Quote: (08-27-2015 07:49 PM)Geomann180 Wrote:
Quote: (08-27-2015 06:35 PM)scorpion Wrote:
That day is coming quickly. We will live to see it. Civil war is coming to Europe. The day is too far gone, the crimes far too extensive, the betrayal far too bitter for this to end in anything but bloodshed. The only question is when and what the spark will be that ignites the massive powder keg Europe is sitting on.
![[Image: Seen%20this%20before_zpsywy6gmpm.png]](http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa26/teoconnell/Seen%20this%20before_zpsywy6gmpm.png)
The tweet and the man behind it; Ace.
G
That said, the difference this time round will be that the US will likely stay the fuck out of it.
People forget that the US as a nation had roughly zero fucks to give about Europe's issues ahead of both WW1 and WW2. If anything they were more isolationist ahead of WW2 in that they refused to put troops on the line until they were bombed into it.
The only reason the US put boots on the ground in Europe was because Hitler declared war on the United States at the same time as Japan. Admittedly FDR was already supplying a shitload of arms and materiel by that point -- Lend Lease was signed in March 1941 -- but until Pearl Harbor the US was still heavily isolationist, although it had been slowly moving from a stance of neutrality as people became used to the idea of arming others but not fighting themselves.
Let me underline I am not criticising the US in those instances. Being in a country that's an ally of the US and thus a beneficiary of the US's nuclear umbrella, I would certainly prefer the US to be around as the global policeman, mainly because
(a) one is needed and
(b) every other alternative to the US is
(1) basically the US anyway (see: NATO)
(2) corrupt (see: India) or
(3) fucking evil (see: China) as demonstrated by its actions against its own people and its support of an openly dictatorial and oppressive regime (see: North Korea).
But a country does also have a right to decide its stance on foreign policy, just as much as it has a right to control its borders. Were conservatives to take back over the White House, I think you would see the US go isolationist again, especially if Europe's constituent nations remain hellbent on socialist armaggeddon while the US swings right.
This time round it would not be a simple clash of nation against nation which would make it easier for the US to intervene. As ScorpMan points out, it'll be civil war within countries. The UN will be hamstrung because someone on the Security Council will veto intervention and/or because the UN still hasn't got its shit quite in order to give it power to fuck around within sovereign nations as yet. Not to mention that, as said, the UN hasn't got an army. Generally it asks the US to spill blood on its behalf.
Appeals to humanitarian concerns will not sway that position, either, anymore than humanitarian concerns in favour of the Jews got any nation off its ass to deal with Germany. ISIS has been committing acts on par with the most barbarous medieval regimes imaginable, on a par with if not beyond what Nazi Germany was doing, and I don't see any middle Eastern Overlord or Anvil to deal with them anytime soon -- absent vaporising any ISIS force that comes within five miles of Israel's border and/or a country that's hosting US bases.
Economic globalisation, with the argument that "Nobody will start a war because everybody loses out monetarily", won't stop it either. The periods ahead of WW1 and similar previous continent-spanning wars were also heavily interlocked economically; the post-WW2 era is not the first era of globalisation and economic cooperation the world has ever seen. I can see no compelling reason why it would stop another war given those concerns. But I do think the US is likely to sit this one out, when and if it happens -- absent Putin rolling tanks over the Polish border, in which case all fucking bets are off.
Remissas, discite, vivet.
God save us from people who mean well. -storm