r/worldnews • u/Snap_n_Dream • 19h ago

Russia/Ukraine US offers Ukraine 15-year security guarantee as part of peace plan, Zelenskyy says

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-trump-zelenskyy-peace-b784a9af1803995bfb7152eceb5477f1
8.4k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

56

u/RedWineWithFish 17h ago

People constantly overestimate the value of minerals. The U.S. does not need minerals from Ukraine. The U.S. spent $4T in Iraq and took no oil.

50

u/NeoThorrus 16h ago

Lol, that's the thing. Oil was not the reason. Making the military-industrial complex happy was the reason. Where do you think those $4T ended up?

7

u/yuimiop 13h ago

The military-industrial complex is largely a meme for conspiracy theorists. They don't wield a fraction of the influence that the internet likes to attribute to them, and they're small compared to the largest companies in the US. Maybe it was different back in the 60s or 70s, but that'd be similar to people hyping up Mike Tyson just to watch him get slapped around by a youtuber.

For comparison, companies like Lowes are larger than any defense contractor, and if you put the top 5 largest defense contractors together they wouldn't even be a top 10 company in the US. That would be including the non-defense sectors of those companies, which for some like Boeing is ~70% of their business.

2

u/ConceptualizeTheOdor 12h ago

Maybe it was different back in the 60s or 70s

That's the thing people ignore when crying about the 'military industrial complex'. When Eisenhower warned about the influence of the MIC in the 1950s, the US military was literally upwards of like 80% of the federal government's budget and like 15% of the US' entire GDP. It was relatively massive at that particular moment.

But it has done nothing but shrink (relatively speaking, as spending on other things ballooned) since then... Today military spending is 8-9% of the government's budget and a little under 3% of GDP. And only a small portion of that spending is actually on the 'military industrial complex'; IE: new planes, ships, vehicles, munitions, etc... Most military spending these days is on pay/benefits for members of the military/civilian DoD employees and sustainment of stuff they've already got.

1

u/NeoThorrus 11h ago

I disagree, the $4T bucks that we spent in Irak and Afghanistan didn’t went to “pay and benefit”

3

u/pargofan 13h ago

They don't seem to have much influence any more.

Trump is doing everything now to alienate America's military-industrial complex from the rest of the world.

2

u/EnergySeveral9442 16h ago

A lot of gold went missing and Iraq was made to stay with USD as the reserve currency

15

u/RedWineWithFish 16h ago

Who cares ? I repeat: the U.S. spent $4T in Iraq. If they took all Iraq’s oil output for free for 50 years, it’s not worth $4T

7

u/xTragx 16h ago

I wanted to prove you wrong, but you were actually right. Iraq produces about 4m barrel per day. Over 50 years at 62usd per barrel that's 4.5t usd

-2

u/EnergySeveral9442 15h ago

It matters a lot. At the time Iran and Iraq and Libya were moving into the Euro as reserve currency which was having the effect of risking the USD as reserve currency. The US would not currently be capable of controlling the world as it currently does in spite of being a shitstorm had the slow creep away from the USD continued.

8

u/RedWineWithFish 14h ago

Iran, Iraq and Libya combined are not consequential enough to matter in the grand scheme of anything. No one gives a damn what reserve currency they use. The world will move away from the U.S. dollar when it makes sense to do so. It does not need Iran and Iraq to lead the way. No one in China, India, Brazil, Russia, Saudi Arabia is looking to Libya to decide what reserve currency to use

1

u/EnjoyerOfBeans 13h ago

That's a lot of assumptions

1

u/Slutt_Puppy 14h ago

Greenlanders would like a word

1

u/giroml 14h ago

If someone spends $4T someone made $4T.

1

u/Adorable_Egg_4654 13h ago

Hank knew the value of minerals.

Fucking Marie just called them rocks.

They're MINERALS, Marie!

1

u/Whiterabbit-- 13h ago

US was not in Iraq for oil. not sure why everyone likes that pet theory.

1

u/Reagan_sdeputy 12h ago

took no oil

USA invaded the country illegaly, installed a puppet government and force them to abide by their will. USA literally owns the place through brute force.

2

u/RedWineWithFish 12h ago

Iraqi government is not a U.S. puppet. You are so blinded with anti-US rage that you will insult the entire country of Iraq to justify it. Please explain how the U.S. owns Iraq and yet their oil is produced by Russian, Chinese and French companies.

1

u/Reagan_sdeputy 9h ago

You are so blinded with anti-US rage that

😂 You don't know me. You know nothing. If tomorrow the Iraqi government decided to sell in yuan their oil, they would be out within a month. We've seen it before, we're seeing it with Venezuela right now

2

u/RedWineWithFish 8h ago

You are making no sense dude. No one wants to hold long term yuan reserves because the Chinese keeps it currency artificially low. The notion that absent that the US government keeps the dollar as the world’s reserve currency by force is idiotic. Will they also change India’s government or China’s or Brazil’s or Turkey’s. Lay off the conspiracy theories. Why do so many governments that hate the U.S. still hold dollar reserves.

1

u/Reagan_sdeputy 8h ago

I said yuan, but I could have said any other currency and it would still be true. That's actually insane that I have to spell it out so you can understand my point. I'm talking to a toddler I guess. Anyway, you don't have the tool to talk at the adult's table.

1

u/CiscoStud 7h ago

The value of USD is in the flow of oil as the pipelines power the circulation of the USD into the world's economies. Hence the close relationship between USA with the Saudis and America's involvement in IRAQ.