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Chinese Huawei Takes on U.S. Telecom Market
ChipGuy writes "With funds on loan from the Chinese government, Chinese equipment giant, Huawei is undercutting big rivals like Cisco and Nortel, and is using money to buy its way into the U.S. market. Overseas in Europe and Asia it already has become a major force. There are parallels with auto industry and home appliances. It took a little while before prices became a determining factor and shifted growth away from North American vendors. Telecom will go through the same curve. Huawei is curently selling EVDO phones for about $130 and WCDMA phones about $250 which is about 30% than everyone else on the market. Huawei's agenda is pretty clear - get business and sales at any cost. And that means bad news for already struggling telecom industry."
Higher? Lower? Fucking idiots.
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
Sounds good. Cheeper is better.
30% less?
30% of?
30% more?
30% crappier?
Come on!
--sig fault--
Too bad the US is:
a) violating the WTO rules currently.
b) too addicted to Chinese money to fund Bush's spending splurge/tax cutting spree to really bring any meaningful grievances against China....
Am I the only one who sees how insane Bush's spending policies are? Maybe it's not the wisest idea to become dependant on a country whose primary objective seems to be to destroy us...but then again, this country did elect Bush...twice....
Monstar L
As some have noticed... There was a lack of one word "LOWER" in the post. Here: "Huawei is curently selling EVDO phones for about $130 and WCDMA phones about $250 which is about 30% LOWER than everyone else on the market.
Chinese Hawaii takes on U.S. Telecom Market?
Does this mean that the money the Pentagon saves by cutting basic research funding can be redirected to our poor struggling telecoms?
[o]_O
I don't recall the details about Mr. Gore, but Senator Kerry's spending plan involving wasting a lot more money than Bush.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I do not understand this form of economics. Why exactly is the Chinese government allowed to fund this company, is this not unfair to American and other countries corporations? Isn't this violating free-trade with China and Bush and Clinton both advocated?
'nuff said.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Damn communists! Undercutting big rivals, using money to buy their way into the U.S. market! Can't trust 'em!
You can't take the sky from me...
If you want to keep your country, quit offshore outsourcing, and quit purchasing foreign tech. Begin innovating again, quit taking the quick-and-easy development path, remember that "God is in the details."
Hey Corporate America: If America ceases to be the great land of opportunity as it once was, it is because you sold us out.
I have seen first hand the junk that is Huawei, most of it blatently (and poorly) copied from Ericsson.
At [carrier in S Asia] they failed for 3 weeks in a row to roll out one HLR only to barely succeed with thousands of CSR calls. But since they're cheap, the customer stuck with'm.
Can't wait for the junk to go turtle in the US.
--Good morning fellas; Hand me that thing; Boy, this work's hard; Guys, break's over.
.. when they end up having to deindex the RMB in order to clean up their banking structure..
s ia/03china.html
http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2263.html
Remember how the last Asian Crisis (tm) came about from lots of nonperforming loans of cheap money for phallic skyscrapers (among other things). Guess where the biggest concrete and steel dicks are these days? Shanghai, Chicom Hong Kong, and the coveted Taiwan ROC... I'm thinking Soros is chomping at the bit for the opportuninty to fuck China _and_ the US over in a spectacular fashion once the dike starts to crack...
Given that and recent reporting of labor shortages in Guangdong..
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/international/a
The next few years should be interesting indeed.
At any rate, there's enough dollars in China to support an interesting shopping spree. I'm thinking they'll buy GM after they declare bankrupcy, and use those brands plus Chinese labor (and, hopefully, American labor after the UAW is destroyed by bankrupcy renegotiation) to enter the US auto market.
Take a look at the rapid growth of Koren company Samsung in the global handset market. They came out of nowhere and now are in the top 3 of handset manufacturers along with established giants Nokia and Motorola.
Hyundai is also doing a great job undercutting other auto compaines with surprisingly decent cars at excellent prices. 5 years ago I would never have considered owning a Hyundai, now I think they're just as good or better than some manufacturers.
If you don't think China already has a major stronghold on the US, you haven't been to a Wal-Mart lately. It's a global market, like it or not.
FYI, Nortel, which is mentioned in the summary, is a Canadian company, not a US company. Canada != U.S.
- a competitor challenges them (offering new, better or cheaper services)
- They fail at getting government to subsidize them (they don't always fail though).
- They find that they can't negotiate or buy-off a limited truce with their new competitor.
At this point, if all of these money-backed attempts to ward off competition have failed they usually don't even bother looking internally at their own talent. They'll try buying up a third-party and use them as the signal that they're serious and starting to compete (whether they actually are or not).I'd prefer that my telecom bills weren't funnelling money out of the country to an internationally owned competitor. I'd prefer to support my friends who work as sysadmins of the local Bell's subcontracting agency (since being downsized from Bell employees). But my local Bell doesn't seem to even attempt to innovate unless it has a serious challenger. Despite the coming months of political dogma, I'm glad that a serious challenger is attempting to enter the American market.
Competition is good for consumers, and in the long run it is good for the industry as well. It's only bad news for the entrenched players.
If China wants to tax its citizens so that it can sell me cheap telecoms products, I'm not going to complain.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Great....westerners give communist China financial assistance...then they try to put our companies out of business. What the hell are we doing business with a communist country with such horrendous human rights violations?
China's ok...but Cuba's bad?
What's the difference? Who cares? Are we going to lose any US jobs (besides corporate management) from this? No.
...that the word Cliché is spelled with six letters.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I just can not understand why the American government is allowed to fund Boeing, General Dynamics, several oil companies, and Halliburton. Is this not unfair to American and other countries corporations?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Huawei Technologies, China's largest telecoms equipment maker, plans to set up a manufacturing unit in India in a bid to tap rising demand for communication gear in the country, a company official said on Thursday.
_ id=86255
http://www.financialexpress.com/print.php?content
Even if the slander against India were true, the software market is so much different than the chinese goods situation.
The difference? Software already IS dirt cheap. How much did you pay for Mozilla Firefox? How much is OpenOffice? How much is all that good stuff on sourceforge?....do you expect India to grab the market by PAYING us to use their software? That is the only way they can be cheaper than free.
Moving up a little in price, aren't those numerous $5.00 to $10.00 discount CDs of software found at so many stores already dirt cheap?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
... yeah, whatever...
I can understand your frustation, it's not hard. But come on, can you really be mad at the Chinese ("unfair") competition? They're essentially just doing what you taught them to do. Extreme capitalism backfiring?
The best of luck to you, though. I have no wish to see the US come crashing down.
As opposed to action, such as..... awarding most favored nation status and allowing China to join the WTO.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The outsourcers now take over the market. Congratulations to all CEOs who shifted jobs to other countries, it is not like that has happened before with the car industry. Japan also started as an outsourcing base for General Motors and others.
Does anyone remember what happened to the DRAM market tanked after Hynix had been recieving subsidies from the South Korean government? Basically, all major DRAM manufacturers (Samsung, Micron/Crucial, Fujitsu/Seimens, etc) suffered huge losses because of it and took a few years to recover. The point is that China is not the only state guilty of subsidizing a tech company. Hell, how long did the US gov't keep SGI on a respirator?
Of course, being a computer building geek at the time I had a lot of fun shoving enormous amounts of RAM in my system for under a hundred bucks. Maybe this whole Huawei thing will mean I can afford a good cell phone for less than $200 without signing up for some rediculously restrictive service plan.
It is not like sneakers became cheaper just because Nikey suddenly moved the work from the US to asia into non regulated low paid sweat shops. The prics stayed high, and Nikey took the difference to raise its earnings.
It's only bad news for the hardware side of telecom. The services side would like nothing better than cheap equipment that boosts adoption and use of telecom. The cheaper the infrastructure, the higher the profits in service and/or the greater the adoption of services if they become less expensive to roll out.
In some ways this becomes a battle between the best interests of the infrastructure makers (a small segment) and the infrastructure users (all the rest of the economy).
The long-term impact is far less clear, however. The effect of cheap Chinese goods will depend on how the U.S. economy uses the less-costly telecom gear. If we only use it to download ring-tones while standing in the unemployment line, then it will be bad. But if businesses find growth-generating new innovations in business processes, services, and products that make use of cheap telecom infrastructure, then it will be a good thing.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Huawei have had representatives sent to Ottawa, Canada to recruit Nortel Networks employees (existing and laid off) of Chinese origin. One of their requirements for hiring you was that you would bring some knowledge and material (eg. manuals, data etc) from Nortel over to Huawei. This is plain and simple thievery.
and lack of foresight, I think that we in the USA are in big trouble, real soon.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Is this the same Huawei that stole Cisco's software and sold it as their own? I guess that's one way to jump start your business.
At last! The discussion has degraded, as someone has used a lame insult for their opponent. Congratulations, pavlov, you beat to the punch the right-winger poised to whine about Slickwillie and the Clintonazis.
As for your weak point, if Senator Kerry would have won, there would still be the same spent on Iraq.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
From the summary: " There are parallels with auto industry and home appliances. It took a little while before prices became a determining factor and shifted growth away from North American vendors."
I thought the problem with American cars in the 70s was quality, not (just) price.
no taxation without representation!
It is nice that you say that Americans buy Chinese junk over American good stuff. But that is not true. Americans buy Chinese junk over American junk because it is cheaper and is the same damn stuff. America needs to go back to doing high quality goods at decent prices. It does not have to be the most profitable, just decent. We have spent the last 20 years pushing cheap ass stuff in the quest of outlandish profits. That has come at the expense of our futures. Well the future is showing up.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If the Chinese govt. is subsidising Huawei to undercut the competitors and be a loss leader wouldn't the US be able to invoke anti dumping laws or something similar ?
TechSutra
No troll, no racism.
Here's the first result for a google search for 'china' and 'dollar' on economist.com, an article on how China ought to un-peg the yuan and allow flexibility in the capital market.
Now, I'm an engineer, not an economist, so I've got no idea what will happen after the devaluation, but I'm pretty sure it will happen.
I think I need a new sig here.
So? This kind of low-skilled labour has a low value. It is not slavery. It is voluntary working for pay equivalent to the value of the work. Slavery means something.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Office and OS is hardly ever enough for businesses these days. They want CRM, they want ERP, they want SCM. And these things cost an arm, a leg and a newborn right now. Not because they're that expensive to produce, but because greedy stupid CEOs are pricing themselves out of reach of all but the richest companies.
Having said that, the code that I've seen come from India (our company does outsource strategically insignificant development) and I would never rely on anything that comes out of there. Worst of all, these fellas think they're the best programmers in the world. Copy & paste is OK, the most important thing is to meet the schedule and kiss their bosses ass.
I live in Argentina and I work for a major ADSL ISP. We used to have Cisco/Alcatel DSLAMs and DSL Modems but budget cuts made us switch to "Huawei". Huawei DSLAMs are an almost exact copy of Cisco's in terms of performance, but cost like 2 or 3 times less, and you can get a bulk of Huawei USB DSL Modems for a few dollars each (And then give it for free to new users). But, of course, there is no Huawei tech support (unless you can talk chinesse or are willing to wait a week for an automated response), you have to compile your own USB driver for the modem unless you want the internet user mess around with VPI, VCI and DSL encapsulation modes, and while this shouldn't concearn any skilled programmer, the result of compiling your own driver for a cheap modem, using limited testing and questionable source code that NEVER updates only brings problems for the end user (incompatibility with some Windows versions, NO linux or MAC support, etc).
How about the cotton, sugar and other farming subsidies USA provides its farmers at the expense of poor nations unable to compete and with little other export possibilties, thats not just putting people out of work, but starving them also. The EU also does the same, so anyone crying foul at the Chinese is laughable.
Laptop Reviews
Please mod this up. China is getting away with murder with their currency, which needs a serious revaluation.
Of course, they're also getting away with a more literal form of murder in their brutal factories and in Tibet, but that's another matter.
Apples and oranges. Everyone subsidizes powerful agric. groups. The difference is this is targetted to gain marketshare.
There is NO such think as Free Trade.
Here are views from different sides:
UAW report, from the left.
This report, from a fringe right-wing guy.
This report, from Jim Hightower, also on the left.
Cache of Bob Johnson campaign site, right-winger. Relevant quote: "in dealing with the slave labor camps in Red China, we have to rmember that about 5% of China is in slave labor camps, amounting to 50 million Chinese working"
Indian NGOs site. See part about Chinese slaves making footballs(soccer balls).
Chinese human rights group site
Another Laogai article
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Please click here for links to reports and information. Is 50 million a large slave workforce?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The same applies to US and European agriculture subsidies.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Right. As if the US government never gives subsidies (tax breaks, sweet-deal contracts, research grants, etc.) to corporations and public/private partnerships. Without trillions of dollars of US government support for semiconductors, computers, telecommunications, airplanes, and networking, the US would not be a big player in any of those fields today.
Not true, most of it is directly cloned from Cisco. ;)
The telecom/automotive/airline/etc/etc/etc industries are NOT struggling. last time i checked (about 10 seconds ago) these industries are BOOMING.
look around you. everyone has wheels/multiple cell phones/flies everywhere for the holidays/etc/etc.
the problem is that even though everyone (almost) on this planet esposes global markets and free competition, if -their- company ends up on the short end of the stick (mainly due to the upper management of the worst run of these companies collecting millions in compensation for lackluster performace), they cry to the government for a bailout. fuck that.
half the telecom/auto/airlines NEED TO GO OUT OF BUSINESS, and let the better run companies in these markets take over. simple as that.
A more reasonable comparison would be the support of US farmers with price supports and government loans to exporters, and how this undercuts farmers in the third world.
"I love his boyish charm, but I hate his childishness" - Leela
The government collects tax. Nothing else.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
> "With funds on loan from the Chinese government,
> Chinese equipment giant, [...] Huawei is
> curently selling EVDO phones for about $130 and
> WCDMA phones about $250 which is about 30% than
> everyone else on the market. [...] And that
> means bad news for already struggling telecom
> industry."
But *great* news for everyone who uses telecoms, since they're now able to buy formerly expensive kit at knock down prices, *subsidized by the Chinese State*.
If the Chinese State wants to pump money into the US economy, cool! all the companies who use telecoms (far, far more than those who provide telecomes) will have that much more money available to undertake work since they didn't have to spend it buying expensive telecoms kit - which means, over the whole of the economy, a whole bunch of new jobs.
--
Toby
And Reagan got the economy moving by spending a trillion or three dollars that we didn't have. We have to pay it back eventually don't we? Meanwhile the interest on it last year was 321 BILLION DOLLARS! That's how much was paid out! That money could have been spent in far better ways.
Behind the scenes China funds the U.S. debt by buyin g U.S. bonds. Alot of Asian countries do too. This may be why there is ZERO action against them.
Another reason is that MANY DIRTY U.S. companies now LIVE/work there for their CHEAP labor . Do these companies Lobby/buy out their local congressman. Sure as hell they do.
There is also some secret geo political shit going down we never hear about such as the Taiwan situation. There could be a deal for allowing China to dump as long as they don't invade Taiwan.
Hey, they're just in time to have their guts ripped out by IP telephony and software PBX's that run on cheap commodity computers, just like the rest of the market!
Cisco and Nortel, at least, have enormous markets in optical data circuit stuff and TCP/IP routing equipment to fall back on.
SoupIsGood Food
"I have a plan to balance the budget without increasing taxes (and I want your vote). Drastically reduce in size and scope the Military. Unfortunaly no mainstream candidates seem to be advocating this common sense solution but if something isn't done the military will destroy our beloved nation. Remember, the Soviet Union fell with a bank statement, not a napalm atack."
You are trying to utilize a security v. disarmament paradigm in a world that needs security right now. Disarmament only works if it is unilateral, and unfortunately we live in a world that has North Korea, Iran and Venezuela as entities willing to pursue their goals outside of the realm of diplomacy and economic leverage.
Welcome to the year 2005! Limited war and police action is the name of the game, and the U.S. military is frequently the only regional security vendor in many world markets.
You won't see anything but an increase in military funding in the next 10 years, and that's a good thing. Globalization needs strong security controls and safeguards. The U.S. military through its operating centers around the world provides that. The size, scope and nature of the U.S. military is changing. Because the U.S. needs them, the World needs them, and you need them.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
So you can't envision a future country where the means of production are owned by the government but there is representative democracy for the people instead of dictators and his inner circle?
Like for example if all city and country owned municipal water systems were instead owned by the country's government? Or municipal power, or telephones, or airlines?
The fact that there are currently municipal water and power systems providing cheaper services than the corporate competition is proof that privatization isn't always better. The very fact that corporations are in business to make a profit is part of the problem. In a not-for-profit municipal water or power system, there should still be rewards for good performance, but a million bucks to a CEO is money that could have stayed in people's pockets.
Now just expand the concept to other services and forms of production.
There's a good reason I said modified communism. It's because I don't like what Stalin did either. I'm impressed by Cuba's health care system, but having a dictator is not a good thing. Castro has plenty of faults and failings.
Looks like the first large-scale Huawei ADSL deployment will be in Australia:
d =Huawei+snags+Optus+deal/
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=11321&he
Optus will be deplying ADSL 2+ (24/3.5mbps) in 300 exchanges. Nice to see that the Aussies have granted competitive access to their copper. Too bad the fuckwits in New Zealand can't follow a good example.
You know how much resources it takes to keep those slaves in line? Not to mention the price of slop!
Capitalists will sell you the rope [with] which you will hang them[]
And the capitalists gleefully sold the USSR rope by the shipload.
And the USSR, while prattling that old saying, hung itself.
And the capitalists laughed all the way to the bank.
Then they came back and sold the people of the FORMER USSR all SORTS of stuff.
And bought stuff from them too.
And are still laughing.
Right along with the people of the former USSR.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I remember a friend of mine coming back from China talking about this company's routers. The IOS on it was identical to the Cisco IOS, bugs and all. So much so, there were stories of Huawei tech support reffering customers to Cisco Tech support until someone convinced Cisco to send someone out onsite and they found out it wasn't their equipment they were supporting.
I havn't followed it, but I imagine Cisco is trying to go through the Chinese legal system at the moment, and not having a great deal of success.
If all of this turns out to be true, and HuaWei isn't actually making any of their own software, they aren't going to get very far outside of China. Guess I'll have to poke around when my wife drags me back to visit the inlaws this summer.
The only people who will complain about this are Euro-American CEOs. If you are a worker, Chinese businesses that expand to the USA create just as many jobs are American businesses that expand to China.
The pie chart below is the government view of the budget. This is a distortion of how our income tax dollars are spent because it includes Trust Funds (e.g., Social Security),
"Trust Funds" don't exist. That money is part of the general budget, via sale and purchase of treasury bonds. It's moving money from one pocket to the other, then spending it, and claiming that it's in "savings".
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Probably true, but why? We need more security? So we can invade some more countries and then rebuild them at great expense? Sigh...
China bashing has become a slashdot tradition. Whenever we get a story that centers on this country at this site, regardless of whether that story is about progress (e.g. cracking md5, ip6 networks) or opression (e.g. web censorship,dissident jailing), there is a splash of generously moderated comments whose content is tainted with negative bias.
2 6&cid=12127913
Being appalled at censorship, for example, is a matter I agree with, as I suppose most visitors to this site are.
There are however comments such as these in this very thread
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1448
"...a country whose primary objective seems to be to destroy us..."
This is the most flagrant example of this bias, but it does not take much browsing at +3 or +4 to find more.
I will not waste my time refuting these silly, uninformed biases and comments. I just want to emphasize their existance for lurkers, whose knowledge may be shaped by such comments, and those who post, whose arrogance is reinforced by them. Arrogance (bias) is the end of wisdom.
Before you post such rubbish, please go read a variety of reliable and credible sources about the country. Then, you will actually be able to state something of substance, a more informed analysis or criticism. For those of you fond of bashing, this habit of having informed opinions will give you more weight to swing with.
-An American who is sometimes ashamed at his fellowes rash conclusions based on insufficient evidence. Ignorant arrogance like this, my friends, is not the way forward.
first i would like to say, many slashdotters must not buy sonet gear. If you did, you would have used luminous, whiterock, lucent, etc...
Hands down, Hauwei put them to shame. a 4U OC48 solution with the ability to take many different cards.
Now some people would say, heck, when you pull out a card, i actually droppped a packet. Well, they all did. Even the good old DDM-2000 OC3 dropped a packet on failover tests when yanking out a card to simulate it dieing.
my point i want to make, is that whiterock and luminous, both American companies offer pathetic products. pathetic, i mean it. Who wants an OC48 that can only have 3 DS3 ports? laugh. software updates that would choke while using the sonet dcc channel.
so before you laugh at Hauwei, best not until you use their gear. Because when your boss visits us down the street, showing off our 20,000 dollar OC48 solution, he will ask why did we pay 100,000 for nortel.
the chinese kid they sent to us was educated, polite, smart, and knowledgable about the gear. he spoke english just fine. Considering my boss is from Turkey, who am I to complain about proper english to him. It is a small world now. I welcome the diversity.
I cannot wait to take shipment of more Hauwei gear, so I can light up the fiber we leased. It will be really sweet when our backbone is up. TDM and ethernet. nice. OC192 upgrade path. nice.
so. any of you people pretending to be a network engineer like me? Life at a CLEC is strange.
"I am surprised to see that Cisco settled with them in US court. I expect the company in question, which has phalanxes of lawyers on salary, won't roll over so easily when it comes to defending the domestic market."
Not really.
How well do you think Cisco would perform in the Chinese market if they kept pursuing a domestic lawsuit against a company heavily sponsored by the Party?
All kinds of suprising "inconveniences" in selling their routers inside China might occur if Cisco kept up their USA lawsuit a bit too aggressively.
The US-RMB peg has NOT CHANGED since 1994, which basically tells you the whole story.
There is absolutely nothing manipulative about a currency peg (the US dollar was pegged to other currencies at various points in its history). About the worst you can say is that the Chinese central bank has been buying up USD to neutralize inflationary pressures caused by the inflow of foreign currency. This places some deflationary pressure on the US dollar, but the logical thing for the US government to do if this is a real problem is to compensate by printing a few more dollars.
You are trying to utilize a security v. disarmament paradigm in a world that needs security right now. Disarmament only works if it is unilateral, and unfortunately we live in a world that has North Korea, Iran and Venezuela as entities willing to pursue their goals outside of the realm of diplomacy and economic leverage.
Okay, I just spent 5 minutes laughin. you can't be serious, can you?
The only country right now I see projecting force outside of it's own borders under strange ideas is actually the US, the sabel ratteling that is done by the other countries is (so far) just that. And heck, if the situation would be reverse, so would be the US.
Welcome to the year 2005! Limited war and police action is the name of the game, and the U.S. military is frequently the only regional security vendor in many world markets.
Welcome to the world since the end of WorldWar II, where all those small little conflicts happened constantly.
And before that we had those little colonial wars et al... Nothing new to see here.
You won't see anything but an increase in military funding in the next 10 years, and that's a good thing. Globalization needs strong security controls and safeguards. The U.S. military through its operating centers around the world provides that. The size, scope and nature of the U.S. military is changing. Because the U.S. needs them, the World needs them, and you need them.
Contrary to popular american believe the rest of the world does not need an ueber Babysitter to take care of their business, actually, the rest of the world can manage just fine on it's own. Thanks for asking though.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
"The only country right now I see projecting force outside of it's own borders under strange ideas is actually the US, the sabel ratteling that is done by the other countries is (so far) just that. And heck, if the situation would be reverse, so would be the US."
Not only is your premise false, but it undercuts the actions of most of Europe (France, Germany, UK, Denmark, etc) and a number of African countries which are projecting military force in places like Bosnia, the Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, Haiti, Sudan, DRC and a number of other smaller theatres. All of these situations are experiencing the projected force of a formally declared military. And the number of countries projecting force through less formal conduits is far larger.
Although when argued from the qualifier of some vague notion of "strange ideals" I suppose it might be impossible for me to actually discern your point of view.
"Welcome to the world since the end of WorldWar II, where all those small little conflicts happened constantly."
Actually, if you want to express this change in terms of a lack of the potential for 'total' warfare, you really have to look at the reductions after the end of the Cold War as being the real change. Both the scale and nature of the US-Soviet Proxy wars in the 60-80s demostrate them as far removed from the plethera of police actions you see today.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
Actually because of this they are wrong.
It is not about farmers from 3rd world countries exporting their food to our shores but our subsidies (not only for growing but also transporting) make it CHEAPER for those countries to import food from us.
Not only does that put their farmers out of work, but it also makes them dependabale on us and our on oil based agrar businesses.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Not only is your premise false, but it undercuts the actions of most of Europe (France, Germany, UK, Denmark, etc) and a number of African countries which are projecting military force in places like Bosnia, the Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, Haiti, Sudan, DRC and a number of other smaller theatres. All of these situations are experiencing the projected force of a formally declared military. And the number of countries projecting force through less formal conduits is far larger.
I did exclude UN missions from my list.
As for the other countries who are waging war with each other: Yep, this happens every day, but the only country on this planet right now that has the ability to put it's forces anywhere on the planet is the US.
And currently the US is the only one who does so out of some dubious reasons and wants the world to believe them.
Actually, if you want to express this change in terms of a lack of the potential for 'total' warfare, you really have to look at the reductions after the end of the Cold War as being the real change. Both the scale and nature of the US-Soviet Proxy wars in the 60-80s demostrate them as far removed from the plethera of police actions you see today.
The point I was trying to get to was that there always were armed conflictes throughout the history. The situation for the world as a whole has not changed. Thus to argue that the US needs to build up a very strong military force in order to "contain" these events is pretty much a marketing gag by the Whitehouse.
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"Probably true, but why? We need more security? So we can invade some more countries and then rebuild them at great expense?"
To some degree, we are protecting all the Free Trade Agreements we signed in the last 20 years. Some of the signitories do not have need security mechanisms which must be comparible to their economic mechanisms. In many cases, the US (and much of NATO and the UN) is willing to provide at least some of that security support. Maybe it's in the training of a local military, or maybe it's funding via USAID or the World Bank.
The modern world needs the exchange of information and goods that globalization provides. But the inherent conflict that globalization causes requires a strong security model as well. The US is playing a big part in that outside of its immediate sphere of influence, as is much of Europe and Asia.
Ultimately they do it because they believe maintaining free trade and security will lead to more prosperity at home and around the world. A good example of this comes in asking why the US bail out the Brazilian banking system a couple years ago? The US did it because a strong Brazil is a critical trading and security partner in that region of the world.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
"The point I was trying to get to was that there always were armed conflictes throughout the history. The situation for the world as a whole has not changed. Thus to argue that the US needs to build up a very strong military force in order to "contain" these events is pretty much a marketing gag by the Whitehouse."
I think we may have a disagreement concerning what type of force >I think the US needs to build up.
As you and several other posters have pointed out, the immediate potential for total warfare seems distant (particularly in a post-MAD world, but even more so after the Cold War).
An effective armed forces needs individuals and units that excel at killing other people. This seems to be an area in which the US has some measure of skill. This is an important part of the military, but I think we already have plenty of capacity for killing as is.
The other function of the armed forces is increasingly to provide training and logistics for native militaries, and to work as a formal security parter (within a coalition) in a given theatre. In this area the US does not have near the capacity that is needed. It needs to easily be doubled or tripled, and since it's a long process to train these type of people it needs to start now.
Still even more forces need to be trained for covert missions. For example, when the US recieved reports France that Saddams intelligence units were planning covert ops in the US, they should have done their own covert operation and assasinated Saddam. Instead they asked the UN to help, and when the UN did nothing, they invaded Iraq which led to far too much needless death.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
The other function of the armed forces is increasingly to provide training and logistics for native militaries, and to work as a formal security parter (within a coalition) in a given theatre. In this area the US does not have near the capacity that is needed. It needs to easily be doubled or tripled, and since it's a long process to train these type of people it needs to start now.
The US is doing this since it's existance more or less, there are plenty of people who know how to teach. School of the Americas is the most well known of these endavours, and if you look at their graduates, you'll see just how well it is going (yes, I am sarcastic here).
Still even more forces need to be trained for covert missions. For example, when the US recieved reports France that Saddams intelligence units were planning covert ops in the US, they should have done their own covert operation and assasinated Saddam. Instead they asked the UN to help, and when the UN did nothing, they invaded Iraq which led to far too much needless death.
THIS is one of those things we will clash for a very long time. I do not believe that the "preemptive" going to war or killing others is agreeable or just be allowed.
Any nation who acts that way is nothing else but terrorists themselves.
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Sun Cellular, who has started a price war in the Philippines by offering unlimited free calls and text (SMS), is tapping Huawei for a $200M GSM equipment rollout.
What will outsourcing companies do if Asia, South America, and Africa ever stop fighting and develop? When labor costs rise in China, then Brazil, then Somalia? When labor costs finally make everything more expensive for everyone? Then the developed nations will no longer have any countries to exploit for cheap labor. That shows working in a sweatshop should have been worth more all along, but presently we exploit the misfortune of others by paying them less than they deserve, only because we can.
There were plenty of jobs in the 50s and 60s, we made our own levis and TVs. Of course we helped rebuild Europe and sold plenty overseas. Now the jobs are leaving, and being replaced with $5.50/hr at Walmart. Remove the minimum wage and jobs return. You say the whiners should just find another job, but what if there's a lot more whiners than better jobs? What if Walmart cuts pay to $2.50 an hour and working 50 hours a week leaves no time and money to go to community college for that better job?
3com helped out Huawei when Huawei was sued by Cisco. Now both have a tie-up.
Who is eating who?
"I do not believe that the "preemptive" going to war or killing others is agreeable or just be allowed."
Do you believe one only has the right to self-defense after one has been attacked? Or is there a time at which one can preempt one's enemy and attack first? If so, where is that line?
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
That is true of the US too. Look up the "softwood lumber dispute" with Canada, where the US has put thousands of Canadians out of work through levies that both NAFTA and the WTO has ruled against. The US has no problem being blatantly protectionist when it suites them, and everyone in the world knows this. And also, *every* country tries to manipulate their currency.
Lets have zero % income tax, and let the govt borrow money via bonds. So have mandatory 30% bond issues.
That way, the money you loose weekly buying bonds instead of tax, earns you interest instead of LOST interest if you actually saved, and paid in march each year.
Tho, then again, looking at it this way, taxes are a way for the govt to "STEAL" or "borrow" your money with never paying it back. Your tax-receipt is kind of like a $0 value bond.
The money spent on the house came from THIN AIR!!, its fractional reserve banking, ie you can lend out 9fold your assets, so $1billion in the kitty gives you permission to lend out $9billion.
Look at the M3 money supply for the last years www.financialsense.com
Where did the 3trillion dollars come from? Whos ass? or was it just magic via a spreadsheet, it sure didnt come from Asia/Europe, they cannot spare 3 trillion dollars. And if anyone has that money, then its usually in fixed assets, like land/bonds/funds/debt/shares, so you cannot sell it all, because there isnt enough cash in the world to transfer to you. ie we live in a world where we have probably 5-50x worth book value compared to real floating cash out there.
And mr sybert, the gdp figures are fudged, they reallly really do enron accounting there, like if a PC is 15% faster this year, the GDP 'output' is recalced to be higher for all PCs, because its faster, not that it really made more money. Its bunk.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Well, Anyone in the telecoms industry knows that when it comes to telecoms and mobile network equipment, Ericsson is the Rolls-Royce of them all. You get what you pay for.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
it's easy to compete when the state owns or partially owns all the means of production and they can force people to work for nothing...
Get your torrents...
I wish govt employees were paid $2/hr , because of their 'half paced' work ethic and slllooowwwww processes or 10x more complex red tape.
Either pay them $2/hr, or sack 50% of them and make them work 2x faster with 90% less paper work.
I guess I agree somewhat that no min wage will force lower prices since more people will have less money. Most things stablized with each other, having more 'artifical' prices/costs forces unneeded minimums in certain sectors.
We just have to be carefull there isnt much exploitation, ie semi slaves, people working 15hrs a day for $50, when their economic output might produce a true value of $2000 a day, having a massive gap between their cost and their output isnt good because it concentrates wealth at the 'master/director' level.
Yes rich people filter their wealth downwords, but for every million they spend, they probably have/keep $2million in the bank which doubles every 3 years.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Thats the trick, we dont want to turn people into 15th century slaves with good conditions.
Society needs down time, play time, fun time, family time, too much work time destroys families producing garbage/wreckless idiots.
Working $3/hr at walmart might be good, if you can get all your shopping/food/cloths there as well at real wholesale cost, and not just 10% discount. Just dont get 50% of the population working there. But $120/week isnt going to cut it, unless housing+energy+communications costs are ultra cheap, like $30/week rent, or $40/month power costs. You cant have it both ways, uber cheap wages, and ultra profitable goods selling at 300% markups. You cannot have a collective wages of 100m people be 2 trillion dollars, while at the same time expect them to buy 10 trillion worth of goods, though each dollar can be recycled in a 24hr period a fixed amount of times because of taxes it gets smaller each time. Now if we had zero percent taxes, that one dollar could be traded 30 times in a day (making a gdp contribution of $30 in one day)
See thats the trick, low wages can only survive if we have zero percent taxes. ie if they want no minimum wage, then set a tax-free-wage level, so instead of $5.50 being minimum, make $5.50 the minimum to pay taxes, which will give more incentives for people to work for $5.20 as it is 100% tax free.
If you're a doctor, getting $80/hr, then that should be taxed at 25% or whatever.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
unlike Darth Vadars plans, put all his eggs in one basket for 500% returns, and BOOM , lost it all. ;-)
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Even if you dont believe Peak oil and think its a big zionist evil plot to get rich and theres infinite oil under the mantle/earth core. There are some good links/articles on what the world would be like
M A D M A X - the reality game show with 6 billion contestants.
ie read http://www.dieoff.org/
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Why? Why not leave it to those involved to figure out the relative worth of the job? What next.... cap caviar at 10x the average price of bake beans? It is really not the government's business at all.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You a MBA from harvard / stanford /somethin?
Why does yahoo do this
One has the right to defend oneself, but not by invading first.
If that makes any sense?
If we would not follow this simple rule then why bother with an "honest" war at all? In that case anybody could just construct a reason to go to war and claim moral superiority.
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I would have seen this earlier if you would have posted while being logged in. It seems there is a certain paranoia in america these days when it comes to discuss policy publicly.
That is just one example. Need more? Just ask. As for your U.N. missions? You are kidding, right? Whom do you think is actually moving the majority of all that U.N. equipment around?
This is not about "moving stuff around" this is about reasons to go to war.
Yes, the majority of States do not have the air power required to move troops within hours around the planet, but most UN Missions aren't designed that way.
A lot of the business done by the UN in the last 10 years was not headed by the US forces but rather local ones. EXACTLY because those states don't want to have to rely on the US for their own well being.
Afghanistan is free today because of the U.S. military, not the U.N. The U.N. minus the U.S. is not much of a military force. But what do we know, you seem to believe otherwise.
I suggest you look a little bit closer to Afghanistan, "free" I wouldn't call it. Yes, Karzai is in Kabul, and that's pretty much were he's staying. Outside of Kabul warlords are calling the shots with some other cities "free" as well. The situation for the people in Afghanistan has not dramatically improved and in all likelyhood it won't.
If Afghanistan is any indication for Iraq then I hope you are willing to stick around for another 20 years or so.
I would love to know you and ask your opinion of Iraq 10 years from today. I bet you would not be so forthcoming with the viewpoint you have today. Just like the many liberals that talk today as if they were Cold Warriors during the 80's. History was not on their side and it will not be on yours.
Why? Because the USSR collapsed before the US did? it did so out of it's own accord not because the US was "outspending" them.
As for Iraq. The votes are still out on it. I think at best it has a 50/50 chance of becoming a stable nation, I still consider it more likely though that Iraq will split up in 3 regions in a bloddy civil war (with Turkey probably trying to annex norther Iraq / Kurdistan).
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This is the kind of stuff the infamous "school of the americas" provides:
c sherry.html
http://larc.sdsu.edu/humanrights/rr/PLAarticles/m
(Ever heard about plan condor? US trained military killing their own people??)
Uruguay was a democracy, and suffered 11-12 years of SOA-aided military oppresion from 1973 to 1985. Argentina, Chile, and many others had similar regimes.
Unless by democracy you mean ultra-rightist military government, there was little democracy troughout Latin America.
Most CIA helped military governments replaces democracies, and left destroyed countries as their outcome. In the social, and the economical sense too.
I don't know how you inform yourself of oprresion. Although there are awful things happening in Cuba, it was worse in other countries with the help of the CIA in Latin America. For example, in Argentina, political "enemies" were put to sleep and dumped in the ocean. Cuba does execute people, but it's not worse than what the US does right now trhoughout the world. The US did have the power to stop communism, but the things our peoples feared of communism did happen and do happen under the US rule ( state terrorism, orwellian states et al).
196x: MLN-Tupamaros rises against totalitarian right wing government. Some armed fight.
1970: Uruguay is a democracy. A totalitarian right wing government, but a democracy.
1971: The elections are rigged against center-right presidential candidate Ferreira. 1973: MLN-Tupamaros movement jailed (all of them).
1973: Right wing Bordaberry gives government to insurgent military. (Yes, _after_ the "communist menace" is completely defeated)
The communist party did exist at the time, but in size was almost non existant.
They primarily took control of the government because they saw that 300.000 people assisted a Frente Amplio public act, where 1.5M people votes.
Frente Amplio was and is a center-left coalition that won the government last election with 50.5% of the votes.
Here, the SOA helps that military government in terror tactics that extends into the eighties.
result: 12 years of lost time for our country, hundreds of "desaparecidos" (people jailed by the police/military but missing/assasinated). Billions of external debt. Social disaster.
The SOA helped a government with no enemy to fight its own people, at least in my country. They were only one more instrument of oppression and hostile intervention.
The US didn't want left-wing governments in the area, and they succeded, for 30 years. Now that they left the region alone, the region makes their own decisions, and for a change is becoming independent of international financing institutions.
Electronic registers, robots and other high tech (read: foreign) tech is slowly replacing all those $5.50/hr jobs at Walmart.
Now what?
The jobless have a revolution?
The jobless are allowed to die off in unpleasant ways?
Countries decide to be humane and use socialism to provide a minimum of food and water to keep them alive. Maybe even free education and job training to make them productive members of the country again?
Isaac Asimov and Roger MacBride Allen collaborated in the 1990s producing the Caliban, Inferno, Utopia trillogy. 10,000 years in the future on another planet, humans no longer worked unless they wanted to, and those that did were considered a little bit peculiar. Everybody else had robots wait on them hand and foot. I'm not suggesting we go that far, because the books clearly show some undesirable effects of such a place. But when we do have robots capable of stocking shelves, serving food, and cleaning hotel rooms, all those people are going to need new jobs. And they won't find them building the robots, because other robots will build each other. Even mining metal and processing it for robots could be done by other robots.
Yes there will be new jobs to maintain and design robots, but not enough for all of Walmart's millions.
Perhaps governments and the wealthy might chose to pay for all these people to become artists and entertainers?
Do you realize that at 1/3rd of a trillion dollars each year, in 21 years we'll have paid the entire debt just in interest? In about 40 years we'll have paid just in interest, what it would have cost to pay off the debt and interest. Now granted in 40 years 7 trillion won't have the same buying power, but that's because of the sham the government does making the dollar's value decrease by 3% each year. It doesn't have to.
I'm not going to search for sources for an AC, but the Reagan budgets were at least as much his fault as the democrats. He certainly took credit for their effect on the economy.
The MLN had nothing to do with the communist party, either in Uruguay or in Russia. They both did read Marx, of course, but they are not affiliated in any way. there was a time where they hated each other.
They were the most voted list in the last election.
Their most popular leader is a minister right now, and they rule the lower chamber of the "congress".
They are right now the most popular political force, into the leading party.
I agree with you that USSR interventionism was disgusting. But it's not just communist interventionism is disgusting, any kind of interventionism is.
I lived there for a while, right now I am living just north of it, so I do have some idea on what is going on there.
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My parents have made as much as 2 million a year that was taxable under income tax. You know what they said? 39% or 33% doesn't matter. They would much rather the budget be balanced, and the people who weren't so lucky would not live in the gutter.
"One has the right to defend oneself, but not by invading first."
Lets say you are President of Country X, and your intelligence network says that the President of Country Y is planning to covertly detinate nuclear weapons in your country. You go to Allies A, B, C and D who tell you that their intelligence networks also tell them the same thing.
As with all rational decision making, one is limited to the quantity and quality of the relevant information you have access too. Knowing that intelligence is not always fully accurate, do you invade the country? Or wait til they detinate those nuclear weapons before invading?
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
How about I make my knowledge public together with the allies and challenge the other guy to "come clean".
BTW, it would be a rather strange thing for a neighbouring country to nuke you, as the fallout would hit them themselves (assuming right now that YOU don't have any weapons yourself.
A better example would be what would happen if you hear about an invasaion, again, diplomacy first.
Now, with terrorists it is a little bit of a different issue, but then they don't really "own" a country normally and invading another country on the basis that there MAY be terrorists is not right, now is it?
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So does that mean that Country X doesn't have a right to preempt an attack by invasion?
I specifically provided the example as such so it would not be confused with any of the currently ongoing conflicts. Additionally, the question has nothing to do with non-state actors (e.g. transnational terrorists) only with actors within the scope of sovereign governments.
If nothing else, the delimma (even if it is not strictly realistic by itself) illustrates some of the decisions governments are forced to make when dealing with threat assessment.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
Germany pretended that the poles attacked Germany first, this gave them the "moral reason" to invade poland.
The reason the UN was created was to allow a "neutral" area to resolve any conflicts before it came to the firing of bullets.
One might argue that today the UN is not capabal anymore of actually providing this service (but one might also argue it worked rather well during the cold war).
Whatever the case of the UN may be. I do not believe that any country has the right to launch a pre-emptive war, because on a moral ground a pre-emtive war isn't anymore justified than an aggression war. In both cases I am sure the people who order the attack will claim moral superiority towards the world.
Certainly, but morale is not something you can only have when it suits you. Or as someon said:
"If all you have is a hammer then all your problems start to look like a nail. Of course if you do not have a hammer you do not want any of your problems to look like a nail."
And always remember:
"War is the continuation of politics by different means."
von Clausewitz, and personally I think we should be very careful when we step to that measure.
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"Do you know how the second world war started?
Germany pretended that the poles attacked Germany first, this gave them the "moral reason" to invade poland."
Actually as I understand it, most historians view the causal beginning of WWII as being attributed to the failure of Britian and France to respond to the violations of the Lacarno Pact and the Treaty of Versaille. Specificially though Hitler's seizure of Czech land (an autonomous region setup by the Treaty of Versaille), but also due to the British concession of their 3/5ths "commonwealth" fleet allowance which ensured Hitler's trajectory. But Hitler had to have his Lebensraum, and the later invasion of Poland was an extension of this goal originally initiated in Czech territory.
The UN has never been more than a convenient place for diplomates to address each other as a sitting body (everyone in a common place). When it was ostensibly under the League of Nations charter (as created after WWI), many wished to give it an enforcement capacity. It was this inate interferance in local sovereignty that spelled its downfall. And for the UN, ironically it is its lack of such capacity that renders it uncapable of dealing effectively with with security issues.
"I do not believe that any country has the right to launch a pre-emptive war, because on a moral ground a pre-emtive war isn't anymore justified than an aggression war."
I'm not sure why you insist on couching this in moral terms. Taking a moral position is nice, but when faced with imminant threat, it is often an afterthought.
Am I correct in understanding your opinion to be that, one does not have the right to attack another country until one has been physically attacked?
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
I was more referingn to the actual shooting starting, but yes, I would agree that Hitler was testing how far he could go before the victors of WWI would intervene, a more decisive response may just have stopped Hitler for a couple of years.
BTW, I also believe that the treaty of Versaille was in part the issue for Hitler being able to gain power, the fact that at the end of WWII the US decided to go with the Marshall plan instead of the Morgenthau plan.
What I find of a bit ironic is that what happened to Iraq after the last Gulf War seems to be what Morgenthau suggested for Germany.
The idea behind the UN was to have a "gathering place" a "world townhall" if you like. A noble idea, problem is the more voices you have the harder it is to hear a single one.
The UN definetly needs a reform, starting with the security council which is not up to times anymore. Unfortunatly the ones who are prone to lose power in the council are also the ones who have to agree to the changes, and who likes to give up power?
I would say that if the reforms would happen that the UN would benefit greatlly from their own military force. The problem there only is that the question is: Where would you stage them? How would you make certain that they really only answer to the council?
Out of the same reason why I am against the death penalty: You can't take it back. If we do not act on morale grounds but rather on "gut feelings" then what differenciates us from animals?
A dog that bites people or is outwardly aggressive (for whatever reason, be it that it feels threated, be it that it's in it's character) is put down. Why should we allow an entire nation to act irrationally out of fear and then not hold them to morale standards?
It is (in this case the US) who claims to go the moral high ground by "freeing Iraq", yet their motivation is anything but morale, it is something that is at best motivated by fear and at worst out of greed and power hunger.
Yes, one has to reserve the force as the last resort, and that means if there is sufficent evidence then one can prepare to defend onself, but the moment you attack first you lose any moral grouind you may have.
Look at the events of 9/11, this was a "first strike" scenario, when the US decided to go into Afghanistan
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"I would say that if the reforms would happen that the UN would benefit greatlly from their own military force. The problem there only is that the question is: Where would you stage them? How would you make certain that they really only answer to the council?"
More importantly, how would they fund such a force? Without the power to tax, maintaining a standing army is impossible. Currently the UN infastructure is paid for by donor nations as stipulated in its charter. As such, without a totally new charter, providing an enforcement unit over which the UN officals have full command is impossible.
"Yes, one has to reserve the force as the last resort, and that means if there is sufficent evidence then one can prepare to defend onself, but the moment you attack first you lose any moral grouind you may have."
We may agree on the origins of WWII, but here we find a major point of contention.
One of the basic tenants of "Enlightenment" government was that citizens bind themselves to an authority with the understanding that this authority would protect them against all others. This is always tempered by prevailing moral positions, but underlying all of this is the authority's "duty" to provide this protection.
Clausewitz during Bismarck's time was right, the ability to make war is an extension of foreign policy. Diplomacy and warmaking are stepchildren of the same mother.
Since it has been impossible to shake the policy implication of Iraq, as a specific example, I'll follow your lead and utilize this conflict rather than say the Russo-Japanesse War or others.
US armed conflict with Iraq has continued without break under three administrations since its inception in the early 1990s. The nature of that armed conflict has changed during this time, but Iraq has been considered a belligerant nation since then, and treated as such.
While I will grant that international sanctions do appear to have sufficiently dilluted Saddam's capacity to produce many types of destructive arms, there was no Memorandum of Understanding or Peace involved in the conflicts. The nature of Saddam as a belligerent did not change, and arguably never changed.
In retrospect however, we must also consider the corruption now found in the few legitimate trade channels (Oil-for-Food, etc) that were likely counterproductive in regard to these sanctions. Ironically, it was probably this funding that found its way into the pockets of the "con-men" who bilked millions out of Saddam for "weapons research". While this research was happening largely only on paper, it was this information that was intercepted by French, Russian and Isreali signal intelligence. They in turn passed it over to Bush-43 as credible threat information after it was learned that Saddam's intelligence unit was planning attacks on American soil (as the sole actor or as a facilitator we will never know).
I've framed the origins of this conflict in this way because I believe it has several extremely relevent aspects to it. Namely - (1) Saddam's administration was classified as a belligerant by the US, (2) Saddam was believed to have and proported to have capacity to project covert force, (3) numerous allies presented "intelligence" that indicated that Saddam was actively seeking opportunity to exercise that capacity directly against the US, and (4) Saddam insistance on remaining non-compliant with weapons inspectors dilluted any hope that non-warhawk US administration members had of resolving this without bloodshed.
Most of my account I don't believe is controvesial. However, how one moves from these four points to action or remaining inactive depends on your world view and your stake in the threat assessment process.
For the French for example, Saddam had not directly threatened them. To the contrary, he had signed several major oil leases with them. They actually had much to lose if Saddam's administration was toppled because those leases would disappear in a cloud of smoke along with the
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
Well, money is always an issue, but iif they manage to resolve the first two issues, money will be the least of their worries.
I would like to disagree here. On (2). I do not think that anybody outside of the US really believed he had the ability to project any military force outside of his direct area. Even IF he had some kinds of launching a ground assault, he had no air cover. With the US and all the other countries (not in the least Israel) having air superiority the chances for him to succed anywhere where pretty much nil. And even Saddam knew this.
(3) The "evidence" that was presented was rather laughable, and it actually begs the question on why those "Intelligence Services" doctored the documents. Taking a paper from the internet and presenting it as your own is something one may expect from a D Student in highschool, not from highly trained and paid analysts at an Intelligence Agency. The fact that Bush took them at "face value" without having checked them himself makes it pretty clear to me that there was a deliberate attempt of not wanting to see what might not be there.
(4) I am aware that the majority of the media in the US was spinning the story that Saddam was non compliant, but if you read the reports from the UN Weapons Inspectors it is very clear that Saddam did indeed comply with all their requirements.
I am also aware that one of the most famous spins is that Saddam kicked the Weapons Inspectors out in '98 when in fact the US told the then UN mission in not unclear terms to clear out because otherwise they may be caught in the crossfire.
If Bush and his security advisors truly believed that Saddam was supporting Al Quaida or any other similar organization they should better stop working in their fields. Saddams government was secular, there was no "state religion" and he clearly would not have supported someone like bin Ladin, out of the simple reason that he was one of their targets as well as he prevented the fundamental muslims from getting a foot on the ground in Iraq.
Who did he put on notice? North Korea? The lesson he taught wannabe dictators is that you better DO get WMDs as quickly as possible, because if you have them the US won't touch you.
North Korea is
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