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This is looney toons logic. The united states militarily completely dominated Afghanistan. The thing we failed at was nation building after easily winning the war. It'd be comparable if the Russian Tanks really did take over all of Ukraine in a couple weeks but there was still guerilla warfare ongoing.
Right so it's ambiguous.
Sorry, I wasn't asking where the military went, I was asking where the title went as in what it bought us. You said "But even if the US is still the world's only superpower, that title went a lot further in the 90s.", I'm asking what it bought us in the 90s that we aren't getting today. What material impact does it have on Americans that would justify a feeling of decline? We're going back and forth on trying to measure whether our military might has declined and I'm just trying to determine why anyone should care that much. Care to the point I would like to point out, that we might as well just have one of our two political parties taken over by communists.
This is a relevant prediction of a future possible decline. But I'm to believe we've been declining, again to the point where one of our major political parties might as well be taken over by communists. Where is the decline caused by a relatively less dominant military than we enjoyed in the early 90s?
I just don't really think this is a useful lens to investigate populism. It's like asking who should be managing the houses finances, the dogs or the parents and then litigating all the poor financial decisions that the parents have made. We could discuss them, for instance I think your read on the sub prime crash as being downstream of banking deregulation is overly simplified. But the dog being in charge of the financials wasn't going to divert it, like what possible empowered populist pathway averts the sub prime crisis? You think populists would have been in favor of declining a lot more home loans?
Left populists would have declared being worried about hijackers flying a plane into the world trade centers as baseless islamophobia and anyways we'd deserve it if it happened because of our support for Israel. Right populists might have stopped it but because they'd not have allowed foreigners to come within a 100 miles of the mainland or maybe they'd declare the FAA a tyranny against the 2nd amendment and the terrorists would have been totally within their rights to own private jet fights without any need to hijack.
I kid, a bit, but I really don't think the existence of flawed governance justifies the doomer narrative or support populist alternatives. Was pre-90s governance really not error prone? I can think of quite a few boondoggles.
I mean what are you trying to do then?
I agree, we shouldn't use it. Instead, we should look at tangible things (like readiness and force numbers) and statements from subject matter experts, with the cautious understanding of the significant blind spots in both areas. Those tell us that Russia is stronger now than it was in the early 2000s.
Besides America ego, because a less powerful United States is subject to greater use of coercive force by its adversaries. This results in things like, for instance, supply chain shortages and increasing oil costs when American adversaries attempt to restrict travel in international waterways (although the American military was never omnipotent, of course.)
I would like to discuss it! I agree that it's simplified. I'd love to learn more about it.
Well, what I concretely said was
so presumably I don't think that, necessarily.
If we're not going to litigate all the poor decisions our leaders have made, we should scrap democracy and save ourselves the time and energy.
I agree. I think those were forgiven and/or covered up in part because the West was in an supposedly existential struggle with Communism. The sins of the governance of the 1990s was unique in that it squandered the peace dividend.
Well, I chimed in because I thought it was possible to discuss the errors of the gatekeepers without getting bogged down in partisan nonsense. And I think we've mostly avoided the partisan nonsense here, although we've also avoided discussing the errors of the gatekeepers.
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