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Woolie Wool posted:Who gets to decide which organizations are nations entitled to nuclear weapons? Does Kurdistan get a nuke? What about Ngorno-Karabakh? Or, for that matter, ISIS? Whoever can get enough capital together to do the science themselves. Bootstraps. Buying and selling warheads is cheating (Ahem KSA/Pakistan)
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May 12, 2016 05:12
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That pretty much means nobody except for current nuclear powers and developed countries who already enjoy the US nuclear umbrella.
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May 12, 2016 05:18
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Woolie Wool posted:That pretty much means nobody except for current nuclear powers and developed countries who already enjoy the US nuclear umbrella. And that's the way it should be.
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May 12, 2016 10:13
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Yeah the genie has been out of the bottle for awhile. If the next president really cares about Mideast peace they will be getting everyone to declare arsenals and share power technology.
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May 12, 2016 12:12
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gobbagool posted:So wait, what are you arguing? That it's ok for Iran to fight for their interests, but not ok for the US to do so? That Iran is going to fight for Iranian interests the same way the US is going to fight for US interests, that they're not particularly likely to help the US with US interests when they think that US interests include actively demolishing Iranian interests, and that they are likely to take it as a sign of hostility when we hypocritically criticize them for doing many of the same things we did just last decade! The US has no room whatsoever to criticize Iranian policy in Iraq.
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May 12, 2016 14:30
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I'm note sure what anyone is arguing. I think the point both sides(?) are skipping over is that the Iran deal - and the sanctions that preceded it - were specifically about halting any Iranian advancement towards a nuclear weapon. Regardless of what you think about Iran's regime, once you have reached a satisfactory agreement on that nuclear programme - and all the world powers consider the Iran deal more than satisfactory on that - you cannot keep the nuclear related sanctions in place.
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May 12, 2016 17:13
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Volkerball posted:
Cultivating impotent, corrupt and poorly governed regimes has consistently backfired and produced a massive humanitarian crisis in the region while encouraging the rise of Islamist gangs. The current Iranian regime wouldn't exist if the United States and Britain hadn't overthrown Mosaddegh in 1953. For that matter, much of Iran's regional influence comes from the power vacuum left by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Fifty years ago the middle east seemed to be moving toward a secular kind of development oriented socialism that was threatening to the interests of western companies but which would not have been difficult to accommodate politically. However, the US government, adopting a perspective very similar to the one you advocate, decided to treat any semi-competent Arab regime as an enemy. Decades later the US has proven itself far more comfortable in allying with Islamist gangs, drug runners and warlords. This often serves America's short term interests by preventing any credible challenges to US hegemony but it has continuously made the region less stable and prosperous, so every time the Americans intervene they just generate the conditions for more and even worse interventions in the future. Obviously America didn't have to import lovely ideas to the middle east. Tribalism and fundamentalism have been there for a long time. But the US has consistently allied with some of the worst groups in the region exactly because they would prefer incompetent fanatics or corrupt warlords to a decent government that might occasionally deviate from exactly what Washington wants. The worst part is that none of this is actually necessary, even from a realpolitik standpoint. America isn't anything like China or Russia, who are riven by domestic problems and surrounded by foreign enemies, or France or Britain, which are comparatively tiny and weak once you take away their empires. The United States essentially has an entire continent to itself and the most expansive and dynamic economy imaginable. Americans could continue to enjoy a very high standard of living even if they didn't have a global military empire forcing the rest of the world into America's economic and political orbit. It really is one of the great wasted opportunities of history that you assholes have thrown away all the potential of your revolution and decided to just be a lazier, fatter, stupider and crasser version of the British Empire.
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May 18, 2016 21:53
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 at describing Baathist/Arab socialist regimes as "semi-competent"
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May 18, 2016 22:04
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Competence is relative. Having secular governments attempting to focus on nation building and infrastructure is a hell of a lot better than being ruled over by insane religious death cults.
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May 18, 2016 22:16
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FYI, the current Iranian regime hates Mossadegh. Khomeini said he was a dog that they put glasses on and named Ayatollah. The clerical revolution was irrelevant to who was in power, as neither the Shah nor Mossadegh were heads of government based around a clerical system. You only think otherwise because you are extremely biased, and you have some work to do to find the proper amount of anti-American sentiment. Right now, you are relying on your conspiratorial "source of literally every problem that has ever happened" view of the US, and working out from that as a starting point. It's not a good platform for accurate analysis. Helsing posted:secular governments attempting to focus on nation building and infrastructure Yeah, the Middle East has sure been loaded with these, let me tell you. If only the wicked West hadn't toppled them all or something, man. *rips bong*
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May 18, 2016 23:22
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Helsing posted:Competence is relative. Having secular governments attempting to focus on nation building and infrastructure is a hell of a lot better than being ruled over by insane religious death cults. Arab socialist regimes spent most of their time trying and failing to drive the Jews into the sea and murdering domestic dissidents / engaging in circular coups and purges. Good infrastructure builders they were not icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 23:38 on May 18, 2016 |
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May 18, 2016 23:26
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They were secular governments trying to develop national independence. That is a huge accomplishment compared to what came before and for that matter it often looks better than what replaced it. Given the way in which the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the way that the British and French managed the region during the interwar years it'd be unrealistic to expect anything we in North America would recognize as "good governance" to emerge in the short term. The point is that by historical standards the fact that these regimes weren't Islamist militias or Islamist kingdoms should have been encouraged rather than treated as a major regional problem. You could also completely disagree with everything I've said about these regimes and it wouldn't substantively change the fact that America's interventions in the region haven't been good for the region, and have also damaged global stability in ways that no sane American should celebrate. Making Saudi Arabia a wealthy and powerful modern country that uses its oil wealth to sway the elections of other nations isn't some kind of brilliant foreign policy coup: it's a disaster for which the USA deserves a fair degree of credit. There are similar stories throughout the middle east. So go ahead and keep pointing out the obvious, that these regimes were corrupt and often incompetent, but that just demonstrates how the USA's interference helped take a war torn region and then accentuate all the worst elements of it even further. And then congratulate yourself for having the mature and adult perspective in which American foreign policy can never fail but only ever be failed. Volkerball posted:FYI, the current Iranian regime hates Mossadegh. Khomeini said he was a dog that they put glasses on and named Ayatollah. The clerical revolution was irrelevant to who was in power, as neither the Shah nor Mossadegh were heads of government based around a clerical system. You only think otherwise because you are extremely biased, and you have some work to do to find the proper amount of anti-American sentiment. Right now, you are relying on your conspiratorial "source of literally every problem that has ever happened" view of the US, and working out from that as a starting point. It's not a good platform for accurate analysis. I'm sorry, I mistook you for someone who would give intelligent replies. I wasn't expecting to disagree but I also was expecting a slightly more thoughtful and intelligent response. If you're going to completely ignore what I said then why are you even bothering to reply at all? Helsing posted:
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May 19, 2016 00:01
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Helsing posted:They were secular governments trying to develop national independence. That is a huge accomplishment compared to what came before and for that matter it often looks better than what replaced it. Given the way in which the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the way that the British and French managed the region during the interwar years it'd be unrealistic to expect anything we in North America would recognize as "good governance" to emerge in the short term. The point is that by historical standards the fact that these regimes weren't Islamist militias or Islamist kingdoms should have been encouraged rather than treated as a major regional problem. Wow someone's sure defensive about his bad post
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May 19, 2016 01:35
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Hasn't Iran, through the Non-Aligned Movement, been arguing for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East?
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May 19, 2016 02:06
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Volkerball posted:FYI, the current Iranian regime hates Mossadegh. Khomeini said he was a dog that they put glasses on and named Ayatollah. The clerical revolution was irrelevant to who was in power, as neither the Shah nor Mossadegh were heads of government based around a clerical system. You only think otherwise because you are extremely biased, and you have some work to do to find the proper amount of anti-American sentiment. Right now, you are relying on your conspiratorial "source of literally every problem that has ever happened" view of the US, and working out from that as a starting point. It's not a good platform for accurate analysis. The Iranian populace probably wouldn't have supported and participated in the revolution if a popularly-elected leader they liked was in charge, rather than an unpopular dictator who had been repeatedly forced upon them by foreign powers.
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May 19, 2016 16:03
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Volkerball posted:FYI, the current Iranian regime hates Mossadegh. Khomeini said he was a dog that they put glasses on and named Ayatollah. The clerical revolution was irrelevant to who was in power, as neither the Shah nor Mossadegh were heads of government based around a clerical system. You only think otherwise because you are extremely biased, and you have some work to do to find the proper amount of anti-American sentiment. Right now, you are relying on your conspiratorial "source of literally every problem that has ever happened" view of the US, and working out from that as a starting point. It's not a good platform for accurate analysis.
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May 19, 2016 21:14
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gobbagool posted:Wow someone's sure defensive about his bad post It's cute that you feel compelled to keep coming back to this thread but clearly have nothing to say, so you just kind of flail around and get indignant that there are people in the world who say things that you don't like.
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May 19, 2016 21:20
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