Smurf said:
If a dictator is killing millions of people on a regular basis and not doing anything outside of his country I would think his regime won't last longa anyways, if only because he's going to run out of people really really quickly.
So you would let the dictator run out of people...and then, after (but only after) he began to turn his attentions to other countries, you would intercede militarily? Explain your logic, because I really can't see how this is the better way.
There is enough historical evidence to show that brutal regimes can last a long time. Observe the Soviet Union, especially under Stalin. As you yourself said later in your post, he was able to trick most of his people into believing that he was a good leader.
Okay look, saying never use violence is too open-ended. The point is there is never a realistic example where it gets to the point military action is justified. You can easily imagine up some absolute horror and say "Nothing else would work" and you'd be right... but it wouldn't exist. There is always going to be a better way, one that is quite possibly more cost effective too. And I will gladly come up with some alternatives to any conflict you want.
First, I'd like you to explain
why military action is impossible to justify, no matter how horrible the conditions in the offending country. Then, explain to me why you value the sovereignty of nations over the rights of the humans being abused by these nations (as your willingness to allow the dictator to kill millions of people seems to indicate).
Also, I'd like to know what you think of rebellions and internal revolutions. When is it justifiable for a rebellious element of society to fight (that is, kill) for its rights? Would an armed uprising, which, for the sake of argument, fired the first shots, be justifiable if the people saw themselves as oppressed?
Yeah, that would work. The problem is you'd never be able to pay 1 full time soldier for every 10 citizens in your country. You'd have the army mutinying on yourself because they're not living off of much more than the peasants because it's spread so thin and they, being the army, arn't producing anything themselves.
Again, I should have specified the realism part.
The ratio was completely arbitrary. Of course you can't have that sort of ration of soldiers to civilians, but that wasn't the point. The point is that even a civilian uprising with an enormous numerical advantage is going to have a hard time fighting against tanks, planes, advanced weaponry, etc. People just aren't going to throw away (not risk) their lives: the fear inspired by an obviously superior military is enough to quell many uprisings.
Everyone did. Only after his death did all his crimes come out. He was actually very clever about it.
And the millions of people whose neighbors, friends, and family members disappeared thought what?
None, that's why they're no longer communist, and they weren't invaded by a big bad democratic power to stop it. Now imagine how much faster it would've been if the US had devoted resources to helping them instead of killing and dying in Vietnam and Korea and all their other little invasions and small wars.
The point is that even though they wanted to be free, many people in Eastern Europe were unable to free themselves from Soviet domination. Yes, they might have succeeded earlier with help from the West. But how many people died under Stalin: it's not reasonable to say that Western aid would have allowed Soviet satellite countries to free themselves within a few years, right? Millions of people died during Stalin's reign alone. How would Western assistance have helped lower this number in any significant way?
I don't think the Soviet Union would have fallen apart if it weren't for Eastern Europe's insistance on defying them.
The fact remains that this happened almost 50 years after these countries were first placed within the Soviet sphere of influence/domination. How many people died in the interim?
Show me a regime that kills "millions" of people yet has a military comprised of just a few thousand.
I assumed you were referring to civilian casualties. How many Iraqi soldiers actually fought? How many deaths in Iraq were the result of civilian casualties of the invasion? No doubt Hussein had the
ability to kill millions of people, even if he didn't. This doesn't mean that some vast and well-trained army must resist all invasions.
Okay
The problem is no one is actually using these now-a-days. Hense your assumption that it won't work until military action is used (the bold part implies such), because you've never seen someone actually work it through before resorting to violence or having it messed up by the US or who-ever.
Okay.
Diplomacy: Usually won't work with dictators who are already bent on killing millions of people. What would you have offered Hitler in return for his cessation of his murderous campaign against Jews and other minorities?
Economic Sanctions: Why should the dictator care? Anyway, economic sanctions tend to have a *slightly* detrimental effect on the health and prosperity of the general population. The dictator himself, of course, continues to live in luxury.
I don't think we should use military action first: we can try diplomacy and perhaps even sanctions. But I'm opposed to the statement that military action is
never justified. Sometimes, it's the only reasonable path (that is, when you're concerned about human rights over the rights of sovereign nations).
