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Yep. American “wars” (imperialist interventions) aren’t about “winning” against an insurgency but are rather about destabilizing countries, reversing their development, destroying their surplus, forcing them to the negotiating table, and opening them up to foreign capital (particularly in the form of high interest loans, to put them in debt to the imperial core), while shoring up profits for the domestic military-industrial complex. Imperial core bourgeoisie are willing to indoctrinate and sacrifice young people in the prime of their life for the purposes of killing and subjugating working class people in the periphery.
The purpose is to fund the military industrial complex and keep communism at bay. The USA has been quite successful in this regard. But one can only delay the inevitable for so long. The overall tendency for profit to decline means that capitalism will end one day, one way or another.
Yeah, the title spells it out perfectly. The only other function for the eternal war is to serve as an distraction from internal problems (but that’s more of a bonus on top of the spending).
The US doesn’t lose wars. It either wins, or it quits because they’re unfair.
Vietnam was a tie
Google “who won the Vietnam War” and prepare for nuclear levels of copium.
Well the PAVN did win the war, but Vietnam was forced to abandon revolutionary society and enter the capitalist dominated world economy of privatization, free trade, debt, commodity/labor export, and resource extraction, so American capitalism did win in the end even if they lost the war. Not to mention the billions made for defense contractors.
Vietnam is a part of 15 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). This is opening markets like South Korea where, more than seven years after implementing the VKFTA, Vietnam has become the third largest mango supply market for S. Korea, reaching 1.7 thousand tons. This is equal to US$7.4 million.
As a result of the EVFTA that is now in place, Vietnam has also become the largest source of cashew nuts for the EU. In the first 10 months of 2022, Vietnam exported 98.97 thousand tons of cashews to European markets, worth US$699 million. This represents an increase of 9.8 percent over the same period in 2021.
[…] There are, however, a number of government incentives supporting the agricultural sector, as well as FTAs, that, though a challenge in many ways, are also opening up foreign markets to Vietnamese agricultural products.
Src: https://www.vietnam-briefing.com/news/vietnam-agricultural-products.html/
While foreign companies are not allowed to directly own land in Vietnam (they must pay rent) it seems there’s a lot of foreign participation in the agricultural center (cited from the same article):
Three firms that have been relatively successful in the Vietnamese market are Cargill, Olam, and the Louis Dreyfus Company
Now as expected these “free trade” agreements and foreign corps contribute to the exploitation of workers, including children:
The last official survey to assess child labour in Vietnam was undertaken in 2018 with the Second National Child Labour Survey. The survey found that more than 1 million children aged between 5-17 were engaged in child labour and it is estimated that over 50 percent of those children were working in the agricultural, forestry, and fishery sectors
[…] As part of the assessment, we spoke to a range of people involved in the pepper harvest and visited the plantations first-hand. During this trip we met Y.D.A, an 11-year-old boy from an ethnic minority group who was working on the plantations with his parents and had never been to school. In many ways, Y.D.A. became a symbol of the unknown numbers of children in rural Vietnam who too were out of school due to poverty, working and making “invisible” contributions to an international company’s supply chain.
So yeah let’s stop pretending the world situation is still 1976, vietnam is a still imperialised country with a long way to go in the process of national soverignty, anti imperialism, workers’ rights, education, and socialism.
E; Just had a further thought that the Vietnamese victory in their wars of liberation is more comparable to the British leaving India than say, the establishment of USSR
I was mostly making a reference to a fish called wanda where they get into arguing about that with the
in the backgroundTotally agree otherwise though, and it really puts the lie to the entire domino theory in hindsight.
Lmao at the burgers doing copium in the comments
This is stupid. Military spending is outrageous but this article is plain stupid.
What does “real war” mean after WWII? Does that mean total war? That means using nukes.
Maybe the fact that the US hasn’t fought a real war by this article’s “standard” is the exact proof that it does work.
Korea, loss despite dropping more ordinance than WW2, destroying every structure in the country and killing 1 in 5 of the entire population
Vietnam, total loss
Afghanistan, total loss
Ukraine, losing to Yeltsin Jr.
Who did these wars benefit?
Ukraine? We’re not fighting in Ukraine ffs. Losing? The jury is still out on that. If Russia is “winning” it looks an awful lot like losing to me.
Anyway…
Really all the wars are beneficial to the rich and esp the military industrial complex. I hope we all know that.
Invading Afghanistan was colossally stupid (from a geopolitical standpoint) and I said it would be a disaster as the sabers started rattling.
Vietnam and Korea… don’t know much… I kind of assume it was red scare bullshit gone off the rails. Idk. Welcome to be schooled on that.
Listen to Blowback they got the education you need on Korea and Afghanistan, most recently.
Ukraine? We’re not fighting in Ukraine ffs. Losing? The jury is still out on that. If Russia is “winning” it looks an awful lot like losing to me.
Ukraine’s Western Sponsors Running Out of Ammo & Out of Time
British Challenger Tank Destroyed in Ukraine + Heavy Losses Amid Failing Offensive
US Considers ATACMS as Ukraine’s Offensive Struggles + Problems to ComeThe jury isn’t out on anything. Ukraine is finished, and NATO is running on fumes to supply it.
What in the world are you on about here? Present your case on why “it looks an awful lot like losing to me”.
What’s stupid about it? You haven’t actually said anything. Which specific part do you disagree with? The consistently losing at everything part? Or are you really just quibbling over the definition of war?
What was the last time the US formally declared war?
Am I missing something? It looks like the US hasn’t declared a war since ww2. Are you agreeing with them?
Even on its own terms, the claim is wrong. We very clearly won the First Gulf War. We won in Kosovo. We flattened Grenada and Panama like pancakes. We won the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan easily, and dominated these countries for decades before the sheer cost of occupying such a remote territory ultimately removed us. We have occupied South Korea uncontested for 70 years and reduced North Korea to a hermit kingdom.
We pretty unequivocally won the Cold War.
The problem with all this “winning” is that it has come at the expense of our economic foundations. Or academic sector is crumbling. Our health care sector is three insurance companies in a lab coat. Our transportation and energy infrastructure is 50 years out of date. All that so we can throw trillions into a bloody mess on the frontier that we get to pretend means we’re a Superpower.
We won the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan easily,
And what happened after the invasions?
We hung out, playing duck hunt with any “military age male” out of diapers for the next twenty years.
out of diapers
rather optimistic qualifier
We, the people, did not win. The federal government of the United States at the behest of the interests of Capital won.
Living in the imperial core, eating the imperial slop, but claiming we’ve got no interest in the imperial frontier…
That opium didn’t import itself
You criticize society yet you live in it
level take there.This isn’t criticism. You’re suggesting “the people did not win” when Americans absolutely enjoy material benefits from our relationship with our satraps.
Very different to say “I criticize how my electronics and energy are produced” and to say “I just don’t see any benefit in our relationship to cheap silicon chips and fossil fuels”. Again, that opium didn’t import itself.
This is criticism. The whatever “material benefits” the American working class “enjoy” comes at the overwhelming expense of the fruits of their surplus labor value that they are not entitled to to be used in exploiting the “free” markets of other nations for their resources at the most minimal costs and in turn taking and transforming those commodities into finished commodities to sell back to the workers in the exploiter countries at artificially inflated prices in order to scrape back the financial losses that are paid out to labor in the form of their paltry wages that barely sustain their existence enough to reproduce the cycle.
Capital very clearly won the First Gulf War. They won in Kosovo. They flattened Grenada and Panama like pancakes. They won the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan easily, and dominated these countries for decades before the sheer cost of occupying such a remote territory ultimately outweighed the profits. They have occupied South Korea uncontested for 70 years and reduced North Korea to a hermit kingdom.
Capital pretty unequivocally won the Cold War.
In the end of this vicious cycle, the only winners are the capitalists in their fetishistic pursuit of wealth.
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the surplus labor of the US worker was funnelled directly into defense contractors and then lit on fir
I’m a Houstonian and I watched this city’s economy expand significantly during the war’s execution.
I know people who personally profited from the Pentagon’s spending glut. Haliburton HQ is a short drive from my house and one could argue my mortgage payment on a postage stamp property reflects the enormous real estate price inflation resulting from all that federal money flooding into the region.
Nevermind what Iraq did for the cost of energy, which directly benefits my city’s native industry.
Iraq was, in a certain international geopolitical Sense, a labor disciplining war. It guaranteed that energy profits would continue to flow into the West.
One could argue this fight with Russia is a similar exercise in disciplining a rival energy exporter.
in addition to the takes on your use of “we” language, i’d like to press on whether what was done to grenada and panama were “real wars”
your use of “we” language
I’m an American. These sins are on my shoulders as much as anyone else’s.
what was done to grenada and panama were “real wars”
They’re as real as any other mass mobilization of a national killing machine.
I’m an American. These sins are on my shoulders as much as anyone else’s.
oh so you’re a congressman? or a boot? or a “defense” executive? don’t identify with the imperial machine, especially if you didn’t ask for any of its crimes or the maintenance of the empire.
real wars
i guess you also think the rodney king beating was a fistfight? the addition of “real” means OP is trying to imply extra qualification.
Even on its own terms, the claim is wrong. We very clearly won the First Gulf War. We won in Kosovo. We flattened Grenada and Panama like pancakes.
Why didn’t you include Libya?
So many wars, that one slipped my mind
People tend to consider war a “real one” when your country is attacked and you respond, not when a small island is doing something popular with the citizens but you dislike, so you go and drop herbicide on their forests and brag about massacring 20% of the country.
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I think they mean a large scale military conflict with an outcome that can be spun in such a way that the American people can feel good about it. A serious propaganda victory. I think the first gulf war was the last one of those they had
Dumb tankie. Don’t you know we killed 700 million Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghans, and Libyans? You’re lucky we didn’t kill every last woman and child, you stupid genocide loving freaks
You know how in thr producers they found it was more profitable to do the job poorly? That is everything in america
This is stupid. Military spending is outrageous but this article is plain stupid.
What does “real war” mean after WWII? Does that mean total war? That means using nukes.
Maybe the fact that the US hasn’t fought a real war by this article’s “standard” is the exact proof that it does work.
It’s a bad standard and makes the US look kind of bumbling and incompetent. In reality the US has used its military capacity to participate in and bankroll countless undeclared dirty wars, violent anti-democratic coups, and to facilitate violent far-right terrorism as well as drug and human trafficking.
Most of these conflicts are excluded from American curricula and the ones that are included are largely just sob storied for the few thousand dead Americans with maybe a sentence or two for their millions of victims.
