Comment by bawolff
4 days ago
Not really. Most countries don't face realistic threat of invasion, especially post world war 2.
Over the last 50 years, the probability of anyone invading france, canada, australia, etc has been next to 0. The only countries that really had to worry are the ones that straddle the regions of influence during the cold war.
But that's mostly true because those countries are rich and fly half the world away to attack poorer countries and usually by bombing them from far away. Eg syrians can't realistically gather enough money and weapons and planes and bombs to bomb paris. Or iraqis london. Etc. On the other hand, they can gather a few fanatics, give them guns and have them shoot a bunch of people, or bomb something, or worse. But then we get the "why did those people get radicalized? was it GTA?" articles.
TBH, considering the number of dead in palestine and the number of people in europe/us who literally lost everyone who ever mattered to them, the number of "terrorist" attacks seems relatively low.
Why is that relavent? The point is that some countries have more immediate security fears then others. It doesn't matter what structural factors lead to that. Countries with realistic security fears are going to invest differently than those that don't. Countries like people do whatever they think is in their best interest.
If your point is the world is unfair, then yes obviously that is true, nobody disputes that.
If france decided they needed to exert their "political pressure" over eg. germany, they'd have the same problem and all the realistic security fears, because germany is a rich country and they share a border. Same for the opposite direction with a few more historic events related to that. Same with france vs uk wars, and many many other wars in europe.
But hey, having your capital cities bombed is expensive, transport is cheap, and so it's easier to bully countries in a different continent, eventually bomb and invade them, becuase you're pretty sure they won't be able reach you back home with conventional war means (planes, rockets, tanks,...).
And yes, it's relevant, some politicians in one of those "safe" countries decided to bomb some country in a different continent, and you, a normal football fan or a party goer get killed when those people come and fight back in "unconventional means" (eg 2015 in paris). Somehow no one treats those as "we're at war with them, we bombed them first, they're just fighting back".
> Over the last 50 years, the probability of anyone invading france
Wat.
Sure, maybe if NATO stopped the USSR in the Fulda Gap. But you know that the USSR's war plans definitely involved invading France, right?
And don't make the mistake of judging probability with the benefit of hindsight, that'd be a terrible intellectual tarpit to fall into.
> the probability of anyone invading france, canada, australia, etc has been next to 0.
Good for them. They learned to cooperate with their neighbors, created alliances and friends, and restrained to kill other people.
If you have one enemy, the enemy is the problem
If everybody else is your enemy, YOU are the problem.
Check your behavior and see if you can improve as human being.
> If everybody else is your enemy, YOU are the problem
Because morality is a numbers game?
If Israel nuked everyone but one of their enemies, would they be in the right, as then they would have only one enemy?
> If Israel nuked everyone but one of their enemies, would they be in the right, as then they would have only one enemy?
Depends. Their current friend will most likely become their enemy by then too.
Because the problem that's common to a set of situations is the common factor in those situations, not the uncommon one.
This is an extremely weak argument.
Pre-1967 Israel didn't control the West Bank or Gaza. So most of the bad stuff people claim about Israel today didn't really exist.
Yet all its neighbours wanted to destroy it.
Lebanon who in theory should have no dispute with Israel bombarded it with ten's of thousands of rockets, mortars, anti-tank munitions etc. After Oct 7th.
The bit you're missing in your overly simplistic analysis is that Israel is really surrounded/attacked by a single religious/political ideology. There is no "everybody else here".
And what you are missing is that Israel acts don't call for friendship even in the people that would want this friendship.
Israel has stolen as much military and industrial secrets from US as they could grab. Has violated every international law. There are strong suspicions to be behind Epstein honey trap for riches and politicians all around USA and Europe. Has funded Hamas. Has an horrible relationship with human rights, longer than the bible. Has called non Jews "human animals", and acted accordingly, even to the point of doing competitions about "who can destroy more kneecaps or shoot more testicles in a week", among starving people that were trying to obtain food none less. Has treated 5Yo children like partridges in a hunting party. Has killed thousands of journalists, doctors, nurses and NGO staff without even trying to pretend that they care. Has put spy devices in friend's phones each time they could. Was caught messing with the elections in UK. Has used, discarded, and left each politician that supported them, alone and hanging dry in the elections, from Biden, to Trump, to Merz.
US does not want the demise of Israel, but Israel does not even try to pretend that they respect the opinion of US. Even after all this time, is all grab and cash. And US is always cleaning the mess that they left behind.
And the only thing that we can hear from them is "Why everybody hates us?" Really?. Clean your acts first.
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