Hey gang, you can listen to The Iron Dice Podcast over on th-cam.com/users/TheIronDice OR anywhere podcasts can be found! If you want access to the member feed and unlock our entire Bonus Episode Backlog as well as future bonus episodes you can sign up on: www.patreon.com/join/DanArrows? Take care!
Great to see you posting videos here again. You've been missed. I'll will be sure to check out the Iron dice. BTW I appreciated the references to the Blob. It's one of the first horror films I saw as a young kid. It even scared me a little bit. It then because one of those films that I can't help but watch if it's on terrestrial.
Still haunted by the sheer inhumanity of Brian Williams' "I'm guided by the beauty of our armaments. And they are beautiful pictures of fearsome weapons." It's hard to get more propagandistic than that.
@@robertstan298 It's always been the same game, across centuries. The US, I feel, is just Britain incarnate, but without any geographical or climactic limits. Due to this, their chief longstanding goal is to prevent the rise of any dominant power in Eurasia, because the national US psyche still thinks it's a small North Atlantic island bordering said continent. Hence, the extra effort to prevent the Soviets away from Hokkaido- access to it would mean unblockability in the Paciific, containment would have failed. Same with spending on corrupt politicians in Greece and Italy specifically. And the push to keep the Soviets from the Indian Ocean by arming Afghanistan. Same idea with China and Taiwan. In other words, keep the hoardes away from water.
@@LancesArmorStriking I very strongly disagree with the idea that America views itself as Britain did. A single conversation with the average Republican (which is where most of these backward policies come from) would give you an idea of some massive, impossibly powerful, and perfect nation. By no means is there a perception that America is small. Hell, phrases such as "From Sea to Shining Sea" come to mind when I think of America's size or influence on the continent. I admit that as an American I may have a biased view on the use of nuclear weapons, but I have yet to encounter anyone (even non Americans) say that the reason for the use of the weapons was to prevent the Soviets from entering Hokkaido. I'm not sure where you've gained that idea. The Soviets already had ports on the Pacific, such as Vladivostok and the island of Sakhalin (or half of it, at least). I don't have any knowledge on spending on corrupt politicians, except for in our own country. I'll assume we did it elsewhere too. I also disagree that the goal of the proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviets was driven by the want to keep the Soviets out of the Indian Ocean. I think India/Pakistan can do that themselves just fine. The goal was to prevent the Soviets from expanding their influence or territory, and to just overall harm their military strength. China doesn't make a whole lot of sense, considering they have a massive coast on the Pacific. Not exactly a whole lot we can do there, and we've already pretty much conceded on them having the SE Asian Sea. Taiwan makes even less sense, as they're our ally. If your argument is that it's more of a *subconscious* thing that drives a neo-British thought in America, then I'd still have to strongly disagree.
@@hirocheeto7795 so, um… Pardon for the interjection. I think you misread that post. Britain didn’t think it was “small”. The comment didn’t say that. They said it _is_ small. It was the most extensive empire in history and the ultranationalist jingoism of a British Imperialist’s (the empire being in their eyes massive, powerful, perfect) would put a modern Republican to shame. They were saying we the US think of Europe as if we are still that small island on the North Sea that ruled a world empire, and England’s long-standing goal regarding Europe was to keep control of the seas and prevent any one or two countries from being strong enough to challenge her. (In other words, they were calling the island small geographically, not at all saying the Brits thought of themselves as small. That almost the opposite of what they said ) The thing with the Soviets and Japan, the thing they said is just true, and the comment you responded to didn’t mention the bomb (although they could have. the timing and decision to use it was heavily influenced by what the US wanted to happen with the Soviets. Shaun has a good vid on it if you haven’t seen it.) I digress. They didn’t say anything about using the nukes to stop the Russians entering Hokkaido. I’m not saying I agree with their comment elsewhere, for the record. I just saw two bits where you responded to things they didn’t say as though they said them. That’s all. Cheers.
Ironically, I felt relieved when Taliban took Kabul and the last Western planes and helicopters left. Don't get me wrong, I hate the Taliban. I felt relief because it seems like an end of an era and the beginning of a new one. There will still be the occassional terror attack in the West, but thats a police problem, not a military problem. Unfortunately, President Biden of the United States has made it clear that this is the beginning if not the continuation of a Cold War against China
@@DieNibelungenliad Its not, but its hard not to blame , dont get me wrong taliban are undoubtly very bad news, ut the blame is the half hearted rushed instead diplomatic long term and investing in structure to stabili tactic. But th us does that internal too so, no surprise , just the blame is there mor than on taliban who are horrble and .... but local. And got enabled by the us honestly. Biden retreating if as always by the us military rushed and mesy but reasonable , if consequence of a loong inability to plan long term international. Being strong wont make you a leader lasting, connection are. diplomacy is, trade. Trust is and relations. Not fear.
Terrorism has completely, overwhelmingly won this war. How could it not? The US spent decades fighting an idea, restricting the freedoms of its people in ever way possible to feel "safe".
As an Iraqi, that last part about consequences really hit hard, because to me the war and the string of corrupt governments that followed is my entire life, I and others of my country face these consequences every day while Americans debate the cost of the war in monetary abstract terms! I know a lot of Americans like to speak in ideals and how it's for democracy or human rights, but here is the thing, about 2 years ago there were uprisings around the world, one in Hong Kong got so much media attention, another in Iraq, got a passing mention and mostly when the Iranian embassy was attacked, yet if you do a quick google search about the casualties of both uprisings you should be confused as to why no one talks of the deadlier suppression of the Iraqi government ? in few years when ISIS or some other military group takes over Iraq like the Taliban did will the American politicians also act blindsided? when they so blatantly ignored the human rights violations of the current government? will they blame Iraqis for not fighting back after they stood back and did nothing as they got slaughtered? and no I'm advocating the US interfere, I simply expect the world media to report human rights violations equally and not pick and choose which ones serve their narrative.
I am Chinese Indonesian WHen I read the news about Operation rolling thunder, in the Vietnam war I thought it's going to be something big!!. and mind-blowing ones. but then we realize it's just bombing random places nonstop. I remember my grandfather said, "are they fighting mother nature?".
I can’t pretend to apologize for my whole country, but as an American and simply as a fellow person, I want to…I don’t know how to say so in a way that’s not awkward and laughable, but to offer support/be a voice of someone who cares. I was a kid when the US invaded Iraq, but I absolutely remember seeing it on the news. I remember despairing. The war didn’t pose any threat to me, my hometown, or my family- but the consequences of war for any town or family is one too many. I guess I just wanted to say that there’s at least some folks here who do actually care, not because they have anything to gain or lose, but because nobody deserves to grow up in a war zone. Words alone are probably cold comfort, but silence seems worse, I figure.
I love listening to Dan Carlin and one of his most consistent gripes with American foreign policy is the fact that so many people who have been wrong wrong wrong still get a seat at the table.
@@sleepyhead8681 I have to disagree - the "GOP", or rather "NTP“(New Trump Party), is far far worse than the Dems. Not only on domestic issues, but foreign issues as well.... Now I'm not claiming that the Dems are perfect, far from - but Trumpians is so f...ing disgusting that the very thought of the risk of them getting more power is making me wanna vomit...
Becaus love it ior hate it, america is internationally integral and you just cant just keep them from the table. That honestly why china of all countries still is on the human rights comiteee and needs to go off till ther is a better china that isnt ...
My only problem with the pullout from Afghanistan is HOW it was done; as a Canadian seeing our vets need to gather & spend money on helping our Afghan interpreters hide & finally escape here with their families, it feels like both the USA & my own gov failed horribly in how they enacted this withdrawal.
At least they got somewhere. Germany (even tho it was only there thanks to the USA insisting on it) f-ed up way more. So many allied locals died from it and nobody from the military or politicians faced any prison time for it.
It wasn't any 'government's' fault, it was Trump's fault because he made a shitty deal with terrorists. Even worse, he made that deal knowing that he wouldn't be in office to deal with it. The deadline was after he was voted out of office.
The problem is the corruption meant that Afghanistan couldn't maintain a sense of order while the west left. They were falling before the planes even left
"Can you believe that? That the Afghan soldier isn't provided with a proper winter uniform?" Germany in Russia, France in Russia, Russia in Finland: "Wow! Who would do such a thing?"
Thinking about it always makes me think of the scene from Generation Kill where they pull out their MOPP suits and see they're all in Woodland Camo as they're standing in the desert and Brad just says "Woodland camoflague? Did anyone happen to remember we're invading a fucking desert country?"
I love how many times biden claimed that there were 300.000 afghan security forces, a number that literally nobody at all familiar with the matter has ever believed.
I figured that was just sour grapes on our part, as, IIRC, the people saying that weren't asking the Afghan soldiers themselves why they didn't fight. I'd heard the soldiers were barely getting paid or fed. Ideals don't feed your wife and kids, do they?
Yeah it's pretty hard to fight as a soldier when: your officers sold all your ammo, you haven't been paid, chaos endangers your family back home, you have so many generals soaking up so much of your defense budget, you have nothing left for training, food, etc. So don't blame the damned troops. They never had a chance.
@@grmpEqweerThe Afghan government of the time was heavily centralized and depended on local warlords and strongmen. Parts of the coalition presence believed warlords was a necessity and propped them up. Afghans themselves hated warlords.
The corruption in Afghanistan under US control, has some correlation with the corruption that plagues Puerto Rico. “It’s the Puertorican government’s fault”… but there’s more to it than that. Welcome back btw!
I would say its 50% gov corruption which is our fault and 50% tribalism yeah you can blame alot of the inadequacy of the Afghanistan military on bad US planning you also can’t overlook that Afghanistan is a tribal country making alot of their soilders likely to dip and run back to their home tribe any time any tpe of fighting happens or to desert if their home village is taken by the Taliban
@@dustie455 IDK about percentages, but you're right that "nation building" was kind of doomed to fail, and was attempted with no understanding the sociopolitical reality there. In _The other Afghan women_ (New Yorker), a rural woman describes how she experienced the Taliban as the least worst, compared to the pillaging bands of warlords they defeated (aka the "freedom fighters" of the "Northern Alliance"), who in turn were later propped back up by the US & put into offices under Karzai.
Who would have thought that limiting Puerto Rico (a modern day colony) to only trade with it's colonial power would have socioeconomics downsides? Either just turn Puerto Rico into a state or let them be their own nation, but since the US doesn't want either one well, Puerto Rico remains a colony
@@BurningFyre bruh im literally a high school student of course i cant give you an accurate percentage of blame for a geopolitical fuck up as big as Afghanistan im simply giving a subjective estimate, do i seriously have to proclaim that the number is just a estimate when it comes to something that is obviously just a made up percentage so you can understand how i will distribute blame especially in a TH-cam comment section
If you want to hear a story about a superpower filled with hubris, going to "easily" defeat a land, only to get stuck on that land, and ending up being totally annihilated, look up - "The Sicilian Expedition" from 415 BC. It's one of the craziest historical events in history, and very few know about it, even though it's so well documented by Thucydides and others. Athens lost a generation of men and her entire fleet in a most horrific way.
"Let's go back to the 90s. The EIGHTEEN nineties." Should have started there, because the 1990s is merely a continuation of the attitudes and policies of all of the 90-100 years that came before that, and is part of a pattern that goes back even further.
@@Vee_9001 I implied that with the last bit: "and is part of a pattern that goes back even further." My focus, though, was on US foreign policy, and how the interventionist leanings by the US (different from "merely" trying to conquer new territory) started around the 1890s or so (I'm no historian, so I don't give a hard date. I just know that we did a lot of crap in the early 1900s).
USA fails to learn important things after losing to Vietnam: 1. Learn Geography 2. Avoid backing a corrupt and weak government that's not popular with the people 3. Train that government's forces properly as if they were yours 4. Understand how Guerilla Warfare works 5. Never beat around the bush when civilian casualties happened
@@DieNibelungenliad 3. Like, seriously, chill homie. Use the military budget on a universal sexbot program or federally-funded cookie dough ice cream, or something.
As a veteran of the Afghan war, this really reinforced what I realized after Aug 2021. Our government cares not for it's people, democracy, or freedom. Only about money
It seems to me that the Domino Doctrine kind of admits that the communist analysis of capital was right: left to their own devices the exploited would revolt.
No the domino theory suggested that because a land has been captured by the communists , the neighbouring lands would be accessible to their armies to spread communism.
@@kaavi1391 Armies alone never were the deciding factor in a Communist takeover. Virtually all had (minimal to maximal, it varied) some levels of domestic support. There were devoted communists even in Poland and Germany, otherwise administration would have been an enormous headache and quickly failed (as was the case in Afghanistan, though that also came down to US money).
@@kaavi1391 you’re right in a sense, a situation that exemplifies this is the Greek Civil War right after WW2, where because of a growing Yugoslavia, Greek Communists - of which massive part were ethnic Macedonians - were supported by a stable Yugoslav socialist army from the north. The communists lost and the Macedonians were exiled, but the war itself was definitely more ferocious because of a viable socialist army supplying it from the north
No. Even without a revolt, Commies will try to colonize free nations. This was proven when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, even though the people clearly didn't want Communist rule any longer. Similarly, Vietnam colonized Laos in order to install a puppet Communist government there. In line with Marxist doctrine, the Soviet Communists sought world domination through violent military action, and thus it needed to be opposed, as it directly threatened OUR sovereignty. This like saying imperialism was true, as it was so successful, so the nations must have been willingly colonized by a "superior" civilization.
I remember reading a joke when I was kid: "Russia thinks it will save the world, and the world hopes Russia would save them from Russia". Swap Russia to USA and the joke still works.
For the record, I want to point out a couple things on foreign policy: 1. When I lived in Massachusetts, there was town called Devens that was not too far away from where I live. It was a town where the biggest driver of economic growth was the Military Barracks. Around the time of the great recession the barracks was shut down, and ever since that period of time, the economy has never recovered. This kind of dilemma is a consistent issue in the United States. Military Spending is not just about bombs, it's about jobs and maintaining the economic foundation of many local governments. The idea of the military industry complex and that American politics is simply driven by the interest of elites with an ideological goal ignores the legacy of the New Deal and WW2 on how America's economy is fundamentally structured. There are multiple webs of interests that extend from the lower to the upper classes of America that drive the often incoherent aspects of US foreign policy, and just like our healthcare system or our welfare system in general, those webs are filled with special interests, activists, unions, lobbyists all fighting for a piece of the pie. 2. This is the primary issue of Trump. A lot of people liked Trump, the same way a lot of people like a shock to the body as a cure for monotony. However, not understanding the system and how it works, and treating it based off a whim driven by outrage, is how we had the poor reaction to the pandemic, especially compared to other nations that had far less capacity or resources to fight it like we did. An ideology can be wrong and at least understood and criticized, incoherence is what American politics produces generally speaking, because the people have no idea how the system operates and what would have to be given up across the board, so the media gives them the culture war, so they can blame some other groups of people for the existence and incoherence of the system. And in the midst of the confusion the status quo operates, not because it's better, but because there's no coherent alternative and even if it did exist, it would not be propagated by the kind of person who would run for office.
Short answer, the US has set vauge military goals so the army doesnt know what they are there to do. Since politics have become more muddled and war is the continuation of politics by other means this is a natural development. But in a conventinal war the US is unmatched, until it is time for the occupation.
I would go a little further : it isn't that the US has vague military goals, it is that the goals are not really military in nature. The feedback loop revolves around domestic elections rather than foreign policy objectives, so it produces behavior that makes little sense at face value.
@@shartstanker2086 Actually, the US military is really good at putting stuff back together, and when you talk to planners the whole 'building' and 'doing good' process really gets them excited. But voters, and thus politicians, are not that excited about such things, so they are not made into strategic goals.
No, US military goals are pretty clear, it's just that those pesky civilians and rebels keep resisting US military goals. So, the inevitable cope comes "b-but we are just not defined our goals! If we were allowed to murder civilians at will without any oversight, we would have won!" Look at the Vietnam, buddy, you are not winning anything, conventional or propaganda or economical. People of the World refuse to be ruled by foreign rulers; ever since USSR single-handedly defeated fascism and discredited it in history forever, people of the World refused colonialism and imperialism at every opportunity. USA's inability to occupy anyone properly is a continuation of decolonization process which USSR spearheaded. USA cannot win, because it's impossible by this point in history to force people overseas into subservience to your empire. And no, USA is shit in conventional warfare. I mean, rebels with 1800s weaponry manage to kick americans out with all their high-tech stuff, and when countries like USSR or China support those rebels, americans get thrown out even faster. K/D ratio doesn't matter, military objectives are, and USA keeps on losing those despite having proxy armies in the regions outnumbering rebel armies.
@@shartstanker2086 mate. Dont ignore how the US spent 1 TRILLION dollars over the 20yrs in building afghan infrastructure. Just like how they helped rebuilt germany and Japan prior ww2. If you are looking to criticize a superpower on its weak building up of a country, look at Russia / Soviet Union. Almost every country they influence or touch, turned to shiet. North Korea, Ukraine, etc.
The business these days is selling weapons, not achieving a definitive military result or victory. Afghanistan left us 20 years of audit records showing how bad the arms industry corruption has become. PMCs in particular had a habit of price gouging for same services and goods. America wasn't listening to the people who live there. It went in with its own cynical agenda and made that last for as long as was politically tolerable. Also, it's good to see you making videos again. Your content has always been very well thought out.
Three Arrows, I don't see why you would feel boxed in when I'm sure most of us came to this channel because of you debunking right-wingers but then stayed for the excellent historical analysis and your narration. I found myself specifically often rewatching your history videos like the one about how societies turn cruel or the one about propaganda during the Great War. I know you to be a fan of The Great War channel and I'm sure many here as well so your Iron Dice content would also neatly fit here. It's not like you're switching up to some Fortnite rage compilations or some shit.
I agree. My first, and still favorite, Three Arrows vid was "How Societies Turn Cruel." What didn't draw me in was dunking on Sargon of Akkad, though that was a bonus, but Dan's excellent knowledge of history to draw the dark parallels between America's current immigration policy and Weimar Germany's stance towards Jews fleeing the Russian Civil War. It was that video and that excellent use of history to prove a point that proved to me I'd love Dan's output. I love the Iron Dice and especially the Fight for the Republic series. I'm learning so much from it.
@@otisjacksonjunior9795 *Looks at heat waves, heat domes, increasing global temperatures, disappearing glaciers and the retreat and disappearing of polar ice caps.* About that....
@@otisjacksonjunior9795 Science say's that isn't gonna last, and in fact we are seeing that changing rapidly at a worrying pace and extent. Are you just denying the science now?
All Star by Smash Mouth is scathing critique of our modern day political reality and global warming. You can't change my mind and you can't prove me wrong. It's a cool place and they say it gets colder You're bundled up now, wait 'til you get older But the meteor men beg to differ Judging by the hole in the satellite picture The ice we skate is getting pretty thin The water's getting warm so you might as well swim My world's on fire, how about yours? That's the way I like it and I'll never get bored.
I'm a fan of the channel that posted this video, and a fan of the channel that posted this comment on this video. As such, I am compelled by eldritch forces to point out that this comment is from a channel that posts content of a similar style and/or within a similar overall field to the channel that posted this video and to do so with a sense of surprised excitement. OMG funny mustache man is here!!! (but for real I'm loving the content, and the stache)
Let's be real about Syria: it was an attempt by the US and Saudi Arabia to take down a mutual enemy, and the US cannot tolerate anything that is not its own puppet, and Syria had always been allied with the Soviet Union and after Russia.. it isn't that fundamentally different than Venezuela, Serbia (taken care of), Iran, etc. By the way, thank you, really, for putting Serbia and Kosovo into the correct category. It is rare.
The Iron Dice podcast is easily my favorite podcast and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in German history. Your ability to turn the history into an engaging story is awesome and I can't wait for more
Technically we have not , it’s our politicians that lose. Consider Vietnam- 6 weeks after the so called Tet Offensive out military ran them right back up the country side . Consider Korea, right back up to China and has McCarther not gotten so close to China we would still be there
They still teach it in US K-12 schools, too. And when you push back with examples like Vietnam, the propagandists insist that it doesn't count because "that was a conflict, not a war."
@@peterthegreat996 “We would still be there.” In what sense is even this hypothetical situation a victory, much less the other piss-poor examples you provided?
@@peterthegreat996 If a war does not conclude in the political state which was seen as the goal in the beginning (Vietnam, stop it from going red) the war has been lost on all accounts that matter though. Military achievements that do not translate into changes conductive to that goal are meaningless.
Nothing wrong with stepping back and re examining what it is YOU WANT to do. I've been enjoying The Iron Dice greatly, and look forward to further Three Arrows content :D
@Jean Sanchez Yeah, sadly YT disabled the community captioning tool a while ago in their infinite wisdom (remember annotations?)... Some creators now crowdsource it via third-party websites that recreate that functionality. Or pay someone to do it - it is a pretty important feature for accessibility after all.
I've been rearranging my Patreon support but I've kept you on - in large part because I enjoy the Iron Dice series. Please continue to make the content you feel called to do, there are plenty of other youtubers who can do response and debunking videos. No need to do that if it's only to chase the algorithm, at least for my part.
@@otisjacksonjunior9795 it can express itself that way, nature is diverse to say that things are naturally hierarchical or not just leads to a naive worldview and lessens the range and beauty of nature
We talked explicitly about America as the one world power in school, usually by using the period we’re talking about and then saying “and now America is Britain” or “and now America is Rome” (we talked a lot about Pax Britannica so it makes sense) I live in Canada btw and I learned my social studies in French from Québécois teachers (which does make a difference)
36:38 I first saw The Blob at a vintage movie fest in 2019, and the whole theatre crackled with the grimmest laughter I've ever heard at this line. I think it might have been the last movie I saw in theatre before Covid. The movie itself wasn't scary, but I will forever associate it with nervous, existential dread. This is tangential to the video, it's just an affecting experience I had that I rarely get to share because it's so particular and niche. Glad I'm not the only person getting that song stuck in my head
20:00 One small point on bomber choice : in my understanding of reading testimonies from soviet détachés to the Vietnamese, the choice of fighter-bomber was not made to counter flak (a solution towards flak is precisely to fly higher) but against guided missiles that the Soviet gave to the Vietnamese. Those missiles had one, basic and simple counter measure : fly low. So the Americans quickly learned to fly low.. exposing themselves to the flak that caused 80% of air losses in the conflict.
Interesting! Is avoiding flak the only reason to fly high, or does it give other advantages? Do you have an idea whether flying low and choosing to deal with flak over missiles was ultimately the least worst strategy in terms of avoiding losses? (besides, y'know, just staying home...) I know it's a vague counterfactual... I guess as someone who knows nothing about history or military strategy, I'm mostly curious how "rational" or "effective" militaries are in achieving particular small-scale objectives like "minimize air losses on mission XYZ" (as opposed to big-picture stuff like "defeat the Vietcong", which they apparently are quite bad at).
@@nibblrrr7124 Well it's a complicated issue. But against an enemy with guided missiles, a quadrimotor strategic bombers can only resort to electronic or physical countermeasures : it cannot dodge, it's big, slow, fly straight and high. So from that perspective, it's clear the presence of missiles pushed heavenly towards low flying high speed fighter bombers. Flying low can also help accuracy for a bombardment, so I guess the nature of the objective (being often small, hidden and in the jungle) forced to rely on more precision. Also because a fighter bomber carries less, so carpet bombing is less efficient. Considering the technologies of the time, and the willingness of the Soviet to give material and training to the Vietnamese, exposing planes to flak might have been the lesser evil. Yet precisely what other countermeasure towards flak the Americans could have used (or did use), I don't know
@@prierepanda2186 The countermeasure would be to not rely so damn much on air power. The US military, and in particular the USAF is way too married to the idea that air power can solve everything. Except that no it cant. Because it often tends to ignore the fact that air power is expensive to maintain. your average combat aircraft easily costs tens of thousands of dollars to maintain per flight hour on top of the tens of millions for the aircraft itself. That by itself is fine if you know, your bombing expensive infrastructure like cities or multi million dollar pieces of military hardware, or many hundreds of millions of dollars in naval waship's, yeah that's when air power works well. But using these same aircraft to bomb what amounts to poorly trained insurgents and rebels with kalashnikovs and bamboo huts (and missing most of the time), its not exactly a good strategy if you care even the slightest about cost effectiveness. Not to mention the incredibly bad optics of constantly bombing the shit out of innocent civilians. Of course this ignores the fact that the best strategy for dealing with Vietnam was simply to never go there in the first place. While yes the Vietnamese turned to communism, after the end of the Vietnam war, they quickly showed they had no interest in becoming a Chinese or Soviet puppet either, as the Chinese then tried to invaded Vietnam in the late 70's and it predictably went poorly for them too. And before the US even got involved in Vietnam, the Vietnamese where mangling the french pretty good too. Vietnam was never going to be a real threat to China, France or the US, until all three got the pig headed idea to try and invade the place.
24:00 I would argue that the Domino theory wasn't wrong, but rather the capitalist of the world were sufficiently skilled at blunting the progress of socialist governments. You just have to look the history of intervention in Central and South America to see how they would stamp out any shift toward socialism by supporting local fascists.
It’s crazy how I always thought my mom left Russia cause of “communism” but she left during this shock therapy to capitalism completely destroying the country, glad you talked about it for a little. Idk why I never just asked my mom, she is pretty open about it, (vaush would prob call her a tankie)
I also only recently learned about how bad it was in Russia in the 90s, I think in Adam Curtis' documentaries. Re: your last sentence: As someone who often feels better informed about the omnipresent US politics & history discourse than what's going on in my own country (Germany), the political & ideological landscape in Russia seems completely alien and incomprehensible to me, and I have no idea how to get into learning about it. (cf. that study that in Chinese surveys, "social conservatism" correlates with "communism", and "progressive values" with "capitalism". I sometimes struggle to grasp that other countries are, well, other countries.)
Communism had severe failings and mixed markets are way better. But going straight from a command economy to markets is incredibly stupid. The population's not ready to take the more active role in stock ownership and other things like that immediately, and the people who ran bureaus and had *already* engaged in regulatory capture are going to just take over the new system.
@@IntrusiveThot420 It's rather ironic that, by choosing to screw Russia over so badly for so many years, the Us has created it's own biggest headache (besides China, that is-- though Deng Xiaoping's decision to dupe the Americans into jumpstarting their economy was brilliant, it wasn't a kneejerk reaction to American power, but careful observation). Russia now has bases planned for every continent on the globe, has increasing (though still tiny) influence everywhere, and poses a genuine ideological threat to the US. All because they wanted to kick their enemy while they were down. If they had been integrated and treated with respect, it's likely that they wouldn't feel the need to expand (which they tried to show in the 90s with Yeltsin's openness).
@@LancesArmorStriking Deng Xiaoping learned from other Asian economies (namely Japan and Singapore) on how to get American help to grow a nation's economy quickly. Without the precedent, I'm not sure Deng Xiaoping would have gone down the state capitalist route.
@@weirdofromhalo You are right, probably not. But even if Japan and Singapore had not industrialized and Westernized prior to China, I think a Chinese leader would have recognized the usefulness of a large, industrial economy opening its markets and sharing its technical knowledge.
I just read a comment yesterday from an American going back to the “maybe we should enforce rights abroad by force or intervention”…like, have I been taking crazy pills, or do these people want a forever war?
@@longliverocknroll5 you have no idea because you are so privileged to live in the west, you have never been in a situation where your people need help but your own government is against the people, who do we ask for help then ?
Let loose and fly Three Arrows, for if only one of your arrows hits the mark, your silver tongue will make your audience forget any of those that don’t. Watching your videos is like running into an old friend, the conversation never fails to be engaging, but the time always feels too short. I’m glad you have returned, and it’s been too long my friend.
on the topic of whether or not the US said they wouldn't expand NATO east; firstly, the US can't unilaterally decide that, NATO's an organizaiton of multiple countries which each get a vote. Secondly, NATO doesn't really expand like a country or empire would. It's a voluntary organization, an alliance; countries join of their own free will. Thirdly, there is, to the best of this one's knowledge, no evidence that anyone in any position of power ever said that.
it's also worth noting that Biden may have pulled us out of Afganistan(and did a shit job of it, mind you), but it was Trump who started the pullout proceedure.
18:48 It's interesting that you mention this approach to strategic bombing in Vietnam. During this time, you actually had a pretty "old guard" sort of arrangement in the USAF who very much still had their heads in WW2-styled "bomb them until their industry is dust" mentality. McNamara had to reign in guys like Curtis LeMay who just wanted to drop nukes on Hanoi like it was Japan all over again. The problem - as we know now - is pretty apparent: WW2 isn't Vietnam, and Vietnam wasn't WW2. Even if by conventional measures, the US was doing pretty well against the NVA, the sheer political pressure as well as the war exhaustion of the whole conflict was only growing wider by trying to be so forceful. It didn't help that the RoV in the South had practically collapsed by '63, and what came after was pretty much just a military government which had like, next to no popular support. It's easy to see all the parallels with Afghanistan, where the US goes in with their heads in a "Grand Battle, Shock and Awe" sort of mentality that - like in WW2, worked in their previous war (in Kuwait), but falls apart basically as soon as you have to shift gears.
@@DieNibelungenliad The US defeated the Taliban & the Vietcong multiple times. The Tet Offensive was considered by NV as a complete military failure and basically exhausted their guerrilla forces. The only reasons why the Taliban were able to make a comeback were that they hiding in Pakistan (a nominal US ally), that the US made the strategic error of going in the 03' Iraq War and thus severely reducing US forces in Afghanistan, and that Trump literally released the Taliban's leaders as part of his "peace plan" with the Taliban.
@@balvarine8709 Defeating the enemy in battle is insufficient to win a war. The Gov of Pakistan allowed the Gov of the US to bomb the Taliban in Pakistan. The US military operation failed to eliminate the Taliban in Pakistan and it even increased Taliban support in Pakistan. The US Gov invaded Iraq because the US gov was confident that the US military could win. Turns out the US military was weaker than thought. The US Gov agreed on a peace plan with the Taliban because the Taliban were too strong for the US military to defeat. You dont make a peace plan with an enemy you destroyed.
Honestly I'm more interested in your videos where you talk about overall topic in depth, this includes the iron dice and this video. More leftubers are Chaning their content from reacting to the alt right to this type of stuff and I love it. Good luck with your podcast and the rest.
I take this as a positive sign-that there’s less alt right content to react/combat than in the past few years…wonder if dumping Trump was a cause or effect of that…?
@@warlordofbritannia I think it's more that the alt-right only has a few talking points that are endlessly repackaged Edit: so therefore our favorite TH-camrs end up doing something more interesting with their time instead of disproving the same lies over and over.
It might be because dumping on alt-right/Trump supporters doesn't get as much traction without Trump in the white house. He's easy to hate along with his supporters.
@@GreebusBleeb I’m somewhat curious to see how breadtubers adapt to that - I figure hbomberguy and Three Arrows will do well, seeing as they already had an established interest in other content (consumer media for the former, certain bits of history for the latter) Then you got guys like Shaun, who consciously or not, have dipped their toes to…mixed results at best so far And finally, the breadtube-adjacent creators like Sarah Z or Lindsay Ellis, who more or less already had their own thing going anyways
@@CarrotConsumer I wouldn't go that far, even without Trump to scathingly deconstruct: their are still plenty of alt-right and Trump supporter nonsense to debunk.
If I’m correct in reading this, the losing is on the strategic scale. The emphasis on liberal foreign policy in intervening in smaller nations creates broader strategy failures, especially when it comes to angering allies and frightening larger rivals. The decision to intervene in Libya was a strategic failure in that it upset Ghadafi’s ally Russia and showed states like Iran and North Korea that the U.S. would not respect a country that had willingly surrendered its WMD’s.
Glad to see you (well, your content) again! Franlky I enjoy your videos like "Was every German soldier evil" oder Ramstein analysis more than reactions/debunking (but they are also pretty good and informative to be honest). So I'm looking forward for more of your content here and I'll certainly will check podcast :)
@@burke615 Here's a quote for anyone ; "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
They want the whole world to become liberal: a global market with free trade and open borders. This is NOT a bad goal if every country has a democratic gov and a socialist economy. However, these war mongers want every country to have a plutocratic gov and a capitalist economy. They want capitalists to freely travel all over the world to buy cheap and sell high at the expense of common people. We all know what will be the end result of this system, the economies of many countries will only sell one or few commodities; causing those countries to suffer crisis when the market for those goods busts. We saw this in 19th century Ireland, where the main export was potatoes. A disease caused the potatoes to rot, the price of food rose, and most people didn't have enough money to buy potatoes or any food because the only crop grown in their farms were potatoes for export. We saw this in British India, where many famines happened because ever more tenant farmers were growing opium, sugar, cotton, indigo, spices, coffee, and other cash crops in exchange for rent rebates. When there was a poor harvest of staple foods, the price of food rose drastically, causing many people to not afford the food they need and more people resorted to growing cash crops to earn money. As more farmers grew cash crops instead of staple food crops, the price of food slowly rose even in times of good harvests. We saw this in the 1800s-1940s China, where their economy was increasingly reliant on selling tea and buying opium. We saw this recently in Venezuela, where their economy was reliant on selling crude oil. The US has a diverse economy, but the US is not invulnerable to economic crisis. The US has had 48 recessions in its history, an average of about 1 recession every 4-7 years. Thats more recessions than different Presidents
@@burke615 Under Eisenhower the US was spending 10% of it's GDP on Defence. It was spending 8% during the mid 1960s and it was at 5% in the 1980s. It now spends 3.8%. The Military Industrial Complex has never been more diminished now then relative to how large it was during the Cold War.
24:50 The blob actually exists, at least kind of. It's called Physarum polycephalum and is a unicellular. You can look it up if you like, it's pretty fascinating.
The main issue that I have about NATO expanding East topic, is that I can see people talking about Western or Russian interests, but never about for example Baltic States' interests.
@@Carewolf sounds weird. You ever heard about Yugoslavia? I think that people in the Balkans do still remember thousands of civilians killed by the NATO troops. I believe it has more to do with the fact that these countries are not actually sovereign in their foreign policy, having to chose either America-EU or Russia as their big daddy ally, cus you have to buy products you can't produce yourself somewhere => you have to trade with the large countries, and to the most Balkan states the US-EU are much preferred trade partners. Look at Georgia and Armenia, the two are very close to each other and to them that choice is way less obvious, since the EU is far and trading costs are higher due to longer supply chains. When the choice isn't that obvious Georgia chose the West, while Armenia chose Russia.
@@Carewolf you shouldn't view any modern conflict in an aggressor-defender way, man, that's just ignorant. Almost every modern military conflict has a background of an economic collision and sometimes, a history of mutual cultural hatred, so saying that someone is in the wrong is just stupid. You have to lift these pink glasses, man, there are no good and bad agents in the global politics, countries are fighting for their interests, that's it. Look at Armenia and Azerbaijan, if you want to see an example of how economic interests of regional powers meet cultural differences - and literally everyone is in their right, but also in the wrong. But NATO troops still killed the most civilians with their bombings in the Yugoslav wars, more than Serbian and Croatian troops combined. That probably should worry people, you know.
@@32Singder I wasn't talking about Serbia being an aggressor as a country. I was talking about them doing a genocide against other people, those people appreciated not being slaughtered.
And as usual, the US military tried to blame Hash or drug use for the Afghan Armies poor performance. The weren't poorly trained, they were poorly supported. Because just like Vietnam, the war was never meant to be won, just sustained so the military industrial complex could keep making money.
Even those that did want to 'win' the war, refused to face the reality that you can't use force to change a country's political opinions. No amount of bombs, planes, etc... will make someone believe democracy is worth getting killed to try to achieve, nor create a unified trusting national identity where one didn't exist before. Nation building by an external force is impossible.
@@what-uy7go That was my impression, having been there. Was there drug use? yah, but there was/is drug use in the US DOD as well. Although the "training" the ANA received was inconsistent, at best. When you have villages risking imprisonment and death to smuggle Taliban Judges back into the area to adjudicate issues, then smuggling them back out, when they could just go "down the road" (relatively speaking) to the Afghan puppet government, that's a sign you won't win. The initial invasion was BS, the Taliban were initially aiding us in locating Al-Qaeda camps to target; then we invaded to install a puppet state. A punitive war against Al-Qaeda, where a good chunk of it's infrastructure and leadership are hiding out in Afghanistan is one thing (especially where the Taliban weren't especially fond of them, they just hadn't given them a reason to go after them); trying to overthrow the legitimate sovereign of a country is another. It's not that the majority of Afghan's cared whether the Taliban were in power or not, they just weren't interested in what we were trying to shove down their throat. Less than 5 years into that mess, it was already becoming noticed that Afghanistan was becoming like Vietnam, a conflict that was wrong to begin with, and was being dragged out to try and help the "powerful" save face, and to consolidate even more wealth into the hands of a few (warhawks, MIC, ect). A song by Tom Paxton sums it up: "Lyndon Johnson told the nation Have no fear of escalation I am trying everyone to please Though it isn't really war We're sending fifty thousand more To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese"
A lot of it boils down to the US not following Clausewitz's "War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means." The US might be good at fighting particular military engagements and battles, but has most of the time vague and ill defined political goals, which is the source of their failures.
Definitely. As one French politician keeps saying (regarding the French army’s own stalemate situation in Mali), "There’s no military solution to political problems."
Their foreign policy goal is not nation building or making friends or durable military occupation. It’s to make clear that no smaller country will be allowed to steer a successful course independent of the US, to make the world safe for American corporations, and to shift large portions of US and other countries’ budgets to its military-industrial complex. Sure, Vietnam, Syria, Afghanistan etc may look like defeats, and I assume the US government might have planned for different outcomes but they have always achieved those three objectives
I am Chinese Indonesian WHen I read the news about Operation rolling thunder, in the Vietnam war I thought it's going to be something big!!. and mind-blowing ones. but then we realize it's just bombing random places nonstop. I remember my grandfather said, "are they fighting mother nature?".
Great video. Gotta add another point to the whole "the US believe that military presence can shape country's politics", especially in Afghanistan's case, may as well be influenced by the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan, since despite being a failure which has greatly influenced the collapse of the Soviet Union, the soviet military presence had had a somewhat positive effect (mostly in cities, since rural regions were often controlled by the Taliban) on Afghanistan's economy, being shaped in image of the USSR. But what Americans may not realize is that USSR has brought engineers, scientists and teachers to build schools and hospitals while occupying the country, not just soldiers. You cannot reshape a country just by bringing in troops and having them stay there, you have to actually do something, build some infrastructure, teach the locals to maintain the system you are trying to build. I haven't seen the US do that anywhere, they just bomb shit and say their job is done.
What kind of bs is this?the USSR destroyed nearly all of rural afghanistan's infrastructure They bombed hospitals in herat way before the revolt even started They made toybombs to paralyze the afghan youth so they dont end up joining the mujahideen Where do you think those 1m+ civillian casualties came from?The soviets routinely massacred entire towns under suspicion of hosting mujahideen since they failed at identifying them themselves. The US has committed several warcrimes in afghanistan but lets not compare them to what the Red army did in Afghanistan along with the Afghan communist intelligence KHAD,The soviet backed najib was literal known as "Kashoga" meaning spoon since he used to take out people's eyes with spoons and the soviets overlooked every warcrime they did as they themselves were involved in it.
You do realize the US built up infrastructure and the economy in the cities too right? Do you really think the US went there with just military presence
@@LiquidBangash Nice fake lol. The only ones besides the fascists with the history of massacring entire cities in the last few decades were western liberals throughout every war especially WW2 haha!
30:30 what’s crazy is, there are still a surprising number of people who still think the U.S. *needs* to maintain its massive military. I’m an undergrad in the history/politics department of my school (yeah they’re prioritizing engineering and shrinking all the liberal arts so our departments are combined) I got into an argument with a professor and student, and their legitimate position seemed to be that everyone in the world either hates us so much they would instantly invade us if we downsized the military. It was wild cause that’s obviously insane, as if we haven’t been the main purveyor of overseas invasions.
Excellent video, and great to see you back on TH-cam! Though I do have to criticize a particular thing, the NATO enlargement thing. See, the problem that us lefties often have with this is that we only take into account two parties in the topic: The US, and Russia. There is no consideration at all given to the simple fact that countries need to WANT to join NATO, or what exactly Russia's "fear" of being "encircled" really actually says without saying it out loud: The reality is that Russia has a history of brutal imperialism towards its neighbours, and the current Russian ruling class clearly still believes in Great Russian Chauvinism and does not accept anything but limited and conditional autonomy for its former imperial victims. Russia's invasions in Ukraine and Georgia have only proven that the Baltic countries, Poland, etc only did the rational choice in joining NATO to safeguard against Russia's imperialism.
@@nektariosorfanoudakis2270 Because when they both joined in 1952, the Soviet Union seemed a bigger threat. Greece had just come out of the civil war against the communists, so allying with the US was the logical step. But judging from your name, you're Greek, so I'm not sure why I have to explain this to you.
Hey gang, you can listen to The Iron Dice Podcast over on th-cam.com/users/TheIronDice OR anywhere podcasts can be found!
If you want access to the member feed and unlock our entire Bonus Episode Backlog as well as future bonus episodes you can sign up on: www.patreon.com/join/DanArrows?
Take care!
3:09 so is this Hasan shade?
I will be listening to your podcast.😊
When's Iron Dice ep5 coming? It's easily my favorite podcast at the moment...
Great to have you back!
Great to see you posting videos here again. You've been missed. I'll will be sure to check out the Iron dice. BTW I appreciated the references to the Blob. It's one of the first horror films I saw as a young kid. It even scared me a little bit. It then because one of those films that I can't help but watch if it's on terrestrial.
Still haunted by the sheer inhumanity of Brian Williams' "I'm guided by the beauty of our armaments. And they are beautiful pictures of fearsome weapons." It's hard to get more propagandistic than that.
He probably would've orgasmed live if he was around when the US dropped the nukes on Japan to halt the USSR's land invasion.
@@robertstan298
It's always been the same game, across centuries.
The US, I feel, is just Britain incarnate, but without any geographical or climactic limits.
Due to this, their chief longstanding goal is to prevent the rise of any dominant power in Eurasia, because the national US psyche still thinks it's a small North Atlantic island bordering said continent.
Hence, the extra effort to prevent the Soviets away from Hokkaido- access to it would mean unblockability in the Paciific, containment would have failed.
Same with spending on corrupt politicians in Greece and Italy specifically. And the push to keep the Soviets from the Indian Ocean by arming Afghanistan. Same idea with China and Taiwan.
In other words, keep the hoardes away from water.
@@LancesArmorStriking I very strongly disagree with the idea that America views itself as Britain did. A single conversation with the average Republican (which is where most of these backward policies come from) would give you an idea of some massive, impossibly powerful, and perfect nation. By no means is there a perception that America is small. Hell, phrases such as "From Sea to Shining Sea" come to mind when I think of America's size or influence on the continent.
I admit that as an American I may have a biased view on the use of nuclear weapons, but I have yet to encounter anyone (even non Americans) say that the reason for the use of the weapons was to prevent the Soviets from entering Hokkaido. I'm not sure where you've gained that idea. The Soviets already had ports on the Pacific, such as Vladivostok and the island of Sakhalin (or half of it, at least).
I don't have any knowledge on spending on corrupt politicians, except for in our own country. I'll assume we did it elsewhere too.
I also disagree that the goal of the proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviets was driven by the want to keep the Soviets out of the Indian Ocean. I think India/Pakistan can do that themselves just fine. The goal was to prevent the Soviets from expanding their influence or territory, and to just overall harm their military strength. China doesn't make a whole lot of sense, considering they have a massive coast on the Pacific. Not exactly a whole lot we can do there, and we've already pretty much conceded on them having the SE Asian Sea. Taiwan makes even less sense, as they're our ally.
If your argument is that it's more of a *subconscious* thing that drives a neo-British thought in America, then I'd still have to strongly disagree.
Maybe lets not give likes to the russian nationalist dogwhistling for russian empire folks
@@hirocheeto7795 so, um…
Pardon for the interjection. I think you misread that post.
Britain didn’t think it was “small”. The comment didn’t say that. They said it _is_ small. It was the most extensive empire in history and the ultranationalist jingoism of a British Imperialist’s (the empire being in their eyes massive, powerful, perfect) would put a modern Republican to shame.
They were saying we the US think of Europe as if we are still that small island on the North Sea that ruled a world empire, and England’s long-standing goal regarding Europe was to keep control of the seas and prevent any one or two countries from being strong enough to challenge her.
(In other words, they were calling the island small geographically, not at all saying the Brits thought of themselves as small. That almost the opposite of what they said
)
The thing with the Soviets and Japan, the thing they said is just true, and the comment you responded to didn’t mention the bomb
(although they could have. the timing and decision to use it was heavily influenced by what the US wanted to happen with the Soviets. Shaun has a good vid on it if you haven’t seen it.) I digress. They didn’t say anything about using the nukes to stop the Russians entering Hokkaido.
I’m not saying I agree with their comment elsewhere, for the record.
I just saw two bits where you responded to things they didn’t say as though they said them. That’s all. Cheers.
Big congrats to "Terror" for winning the War on Terror.
just wanted it more
Ironically, I felt relieved when Taliban took Kabul and the last Western planes and helicopters left.
Don't get me wrong, I hate the Taliban. I felt relief because it seems like an end of an era and the beginning of a new one. There will still be the occassional terror attack in the West, but thats a police problem, not a military problem. Unfortunately, President Biden of the United States has made it clear that this is the beginning if not the continuation of a Cold War against China
@@DieNibelungenliad Its not, but its hard not to blame , dont get me wrong taliban are undoubtly very bad news, ut the blame is the half hearted rushed instead diplomatic long term and investing in structure to stabili tactic. But th us does that internal too so, no surprise , just the blame is there mor than on taliban who are horrble and .... but local. And got enabled by the us honestly. Biden retreating if as always by the us military rushed and mesy but reasonable , if consequence of a loong inability to plan long term international.
Being strong wont make you a leader lasting, connection are. diplomacy is, trade. Trust is and relations. Not fear.
@Ali no but Im interested. What is it about?
Terrorism has completely, overwhelmingly won this war. How could it not? The US spent decades fighting an idea, restricting the freedoms of its people in ever way possible to feel "safe".
"As long as the Arctic stays cold!"
When are we going to bring Blob containment into the conversation about climate change?
Technically, the Arctic will stay cold, even throughout Climate Change. It's just slightly less cold.
@@Copyright_Infringement
Slightly, as in a lot more of it not frozen the whole year.
Scubaing parts of Miami will be interesting.
@@grmpEqweer Miami is an acceptable loss
@@UberMenschNowFilms Well yeah, but I feel kinda sad about Venice & Mumbai.
Oh yeah, that little ball of gain-of-function! Back when the conservatives were unironically batty about Russia.
It's wild to see these "policy experts" continue on with life without an ounce of shame or self-reflection.
Henry Kissinger & Donald Rumsfeld enjoyed retirement & the Kristols are now permanently embedded in US foreign policy. Hard to not be cynical.
@@pauly260 kill one person you go to jail, kill ten thousand you get a book deal and a cush spot writing up eds for the washington post
@@chriss780 The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million men is a statistic
@@thunderbird3304 *The death of one American is a tragedy, the death of a million foreigners is a statistic
And so it has always been in the US.
As an Iraqi, that last part about consequences really hit hard, because to me the war and the string of corrupt governments that followed is my entire life, I and others of my country face these consequences every day while Americans debate the cost of the war in monetary abstract terms!
I know a lot of Americans like to speak in ideals and how it's for democracy or human rights, but here is the thing, about 2 years ago there were uprisings around the world, one in Hong Kong got so much media attention, another in Iraq, got a passing mention and mostly when the Iranian embassy was attacked, yet if you do a quick google search about the casualties of both uprisings you should be confused as to why no one talks of the deadlier suppression of the Iraqi government ? in few years when ISIS or some other military group takes over Iraq like the Taliban did will the American politicians also act blindsided? when they so blatantly ignored the human rights violations of the current government? will they blame Iraqis for not fighting back after they stood back and did nothing as they got slaughtered? and no I'm advocating the US interfere, I simply expect the world media to report human rights violations equally and not pick and choose which ones serve their narrative.
I am Chinese Indonesian WHen I read the news about Operation rolling thunder, in the Vietnam war I thought it's going to be something big!!. and mind-blowing ones. but then we realize it's just bombing random places nonstop. I remember my grandfather said, "are they fighting mother nature?".
I think you missed to write a "not" here:
"and no I'm advocating the US interfere"
This comment is more relevant now than when it was written. I feel for you brother, I hope things get better.
I can’t pretend to apologize for my whole country, but as an American and simply as a fellow person, I want to…I don’t know how to say so in a way that’s not awkward and laughable, but to offer support/be a voice of someone who cares. I was a kid when the US invaded Iraq, but I absolutely remember seeing it on the news. I remember despairing. The war didn’t pose any threat to me, my hometown, or my family- but the consequences of war for any town or family is one too many. I guess I just wanted to say that there’s at least some folks here who do actually care, not because they have anything to gain or lose, but because nobody deserves to grow up in a war zone. Words alone are probably cold comfort, but silence seems worse, I figure.
@@r3dpowel796 yes mostly lol. As long as the propaganda footage is good
I love listening to Dan Carlin and one of his most consistent gripes with American foreign policy is the fact that so many people who have been wrong wrong wrong still get a seat at the table.
The problem isn't that they have been wrong - the problem is that they refuse to learn from it!
@@gorillaguerillaDK 100%, and we have no electoral answer to stop thing's although the GOP tends to be worse it's not by mutch.
@@sleepyhead8681
I have to disagree - the "GOP", or rather "NTP“(New Trump Party), is far far worse than the Dems.
Not only on domestic issues, but foreign issues as well....
Now I'm not claiming that the Dems are perfect, far from - but Trumpians is so f...ing disgusting that the very thought of the risk of them getting more power is making me wanna vomit...
Becaus love it ior hate it, america is internationally integral and you just cant just keep them from the table. That honestly why china of all countries still is on the human rights comiteee and needs to go off till ther is a better china that isnt ...
You don’t need to make good or correct or morally consistent decisions to work within the military industrial complex. Lol
I’m so disappointed that you missed the obvious gag “Operation Rolling Blunder”
Other than that tho great vid lol glad to see you’re back
I think that was the joke
“I don’t think it can be killed, but at least we’ve got it stopped...”
“Yeah, *as long as the Arctic stays cold*”
Ruh roh raggy, I got some bad news
The blob needs a sequel
Scooby doo memes as a proxy for solid points on geopolitics yup, not surprising in a three arrows comments section
@@flametitan100 Hideaki Anno announces Shin Blob
@@mitchtherighteous the arctic is progressively growing less cold
@@bama2055 three arrows is perpetually getting more detached from reality
My only problem with the pullout from Afghanistan is HOW it was done; as a Canadian seeing our vets need to gather & spend money on helping our Afghan interpreters hide & finally escape here with their families, it feels like both the USA & my own gov failed horribly in how they enacted this withdrawal.
At least they got somewhere.
Germany (even tho it was only there thanks to the USA insisting on it) f-ed up way more. So many allied locals died from it and nobody from the military or politicians faced any prison time for it.
It wasn't any 'government's' fault, it was Trump's fault because he made a shitty deal with terrorists. Even worse, he made that deal knowing that he wouldn't be in office to deal with it. The deadline was after he was voted out of office.
The problem is the corruption meant that Afghanistan couldn't maintain a sense of order while the west left. They were falling before the planes even left
"Can you believe that? That the Afghan soldier isn't provided with a proper winter uniform?"
Germany in Russia, France in Russia, Russia in Finland: "Wow! Who would do such a thing?"
Thinking about it always makes me think of the scene from Generation Kill where they pull out their MOPP suits and see they're all in Woodland Camo as they're standing in the desert and Brad just says "Woodland camoflague? Did anyone happen to remember we're invading a fucking desert country?"
Also Russia in Russia: “Wow! Who would do such a thing?”
Russia in Russia be like: *amateurs!*
@@appleslover weapons? Who needs them when we have people!
Russis in Ukraine.
When the world needed him most...he returned
Your comment is so good I’m kinda jealous I didn’t think of it. 🤓💯👽🧬 great job with the wit!
right? it's been so long, good to have the guy back
@@OhWellWhatTheHell1 yes
After we all thought he had disappeared.
nice pfp
12:53 This is devastating to hear, especially after the many newspaper articles that blamed Afghan soldiers for their surrender... 😔
I love how many times biden claimed that there were 300.000 afghan security forces, a number that literally nobody at all familiar with the matter has ever believed.
I figured that was just sour grapes on our part, as, IIRC, the people saying that weren't asking the Afghan soldiers themselves why they didn't fight.
I'd heard the soldiers were barely getting paid or fed. Ideals don't feed your wife and kids, do they?
Yeah it's pretty hard to fight as a soldier when:
your officers sold all your ammo,
you haven't been paid,
chaos endangers your family back home,
you have so many generals soaking up so much of your defense budget, you have nothing left for training, food, etc.
So don't blame the damned troops. They never had a chance.
@@grmpEqweerThe Afghan government of the time was heavily centralized and depended on local warlords and strongmen. Parts of the coalition presence believed warlords was a necessity and propped them up. Afghans themselves hated warlords.
@@grmpEqweerThe Afghan government had its own conflict with the warlords. Part of the coalition was trying to strengthen it against them.
I'd rather have quality content that comes out sporadically than cheaply produced trash that comes out on a schedule.
Take your time, Three Arrows.
"As long as the arctic stays cold."
Jesus! That is some weapons grade wit right there.
My boi just comes in and drops a straight masterpiece after disappearing for over a year.
Keep it up man, we’re here for it.
The corruption in Afghanistan under US control, has some correlation with the corruption that plagues Puerto Rico. “It’s the Puertorican government’s fault”… but there’s more to it than that.
Welcome back btw!
I would say its 50% gov corruption which is our fault and 50% tribalism yeah you can blame alot of the inadequacy of the Afghanistan military on bad US planning you also can’t overlook that Afghanistan is a tribal country making alot of their soilders likely to dip and run back to their home tribe any time any tpe of fighting happens or to desert if their home village is taken by the Taliban
@@dustie455 IDK about percentages, but you're right that "nation building" was kind of doomed to fail, and was attempted with no understanding the sociopolitical reality there. In _The other Afghan women_ (New Yorker), a rural woman describes how she experienced the Taliban as the least worst, compared to the pillaging bands of warlords they defeated (aka the "freedom fighters" of the "Northern Alliance"), who in turn were later propped back up by the US & put into offices under Karzai.
Who would have thought that limiting Puerto Rico (a modern day colony) to only trade with it's colonial power would have socioeconomics downsides? Either just turn Puerto Rico into a state or let them be their own nation, but since the US doesn't want either one well, Puerto Rico remains a colony
@@dustie455 95% of all numbers on the internet are made up
@@BurningFyre bruh im literally a high school student of course i cant give you an accurate percentage of blame for a geopolitical fuck up as big as Afghanistan im simply giving a subjective estimate, do i seriously have to proclaim that the number is just a estimate when it comes to something that is obviously just a made up percentage so you can understand how i will distribute blame especially in a TH-cam comment section
If you want to hear a story about a superpower filled with hubris, going to "easily" defeat a land, only to get stuck on that land, and ending up being totally annihilated, look up - "The Sicilian Expedition" from 415 BC.
It's one of the craziest historical events in history, and very few know about it, even though it's so well documented by Thucydides and others.
Athens lost a generation of men and her entire fleet in a most horrific way.
Is there a TH-cam video or series you recommend?
@@xdearlifex CallMeEzekiel's series on it is pretty good, as is all his conntent.
Alcibiades: Damn sorry about that, that's rough, alright imma head out.
One year later... this made me chuckle...cynically and sad.
“The boys are back in town”-
he’s returned with jokes
**Phil Lynnot's sweet bassline echoing through the streets of Kabul for several seconds, before my boombox is confiscated by Taliban vice police**
That MSNBC anchor talking about beauty or armaments and weapons sounded like some World War 2 propaganda film.
"The US Army is a machine, and machines can be broken." -Some Vietnamese guy, probably
"Let's go back to the 90s. The EIGHTEEN nineties." Should have started there, because the 1990s is merely a continuation of the attitudes and policies of all of the 90-100 years that came before that, and is part of a pattern that goes back even further.
The US is just taking over from British specifically and European imperialism generally. You'd have to go back to the 1490s to stop that.
Really all goes back to stabbing Caeser
@@fake-inafakerson8087 goes back to parmastega
@@Vee_9001 I implied that with the last bit: "and is part of a pattern that goes back even further." My focus, though, was on US foreign policy, and how the interventionist leanings by the US (different from "merely" trying to conquer new territory) started around the 1890s or so (I'm no historian, so I don't give a hard date. I just know that we did a lot of crap in the early 1900s).
The 1990s are literally the best argument for US interventionism though
USA fails to learn important things after losing to Vietnam:
1. Learn Geography
2. Avoid backing a corrupt and weak government that's not popular with the people
3. Train that government's forces properly as if they were yours
4. Understand how Guerilla Warfare works
5. Never beat around the bush when civilian casualties happened
6. Don't pursue imperialism
yeah, pretty true. the US probably could have stopped South Vietnam from falling if they were more honest with their approach
@@TheQeltar it's impossible
1. Dont invade countries
2. Just chill homie.
@@DieNibelungenliad 3. Like, seriously, chill homie. Use the military budget on a universal sexbot program or federally-funded cookie dough ice cream, or something.
As a veteran of the Afghan war, this really reinforced what I realized after Aug 2021.
Our government cares not for it's people, democracy, or freedom. Only about money
It seems to me that the Domino Doctrine kind of admits that the communist analysis of capital was right: left to their own devices the exploited would revolt.
No the domino theory suggested that because a land has been captured by the communists , the neighbouring lands would be accessible to their armies to spread communism.
@@kaavi1391
Armies alone never were the deciding factor in a Communist takeover. Virtually all had (minimal to maximal, it varied) some levels of domestic support.
There were devoted communists even in Poland and Germany, otherwise administration would have been an enormous headache and quickly failed (as was the case in Afghanistan, though that also came down to US money).
@@kaavi1391 you’re right in a sense, a situation that exemplifies this is the Greek Civil War right after WW2, where because of a growing Yugoslavia, Greek Communists - of which massive part were ethnic Macedonians - were supported by a stable Yugoslav socialist army from the north. The communists lost and the Macedonians were exiled, but the war itself was definitely more ferocious because of a viable socialist army supplying it from the north
No. Even without a revolt, Commies will try to colonize free nations. This was proven when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, even though the people clearly didn't want Communist rule any longer. Similarly, Vietnam colonized Laos in order to install a puppet Communist government there. In line with Marxist doctrine, the Soviet Communists sought world domination through violent military action, and thus it needed to be opposed, as it directly threatened OUR sovereignty.
This like saying imperialism was true, as it was so successful, so the nations must have been willingly colonized by a "superior" civilization.
@@jhonklan3794 You do realize that the Soviet Union was an imperialist power that really only preached communism/socialism, right?
I remember reading a joke when I was kid: "Russia thinks it will save the world, and the world hopes Russia would save them from Russia". Swap Russia to USA and the joke still works.
Russia save the world?? What?
@@comradekenobi6908 The idea was saving the world from capitalism until the soviet union fell, now its saving the world from liberalism or some bs
For the record, I want to point out a couple things on foreign policy:
1. When I lived in Massachusetts, there was town called Devens that was not too far away from where I live. It was a town where the biggest driver of economic growth was the Military Barracks. Around the time of the great recession the barracks was shut down, and ever since that period of time, the economy has never recovered. This kind of dilemma is a consistent issue in the United States. Military Spending is not just about bombs, it's about jobs and maintaining the economic foundation of many local governments. The idea of the military industry complex and that American politics is simply driven by the interest of elites with an ideological goal ignores the legacy of the New Deal and WW2 on how America's economy is fundamentally structured. There are multiple webs of interests that extend from the lower to the upper classes of America that drive the often incoherent aspects of US foreign policy, and just like our healthcare system or our welfare system in general, those webs are filled with special interests, activists, unions, lobbyists all fighting for a piece of the pie.
2. This is the primary issue of Trump. A lot of people liked Trump, the same way a lot of people like a shock to the body as a cure for monotony. However, not understanding the system and how it works, and treating it based off a whim driven by outrage, is how we had the poor reaction to the pandemic, especially compared to other nations that had far less capacity or resources to fight it like we did. An ideology can be wrong and at least understood and criticized, incoherence is what American politics produces generally speaking, because the people have no idea how the system operates and what would have to be given up across the board, so the media gives them the culture war, so they can blame some other groups of people for the existence and incoherence of the system. And in the midst of the confusion the status quo operates, not because it's better, but because there's no coherent alternative and even if it did exist, it would not be propagated by the kind of person who would run for office.
Short answer, the US has set vauge military goals so the army doesnt know what they are there to do. Since politics have become more muddled and war is the continuation of politics by other means this is a natural development. But in a conventinal war the US is unmatched, until it is time for the occupation.
I would go a little further : it isn't that the US has vague military goals, it is that the goals are not really military in nature. The feedback loop revolves around domestic elections rather than foreign policy objectives, so it produces behavior that makes little sense at face value.
Simply put, the American military knows how to blow shit up, but not how to put shit back together
@@shartstanker2086 Actually, the US military is really good at putting stuff back together, and when you talk to planners the whole 'building' and 'doing good' process really gets them excited. But voters, and thus politicians, are not that excited about such things, so they are not made into strategic goals.
No, US military goals are pretty clear, it's just that those pesky civilians and rebels keep resisting US military goals. So, the inevitable cope comes "b-but we are just not defined our goals! If we were allowed to murder civilians at will without any oversight, we would have won!" Look at the Vietnam, buddy, you are not winning anything, conventional or propaganda or economical. People of the World refuse to be ruled by foreign rulers; ever since USSR single-handedly defeated fascism and discredited it in history forever, people of the World refused colonialism and imperialism at every opportunity. USA's inability to occupy anyone properly is a continuation of decolonization process which USSR spearheaded. USA cannot win, because it's impossible by this point in history to force people overseas into subservience to your empire.
And no, USA is shit in conventional warfare. I mean, rebels with 1800s weaponry manage to kick americans out with all their high-tech stuff, and when countries like USSR or China support those rebels, americans get thrown out even faster. K/D ratio doesn't matter, military objectives are, and USA keeps on losing those despite having proxy armies in the regions outnumbering rebel armies.
@@shartstanker2086 mate. Dont ignore how the US spent 1 TRILLION dollars over the 20yrs in building afghan infrastructure.
Just like how they helped rebuilt germany and Japan prior ww2.
If you are looking to criticize a superpower on its weak building up of a country, look at Russia / Soviet Union. Almost every country they influence or touch, turned to shiet. North Korea, Ukraine, etc.
The business these days is selling weapons, not achieving a definitive military result or victory. Afghanistan left us 20 years of audit records showing how bad the arms industry corruption has become. PMCs in particular had a habit of price gouging for same services and goods. America wasn't listening to the people who live there. It went in with its own cynical agenda and made that last for as long as was politically tolerable.
Also, it's good to see you making videos again. Your content has always been very well thought out.
Three Arrows, I don't see why you would feel boxed in when I'm sure most of us came to this channel because of you debunking right-wingers but then stayed for the excellent historical analysis and your narration. I found myself specifically often rewatching your history videos like the one about how societies turn cruel or the one about propaganda during the Great War. I know you to be a fan of The Great War channel and I'm sure many here as well so your Iron Dice content would also neatly fit here. It's not like you're switching up to some Fortnite rage compilations or some shit.
I agree. My first, and still favorite, Three Arrows vid was "How Societies Turn Cruel." What didn't draw me in was dunking on Sargon of Akkad, though that was a bonus, but Dan's excellent knowledge of history to draw the dark parallels between America's current immigration policy and Weimar Germany's stance towards Jews fleeing the Russian Civil War. It was that video and that excellent use of history to prove a point that proved to me I'd love Dan's output. I love the Iron Dice and especially the Fight for the Republic series. I'm learning so much from it.
,,Debunking" yeah right.
@@Silver_Prussian U mad, fash.
@@ScorpionViper1001 you do know there are people who have debunked videos of his
@@Silver_Prussian "Debunked"
36:39: "...as long as the Arctic stays cold."
Well, shit.
It's cold, bro. Go see for yourself.
@@otisjacksonjunior9795 not for long lol
@@otisjacksonjunior9795 *Looks at heat waves, heat domes, increasing global temperatures, disappearing glaciers and the retreat and disappearing of polar ice caps.*
About that....
@@brano13177 seriously, go check it out for yourself. It's cold.
@@otisjacksonjunior9795 Science say's that isn't gonna last, and in fact we are seeing that changing rapidly at a worrying pace and extent.
Are you just denying the science now?
All Star by Smash Mouth is scathing critique of our modern day political reality and global warming. You can't change my mind and you can't prove me wrong.
It's a cool place and they say it gets colder
You're bundled up now, wait 'til you get older
But the meteor men beg to differ
Judging by the hole in the satellite picture
The ice we skate is getting pretty thin
The water's getting warm so you might as well swim
My world's on fire, how about yours?
That's the way I like it and I'll never get bored.
welcome back legend
I'm a fan of the channel that posted this video, and a fan of the channel that posted this comment on this video. As such, I am compelled by eldritch forces to point out that this comment is from a channel that posts content of a similar style and/or within a similar overall field to the channel that posted this video and to do so with a sense of surprised excitement.
OMG funny mustache man is here!!! (but for real I'm loving the content, and the stache)
Let's be real about Syria: it was an attempt by the US and Saudi Arabia to take down a mutual enemy, and the US cannot tolerate anything that is not its own puppet, and Syria had always been allied with the Soviet Union and after Russia.. it isn't that fundamentally different than Venezuela, Serbia (taken care of), Iran, etc.
By the way, thank you, really, for putting Serbia and Kosovo into the correct category. It is rare.
Yea
The intro is absolutely awesome this is documentary level stuff. 1500/420
It must be maddening to be so rational in this world my friend. Thanks for your work.
The Iron Dice podcast is easily my favorite podcast and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in German history. Your ability to turn the history into an engaging story is awesome and I can't wait for more
Believe it or not in the US army they still teach new recruits that the United States has never lost a war.
Technically we have not , it’s our politicians that lose. Consider Vietnam- 6 weeks after the so called Tet Offensive out military ran them right back up the country side . Consider Korea, right back up to China and has McCarther not gotten so close to China we would still be there
They still teach it in US K-12 schools, too. And when you push back with examples like Vietnam, the propagandists insist that it doesn't count because "that was a conflict, not a war."
@@peterthegreat996 “We would still be there.”
In what sense is even this hypothetical situation a victory, much less the other piss-poor examples you provided?
@@peterthegreat996 If a war does not conclude in the political state which was seen as the goal in the beginning (Vietnam, stop it from going red) the war has been lost on all accounts that matter though. Military achievements that do not translate into changes conductive to that goal are meaningless.
@@peterthegreat996 an American coping with the Vietnam defeat 40 years later.
Classic
"Kept you waiting, huh?"
-Three Arrows, 2021.
Nothing wrong with stepping back and re examining what it is YOU WANT to do. I've been enjoying The Iron Dice greatly, and look forward to further Three Arrows content :D
“Yeah as long as the Arctic stays cold”
Anyway-
Damn that’s some foreshadowing
*Fun fact:* The auto-captions don't understand mild German accents on English & keep combining incorrect German & English.
Remember when you could turn on fan subs.
@Jean Sanchez Yeah, sadly YT disabled the community captioning tool a while ago in their infinite wisdom (remember annotations?)... Some creators now crowdsource it via third-party websites that recreate that functionality. Or pay someone to do it - it is a pretty important feature for accessibility after all.
If anyone reading this hasn’t checked out this guy’s podcast series the Iron Dice yet, get on it! It’s gripping. Great work as always Daniel✌️
@Forrest Taylor it better NOT be D&D
@Forrest Taylor History, as of now focusing on the Weimar Republic, and modern geopolitics.
That intro was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
Good to see you back in full on your main channel, Dan! Cheers from Chile
I've been rearranging my Patreon support but I've kept you on - in large part because I enjoy the Iron Dice series. Please continue to make the content you feel called to do, there are plenty of other youtubers who can do response and debunking videos. No need to do that if it's only to chase the algorithm, at least for my part.
@@veitdalee4810 nobody's forcing you to contribute
@@OhWellWhatTheHell1 Nice Catch-22 reference in the username.
(If it's not a catch 22 reference, please ignore this comment)
@@fpedrosa2076 you got me haha, McWatt seemed like a cool dude
"WHERE IS THE FUCKING TALIBAN?!" Batman asked calmly.
American
The intro was downright chilling. The Kissinger mention is an icy claw into my spine. Good job. And good work on the entire essay!
Very incisive, well-balanced commentary. The kind of commentary we wish mainstream media were capable of giving us. From a new subscriber: Thank you!
So glad your back mate, missed your videos
Oh damn a new video. The return of the king (don't worry gang it's a justified hierarchy)
Any hierarchy is justified in the eyes of those enforcing it
Yeah Dan doesn't make me have a bedtime therefore this is a justified hierarchy
King ?! Yes Kong !! Speculative Bullshit or Historicism as Capsules.
@@cringeandpunishment3140 nature is hierarchical.
@@otisjacksonjunior9795 it can express itself that way, nature is diverse to say that things are naturally hierarchical or not just leads to a naive worldview and lessens the range and beauty of nature
We talked explicitly about America as the one world power in school, usually by using the period we’re talking about and then saying “and now America is Britain” or “and now America is Rome” (we talked a lot about Pax Britannica so it makes sense) I live in Canada btw and I learned my social studies in French from Québécois teachers (which does make a difference)
Interesting thing with the Blob. In an essay, 10 years ago I called it the "Military-Intellectual complex" in a certain analogy.
36:38 I first saw The Blob at a vintage movie fest in 2019, and the whole theatre crackled with the grimmest laughter I've ever heard at this line. I think it might have been the last movie I saw in theatre before Covid. The movie itself wasn't scary, but I will forever associate it with nervous, existential dread.
This is tangential to the video, it's just an affecting experience I had that I rarely get to share because it's so particular and niche. Glad I'm not the only person getting that song stuck in my head
20:00 One small point on bomber choice : in my understanding of reading testimonies from soviet détachés to the Vietnamese, the choice of fighter-bomber was not made to counter flak (a solution towards flak is precisely to fly higher) but against guided missiles that the Soviet gave to the Vietnamese. Those missiles had one, basic and simple counter measure : fly low. So the Americans quickly learned to fly low.. exposing themselves to the flak that caused 80% of air losses in the conflict.
Interesting! Is avoiding flak the only reason to fly high, or does it give other advantages?
Do you have an idea whether flying low and choosing to deal with flak over missiles was ultimately the least worst strategy in terms of avoiding losses? (besides, y'know, just staying home...)
I know it's a vague counterfactual... I guess as someone who knows nothing about history or military strategy, I'm mostly curious how "rational" or "effective" militaries are in achieving particular small-scale objectives like "minimize air losses on mission XYZ" (as opposed to big-picture stuff like "defeat the Vietcong", which they apparently are quite bad at).
@@nibblrrr7124 Well it's a complicated issue. But against an enemy with guided missiles, a quadrimotor strategic bombers can only resort to electronic or physical countermeasures : it cannot dodge, it's big, slow, fly straight and high.
So from that perspective, it's clear the presence of missiles pushed heavenly towards low flying high speed fighter bombers.
Flying low can also help accuracy for a bombardment, so I guess the nature of the objective (being often small, hidden and in the jungle) forced to rely on more precision. Also because a fighter bomber carries less, so carpet bombing is less efficient.
Considering the technologies of the time, and the willingness of the Soviet to give material and training to the Vietnamese, exposing planes to flak might have been the lesser evil. Yet precisely what other countermeasure towards flak the Americans could have used (or did use), I don't know
@@prierepanda2186 The countermeasure would be to not rely so damn much on air power. The US military, and in particular the USAF is way too married to the idea that air power can solve everything. Except that no it cant. Because it often tends to ignore the fact that air power is expensive to maintain. your average combat aircraft easily costs tens of thousands of dollars to maintain per flight hour on top of the tens of millions for the aircraft itself. That by itself is fine if you know, your bombing expensive infrastructure like cities or multi million dollar pieces of military hardware, or many hundreds of millions of dollars in naval waship's, yeah that's when air power works well. But using these same aircraft to bomb what amounts to poorly trained insurgents and rebels with kalashnikovs and bamboo huts (and missing most of the time), its not exactly a good strategy if you care even the slightest about cost effectiveness. Not to mention the incredibly bad optics of constantly bombing the shit out of innocent civilians.
Of course this ignores the fact that the best strategy for dealing with Vietnam was simply to never go there in the first place. While yes the Vietnamese turned to communism, after the end of the Vietnam war, they quickly showed they had no interest in becoming a Chinese or Soviet puppet either, as the Chinese then tried to invaded Vietnam in the late 70's and it predictably went poorly for them too. And before the US even got involved in Vietnam, the Vietnamese where mangling the french pretty good too. Vietnam was never going to be a real threat to China, France or the US, until all three got the pig headed idea to try and invade the place.
Soviet is more superior l think
i need a full version of that Intro, it seriously slaps
smoking on that america pack 🚬
YES. YES. YES. I. AM. SO. HAPPY! He's back! We have all missed you too.
24:00 I would argue that the Domino theory wasn't wrong, but rather the capitalist of the world were sufficiently skilled at blunting the progress of socialist governments. You just have to look the history of intervention in Central and South America to see how they would stamp out any shift toward socialism by supporting local fascists.
As a career US naval intelligence member, I completely agree with the analysis here.
It’s crazy how I always thought my mom left Russia cause of “communism” but she left during this shock therapy to capitalism completely destroying the country, glad you talked about it for a little. Idk why I never just asked my mom, she is pretty open about it, (vaush would prob call her a tankie)
I also only recently learned about how bad it was in Russia in the 90s, I think in Adam Curtis' documentaries.
Re: your last sentence: As someone who often feels better informed about the omnipresent US politics & history discourse than what's going on in my own country (Germany), the political & ideological landscape in Russia seems completely alien and incomprehensible to me, and I have no idea how to get into learning about it.
(cf. that study that in Chinese surveys, "social conservatism" correlates with "communism", and "progressive values" with "capitalism". I sometimes struggle to grasp that other countries are, well, other countries.)
Communism had severe failings and mixed markets are way better. But going straight from a command economy to markets is incredibly stupid. The population's not ready to take the more active role in stock ownership and other things like that immediately, and the people who ran bureaus and had *already* engaged in regulatory capture are going to just take over the new system.
@@IntrusiveThot420
It's rather ironic that, by choosing to screw Russia over so badly for so many years, the Us has created it's own biggest headache
(besides China, that is-- though Deng Xiaoping's decision to dupe the Americans into jumpstarting their economy was brilliant, it wasn't a kneejerk reaction to American power, but careful observation).
Russia now has bases planned for every continent on the globe, has increasing (though still tiny) influence everywhere, and poses a genuine ideological threat to the US.
All because they wanted to kick their enemy while they were down.
If they had been integrated and treated with respect, it's likely that they wouldn't feel the need to expand (which they tried to show in the 90s with Yeltsin's openness).
@@LancesArmorStriking Deng Xiaoping learned from other Asian economies (namely Japan and Singapore) on how to get American help to grow a nation's economy quickly. Without the precedent, I'm not sure Deng Xiaoping would have gone down the state capitalist route.
@@weirdofromhalo
You are right, probably not.
But even if Japan and Singapore had not industrialized and Westernized prior to China, I think a Chinese leader would have recognized the usefulness of a large, industrial economy opening its markets and sharing its technical knowledge.
"when you get payed to lose, you always win."
Somebody somewhere
I just read a comment yesterday from an American going back to the “maybe we should enforce rights abroad by force or intervention”…like, have I been taking crazy pills, or do these people want a forever war?
That's the disease called AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
Im from Vietnam and very thankful america helped us out it would have been worse if they didn't
@@MC-BOT 1. Doubt it.
2. No, definitely not for most. To even say that you’d have to believe some insane rich-mans lies.
@@longliverocknroll5 you have no idea because you are so privileged to live in the west, you have never been in a situation where your people need help but your own government is against the people, who do we ask for help then ?
@@longliverocknroll5 Actually people in Vietnam do like America, mostly because they hate China with a burning passion
This is an awesome video. Thank you Three Arrows! Glad to see you have returned
Let loose and fly Three Arrows, for if only one of your arrows hits the mark, your silver tongue will make your audience forget any of those that don’t. Watching your videos is like running into an old friend, the conversation never fails to be engaging, but the time always feels too short. I’m glad you have returned, and it’s been too long my friend.
Aww thank you so much!
on the topic of whether or not the US said they wouldn't expand NATO east; firstly, the US can't unilaterally decide that, NATO's an organizaiton of multiple countries which each get a vote. Secondly, NATO doesn't really expand like a country or empire would. It's a voluntary organization, an alliance; countries join of their own free will. Thirdly, there is, to the best of this one's knowledge, no evidence that anyone in any position of power ever said that.
it's also worth noting that Biden may have pulled us out of Afganistan(and did a shit job of it, mind you), but it was Trump who started the pullout proceedure.
"As long as the artic stays cold" that hit different
18:48 It's interesting that you mention this approach to strategic bombing in Vietnam. During this time, you actually had a pretty "old guard" sort of arrangement in the USAF who very much still had their heads in WW2-styled "bomb them until their industry is dust" mentality. McNamara had to reign in guys like Curtis LeMay who just wanted to drop nukes on Hanoi like it was Japan all over again. The problem - as we know now - is pretty apparent: WW2 isn't Vietnam, and Vietnam wasn't WW2. Even if by conventional measures, the US was doing pretty well against the NVA, the sheer political pressure as well as the war exhaustion of the whole conflict was only growing wider by trying to be so forceful. It didn't help that the RoV in the South had practically collapsed by '63, and what came after was pretty much just a military government which had like, next to no popular support.
It's easy to see all the parallels with Afghanistan, where the US goes in with their heads in a "Grand Battle, Shock and Awe" sort of mentality that - like in WW2, worked in their previous war (in Kuwait), but falls apart basically as soon as you have to shift gears.
The US can defeat a state, but it can't defeat a non-state actor; atleast without committing genocide like the US did to the Native American tribes
The US is a country with almost no past, so they constantly try to recreate their last great hit. Only to get buried forever in the mud of history
@@DieNibelungenliad The US defeated the Taliban & the Vietcong multiple times. The Tet Offensive was considered by NV as a complete military failure and basically exhausted their guerrilla forces.
The only reasons why the Taliban were able to make a comeback were that they hiding in Pakistan (a nominal US ally), that the US made the strategic error of going in the 03' Iraq War and thus severely reducing US forces in Afghanistan, and that Trump literally released the Taliban's leaders as part of his "peace plan" with the Taliban.
@@balvarine8709 Defeating the enemy in battle is insufficient to win a war.
The Gov of Pakistan allowed the Gov of the US to bomb the Taliban in Pakistan. The US military operation failed to eliminate the Taliban in Pakistan and it even increased Taliban support in Pakistan.
The US Gov invaded Iraq because the US gov was confident that the US military could win. Turns out the US military was weaker than thought.
The US Gov agreed on a peace plan with the Taliban because the Taliban were too strong for the US military to defeat. You dont make a peace plan with an enemy you destroyed.
@@DieNibelungenliad The US did successfully subdue Islamist insurgents in the Philippines without committing genocide, though.
Yay! Thank you for the new video!
I'm in absolute awe at the massive improvement of this new level production quality
Honestly I'm more interested in your videos where you talk about overall topic in depth, this includes the iron dice and this video. More leftubers are Chaning their content from reacting to the alt right to this type of stuff and I love it. Good luck with your podcast and the rest.
I take this as a positive sign-that there’s less alt right content to react/combat than in the past few years…wonder if dumping Trump was a cause or effect of that…?
@@warlordofbritannia I think it's more that the alt-right only has a few talking points that are endlessly repackaged
Edit: so therefore our favorite TH-camrs end up doing something more interesting with their time instead of disproving the same lies over and over.
It might be because dumping on alt-right/Trump supporters doesn't get as much traction without Trump in the white house. He's easy to hate along with his supporters.
@@GreebusBleeb
I’m somewhat curious to see how breadtubers adapt to that - I figure hbomberguy and Three Arrows will do well, seeing as they already had an established interest in other content (consumer media for the former, certain bits of history for the latter)
Then you got guys like Shaun, who consciously or not, have dipped their toes to…mixed results at best so far
And finally, the breadtube-adjacent creators like Sarah Z or Lindsay Ellis, who more or less already had their own thing going anyways
@@CarrotConsumer I wouldn't go that far, even without Trump to scathingly deconstruct: their are still plenty of alt-right and Trump supporter nonsense to debunk.
When Steve McQueen says "as long as the arctic stays frozen." My stomach dropped.
That's ONE reboot I'd love to see. The blob reawakening in the arctic and going havok because of climate change
If I’m correct in reading this, the losing is on the strategic scale.
The emphasis on liberal foreign policy in intervening in smaller nations creates broader strategy failures, especially when it comes to angering allies and frightening larger rivals.
The decision to intervene in Libya was a strategic failure in that it upset Ghadafi’s ally Russia and showed states like Iran and North Korea that the U.S. would not respect a country that had willingly surrendered its WMD’s.
Great vid. Have subbed to iron dice. Looks really good. Looking forward to seeing more.
Glad to see you (well, your content) again! Franlky I enjoy your videos like "Was every German soldier evil" oder Ramstein analysis more than reactions/debunking (but they are also pretty good and informative to be honest). So I'm looking forward for more of your content here and I'll certainly will check podcast :)
Because the wars aren't about wars or winning. It's about government and corporate contracts. AKA: Money.
President Dwight Eisenhower warned the American people about the military-industrial complex in 1961. We didn't listen.
@@burke615 Here's a quote for anyone ; "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Always has been, it's just bigger and deadlier now.
They want the whole world to become liberal: a global market with free trade and open borders.
This is NOT a bad goal if every country has a democratic gov and a socialist economy.
However, these war mongers want every country to have a plutocratic gov and a capitalist economy.
They want capitalists to freely travel all over the world to buy cheap and sell high at the expense of common people.
We all know what will be the end result of this system, the economies of many countries will only sell one or few commodities; causing those countries to suffer crisis when the market for those goods busts.
We saw this in 19th century Ireland, where the main export was potatoes. A disease caused the potatoes to rot, the price of food rose, and most people didn't have enough money to buy potatoes or any food because the only crop grown in their farms were potatoes for export.
We saw this in British India, where many famines happened because ever more tenant farmers were growing opium, sugar, cotton, indigo, spices, coffee, and other cash crops in exchange for rent rebates. When there was a poor harvest of staple foods, the price of food rose drastically, causing many people to not afford the food they need and more people resorted to growing cash crops to earn money. As more farmers grew cash crops instead of staple food crops, the price of food slowly rose even in times of good harvests.
We saw this in the 1800s-1940s China, where their economy was increasingly reliant on selling tea and buying opium.
We saw this recently in Venezuela, where their economy was reliant on selling crude oil.
The US has a diverse economy, but the US is not invulnerable to economic crisis. The US has had 48 recessions in its history, an average of about 1 recession every 4-7 years. Thats more recessions than different Presidents
@@burke615 Under Eisenhower the US was spending 10% of it's GDP on Defence. It was spending 8% during the mid 1960s and it was at 5% in the 1980s. It now spends 3.8%. The Military Industrial Complex has never been more diminished now then relative to how large it was during the Cold War.
I find it funny that you used The Blob as a metaphor for the US military-industrial complex, because the 1988 remake kinda did that too.
The US shows that no matter the size of the army you have if you do not have popular support for what it is doing that thing will end soon.
*Especially now* Russia is being clowned on and actually losing territory because it has the western MIC backing it *alongside* popular support.
24:50 The blob actually exists, at least kind of. It's called Physarum polycephalum and is a unicellular.
You can look it up if you like, it's pretty fascinating.
My favorite TH-camr is back
There is still a lot of un-detonated ordinance in Laos that maims rural Laotians to this day.
Nice to see you back.
Kissinger is one of the most evil men active in the late 20th century
"America in 2021, getting in owned"
Cracked me up lmao
The goal wasn’t/isn’t to win wars, the goal is to have endless wars, and thus an endless supply of money for the people involved in the process.
podcast sounds right up my alley, definitely checking that out for sure!
I'm so hype to go listen to the podcast! I hope you can find joy in making stuff again. I'll honestly watch anything you put out. 💖
The main issue that I have about NATO expanding East topic, is that I can see people talking about Western or Russian interests, but never about for example Baltic States' interests.
Yep, they wanted to join because they feared exactly what Russia has done to non-NATO member neighbouring states.
@@Carewolf sounds weird. You ever heard about Yugoslavia? I think that people in the Balkans do still remember thousands of civilians killed by the NATO troops.
I believe it has more to do with the fact that these countries are not actually sovereign in their foreign policy, having to chose either America-EU or Russia as their big daddy ally, cus you have to buy products you can't produce yourself somewhere => you have to trade with the large countries, and to the most Balkan states the US-EU are much preferred trade partners. Look at Georgia and Armenia, the two are very close to each other and to them that choice is way less obvious, since the EU is far and trading costs are higher due to longer supply chains. When the choice isn't that obvious Georgia chose the West, while Armenia chose Russia.
@@32Singder You mean in Serbia? The rest of the Yugoslavia is pretty happy with NATO saving them from Serbian aggression.
@@Carewolf you shouldn't view any modern conflict in an aggressor-defender way, man, that's just ignorant. Almost every modern military conflict has a background of an economic collision and sometimes, a history of mutual cultural hatred, so saying that someone is in the wrong is just stupid. You have to lift these pink glasses, man, there are no good and bad agents in the global politics, countries are fighting for their interests, that's it. Look at Armenia and Azerbaijan, if you want to see an example of how economic interests of regional powers meet cultural differences - and literally everyone is in their right, but also in the wrong.
But NATO troops still killed the most civilians with their bombings in the Yugoslav wars, more than Serbian and Croatian troops combined. That probably should worry people, you know.
@@32Singder I wasn't talking about Serbia being an aggressor as a country. I was talking about them doing a genocide against other people, those people appreciated not being slaughtered.
And as usual, the US military tried to blame Hash or drug use for the Afghan Armies poor performance. The weren't poorly trained, they were poorly supported. Because just like Vietnam, the war was never meant to be won, just sustained so the military industrial complex could keep making money.
Even those that did want to 'win' the war, refused to face the reality that you can't use force to change a country's political opinions. No amount of bombs, planes, etc... will make someone believe democracy is worth getting killed to try to achieve, nor create a unified trusting national identity where one didn't exist before. Nation building by an external force is impossible.
@@agilemind6241 liberal hegemony is a huge failure
Were you there? Did you hear from people who were involved in fighting with and training them? Clearly not.
@@what-uy7go That was my impression, having been there. Was there drug use? yah, but there was/is drug use in the US DOD as well. Although the "training" the ANA received was inconsistent, at best. When you have villages risking imprisonment and death to smuggle Taliban Judges back into the area to adjudicate issues, then smuggling them back out, when they could just go "down the road" (relatively speaking) to the Afghan puppet government, that's a sign you won't win.
The initial invasion was BS, the Taliban were initially aiding us in locating Al-Qaeda camps to target; then we invaded to install a puppet state. A punitive war against Al-Qaeda, where a good chunk of it's infrastructure and leadership are hiding out in Afghanistan is one thing (especially where the Taliban weren't especially fond of them, they just hadn't given them a reason to go after them); trying to overthrow the legitimate sovereign of a country is another. It's not that the majority of Afghan's cared whether the Taliban were in power or not, they just weren't interested in what we were trying to shove down their throat.
Less than 5 years into that mess, it was already becoming noticed that Afghanistan was becoming like Vietnam, a conflict that was wrong to begin with, and was being dragged out to try and help the "powerful" save face, and to consolidate even more wealth into the hands of a few (warhawks, MIC, ect). A song by Tom Paxton sums it up:
"Lyndon Johnson told the nation
Have no fear of escalation
I am trying everyone to please
Though it isn't really war
We're sending fifty thousand more
To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese"
Iron Dice is so good, if it was once per month then it would be literally my idea of perfect podcast.
The legend back again.
Excellent! Covers the whole situation with no wasted words.
A lot of it boils down to the US not following Clausewitz's "War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means."
The US might be good at fighting particular military engagements and battles, but has most of the time vague and ill defined political goals, which is the source of their failures.
Definitely. As one French politician keeps saying (regarding the French army’s own stalemate situation in Mali), "There’s no military solution to political problems."
Their foreign policy goal is not nation building or making friends or durable military occupation. It’s to make clear that no smaller country will be allowed to steer a successful course independent of the US, to make the world safe for American corporations, and to shift large portions of US and other countries’ budgets to its military-industrial complex. Sure, Vietnam, Syria, Afghanistan etc may look like defeats, and I assume the US government might have planned for different outcomes but they have always achieved those three objectives
This
I am Chinese Indonesian WHen I read the news about Operation rolling thunder, in the Vietnam war I thought it's going to be something big!!. and mind-blowing ones. but then we realize it's just bombing random places nonstop. I remember my grandfather said, "are they fighting mother nature?".
Yup
Welcome back! Missed your videos heaps.
Es hat mich gefreut ein neues Video von dir zu sehen!
Immer interessant, immer informativ!
Some wars feel so pointless to me. I know there are reasons but having power doesn’t seem worth it when the cost is innocent lives idk
Great video. Gotta add another point to the whole "the US believe that military presence can shape country's politics", especially in Afghanistan's case, may as well be influenced by the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan, since despite being a failure which has greatly influenced the collapse of the Soviet Union, the soviet military presence had had a somewhat positive effect (mostly in cities, since rural regions were often controlled by the Taliban) on Afghanistan's economy, being shaped in image of the USSR. But what Americans may not realize is that USSR has brought engineers, scientists and teachers to build schools and hospitals while occupying the country, not just soldiers. You cannot reshape a country just by bringing in troops and having them stay there, you have to actually do something, build some infrastructure, teach the locals to maintain the system you are trying to build. I haven't seen the US do that anywhere, they just bomb shit and say their job is done.
What kind of bs is this?the USSR destroyed nearly all of rural afghanistan's infrastructure
They bombed hospitals in herat way before the revolt even started
They made toybombs to paralyze the afghan youth so they dont end up joining the mujahideen
Where do you think those 1m+ civillian casualties came from?The soviets routinely massacred entire towns under suspicion of hosting mujahideen since they failed at identifying them themselves.
The US has committed several warcrimes in afghanistan but lets not compare them to what the Red army did in Afghanistan along with the Afghan communist intelligence KHAD,The soviet backed najib was literal known as "Kashoga" meaning spoon since he used to take out people's eyes with spoons and the soviets overlooked every warcrime they did as they themselves were involved in it.
both of you should cite your sources
You do realize the US built up infrastructure and the economy in the cities too right? Do you really think the US went there with just military presence
@@LiquidBangash Nice fake lol. The only ones besides the fascists with the history of massacring entire cities in the last few decades were western liberals throughout every war especially WW2 haha!
I used to believe USSR was the badly guy but now I wish they won against the US.
30:30 what’s crazy is, there are still a surprising number of people who still think the U.S. *needs* to maintain its massive military. I’m an undergrad in the history/politics department of my school (yeah they’re prioritizing engineering and shrinking all the liberal arts so our departments are combined) I got into an argument with a professor and student, and their legitimate position seemed to be that everyone in the world either hates us so much they would instantly invade us if we downsized the military. It was wild cause that’s obviously insane, as if we haven’t been the main purveyor of overseas invasions.
Following the pod now
Excellent video, and great to see you back on TH-cam!
Though I do have to criticize a particular thing, the NATO enlargement thing. See, the problem that us lefties often have with this is that we only take into account two parties in the topic: The US, and Russia. There is no consideration at all given to the simple fact that countries need to WANT to join NATO, or what exactly Russia's "fear" of being "encircled" really actually says without saying it out loud: The reality is that Russia has a history of brutal imperialism towards its neighbours, and the current Russian ruling class clearly still believes in Great Russian Chauvinism and does not accept anything but limited and conditional autonomy for its former imperial victims. Russia's invasions in Ukraine and Georgia have only proven that the Baltic countries, Poland, etc only did the rational choice in joining NATO to safeguard against Russia's imperialism.
Thank you so much for this comment.
Three arrow: The US invasion of Nzi germany was bad because the Nzis felt "encircled".
Then why is Greece part of NATO, when its major rival is Turkey, a fellow NATO country?
@@nektariosorfanoudakis2270 Because when they both joined in 1952, the Soviet Union seemed a bigger threat. Greece had just come out of the civil war against the communists, so allying with the US was the logical step.
But judging from your name, you're Greek, so I'm not sure why I have to explain this to you.