An empire needs a frontier. It collapses without one. So what is the U.S.' next frontier project? Biden alluded to it a bit in his speech today, but is there any particular spot in the world that looks ripe for state department ghouls to conjure an existential threat to Freedom, Baseball and Applie Pie?

I mean unless it all just shifts to brinkmanship with China. But I think actual conflict with China runs up against the interests of too big a slice of the capitalist class to make anything more than saber-rattling a possibility in the short term.

  • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
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    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Drone strikes, wherever we can get away with it. My expectation is that we won't be sending troops anywhere for a long time. Of course they need to keep producing more military stuff in order to launder money, but drones are the perfect solution for them, bombs are single use so you can keep making more of them, and they don't put Americans in danger so you don't have to worry about the "Support our troops, bring them home" libs. And nobody at home is going to notice the difference between 1,000 drone strikes and 10,000 drone strikes. Tbh I suspect that's part of why the US is withdrawing from Afghanistan, because we just figured out a better solution to the need for incessant military spending.

    The existential threat will of course be China. There's no reason that the existential threat has to be the same place that we're dropping bombs so we can make more bombs.

    Short of actually cutting the military budget, which would probably require a coup at this point, the best case scenario would be if someone convinced the Pentagon to start making gold-plated bombs. If we're really lucky, maybe we can get some bullshit "cyberwar arms race" going on, but I think people would realize it's bullshit.

    • machiabelly [she/her]
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      3 years ago

      Launder? You mean justify the govt giving money to defense executives?

    • SoyViking [he/him]
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      3 years ago

      I wouldn't be surprised if the military-industrial complex turned towards the domestic market and started unloading their gear on internal US security forces. Chuds love spending money on the police and there's no actual risk involved as with foreign wars.