It seems like there’s no way that Biden can make any negotiation with Russia seem like a win to his base so if he wins it’s almost an automatic 4 more years of war. But if Trump wins he could make most of the concessions that Russia wants and still sell it as “the best deal” to his fans. Is a trump win the best hope for shortening war?

Disclaimer: I would never vote for trump, I also won’t vote for Biden, I’m also in a state that always goes one way so it doesn’t matter at all.

  • IzyaKatzmann [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Interesting points you bring up. Trump working towards a prosocial environment is an interesting thesis and yeah, from the evidence you provided and from anecdotal accounts that does seem to be the case.

    If I were to think why, I want to say that he takes war to be distasteful on its face. Whereas war hawks and pundits have goals of utter domination, I wonder if Trump sees that as antithetical to business.

    Certainly some productivity and money is to be made and perhaps increases in a conflict, the US seems to have a novel method owing to its place in geopolitics. The net, murder of how many, displacement of more, tendency for sexual violence against women, these can’t be thought to increase production in aggregate.

    Another idea is maybe conflict is too oriented towards the government. Then, their interests are represented rather than business interests. The market becomes lopsided and entrepreneurial activities are tied at the hip at some level with producing for conflict. I think of Microsoft and HoloLens, as well as their software for ICE.

    From the prior points, maybe the best explanation is differing groups interests within the same class conflicting and conspiring with one another. Such a simple explanation does not feel satisfactory.

    If anyone else could help me understand I would really appreciate it, I think it shows, but I’m not really well read on theory (not ML at least).

    • xapr [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      As for Trump, my view is that he relies heavily on instinct in most areas of his life, and his anti-war position seems to be based on a few instinctive positions he holds: he seems to dislike death and blood (ex: his Syria comments), he seems to dislike the destruction of buildings (perhaps because of his real estate background?), and he probably sees no personal profit (even though he has a business background, I don’t believe he’s involved in the military industrial complex) or national economic gain to be made from most wars the US has been involved in (he seems much more oriented toward national economic interest rather than geopolitical power games - see again his Syria comments).

      As for inter-class conflict, I don’t think that is too simple of an explanation. US foreign policy since World War II has been an ongoing battle of ideas, with push and pull between interventionists and non-interventionists. Neoconservatism is an ideology that sees the role of the US as the principal promoter of “freedom” and “democracy” around the world, making domestic economic conditions secondary to that goal. That ideology is opposed by many people across the political spectrum, so the influence of neocons on US foreign policy grows and shrinks with different administrations. If you read the wikipedia article on neoconservatism it says that many neoconservatives opposed Trump in 2016 “due to his criticism of interventionist foreign policies”.