we previously had this thread but it was lost in a sitewide crash. kind of fortuitous, given all the new people!
anyways, i’m interested in how you describe yourself politically but also why you do so, and/or how you came to the beliefs that you did. be as brief or lengthy as you want in answering that.
additionally, as a preface: i would like this to be a generally non-judgemental thread and i think this community is more than capable of that, so please respect that idea.[1] in general, you are not obliged to justify to myself or anyone else why you believe what you do.
exceptions, obviously, go for bigotry or intolerant beliefs that would be otherwise incompatible with the community’s ethos. bluntly if you’re a transphobe or something like that this is not the community for you. ↩︎
Perhaps more than just the US military. A strong international coalition is needed that seeks to preserve the rules-based international order that was established in the aftermath of World War II. That being that countries can’t just invade other countries without expecting severe consequences. Ideally the UN would fill this role but I think it might be up to NATO and its non-NATO allied states. We are in a time where democracies are at odds with authoritarian regimes, and I feel like the only way we can prevent dictator-driven wars is to have an international military coalition that is strong enough to make them think that attacking other nations is a bad idea.
Walk softly and carry a big stick. Fleet in Being doctrine. A big paddle that has the word “No” on it. You get the picture.
I could get behind MEGA-NATO for exactly the reasons you described. I don’t know the authority structures of NATO well enough to say whether we really could turn it into a world police like we need, but assuming it’s given the flexibility to respond to belligerence while being on a short enough committee-leash to prevent it from becoming the defacto military of the US or some other powerhouse, then yeah, I’m all for it.
Is that achievable? Ehhhh… I don’t think it is right now. I think in order to prevent MEGA-NATO from just being the left arm of the current economic powerhouse, we essentially just need to not have one obvious powerhouse. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen though, which leads me back to just acceptingly defaulting to Team America World Police.
I prefer the name coined in /r/NonCredibleDefense for this mega NATO:
Pacific-Oceanic Trans-Atlantic Treaty Organization
Or POTATO for short 🥔