> As a side note, your theory that "Disarmament doesn’t prevent war. It only prevents winning." and “'Transparent and neutral international agencies' are a pipe dream." aligns well with fascist ideology.
Not as much as your style of naive pacifism did, when theory was forced to turn into practice. Fascists are aggressors who will exploit any weakness to their advantage. They don't negotiate in good faith, they will cheat on any disarmament treaty they can, and international agencies are a joke to them. Understanding the world as it is rather than as we wish it might be means understanding that people like that exist.
Having extraordinarily powerful nuclear weapons as a deterrent is a primary reason most of Europe is enjoying the longest uninterrupted period of peace since maybe the Roman Empire. Failing that, "neutral international agencies" who actually had the power to keep the peace could only exist if those agencies, themselves, were an armed hegemon. People with guns always get their way against people without guns. And it just so happens that there is an armed hegemon that actually keeps troops deployed across most of Europe and has done so continuously throughout this long period of peace.
Yes, well. More fascistic talk, the Roman empire was a great inspiration to them too. Again, try and contrast these ideas with the principles on which the UN was founded.
You and your fellow arms race proponents will win, of course. Your prize will eventually be a smoking, poisoned world, billions of people dead or suffering irreparable damage, unspeakable pain (much like large swathes of the Vietnamese and survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have endured), to a large extent uninhabitable where maybe, just maybe some tribe in the deep south will survive to tell the tale of the human folly that ruined the world for millions of years to come, a proud and conceited civilization who thought they knew it all. Congrats.
> Again, try and contrast these ideas with the principles on which the UN was founded.
The UN wasn’t founded by a bunch of pacifists. The pacifists surrendered and collaborate with the fascists. That’s your side. The people who founded the UN killed fascists and tried to build a new world order on the promise, “never again”. A promise that has been broken time and time again.
We’re living in the longest period of peace since before the Middle Ages. I’m not admiring the Roman Empire by pointing that out, I’m admiring the world that exists today. A world in which no one in living memory has had to die to re-litigate territorial claims over Alsace-Lorraine or the succession to the Austrian crown. Not only do you have no explanation for how this world works, you would tear down the structures that keep it peaceful in the name of pacifism.
Yeah, well you could have asked politely what I actually mean before loading the big cannons against a straw-man of my opinions through the course of this thread. I don't feel particularly obliged to expound at this point, but rest assured I'm no pacifist, particularly not towards fascist empire builders. It's just that I have several other goals too - the survival of the earth, and our species, civilization and cooperation among peoples etc. It's probably too complicated for you. Have a nice day.
Not as much as your style of naive pacifism did, when theory was forced to turn into practice. Fascists are aggressors who will exploit any weakness to their advantage. They don't negotiate in good faith, they will cheat on any disarmament treaty they can, and international agencies are a joke to them. Understanding the world as it is rather than as we wish it might be means understanding that people like that exist.
Having extraordinarily powerful nuclear weapons as a deterrent is a primary reason most of Europe is enjoying the longest uninterrupted period of peace since maybe the Roman Empire. Failing that, "neutral international agencies" who actually had the power to keep the peace could only exist if those agencies, themselves, were an armed hegemon. People with guns always get their way against people without guns. And it just so happens that there is an armed hegemon that actually keeps troops deployed across most of Europe and has done so continuously throughout this long period of peace.