, exactly?
Glorified banditry that resulted in a couple of tenous rogue statelets that quickly collapsed. Not exactly the force projection one might expect from a hegemon.
And I think Popes called for the first two crusades. I'm not sure the third was instigated mainly by the papacy and the fourth . . . well that was just a giant clusterfuck that didn't even reach the Muslim world.
Oh, I didn't spot that - in France, the Church was mostly the king's bitch, with the appointments of bishops being merely rubber stamped by Rome. The Holy Roman Emperor and Sicilian/South Italian Normans were perfectly happy to flip Rome the bird, too. Medievil history is more or less the story of the Church trying and failing to replace the Western Roman Empire.
The Crusades werely mostly one big pressure valve for non-inheriting noble scions and assorted mercs left over from staving off the advance of Islam into mainland Europe.
I'm basically stating a truism with regards to the nature of discovery and spread of information and pointing out how it might be used to promote an illusion of benevolence.
The key word here is "might."
Your initial post suggested a position of factual belief that the United States uses propaganda to promote an "illusion of benevolence." There was no "might" involved. Now that it seems there is, I have far less of a problem with your stance. Yes, it is an entirely possible situation that the blurring of information promotes an illusion of benevolence.
Yet it's also the case that there are plenty of things that our government does at home and abroad that actually ARE benevolent (as I said before, largest numerical donor of foreign aid in the world). You can even throw American NGOs (The Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, etc) into the equation and see that while we have some tremendous assholes, we've also got some of the nicest people the world has to offer.
What does NGO stand for? Non-governmental organization.
Non. Governmental.
Of course the USA has some nice people. Germany had nice people too during the Nazi regime. That doesn't mean anything, as it's not your people who are directing your military. It's your leaders, who aren't always acting on behalf of the population because they can hide their crimes behind the guise of "we cannot reveal that information because it's a matter of national security!"
Now, of course, everyone knows that it's not really a matter of national security; nobody gives a damn about 95% of the stuff that is held back from the public with that excuse. But you can't really argue with the president on it; not only does a direct channel of communication not exist, even if it did, he wouldn't care about what you think.
Let me ask you a very simple question: How can you believe that the government is benevolent when they are refusing to reveal information on their various torture tactics? Answer me this, and you're free to go.
If you look at my wording, you'll see I'm talking about American NGO's IN ADDITION TO the government, not as part of it.
As for your question, I suggest you read the first post I made in this thread. I asserted that referring to the United States as benevolent OR evil was one dimensional and flawed. I stand by my belief that this country does good shit and bad shit, and that everything we do is too large to qualify in a single overreaching statement. You have to talk in specifics.
You, on the other hand, referred to us as a media dominating empire where everything is completely manufactured and influenced heavily by a single dystopian entity. I just wanted to point out the flaws I felt were in your outlook.
KevinNash sort of indirectly brought up hegemony in the Ron Paul thread, and I figured it was a broad enough topic to get its own thread.
In response to him, then:
Let me lay it out for you, as calmly as I can.
The United States controls the single largest amount of force in history. We are unparalleled. No one else even comes close. There is not a single nation with a single warship on the same level as a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, or an Ohio submarine. No one has a B2-calibre bomber. Not to mention our sizable nuclear advantage.
The mere fact that we are the overwhelmingly dominant military power in the world prevents war. Everyone in every nation on earth knows that the United States can, if they choose, end a given conflict unilaterally, simply by blowing up everyone involved. As such, conflicts tend to remain relatively small and regional. It prohibits policies of forced annexation (read also: conquest) absolutely.
Hegemony is naturally stable. Stability, on the nation-state scale, is desirable above all else. Hegemony is achieved through military superiority.
Simply put, we are the world's policeman. And we can never, ever stop.
This is not a position we enjoy. Do you not believe that the United States would rather spend the hundreds of billions of dollars the military is budgeted on something more useful? On feeding our poor, on curing them of their ailments, of providing them with shelter? Of course we do. The people of the United States, even its politicians, are not callous men. We have homes and children and families. We see the poor and sick on our streets. But because of our unique position, the money must be put elsewhere. We must maintain our forces.
Power - true power, military power - is not like economics. It truly is a zero-sum game. When one player gets weaker, others get stronger. The United States, by and large, is benevolent. It does not exercise its power for territorial advantage, and never overtly for economic gain. Those who would gain power through our disarmament may not be as conservative in its use as we are. Therefore power must be maintained, for the good of the world.
It does not matter whether or not you asked for it. It does not matter whether or not you like it. It does not matter whether or not you agree. It is the only solution that guarantees stability and sovereignty, on the gross scale, for every nation.
Does the United States occaisionally do bad things to maintain its power? Yes, it does. We have done horrible things in the past, things which were often foolish. The United States did, and continues to do, dishonorable things. But again, this is not out of choice. We are very much bound to history, to our place in the world. The only responsible use of this power is to maintain it, and to use it as rarely as possible.
This is the way of the world. It is the truth. It is not comfortable, and it is not pretty, for anyone. But it is what it is, and we cannot step back, for if we do, another may take our place, and they may not be as gentle as we have.
I think every African genocide since the creation of the UN would like a word with your 'US are da police' argument
I believe it's just silly to believe that the US pours that much money into their military budget simply out of benevolence.
I'll agree that by and large, having the force on the US's side is a good thing, and that force stabilizes much of the world, but lets not go so far as to say the US keeps up that force because they just want everyone to stop fighting
I would say that the U.S. has a number of issues with exerting its power in regards to dictatorships that support our interests. We have a bad history of propping up regimes with terrible human rights records. See: Saudi Arabia, Saddam, etc.
This being said, looking back at history and the amount of power the U.S. wields, the situation could be much, much worse. I feel that the variety of internal discourse in the U.S. helps keep it in check, and I'm not sure if I'd be comfortable if any other nation wielded that sort of power, particularly one that was more homogenous.
While I don't want to explicitly say that I disagree with the OP, I would like some more explanation on how he can be so sure that hegemony is the only way. Considering that the large majority of people alive haven't known anything else, I'd like to know how you can be sure how the alternatives would work.
There's an awful lot of history from non-Hegemonic periods out there. In times when there was not one clear world-dominating power, there was often great strife. (See also: the Middle Ages; the early and late Colonial period, when Britain did not have clear dominance.) Strife is bad.
The most common counter-thesis to hegemony is binary opposition, which argues that stability is maintained when two roughly equal powers work against each others' goals, probably best exemplified by the Cold War. This is a lie. For one, the Cold War wasn't really stable, it was just balanced, which isn't the same thing, and two, the Cold War directly led to far greater invasions of sovereignty and far more open conflict than seen since the fall of the Wall.
Well, first of all, your statement regarding "far more conflicts in the Cold War" is disingenuous. We've not yet been 20 years since the German reunification, and the Cold War lasted just under 50. Second, there aren't many periods of time when there were no Hegemons, and the Middle Ages certainly isn't one of them. There was this thing called the Catholic Church, and it very effectively ruled all of Europe from the Great Schism until the Protestant Reformation. Third, the role of Hegemon does not need to be filled explicitly by one individual political actor. The role of the European "balance of power" and the associated "great game" between Britain, Russia, France, and later Germany ensured stability and a general lack of large scale conflict for about fifty years. That's not unlike what we have today.
I would say the turn of the century "powder keg" was non-hegemonic, how was World War 1 for everyone anyway?
Free-flowing oil benefits every industrialized nation. I know that's an unpopular and uncomfortable fact, but it's the truth. It's why we're backing Saudi Arabia, and it's a not-insignificant part or why we went (ill-advised and ill-prepared, I readily concede) into Iraq.
Granted, but are you admitting that economic benefit of industrialized nations—rather than "benevolence"—is in fact the driving force of American hegemony? I'll toast to that.
I'll also toast, sadly, to the fact that free-flowing oil is doing all of jack shit for less developed nations and is ruining our planet.
Policemen gotta eat, too.
This doesn't really relate to what I wrote, Sal. Yes, a benevolent hegemon would in fact have to eat, and would even conceivably derive taxes from the places it keeps in the Pax Romana or whatever (or trade with them, as the mercantilist British empire did). And there are many economic benefits to maintaining a hegemonic peace without violence. This doesn't relate to the fact that there is a military-industrial complex who derive their money not from maintaining peace but from manufacturing weapons of war.
What's needed is both.
Because violent force has done such a wonderful job of luring Muslims away from their second-rate culture?
I am having a hard time grasping just how you could ever, in good faith, say that.
Maybe you just don't know anything about our recent and historical actions on a grand scale. That's possible.
Other than defeating facism, communisim, and fighting a radical theocratic movement that seeks to forcefully convert the entire world while killing gays, "loose" women, and jews?
Yeah.....we suck. :P
Our problem in Iraq isn't that we tried to replace a vicious tyrannt with a democratic government while defending it from a terrorist organization that seeks violent theocracy; our problem is that we carried it out so badly and, in the case of Rumsfeld, willfully incompetently.
I'll just ask this; would you rather live in North Korea or South Korea?
One nation, under American Hegemony, has rule of Law, an elected government, economic prosperity, is technologically advanced, and has freedom of speech where it's citizens frequently critisize their government and ours.
The other starves it's people to death, literally, to fund a pontlessly large army with little spent on infrastructure where if you say anything bad about "The Dear Leader" you get the living shit beat out of you by the police before drug off to be another faceless death in a Gulag.
America isn't perfect and does do dumb things (what country hasn't?) but overall, I'm glad we won the past few world conflicts and I hope we win this one.
I think "progressives" do as well; unless they want to live in a world where people are killed for being gay, not being Muslim, having sex before marriage, saying anything bad about the government, ect.
Feeble? The Catholic Church had far more power and authority than the UN will ever have. Hell, ignoring their absolute dominion over kings for a second, how many Crusades did they send out against the Muslim world, exactly?
Glorified banditry that resulted in a couple of tenous rogue statelets that quickly collapsed. Not exactly the force projection one might expect from a hegemon.
Being able to rally an army of over one million soldiers during those days was quite a feat.
You, on the other hand, referred to us as a media dominating empire where everything is completely manufactured and influenced heavily by a single dystopian entity. I just wanted to point out the flaws I felt were in your outlook.
I never said everything is completely manufactured, but it's true that there is a heavy uh... dystopian entity or whatever you want to call it, influencing things, mainly because, well, they get to decide which information is appropriate for public release and which isn't.
Feeble? The Catholic Church had far more power and authority than the UN will ever have. Hell, ignoring their absolute dominion over kings for a second, how many Crusades did they send out against the Muslim world, exactly?
Glorified banditry that resulted in a couple of tenous rogue statelets that quickly collapsed. Not exactly the force projection one might expect from a hegemon.
Being able to rally an army of over one million soldiers during those days was quite a feat.
You, on the other hand, referred to us as a media dominating empire where everything is completely manufactured and influenced heavily by a single dystopian entity. I just wanted to point out the flaws I felt were in your outlook.
I never said everything is completely manufactured, but it's true that there is a heavy uh... dystopian entity or whatever you want to call it, influencing things, mainly because, well, they get to decide which information is appropriate for public release and which isn't.
If that is not "influence" I don't know what is.
Um, if any of the Crusades consisted of a *million* man army, the Byzantine Empire would still exist. :P
Feeble? The Catholic Church had far more power and authority than the UN will ever have. Hell, ignoring their absolute dominion over kings for a second, how many Crusades did they send out against the Muslim world, exactly?
Glorified banditry that resulted in a couple of tenous rogue statelets that quickly collapsed. Not exactly the force projection one might expect from a hegemon.
Being able to rally an army of over one million soldiers during those days was quite a feat.
You, on the other hand, referred to us as a media dominating empire where everything is completely manufactured and influenced heavily by a single dystopian entity. I just wanted to point out the flaws I felt were in your outlook.
I never said everything is completely manufactured, but it's true that there is a heavy uh... dystopian entity or whatever you want to call it, influencing things, mainly because, well, they get to decide which information is appropriate for public release and which isn't.
If that is not "influence" I don't know what is.
Um, if any of the Crusades consisted of a *million* man army, the Byzantine Empire would still exist. :P
That number seems a bit....high.
The first Crusade consisted of a million. Problem was most of them were peasants, and they were so undisciplined and hungry for riches that they looted and pillaged the then prosperous Constantinople while they were passing through.
Free-flowing oil benefits every industrialized nation. I know that's an unpopular and uncomfortable fact, but it's the truth. It's why we're backing Saudi Arabia, and it's a not-insignificant part or why we went (ill-advised and ill-prepared, I readily concede) into Iraq.
Granted, but are you admitting that economic benefit of industrialized nations—rather than "benevolence"—is in fact the driving force of American hegemony? I'll toast to that.
Free-flowing oil is arguably more important to nations undergoing industrialization than it is to the first-world. Or are you of the opinion that higher energy prices will help developing nations?
Policemen gotta eat, too.
This doesn't really relate to what I wrote, Sal. Yes, a benevolent hegemon would in fact have to eat, and would even conceivably derive taxes from the places it keeps in the Pax Romana or whatever (or trade with them, as the mercantilist British empire did). And there are many economic benefits to maintaining a hegemonic peace without violence. This doesn't relate to the fact that there is a military-industrial complex who derive their money not from maintaining peace but from manufacturing weapons of war.
These two statements are at odds with each other. Weapons of war are necessary to maintain hegemonic peace. Do you expect these weapons to be made for free?
What's needed is both.
Because violent force has done such a wonderful job of luring Muslims away from their second-rate culture?
Because there will always be those who reject the changes in culture, and seek to impose their will. Ultimately those people who violently cannot tolerate the message the missionary spreads need to be caged or killed, neither of which is possible without the projection of force.
I think you can call the United States largely benevolent, but then again you can say that about most Mob bosses. If you keep your head down, and stay out of the "business" you have little to fear from the local Don. The United States operates in the same manner. The Serbian conflicts had more to do with making sure that the EU's dawning Economic expansion into Eastern Europe wasn't impeded by disorder and conflict. Countries whose conflicts don't cross into our economic or political interests are largely left to play out as they will. Sometimes the US even achieves its goals by using a conflict as a distraction, such as the bombing runs in Somalia during the unrest there to take out "training camps."
What I am aiming at is that we aren't harmless, but those who don't get in the way of the "business" aren't going to worry about the weight of the Pentagon coming for a world tour-- bad for business. Now the future will not bode well, the Don always has an upstart captain who is looking to usurp the throne. It seems most of the dissident left is focused on the post-superpower world. This has to be one of the most useless pondering of our time, with real problems that are growing exponentially due to the massive military build up, and the people who are supposed to provide the solutions are too busy thinking up what we will do when our bombs fall silent.
The Crusades werely mostly one big pressure valve for non-inheriting noble scions and assorted mercs left over from staving off the advance of Islam into mainland Europe.
Er? I think you have your dates a bit mixed up.
Islam only ever advanced into mainland Europe via the Moors in Spain and the Turks up to Constantinople. The reconquista of Spain didn't happen until the mid-15th century, and the Turks didn't even capture Constantinople until 1453. Crusades were going on well up until then. There was a Christian coalition vs Muslims in the 13th century (ie a good 120 years after the first Crusade anyway) in central Spain, but that was mostly a local affair, and hardly of such extreme size that it would have required a 'pressure valve' to draw fighters away; more to the point, there were plenty of small wars in mainland Europe that they could be and were occupied with.
The impulse behind the Crusades wasn't just: "oh look, we've got lots of swords, what shall we do with them...I know! Jerusalem's nearby right?".
And this whole thing about the Catholic Church being a hegemon misunderstands Salvation's point. There are distinctions between kinds of hegemon, and the Catholic Church was never a military / hard power hegemon, even when they did have Italian lands & armies; moreover, I'm pretty sure the realists who came up with these ideas would deny the possibility of a 'political hegemon', arguing that political power would have to be based in military or economic power of some kind. The manifest failures of the Church to actually exert power when it mattered (Sacking of Rome, Reformation anyone?) rather demonstrates that their political power was severely limited.
Shinto is correct, the Church was less a hegemon, and more a transnational body which exerted political influence over the Christian nations according to its whims.
Free-flowing oil is arguably more important to nations undergoing industrialization than it is to the first-world. Or are you of the opinion that higher energy prices will help developing nations?
That's not actually true. Free-flowing coal is more important to industrialising nations. Free-flowing oil allows easy individual & commercial transport, the first of which is not actually vital to industrialisation (just to ideas of industrialised living standards, the ideas are there mostly because we in the west all have cars), and the second of which can be co-opted from first-world countries by using foreign transport companies.
Free flowing oil for cars is about as important as it is for the first world, which is not very; and free-flowing oil for commercial transport is of equal importance for everyone, because they are generally using a small number of the same transport companies. More to the point, free-flowing oil to the US is of vital importance, because it keeps the US Navy afloat, and the US Navy protect international ocean trade routes; the navies of industrialising countries - if they even have one - do not.
No, it's true, but that is mostly because the judgement is in terms of single princes / kings trying to rally feudal armies from their lands. To say that the Pope himself rallied a million man army is false, he just gave a single focus to a huge number of Christian princes who each individually raised small armies. So Ege's numbers are correct, but his point wrong. Oh, there is also a standard problem that they massively overestimated numbers up until modern times, like the 6-million Persians claimed at Thermopylae probably not even exceeding one million according to modern historians.
But right up until the Napoleonic era, it was impossible for individual princes, nations, or even coalitions to field armies of that size, because they simply didn't have the logistics to feed them, and Europe didn't have the infrastructure to maintain them; roads didn't exist to move that many men, and large numbers couldn't be taken from the land without destroying agricultural production within your kingdom.
Even up until Westphalia, the largest armies only amounted to, for example, 134,000 men Imperialist German army in 1629 (which promptly collapsed under its own weight), and most armies didn't number more than 30,000.*
...see the interesting things you miss when you use ignore :P
*Cite: War & Power in the 21st Century, Paul Hirst, Polity Press
The United States controls the single largest amount of force in history. We are unparalleled. No one else even comes close. There is not a single nation with a single warship on the same level as a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, or an Ohio submarine. No one has a B2-calibre bomber. Not to mention our sizable nuclear advantage.
And all that miltech was really great in keeping the WTC towers up and standing.
What I'm saying here is... if someone wants to fight you, they'll cheat. And we've all seen how good the US army is at rooting out insurgents.
The US Army is not a policeman. A policeman does not respond to cell phone pictures of torture in their prisons by banning cell phones.
Your information is outdated. Putin has got their economy back on track, thanks to Russia's oil reserves - and has resumed some of the missions that the Soviet Union used to conduct - like long-range bomber sorties, aka 'military readyness exercises.'
I seem to recall Russian bombers spotted in European airspace some months ago.
The United States controls the single largest amount of force in history. We are unparalleled. No one else even comes close. There is not a single nation with a single warship on the same level as a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, or an Ohio submarine. No one has a B2-calibre bomber. Not to mention our sizable nuclear advantage.
And all that miltech was really great in keeping the WTC towers up and standing.
What I'm saying here is... if someone wants to fight you, they'll cheat. And we've all seen how good the US army is at rooting out insurgents.
The US Army is not a policeman. A policeman does not respond to cell phone pictures of torture in their prisons by banning cell phones.
Yes, but the insurgents can't overthrow US power, or even seriously challenge it without a breakdown of US political will. Also, the US army is getting rather good at counter-insurgency very fast. And a policeman responds to cell-phone pictures of torture in their prisons by saying the prisoners took it themselves :P
Oh, I certainly don't have any illusions about insurgents really accomplishing anything in the long term. I'm just tired of the "We have huge warships, we're invincible!" stuff.
And while we're on that subject... I keep hearing that story about a wargame where some US general lead the opponents. He used messengers on bikes instead of radio to keep the US from snooping on his communication, and they were all "uh, no, you can't do that, it's against the rules and we can't win if you do that!". Any truth to that?
Oh, I certainly don't have any illusions about insurgents really accomplishing anything in the long term. I'm just tired of the "We have huge warships, we're invincible!" stuff.
But the point about a hegemon is that unless you can seriously challenge its power, it's hegemony is invincible. This doesn't mean that individual soldiers, ships etc aren't vulnerable though. Militarily, and by the numbers, the US won the Tet Offensive hands down - it was an extraordinarily successful defence. Politically it was seen as a disaster, and that political perception contributed to the US withdrawing.
The lesson to learn from that is not what a lot of people mistakenly thought: that politics can make you militarily weak. The lesson is: you can be militarily strong but lack political will to use that strength. The distinction is that if you are militarily weak, you can be successfully attacked. If you are militarily strong, even if you are politically weak, you can defend yourself - and likelyhood is that being attacked may strengthen your political will (ie 9/11 & Afghan). Arguably Al Qaeda made the first mistake in that they thought the lack of US will meant they were militarily weak and wouldn't respond. They got fucked. Arguably Bush then ignored the second lesson with Iraq: that military strength requires political will to be effectively used. So he got fucked.
And while we're on that subject... I keep hearing that story about a wargame where some US general lead the opponents. He used messengers on bikes instead of radio to keep the US from snooping on his communication, and they were all "uh, no, you can't do that, it's against the rules and we can't win if you do that!". Any truth to that?
Well, I've heard the same story from a reputable source. Don't know if it's just military apocrypha, but it sounds real enough. I've certainly seen first-hand those kind of Dirty Dozen tactics in wargames where you break the rules to win and some REMF whines about it.
Point is, most military officers are pretty smart, and particularly the young ones aren't nearly so institutionalised and chronically unimaginative as the popular imagination thinks. Innovation, adaptation and new ideas are very much part of any good military, just there is often a hierarchical conflict between the top level senior officers at home and those doing it on the ground, which means change isn't always quickly acknowledged, even if it quickly happens .
Oh, I certainly don't have any illusions about insurgents really accomplishing anything in the long term. I'm just tired of the "We have huge warships, we're invincible!" stuff.
I'm pretty sure most of Sal's point about the benefits etc. is only making a claim about things on the nation state level.
Posts
Bugger me, you've been reading a lot of realism. I'm mostly sympathetic to the realist stance, apart from a few things in your post.
One, bear in mind that militarily the US has only been a hegemon for less than 20 years. The Cold War was a competetive, bipolar system. You seem to be bleeding the edges slightly, as a lot of people do, suggesting that the Cold War, and even the influential role the US played in the two world wars suggests hegemony. This really isn't true, and the behaviour of all parties involved during those periods doesn't indicate a hegemonic system.
As such, to argue that you can 'never, ever stop' is false - as far as we know, this is a transitional period. It is quite likely that a new bipolarity will emerge with challengers such as China.
Secondly, there is the standard realist fallacy of argument. Namely: 1. The reality of the world is X. 2. Therefore you must act in accordance with that reality....which 3. Ensures the world is like X.
I don't really have a solution to that, and as I said, I'm sympathetic to the argument that we should act according to the facts. The question is thus: who says what X is?
3. You mention hegemony and economics. Actually there are quite a few political economists in the last 50 years who have applied realism & hegemony to global economics. Read Krasner, Hegemonic Stability Theory for a primer. I have a book with it in somewhere if you want the reference.
And this is almost right, but from the wrong perspective.
First, militant Islam isn't a credible and serious threat to hegemon military power. There is no chance whatsoever of militant Islamists defeating US military force given the will to maintain that force indefinitely. There is no chance whatsoever of militant Islamists perpetrating more than the most superficial of attacks against the US, compared to the potential retribution the US could unleash. Yes, this includes 9/11. And 7/7 in Britain. The effectiveness of Islamic insurgency relies on influencing (and they hope, ultimately breaking) the political will of the US, not challenging her power. This is common to most all insurgencies, as the dictum goes; insurgents don't win wars, occupations lose them.
Second, even if they did break the political will of the US, they would not have neutered her power. The moment they came from underground and tried to exert power of their own, they would be vulnerable to US economic, military and allied power. This has been demonstrated, for example, with Hamas in Palestine, who under the weight of sanctions led by the US, have lost a promising position leading the PLA, reduced to infighting and self-annexed in the Gaza Strip. The effectiveness of militants relies on being impossible to target as an enemy - if they are successful in exerting their own power, they now now out in the open: they would control countries, populations, have economic resources, etc: all of these the US could exert power against.
Militant Islam could only be said to have successfully challenged US power if they gain from it: at the moment, they are gaining politically and the US are losing politically. But the US aren't losing in their capability to project power (in fact, they are learning about counter-insurgency extremely fast, which arguably increases their power), only their will to do so.
Cough.
One, there were plenty of conflicts, just they paled compared to WW1, and many of them occured in the colonies, so aren't really in the historical consciousness in the same way. But lots of people died. Rather depends on your definition of 'large scale', which usually means 'in Europe'. Two, there were plenty of near conflicts which nobody ever hears about. Louis Napoleon was on the brink of war with Britain before Cobden-Chevalier was signed in 1860, which sorted that out; but they were so close that fleets had been massed, draftees raised and leave cancelled on both sides. Three, the relations of that period (mid to late 19th century) led specifically to the clusterfuck that was WW1, so to argue that the "balance of power" 'worked' is somewhat disingenuous. It's a bit like saying that the League of Nations worked because we have the United Nations today.
Also, arguably during significant parts of that time, Britain was a hegemon. But that really depends how many factors you are working in - they were certainly an economic hegemon from the mid-19th century up until 1913.
Oh, and if the hegemon isn't a single political actor, it isn't a hegemon. re: French, British, German etc budding imperialists fighting over the colonies. That's hardly peace and stability unless you are European. And even then, you had better prepare for mud and machine guns.
I'm pretty sure he's referring to 1054 and the Schism between eastern Orthodox Xtianity and the Papacy, but to be honest, your point holds even better using that as your starting point, what with the Guelphs and Ghibellines kicking the shit out of each other for a lot that period. The papacy certainly liked to act like it was a hegemon, but the Holy Roman Emperor de jour generally had similar ideas.
The key word here is "might."
Your initial post suggested a position of factual belief that the United States uses propaganda to promote an "illusion of benevolence." There was no "might" involved. Now that it seems there is, I have far less of a problem with your stance. Yes, it is an entirely possible situation that the blurring of information promotes an illusion of benevolence.
Yet it's also the case that there are plenty of things that our government does at home and abroad that actually ARE benevolent (as I said before, largest numerical donor of foreign aid in the world). You can even throw American NGOs (The Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, etc) into the equation and see that while we have some tremendous assholes, we've also got some of the nicest people the world has to offer.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
"But! But! Tur'rists!"
One thing to add is that the Bush Cabal's handling of the events post 911 (and probably even pre-911 if the reports of the Bush being warned of possible attacks in the summer of '01, and the exiting Clinton admin's warnings about Al-Qaida being a force to keep an eye on, are true) were botched spectacularly in an effort to seize and hold onto political power.
Instead of telling the American People that the only thing to fear was fear itself, Bush and his cronies told us that there were snakes in every blanket and monsters under every bed. That and he told us to go shopping. In doing so, every time a political or diplomatic hurdle came up in our country (utterly no solid evidence of WMD, a laughable connection between Saddam and Osama, the fairy tale about the Iraqis greeting us with flowers) they pulled the "911! 911! Be afraid of the tur'rists!" trump card that stifled any rational conversation from taking place between the irrational "sheep" quotient of our population, and the idiot redneck "git r done!" crowd as well. Throw in the ad-hominen attacks on our allies who had the audacity to call them on their obvious bullshit ("Freedom Fries" anyone?) and you have a recipe for greed and disaster.
In short, Bush took a problem that could have been easily dealt with via targetting of actually Al-Qaida havens and rigorous regional diplomacy to get the locals on our side (which was actually working in Afghanistan), and decided "Fuck it! They're brown and Muslim in Iraq and have oil! The majority of the populace is stupid and will buy it! This will be easy!" Which is what has led us to our current debacle.
A retarded/complacent if not complicit press aided them too.
In other words, the American government made a mountain of a molehill and now we're fucked.
EDIT: I still don't think Iwas clear, we gave the militants a fuck all lot more power then they would have ever had normally, so our case is somewhat special. Bush's black and white view of "diplomacy" ("With us or against us!" - Ugh.) didn't help win any allies among the Arab populace either.
But that my friends is for another thread.
In that case I would disagree that the Catholic Church acted as any kind of hegemon. More like a feeble version of the United Nations.
What does NGO stand for? Non-governmental organization.
Non. Governmental.
Of course the USA has some nice people. Germany had nice people too during the Nazi regime. That doesn't mean anything, as it's not your people who are directing your military. It's your leaders, who aren't always acting on behalf of the population because they can hide their crimes behind the guise of "we cannot reveal that information because it's a matter of national security!"
Now, of course, everyone knows that it's not really a matter of national security; nobody gives a damn about 95% of the stuff that is held back from the public with that excuse. But you can't really argue with the president on it; not only does a direct channel of communication not exist, even if it did, he wouldn't care about what you think.
Let me ask you a very simple question: How can you believe that the government is benevolent when they are refusing to reveal information on their various torture tactics? Answer me this, and you're free to go.
Feeble? The Catholic Church had far more power and authority than the UN will ever have. Hell, ignoring their absolute dominion over kings for a second, how many Crusades did they send out against the Muslim world, exactly?
Glorified banditry that resulted in a couple of tenous rogue statelets that quickly collapsed. Not exactly the force projection one might expect from a hegemon.
*cough*
And I think Popes called for the first two crusades. I'm not sure the third was instigated mainly by the papacy and the fourth . . . well that was just a giant clusterfuck that didn't even reach the Muslim world.
The Crusades werely mostly one big pressure valve for non-inheriting noble scions and assorted mercs left over from staving off the advance of Islam into mainland Europe.
If you look at my wording, you'll see I'm talking about American NGO's IN ADDITION TO the government, not as part of it.
As for your question, I suggest you read the first post I made in this thread. I asserted that referring to the United States as benevolent OR evil was one dimensional and flawed. I stand by my belief that this country does good shit and bad shit, and that everything we do is too large to qualify in a single overreaching statement. You have to talk in specifics.
You, on the other hand, referred to us as a media dominating empire where everything is completely manufactured and influenced heavily by a single dystopian entity. I just wanted to point out the flaws I felt were in your outlook.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
I think every African genocide since the creation of the UN would like a word with your 'US are da police' argument
I believe it's just silly to believe that the US pours that much money into their military budget simply out of benevolence.
I'll agree that by and large, having the force on the US's side is a good thing, and that force stabilizes much of the world, but lets not go so far as to say the US keeps up that force because they just want everyone to stop fighting
This being said, looking back at history and the amount of power the U.S. wields, the situation could be much, much worse. I feel that the variety of internal discourse in the U.S. helps keep it in check, and I'm not sure if I'd be comfortable if any other nation wielded that sort of power, particularly one that was more homogenous.
It's not a big deal so long as you have liberal/moderate, non-imperial, non-domineering, humanistic powers.
The problem is that there aren't even that many sorts even in the US, much less in places where they beat the shit out of you for GETTING raped.
I would say the turn of the century "powder keg" was non-hegemonic, how was World War 1 for everyone anyway?
I'll also toast, sadly, to the fact that free-flowing oil is doing all of jack shit for less developed nations and is ruining our planet.
This doesn't really relate to what I wrote, Sal. Yes, a benevolent hegemon would in fact have to eat, and would even conceivably derive taxes from the places it keeps in the Pax Romana or whatever (or trade with them, as the mercantilist British empire did). And there are many economic benefits to maintaining a hegemonic peace without violence. This doesn't relate to the fact that there is a military-industrial complex who derive their money not from maintaining peace but from manufacturing weapons of war.
Because violent force has done such a wonderful job of luring Muslims away from their second-rate culture?
Other than defeating facism, communisim, and fighting a radical theocratic movement that seeks to forcefully convert the entire world while killing gays, "loose" women, and jews?
Yeah.....we suck. :P
Our problem in Iraq isn't that we tried to replace a vicious tyrannt with a democratic government while defending it from a terrorist organization that seeks violent theocracy; our problem is that we carried it out so badly and, in the case of Rumsfeld, willfully incompetently.
I'll just ask this; would you rather live in North Korea or South Korea?
One nation, under American Hegemony, has rule of Law, an elected government, economic prosperity, is technologically advanced, and has freedom of speech where it's citizens frequently critisize their government and ours.
The other starves it's people to death, literally, to fund a pontlessly large army with little spent on infrastructure where if you say anything bad about "The Dear Leader" you get the living shit beat out of you by the police before drug off to be another faceless death in a Gulag.
America isn't perfect and does do dumb things (what country hasn't?) but overall, I'm glad we won the past few world conflicts and I hope we win this one.
I think "progressives" do as well; unless they want to live in a world where people are killed for being gay, not being Muslim, having sex before marriage, saying anything bad about the government, ect.
Margaret Thatcher
Being able to rally an army of over one million soldiers during those days was quite a feat.
They didn't do it once either.
I never said everything is completely manufactured, but it's true that there is a heavy uh... dystopian entity or whatever you want to call it, influencing things, mainly because, well, they get to decide which information is appropriate for public release and which isn't.
If that is not "influence" I don't know what is.
Um, if any of the Crusades consisted of a *million* man army, the Byzantine Empire would still exist. :P
That number seems a bit....high.
Margaret Thatcher
The first Crusade consisted of a million. Problem was most of them were peasants, and they were so undisciplined and hungry for riches that they looted and pillaged the then prosperous Constantinople while they were passing through.
I heard they invented the term "team-killing".
These two statements are at odds with each other. Weapons of war are necessary to maintain hegemonic peace. Do you expect these weapons to be made for free?
Because there will always be those who reject the changes in culture, and seek to impose their will. Ultimately those people who violently cannot tolerate the message the missionary spreads need to be caged or killed, neither of which is possible without the projection of force.
What I am aiming at is that we aren't harmless, but those who don't get in the way of the "business" aren't going to worry about the weight of the Pentagon coming for a world tour-- bad for business. Now the future will not bode well, the Don always has an upstart captain who is looking to usurp the throne. It seems most of the dissident left is focused on the post-superpower world. This has to be one of the most useless pondering of our time, with real problems that are growing exponentially due to the massive military build up, and the people who are supposed to provide the solutions are too busy thinking up what we will do when our bombs fall silent.
Er? I think you have your dates a bit mixed up.
Islam only ever advanced into mainland Europe via the Moors in Spain and the Turks up to Constantinople. The reconquista of Spain didn't happen until the mid-15th century, and the Turks didn't even capture Constantinople until 1453. Crusades were going on well up until then. There was a Christian coalition vs Muslims in the 13th century (ie a good 120 years after the first Crusade anyway) in central Spain, but that was mostly a local affair, and hardly of such extreme size that it would have required a 'pressure valve' to draw fighters away; more to the point, there were plenty of small wars in mainland Europe that they could be and were occupied with.
The impulse behind the Crusades wasn't just: "oh look, we've got lots of swords, what shall we do with them...I know! Jerusalem's nearby right?".
And this whole thing about the Catholic Church being a hegemon misunderstands Salvation's point. There are distinctions between kinds of hegemon, and the Catholic Church was never a military / hard power hegemon, even when they did have Italian lands & armies; moreover, I'm pretty sure the realists who came up with these ideas would deny the possibility of a 'political hegemon', arguing that political power would have to be based in military or economic power of some kind. The manifest failures of the Church to actually exert power when it mattered (Sacking of Rome, Reformation anyone?) rather demonstrates that their political power was severely limited.
Shinto is correct, the Church was less a hegemon, and more a transnational body which exerted political influence over the Christian nations according to its whims.
That's not actually true. Free-flowing coal is more important to industrialising nations. Free-flowing oil allows easy individual & commercial transport, the first of which is not actually vital to industrialisation (just to ideas of industrialised living standards, the ideas are there mostly because we in the west all have cars), and the second of which can be co-opted from first-world countries by using foreign transport companies.
Free flowing oil for cars is about as important as it is for the first world, which is not very; and free-flowing oil for commercial transport is of equal importance for everyone, because they are generally using a small number of the same transport companies. More to the point, free-flowing oil to the US is of vital importance, because it keeps the US Navy afloat, and the US Navy protect international ocean trade routes; the navies of industrialising countries - if they even have one - do not.
Cite?
I'm not trying to be a dick, but this isn't a factoid out of one of your Turkish elementary school books or something like that, is it?
But right up until the Napoleonic era, it was impossible for individual princes, nations, or even coalitions to field armies of that size, because they simply didn't have the logistics to feed them, and Europe didn't have the infrastructure to maintain them; roads didn't exist to move that many men, and large numbers couldn't be taken from the land without destroying agricultural production within your kingdom.
Even up until Westphalia, the largest armies only amounted to, for example, 134,000 men Imperialist German army in 1629 (which promptly collapsed under its own weight), and most armies didn't number more than 30,000.*
...see the interesting things you miss when you use ignore :P
*Cite: War & Power in the 21st Century, Paul Hirst, Polity Press
And all that miltech was really great in keeping the WTC towers up and standing.
What I'm saying here is... if someone wants to fight you, they'll cheat. And we've all seen how good the US army is at rooting out insurgents.
The US Army is not a policeman. A policeman does not respond to cell phone pictures of torture in their prisons by banning cell phones.
I seem to recall Russian bombers spotted in European airspace some months ago.
Yes, but the insurgents can't overthrow US power, or even seriously challenge it without a breakdown of US political will. Also, the US army is getting rather good at counter-insurgency very fast. And a policeman responds to cell-phone pictures of torture in their prisons by saying the prisoners took it themselves :P
But the point about a hegemon is that unless you can seriously challenge its power, it's hegemony is invincible. This doesn't mean that individual soldiers, ships etc aren't vulnerable though. Militarily, and by the numbers, the US won the Tet Offensive hands down - it was an extraordinarily successful defence. Politically it was seen as a disaster, and that political perception contributed to the US withdrawing.
The lesson to learn from that is not what a lot of people mistakenly thought: that politics can make you militarily weak. The lesson is: you can be militarily strong but lack political will to use that strength. The distinction is that if you are militarily weak, you can be successfully attacked. If you are militarily strong, even if you are politically weak, you can defend yourself - and likelyhood is that being attacked may strengthen your political will (ie 9/11 & Afghan). Arguably Al Qaeda made the first mistake in that they thought the lack of US will meant they were militarily weak and wouldn't respond. They got fucked. Arguably Bush then ignored the second lesson with Iraq: that military strength requires political will to be effectively used. So he got fucked.
What goes around...
Well, I've heard the same story from a reputable source. Don't know if it's just military apocrypha, but it sounds real enough. I've certainly seen first-hand those kind of Dirty Dozen tactics in wargames where you break the rules to win and some REMF whines about it.
Point is, most military officers are pretty smart, and particularly the young ones aren't nearly so institutionalised and chronically unimaginative as the popular imagination thinks. Innovation, adaptation and new ideas are very much part of any good military, just there is often a hierarchical conflict between the top level senior officers at home and those doing it on the ground, which means change isn't always quickly acknowledged, even if it quickly happens .
I'm pretty sure most of Sal's point about the benefits etc. is only making a claim about things on the nation state level.