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How close call was the Russian civil war? Did the whites have a realistic chance of winning? And what kind of effect did the intervention of foreign powers have on the war? I know that it was a significant reason for Soviet paranoia of its neighbours in later years. Lobster God posted:They progressed faster than expected (they were not initially expected to be capable of significant operations until 1920), but still played a subsidiary role in the final phases of the conflict. poo poo, even thinking WW1 lasting into 1920's makes me shudder.
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Jul 22, 2010 23:41
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Oxford Comma posted:SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP! WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? TAXATION IS SLAVERY! is the other side of the argument. Coming from a country that has a mandatory conscription and civil service it is no surprise that more and more arguments against it are coming from libertarian circles. It is all about how you see the relationship between individul and society. In theory I don't have anything against it. Part of building and maintaining a functioning society is sharing the risks and working towards common goals. Welfare state is a good example of this, where with high taxes and governmental interventions we try to level the playing field within the society and try to maintain sufficient social safety nets and solidarity. I see that the national service is just a logical continuation of this thought, sharing the risks and ensuring the protection of society against outside threaths. This is especially important for small neutral countries that really don't have any other way of organizing sufficient and cost-effective defence. Now, this doesn't mean that the system is perfect or it isn't in need of reforms. For example in Finland it is debatable how effective a reserve of 350 000 personel with the current military budget really is. Modern military technology is expensive and there is only so much you can do in modern battlefield with soldiers who for example have limited ability to operate in night time. So the size of reserve is most likely going to be reduced, as is the number of biannual conscripts. At the same time I would like to see reforms in civil service, instead of just offering free labour there should be more emphasis on civil crisis managment, like disaster relief etc.
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Nov 27, 2011 17:35
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Fangz posted:You can go a lot further. You can ask whether if the atom bombings *were* justified, would it not be the case that strategic bombings were therefore always justified? So, what about Vietnam? German bombing of Britain? 9/11? Yeah this is my biggest problem with defending the use of nuclear weapons as a moral choice because it legitimizes targeting civilians as a valid and moral strategy. Many wars could be less costly if other side just kills 200 000 civilians keeping the rest hostage and forces surrender that way. And I even somewhat agree with the rationale how bombs were necessary or understandable in the context of the time. But you see much less similar defence of bombing campaigns against Germany not to mention bombings against allied side like blitzes in London or Rotterdam when the same strategical argument could be made in those cases. Just because the enemy states were much much worse and not bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have perhaps led to more costly invasion, it doesn't mean that the bombings themselves weren't crimes against humanity (not in a legal sense but in a moral sense). Many atrocities in history were deemed necessary and moral in the offenders mind. The atomic bombings shouldn't be celebrated or glorified and Paul Tibbets shouldn't take it as an insult when they aren't. Glah fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Aug 17, 2013 |
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Aug 17, 2013 09:03
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