This period of peace in Western Europe is pretty special and I would like to keep it that way, thx
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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This period of war in Eastern Europe is pretty shit and I would like Western Europe to take it more seriously, thx
Don't worry, western Europe is doing its thing. It's electing fascists like Putin to create even more such wars. It's the preferred alternative to Socialism for neoliberals, conservatives and social-democrats anyway
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That's because the EU was created with the purpose of making an interconnected market where going to war is simply way too costly.
As the other commenter said, there is a war in Europe though.
Ah but don't forget, we in the UK left the EU. Bo Jo already considered invading the Netherlands once.
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This period of peace in Western Europe
France: "We haven't gone to war with Germany in decades!"
Me: "What about Libya?"
France: ...
Me: "Algeria? Argentina? Rwanda? The Ivory Coast? Somalia? Chad? Basque Country? Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia?"
France: sound of FAMAS F1 cocking
Achtually the french army doesn't use FAMAS anymore and they replaced them with german made HK416.
Not gonna argue about the rest though
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American students every couple weeks
American Economics Professor: "We pulled ourselves out of the Great Depression by entering WW2"
American Economics Student: "I can't afford my car payment and my rent just doubled. When can we re-invade the South Pacific?"
And nothing to do with those pesky socialist reforms of the new deal. No this social reforms ruined everything! Must kill for equity!
In fairness, if you get under the hood of the New Deal benefits, they relieved a lot of immediate suffering and mobilized a workforce that had been functionally abandoned by the private sector.
But they didn't "grow the economy" in the same way as the enormous investment in the Military Industrial Complex achieved. The Citizens Conservation Corps and the Social Security Administration didn't create the kind of high paying engineering and manufacturing jobs that state demand for thousands of new tanks and ships achieved.
WW2 full mobilization of the economy wasn't just taking in the slack of a depressed market. It was a command economy in all but name, dictating every aspect of the industrial chain, from extraction to expenditure to recovery and recycling.
The tragedy of WW2 is that we could only permit this kind of logistical achievement for the purpose of joining a bloodbath in Europe, North Africa, and East Asia. As soon as Roosevelt passed, Truman began reprivatizing the economy as quickly as possible.
Yeah that's fair. But the works and practice in mobilizing the workforce in the new deal played a big part in the US having industrial capability prior to WWII. Not mentioning other logistics, the power grid improvement alone may have made the difference in the war effort even being possible for the US. After the war private industry continued to benefit from cheap energy coming from those same projects. Hell if there's a miuntain range in your state you're almost certainly getting some of your power from a hydro plant made in the 30's.
But the works and practice in mobilizing the workforce in the new deal played a big part in the US having industrial capability prior to WWII.
Hard to power the 1940s industrial economy without coal. And hard to generate coal without an electrification of the Tennessee Valley. Without a doubt.
Hell if there’s a miuntain range in your state you’re almost certainly getting some of your power from a hydro plant made in the 30’s.
Given his attitude towards public works, it's very funny that Hoover has the nation's largest dam named after him.
There's also the west coast. The damming of the Columbia, while a natural disaster, made the region viable for manufacture and ship building. In some ways it lead to the possibility for the tech industry as well for better or worse.
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Just europe?
Yes, we have decades between (direct involvement in) wars!!
We didn't even spend actual money on war stuff the last few decades.
But we sure are gonna do it now, we need to protect our drinking water (for the coming water wars) and update our firewalls (for the coming Skynet wars).
in the US we call that 9th grade
You misspelled "capitalists".
Everyone in Europe killing each other every generation predates capitalism. Capitalism did increase the scale though; after the fall of the western roman empire, we didn't see armies of that size until Napoleon managed to draft a million men in a country of 30 million.
Perhaps you would prefer "the ruling class"?
Lmfao, sorry (not sorry), I should have included feudalists too I guess, to avoid bootlicking pedants.. 🙄
The point stands - war is waged for profit by profiteers, not by random civilians trying to live their lives, always was, always will be.
One exception to it : fascists managed to convince people who can only lose stuff to a war that it's good for them too.
One exception to it : ~~fascists~~ capitalists managed to convince people who can only lose stuff to a war that it’s good for them too.
Fascism is capitalism in decay, there is no exception.
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don't worry, the soviets joined ww2 as well
Yep, and beat the Nazis.
If by "joined WW2", do you mean "got refused from any military alliances with England, France and Poland despite a decade of trying in an attempt to unify Europe against Hitler"? Or do you mean "getting invaded by the Nazis and losing 25+mn people in the process of eliminating Nazism from Europe"?
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The Purge.
The US constantly:
Yeah but at least we limit ours to small scale atrocities committed by civilians, and not all-out civil war. And proxy wars. And not-a-war-wars. And helping others with their own ~~wars~~ genocides.
Fuck. Nevermind I guess.
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