this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
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I wonder what would happen if we didn't have a military at all
but think of the stock market!
This is what I look like when listening to the new Gorillaz album.
What kind of fantasy world are you living in?
Ah, I see. So when the U.S. bombs another country, it's genocide. But if someone does it to the U.S. it's a good thing? Got it.
The US Empire is an empire, countries opposing the US Empire are presently not imperialist. You're comparing them by abstracting the concept of bombing outside of the necessary context it exists in, ie you're using metaphysics to analyze reality.
Depends on your definition. The U.S. fits the definition of "Informal Empire" pretty well, but it's definitely not an old school empire like Rome or Britain
Imperialism isn't something that exists as a static concept, but functions differently depending on the dominant mode of production. The US Empire absolutely fits the Marxist understanding of imperialism as a specific stage of late-monopoly capitalism.
Imperialism as a concept predates Marxism and isn’t reducible to Lenin’s model. We can debate which framework is more useful, but pretending there’s only one definition isn’t serious.
The processes of earlier forms of imperialism predate Marxism, such as Roman imperialism. The analysis of capitalist imperialism, on the other hand, is most well-understood by how Lenin analyzed it with Marxism. Lenin wasn't invalidating earlier forms of imperialism, but analyzing the specific character of capitalist imperialism, the form that by far matters the most today.
Lenin’s framework is one influential analysis of capitalist imperialism. That doesn’t make it exhaustive. Modern geopolitics also includes state security competition, regional spheres of influence, and non-capitalist power projection.
Marxists have also continued to expand analysis of imperialism beyond Lenin. One such example is Cheng Enfu's analysis of neoimperialism, where imperialist countries have ralied behind a single dominant Empire, the US, rather than compete with each other (though this is falling apart now). Geopolitics isn't limited to imperialism, but imperialism is the principle contradiction driving development in the world today, that being the socialization of global labor struggling against the privatization of the profits made by global labor in the hands of the few in imperialist countries.
Calling imperialism the principal contradiction is a theoretical commitment, not an empirical conclusion. Other schools like realism or institutionalism would identify state security competition or balance-of-power dynamics as primary.
And what are the opposing tendencies in these contradictions?
In realism, the opposing tendencies are expansion of one state’s power and balancing by others to preserve sovereignty. In institutionalism, it’s integration versus fragmentation. Neither requires framing global politics as capital versus labor.
And yet both of these are largely driven by imperialism, as secondary contradictions of the single most important factor in the global economy.
We’re working from fundamentally different priors. I don’t think global politics reduces to a single economic contradiction. I’ll leave it there.
I don't believe it does either, though, just that one issue is primary.
Wont someone please consider the genociders??
I prefer that even more
We wouldn't see images like the Iranian girl's rucksack smeared with blood.
Good point. But let me ask you this:
Without a military or nuclear weapons, what is preventing other countries from taking advantage at the first chance they get?
Criticize the U.S. all you want. But the country is full of valuable resources that other countries want. Take away the U.S.'s ability to defend themselves and the risk of foreign nations taking advantage will spike dramatically. Nukes are basically the ultimate "don't even think about it" sign.
sorry full of valuable resources? what, corn? dataservers? pedophiles?
the U.S. is not some piggy bank waiting to be cracked. Realistically, the current US military exists to defend America from all the nations it's pissed off by invading them in the past. It's a self-fullfilling system.
I'm talking about big oil and gas production, food and farmland, massive agricultural output and the ability to export it at scale, freshwater and arable land (underappreciated, but increasingly strategic as climate stress rises elsewhere), minerals (some, not all).
And don't forget non natural resources the U.S. has like:
Capital markets: Deep, liquid markets that can fund governments and companies. Money is a resource; the U.S. is one of the main wells.
technology and IP: Advanced R&D, software, aerospace, biotech, semiconductors design, and the companies that sit on them.
Security alliances and military reach: Not a resource in nature, but it functions like one. i It shapes trade routes, deters threats, and sets terms.
The world's reserve currency system: Being able to transact, borrow, and settle trade in USD is a kind of meta-resource. Others want access to it more than they want a mine.
That bundle is why the U.S. stays permanently relevant, for better and worse.
Your conscience is projecting
If you have nukes and are the only sick fucks ever top use it why do you need to 'defend' yourself everywhere in the world unprovoked.
get fucked with your BS. You're parroting regime propaganda.
Even they at least became less hypocritical in naming it the Dep of War, not defense.
Maybe follow that lead if you want to be a little warcriminal imperialist bootlicker.
Every fucking day there's some fucker online that makes me despise that cancer country even more.
Absolute scum of the earth
They say ignorance is bliss. It must be nice to be as delusional as you and live in a peaceful hippy dippy little fantasy world.
Really don't reply to me, you cunts make me sick.
go kill yourself
Well, aren't you cheerful
blocking you cunt hope plenty of US degenerates and shitraeli scum die for years to come.
And that you're with them.
I'll gladly volunteer
I never specifically said "joining US military is bad", I said joining the military in general is a bad thing. And neither did I talk about nukes, which are the ultimate evil.
I also never demanded to remove the military capabilities of one country, leaving it open for other countries to attack. I never talked about these things, about balance of power, about mutually assured destruction and all these geostrategic aspects of military logic.
All I said was - if you are a person who joins your country's military, I despise you. Period. This is a statement I made completely disregarding all these other aspects you mention, and it is completely logically valid on its own.
Correct. You never demanded to remove the military capabilities of one country.
I said "I wonder what would happen if we didn't have a military", and you made a comment about the little girl's backpack. I followed up with a counter argument.
This is how conversations work.
This is also how they end.
because we wouldn't have the internet. the US military contributed significantly to the development of today's internet.
Would we have the Autobahn if Hitler hadn't built it?
probably with some time delay, the germans love a good race (/s)
apart from that, the military did some significant research into a lot of technology, including airplanes (and rockets), internet, nuclear energy.
You failed to get the point I was making. Just because the military is a driving factor to technological progress, doesn't mean it's a good thing all of a sudden. And all that progress could also have been made by science. Wernher von Braun didn't care who funded his research into rockets.
they can stick the entire internet up their ass if it's used to post idiotic exclamations like yours
What do you think the drones are for?
Thats the trick. If a country doesn't have a military and they have something like resources other countries want. The become puppets of the countries that have militaries. The exceptions are small countries that don't have enough of anything anyone wants for others to bother taking it. They don't tend to do so well usually.
It's a race to the bottom.
So what you're saying is... superpower nations shouldn't exist
but they do. And now it is just a game of brinksmanshit
Correct. If there is one, then others have to exist to balance them out. Only with none can we all exist without militaries. And that really should be a goal.
ironically the countries with more natural resources typically have lower quality of life. this is known as the resource curse phenomenon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
Yeah i'm sure it's a curse, and not centuries of colonialism, imperialism, uneven trade etc etc.
-Michael Parenti
The "resource curse" is just people trying to pretend imperialism isn't responsible. Norway has plenty of oil and they have a high quality of life, because nobody invaded them.
Plenty of these countries had leaders who wanted to use their resources to help the people, but the powers that be, most often the US, didn't want that. And so for example Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran, a peaceful, democratically elected progressive, was overthrown by the CIA, and he was replaced by a monarch who could be easily bribed and would use the oil to enrich himself. And when that monarch caved to domestic pressure and participated in an oil embargo, US support was withdrawn and he was overthrown and the current government came to power.
There's no "mystery" or "curse." It's just imperialism. The story generally goes that these resources were stolen by force during colonialism and remained in foreign hands after independence and the country still functions as a neocolony, leading to poverty and exploitation, or war and instability if they challenge it.
Very much so. So ewhere there is a balance of having enough to be a stable country, but not so much to draw attention. But it's a very small point to balance on.