Who is the biggest threat to world peace?

I totally agree with you there, Montresor. America has started so many useless wars and interfered in so many useless wars too. The policy of its government is the greatest threat to world peace.

 

You mean that Chile electing a socialist is like threatening the US? Still the Chileans got what they deserved - widespread rape and torture.

No wonder the US is not exactly popular, even with its allies.

 

I think Felinoid, Iwelyk, and Dengo are the most intelligent posters here so far.

What is the most dangerous factor to world peace today? Human evil (have to side with evil on this one Fel). Even if we weren't competitive, we would still be evil and that inevitably leads to violent conflicts of some kind. If we were only competitive and not evil, however, violent conflicts would not be guaranteed, only likely.

What one person is the greaterst threat to world peace today? Well, that's the most unstable person with the most power. I think that puts it somewhere between the CEOs of Wal-Mart, Bill Gates, and Kim Jong-il.

 

Then US did a good thing by rising Lenin to power.

Maybe you didn't intended to do so, but it is a good simile. US is like a pitbull. Very aggresive and a total damage to everybody.

 

Yes, those were all Americans raping and torturing the Chileans... no wait, it was Chileans raping and torturing other Chileans... must have been some US mind-control device then...

Absolutely, if the US hadn't entered WWI then the French and English wouldn't have been forced to humiliate the Germans (US mind control device again) leading to WWII. And Europe would have remained the model of peace on earth for the rest of the 20th C it was in the 19th C, the 18th C, the 17th C, the 16th C...

Not really to defend the US of course, but it's not like we're talking about some perfect world that the US came in and despoiled now, are we?

 

I think it's a tautology to say that humans are responsible for (human) world peace. What else would threaten it? Even if you've got a natural disaster or an outbreak of avian flu, it doesn't mean that nations will go to war because the decision to maintain peace rests solely on humans.

Without humans world peace as we speak of it wouldn't exist, since there would be no nations or governments or civilization to speak of. When you say that humans are the greatest threat to world peace, you also imply that world peace -- a human construct -- can be improved by getting rid of humans.

It's true in a very, very general sense. It's also very, very unuseful in talking about, um, world peace.

You've said it. To say that solely (or even primarily) the US can be blamed for all the ickiness in the world is, in my mind, an easy and terrible overstatement.

 

Bion, you know damn well that I didn't say the Americans raped and tortured the Chileans. However the US was happy with Pinochet in charge (they did help him overthrow Chiles democratically elected leader after all).

 

I think we need to achieve world peace first. Only then we can talk about who's going do destroy it.

 

I agree US foreign policy has been reprehensible lots of times (Chile, Cambodia, East Timor, etc etc etc). And not just militarily, also economically, like investors so interested in stability and monetary return that they overlook the deeply problematic behavior of those they're dealing with.

But this is, I think, pretty different from a charge that the US had orchestrated the chaos in the first place. For example, politicians of Central and South America, both left and right, often use the US as a bogeyman for all sorts of domestic problems (and indeed, given that the US is a huge economic and political force there, its not to hard to find examples of US meddling). But this often becomes a way to hide their own responsibilities: many Central and South American countries maintain a huge, patrician class disparity between the wealthy and poor, often along racial lines, with the decendants of plantation owning conquistadors on top and the decendants of Native Americans on the bottom. This affected all levels of culture, from notorious cronyism in business culture to soap operas where all the actors have European features. Roads in Venezuela, for example, were built from the coast into the interior without worrying about connecting the interior because the aim wasn't to "settle" Venezuela, integrating with the local population, but rather to exploit natural resources, get them to the coast and ship them to Spain asap...

So this is all kinda off topic, but just to say that structural, economic, political, etc etc problems are usually present in countries before the US steps in to muck things up further...

 

There are no Utopian societies present on the planet. All have their domestic conflicts. I dont quite understand how this is supposed to serve as an excuse for the US installing and/or supporting terror regimes. Iraq, Iran, Israel (which once again saw need to kill women and children - perhaps things were calming down too much?)

Considering the consequences for countless lifes, the US being perceived as a threat should come as no surprise.

 

So who is guilty? Those who oppress their populations or those who provide said oppressors with financial support? Who is the killer? The man who pulled the trigger or the peson who gave the gun to the trigger puller?

Due to the United States' power and influence there's very little that happens that the States didn't have a hand in. So many things can be traced back to them but more often than not they're not the active party involved.

Gnaff has the right idea about not pissing off the big guy. Some country will do something that affects the States in a negative manner, the States does something to prevent the negative actions from taking place. Basically the pattern is something along the lines of... Country A: Push -> USA: Shove -> Country A: Shove -> USA: Shove -> Country A: Punch -> USA: Bang! You can't expect to piss off America and get away with it. They are the top dog or at least one of the major super-powers that dwarves so many countries it's insane.

The dog analogy is also pretty accurate. You'd have to be asking for trouble to poke it with a stick. You might as well jump off a cliff and then act surprised when you hit the bottom. The question is, who is at fault? The States does just as any other country would in their situation: do their best to provide the best for their country.

As for who is the greatest threat? Depends entirely on what you mean by world peace. Because I doubt the world has EVER been at peace. There's always a war going on somewhere. If you mean world peace as in a lack of WORLD wars (World War I & II for example) I'd dare say it's impossible to tell. World wars only occur when one super-power attacks another super-power and they each drag their respective allies into it.

At the moment I see the next world war, if there is one, between China and the States when oil runs out, but that is only if things continue as they are and there are no technological advancements that will reduce the value of oil.

 

Despite the way you're presenting it, it is not a binary choice; everyone you mention is guilty. They're all 'the killer'.

 

The Russian revolution begun in march a month before the United States entered the war so they would not have hindered the developments in Russia. The Russian revolution was for some nations such as Finland, Poland and the baltic states a good thing, they gained independence from the empire which had tried to russianize them for some time.

Also the US intervention might very well have hindered a total destruction of the European infrastructure and even further expansion of the Russian revolution. I doubt that the European states would have come to a settlement, there was way too much hate and bad blood between France and Germany. Germany had humiliated France in the Franco-Preussian war and France was not about to give in without a proper revenge. Germany was isolated from the world trade anyway by Britain and France and would have been worn out eventually and then the German army might not have been able to stop the communist uprisings that emerged after the war.

I think that proclaiming the US to have been the provoking side in the Japanese entrance into WWII is largely inaccurate. The United States had every right to be concerned about the expansionist policies of Japan in the early stages of WWII. The Sino-Japanese war and the occupation of French Indochina were more than enough to to signal the expansionist intentions of the Japanese government. There was little choice but to implement sanctions in order to hinder the Japanese expansions.

[ November 10, 2006, 02:14: Message edited by: Morgoroth ]

 

The US is the biggest threat because it has to interfere with everything. Take a look at this.

Seriously both Clintons caused enough trouble the first time round.

 

The point being that the revolution was allready well underway and american entry to the war did not influence the future outcome, unless you think that the war would have ended before November and the Central Powers and Entente would have aided Russia against the communist threat together, both accounts I find seriously doubtful.

I have difficulties to fathom a mutually satisfying peace solution in 1917 and I doubt there was enough political will to make much concessions on either side. In any case all of this is quite worthless speculation since it's practically impossible to predict an alternative ending and to know what it would have led to today.