Just a reminder that it took the US years to join the Second World War while the UK was pounded by the Nazis. Canada joined the war nine days after it began. Remember who your friends are. The US isn’t anyone’s friend but it’s own.
Hijacking this post to say: there are too many Americans in this thread arguing about the second world war, somehow apparently suggesting the US is not an untrustable former ally, now ally of Russian oligarchs and strongmen, rather than the important story itself.
Why not shut the fuck up if you don’t have anything relevant to say?
That’s not really a fair comparison, Canada wasn’t a fully independent country in 1939, they were still a dominion of the British empire with foreign policy set from London (though otherwise self ruling).
Then why did it take 9 days?
Also from the link:
At the outbreak of war, Canada’s commitment to the war in Europe was limited by the government to one division, and one division in reserve for home defence.
Canada did not intend to get involved to the extent they did at the start. That changed after the Battle of Dieppe in 1942, along with other events.
Canada entered the was 9 days after it started. The US entered the war 820 days later.
Canada went and fought while the US sat and watched.
Not true at all. You should maybe crack a history book.
Post-WWI the US people wanted to be less involved in world affairs. Congress prevented the country from joining the League of Nations.
Then when WWII broke out I’d imagine there was not a lot of stomach for it. You know, since they had just been involved in a similar war a little over 2 decades before.
To say they did nothing shows your ignorance. Before officially entering the war, the US provided substantial aid to the Allied powers, particularly Great Britain.
Why should the US, in 1939, have declared war?
Canada, 9 days.
US, 829 days.
For those 820 days the rest of the world, including Canada, was sending its young men to fight and die for freedom.
The US sat and watched.
More false information. Let’s see who entered WWII at, or after December, 1941.
- Phillipines
- China
- Guatemala
- Haiti
- Dominican Republic
- Honduras
- Cuba
- El Salvador
- Costo Rica
- Brazil
- Bolivia
- Mexico
Sure looks like most of the western hemisphere didn’t join until after the war came to their part of the world.
I wonder who remained neutral?
- Turkey
- Spain
- Afghanistan
- Argentina
- Yemen
- Saudi Arabia
- Sweden
- Portugal
- Switzerlamd
- Ireland
- Uriguay
- Lithuania
- Latvia
- Estonia
- Bhutan
- Iceland
- Andorra
- Liechtenstein
- Monaco
- San Marino
- Vatican City
Any other lies you’d like to tell?
And they had to be dragged into it by the japanese
Bombed into it.
Fuck America
You know the American hegemony people from Europe seem to be quick to complain about these days? That’s directly related to the US joining in WWII.
The US was largely isolationist though starting to change during that time. That changed drastically after WWII for multiple reasons.
You know NATO? The thing the US dumps money and resources into? That didn’t exist then but the League of Nations did. You know who wasn’t a part of the League of Nations? The US.
The US isn’t anyone’s friend but it’s own.
Maybe, but the cherry picked example you’re trying to use looks mighty different in context.
Cherry picked? 9 days versus 829 days. Cherry pick my ass.
Can you articulate why, with what they knew in 1939, the US should have declared war and not after they were directly attacked?
It baffles me how you don’t see the hypocrisy of both complaining about the US not joining WWII until they were directly attacked and also complaining about American hegemony today.
Can you articulate why, with what they knew in 1939, the US should have declared war and not after they were directly attacked?
I’ll let prime minister Neville Chamberlain do so.
“We and France are to-day, in fulfillment of our obligations, going to the aid of Poland, who is so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack upon her people. We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace, but a situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel themselves safe had become intolerable.”
That explains the UK and France since France and the United Kingdom were the two dominant players in world affairs and in League of Nations affairs, and usually were in agreement.
However, the US was not part of the League of Nations, had not been attacked, had adopted an isolationist approach to foreign policy between WW1 and WW2 and had already fought in one European war. There was no UN, no NATO, no mutual defense agreements like exist today because WW2 was the catalyst for many of those things.
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” – attributed to Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
Yes. We know why the US didn’t join initially. I (Neville) was answering why they should have done.
There is nothing to be baffled by. You’re just misrepresenting the argument.
It baffles me how you don’t see the hypocrisy of both complaining about the US not joining WWII until they were directly attacked and also complaining about American hegemony today.
It’s only baffling if you assume ab initio that the only possible kind of intervention is the imperialist, hegemonic one, and that that is the only way of describing the country’s (or any other Allied country for that matter) entry into WW2. More generally, its only baffling if you assume that involvement naturally equates to “hegemony”, and the behavior that implies, in the long-term. This viewpoint totally negates the normative side of the exercise of power which is why it has been all but abondoned by contemporary IR scholars, political scientists, sociologists, etc.
In short, you misrepresent (deliberately or otherwise) your opponent’s argument by assuming that all exercise of power is “hegemonic”, an assertion that is not grounded in reality. At this point, you should also be able to see the moral issues with some of what you said and the overall image you presented of the human condition. Classical geopolitical thinking is simply not valid and tends to reproduce highly unstable and dangerous systems by ignorant human who reify it into reality.
Can you articulate why, with what they knew in 1939, the US should have declared war
Sure (and you too should be able to - its real simple). It starts with an f and ends with a ascism. Though I’ll give you that policy analysts at the USDOS at the time didn’t see it in those terms. I’m also willing to bet they knew a lot more than you think you know but do let me know if you think I’m wrong.
That articulate enough for you?
It’s plenty articulate but wrong on both accounts. It’s hypocrisy to criticize (wrongly in OPs case) the US for not involving themselves fast enough in one breath and then criticize the US for being “world police” in the next.
Especially considering what the landscape might have looked like had the US remained on its isolationist track and not joined the war.
As for articulating why, with what they knew in 1939, the US should have declared war; you typed a lot but failed at the task. You say fascism like it carried the weight in 1939 that it does today. Fascism rose to prominence in early-20th-century Europe. Hmm, wonder who that was.
Swing and a miss!
Technically, the USA was not directly attacked. Hawaii and Philippines were US colonies. The situation in the Philippines was worse, and it was not mentioned in FDR’s speech while they were getting pounded by the Japanese.
No?
During the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, the USS Arizona (BB-39) and the USS Oklahoma (BB-37) were sunk. The Arizona, a battleship, exploded and sank after a bomb hit a powder magazine, resulting in the deaths of over 1,177 officers and crewmen. The Oklahoma was sunk by multiple torpedoes, causing it to capsize and resulting in the loss of 429 crew members.
That sure seems like an attack on America.
For 829 days the US sat and watched.
At the time the prevalent belief initially was that the mighty British empire, together with the French, would beat back the Germans and Italians. Remember that these countries had fought a destructive war already which an at the time more powerful German empire lost. US sentiment also was against direct involvement in the war, and many in cabinet were more concerned with the rising threat to their west: Japan.
That’s not to say the US did nothing. The US supplied China via the Burma road agains the Japanese, supplied the Allies with arms and they also did the destroyers-for-bases deal. The US also held their first peacetime draft in 1940, well before it officially entered the war.
At the time, the belief was that the US would have to defend the west (against Japan) and that the UK could defeat the Germans. It’s why the US moves the fleet to Hawaii, to hopefully pressure the Japanese into backing down.
The US had both domestic and geopolitical reasons to not declare war immediately. It’s fair to criticize that, but to characterize the US as doing nothing in that time is just a falsification of history.
I didn’t think you could.
I’ve been around long enough that I recognize bad faith and fallacious arguments, pedantism, and particularly expressions of Danth’s Law and choose not to take the bait. I stay on message which was that it was obvious to the UK who their true and trustworthy friends were (for example Canada which joined the Second World War 9 days after its outbreak and sent young men to fight to stop the spread of fascism and defend Britain) and weren’t (for example the US which sat on its hands for 829 days while Europe burned) as it should be today. It should be horrifying (but not at all surprising) to the UK, and to the rest of the free world, to see that fascism has taken hold in the US.
829 days. Canada was there for 820 of those 829 days.
The US joined the war in Europe as a war on USSR. To limit their gains. Colonizing the western part.
To be fair Russia is at war with the US as well, just they’ve captured the government
Are we the Vichy?
Couldn’t we, the UK, just like… stop interfering with Russia? Call a truce of some sort? FWIW I admit I’m completely ignorant as to what’s going on, other than we’re supplying arms to Ukraine. Is it all about that?
I don’t know where you have been but you have some reading to do.
Links, please
The UK could, if Russia would stop interfering with Ukraine.
What’s Ukraine got to do with the UK though?
Obvs I’m against war in principle, but why are we even involved in something several thousand miles away that doesn’t border us or even the Commonwealth?
Because the UK (and the US and Russia) agreed to protect Ukrainian sovereignty after Ukraine willingly had the Soviet nuclear arsenal dismantled after the Soviet Union dissolved.
In 1994, Ukraine agreed to transfer these weapons to Russia for dismantlement and became a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, in exchange for economic compensation and assurances from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom to respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty within its existing borders.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
The other reason is basically the same reason why the UK got involved on the side of Poland in 1939.
Ok that is really useful context, thank you
Hey Ivan, join the Russian infantry, they are constantly looking for canon fodder.
US was never anyone’s ally. They’re just the Tony Stark of our universe, selling weapons and propagating war, and seeing themselves as the hero. J’espère qu’ils crèvent aussi au final 🙄.
Can I get paid to state the bleeding obvious?
"The foreign policy expert, a longtime Russia watcher, said she had first made a similar warning in 2015, in a revised version of a book she wrote about the Russian president "
I think in fairness that if she has been warning us for 10 years she’s entitled to a little bit of “I told you so” now that it is bleedingly obvious
Imagine if westerners applied the same standard for “at war” to themselves that they do to Russia: they’d basically have been at war with most of the world for the last century.
Your ignorance is showing.
I mean come on even Argentina has barely done anything provocative lately. Meanwhile Russia has literally carried out assassinations in the UK.
By what metric do you consider this to be an overreaction?
I didn’t mean other countries were doing things do the West, lol.
I meant the West has constantly been doing to most of the world what westerners are no trying to describe as “war” when Russia does it. Hell, the Russian Federation isn’t doing anything to the West that the West hasn’t been doing to it since the day it was formed
You do realise that the whole point of the United Nations is so that things like that this don’t happen anymore. Of course that presupposes everybody’s going to play nicely. Deals with Russia aren’t worth the paper written on, vis-a-vis Ukraine.
So how can we not be at war with an entity so fundamentally untrustworthy. You are complaining that the West is at war with Russia (as if the Western democracies are a united front) but that’s because Russia is constantly breaking the rules. If they just stayed within their own borders that wouldn’t be a problem.
Your problem is that you’ve already decided who is right and who is wrong and you’re not going to allow anything like reality to get in the way of that.
You do realise that the whole point of the United Nations is so that things like that this don’t happen anymore.
No? The point of the UN is to stop actual wars, not what the UK is trying to describe as war, which are things that the west has been consistently doing for the entire lifetime of the UN.
So how can we not be at war with an entity so fundamentally untrustworthy.
Because a lot of countries are fundamentally untrustworthy? Including all of the ones who are signed onto the Rome Statute who are still supporting Israel. Which includes the UK. If you really want to redefine terms so that any untrustworthy country is inherently at war, then the UK is at war with the entire world.
You are complaining that the West is at war with Russia
No, I’m pointing out that the West isn’t at war with Russia, and it’s an Orwellian abuse of language to say they are.
that’s because Russia is constantly breaking the rules
There is no rule that Russia has broken that the west, especially the UK, hasn’t repeatedly and flagrantly violated both in the past and currently.
Your problem is that you’ve already decided who is right and who is wrong and you’re not going to allow anything like reality to get in the way of that.
Wrong. Nothing I have said implies that; I’m guessing this is a go to straw-man you go to, but it most certainly doesn’t apply to me. If anything, it sounds like you’re projecting; you’ve already decided whos wrong and that’s why you’re not actually reading or responding to what I’m saying.
It’s Britain who has been at war with Russia for 80 years. Ironically, the only reason was to stay on the good side of its colonist emperor, and be its favorite. That British society is entirely programed to CIA/MI6 Russophobia doesn’t stop when Daddy slaps them. Just got to work harder for daddy’s love, is only political position in Overton window instead of pursuing best relations for citizens.
Duh?
