To keep a military base in a country you either need to be allowed to do so, or you have to do so by force, by occupying the country.
Occupation is doable, but very costly. The US did it recently in Afghanistan (which is barely a functioning country itself).
So yeah, it keeping military bases abroad via occupation is doable for some time, but not very feasible. It is more realistic to have a system of allied countries.
It's sort of a meme how people in the US imagine all middle eastern countries to be a bunch of mud huts in the world's largest gravel quarry.
> To keep a military base in a country you either need to be allowed to do so, or you have to do so by force, by occupying the country.
There are all sorts of levers US, China, Russia can pull to in order to put pressure on a country for such things. There's occupation, mutual benefits, long standing agreements post wars, soft power, sanctions, etc. Geopolitics is complicated.
And this is all is part of what "allowing" means. If a country is unwilling to allow for it, the only thing is left is either accepting is as a reality or trying to do so by force.
> I do think there is some irony that the Iran war took down all the AWS datacenters in the middle east except the one (or 3 i guess) in Israel, which is still chugging along.
... For now.
> Like as a strategy its kind of weird. Iran plans to force Israel to stop by wrecking the economies of a bunch of countries that are basically frenemies of Israel? I suppose its meant to pressure USA, it just seems like a terrible strategy.
The gulf countries are enemies of Iran. In fact, they are a lot cozier to Israel.
So... The future is Dubai? I am still to hear a better argument in favor of extinction.
This reminds me of a quote from "Stranger Than Fiction":
> Harold: "I don't want to eat nothing but pancakes, I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes?"
> Dr. Hilbert: "Harold, if you pause to think, you'd realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led... and, of course, the quality of the pancakes"
over and over again, we see that governments are pretty bad at doing their job.
over and over again, they prove to us that they cant handle money, that they are corrupt, that they put the interest of their political class above that of the people.
so are you surprised?
id rather be left alone as much as possible in my pursuit of happiness. On my own terms!
"Fuck you got mine" is the attitude of the boomers expecting young people to die for a country that the boomers left economically and demographically ruined. Young Germans have the worst life prospects of any generation in the past fifty years.
But if you look at serious polls then not many young people will actually fight for this. I remember reading a number of around 15%...
And those probably don't have a high IQ.
That's a generation of people who had to never suffer the prospect of invasion and occupation of German soil by hostile armed forces. Even so, this number of willing recruits would already be much more than the Bundeswehr can possibly arm, and are unneeded as long as there is no military altercation actively involving Germany.
I am mostly in agreement with everything you say, including the push for solar and wind.
The only disagreement is that I think nuclear should be pursued even when building the plants is expensive. It is clean and mostly safe. I think energy should be abundant. It's the sort of thing you want a surplus.
The biggest disgrace is the vassalage to the US in terms of defense, which fuels the US MIC. Whenever Trump speaks of leaving NATO, I quietly hope he actually follows along this threat.
Because those decisions are made at the country level.
People keep speaking of the EU as if it had the authority of a country. It does not. While it was empowered by the members states to regulate certain things, a lot of things come down to each individual country. Pointing at the EU is a way to launder the failures of each country.
For instance, while there are regulations on emission reduction and percentage of renewables, how those are achieved is on each country. It was not the EU that made Germany retarded with nuclear. If anything, the EU regulation on emissions reduction and renewables make the countries here slightly less dependant on oil and gas.
For the EU to make the "hard decisions" that would allow it to be relevant in the global stage, it would need to federalize. Become a de-facto country.
Patents give you monopoly pricing power and patented drugs have huge gross profit margins. Given that, while part of the price increase will be passed on to consumers sellers will also cut prices.
To put it simply if they could charge higher prices without losing volume they already would because no one else can produce that drug so there is no competition to keep prices down.
Which is why they are already charge the price that maximises their profits. If they charged more the increased profit per unit would be more than offset by lower sales.
A good diagram of supply and demand with monopoly pricing power us the easiest way to explain this. I cannot find a good one online that shows the effect of tariffs though. In essence its worth losing some profit per unit to avoid losing too many sales.
To keep a military base in a country you either need to be allowed to do so, or you have to do so by force, by occupying the country.
Occupation is doable, but very costly. The US did it recently in Afghanistan (which is barely a functioning country itself).
So yeah, it keeping military bases abroad via occupation is doable for some time, but not very feasible. It is more realistic to have a system of allied countries.
It's sort of a meme how people in the US imagine all middle eastern countries to be a bunch of mud huts in the world's largest gravel quarry.
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