No matter how well intentioned, I think military interventions nowadays that aim to dethrone an authoritarian regime are practically guaranteed to fail.

Modern combat is fought through surgical air strikes with a limited ground force. It minimizes invading state casualties but poor intelligence from limited local manpower inevitably leads to mass civilian casualties. This progressively undermines local support. Fostering a vibrant democracy or training a self sufficient military and police force, hell, let alone rebuilding the infrastructure from the initial invasion cannot be done quickly. As has been seen from Afghanistan especially, this allows insurgencies to organise and further air bombing simply adds to their recruitment numbers.

Removing totalitarianism also reveals long-held grudges and power imbalances such as how removing Saddam's minority Sunni Ba'ath Party fermented a civil war with the oppressed Shi'ite majority. Local revolutions on the other hand, without intervention create a sense of solidarity regardless of past differences. A foreign coup d'état does not.

States that have democracy thrust upon tend to squander them or relapse back into authoritarianism. Often this is from a lack of established and respectable candidates to choose from, haphazard transition to a market economy (e.g Russia) or a lack of consistent ground level demands from the people resulting in simple pandering by politicians to secure votes with no intentions of governance. Democracy is only able to work effectively when individuals with growing affluence over time begin to demand better infrastructure, services and generally representation of their interests.

Not to mention, especially in Africa, many countries were wished into existence by exiting colonial powers with no logical cultural, religious or ethnic links among them. There is simply no genuine sense of national unity. This is arguably what caused the violence in Kenya in 07-08 following the disputed election. Foreign interventions in ex-colonial countries also inevitably leads to the perception of renewed imperialism, not matter how pure actual intentions. This is why intervention in Zimbabwe to remove Mugabe is inconceivable unless it by the African Union, which is far too weak and unwilling. Even now, Mugabe has considerable support by his colonial independence credentials.

Other countries simply have never had a legitimate and effective government in generations. The Taliban did not so much rule Afghanistan as loosely impose Sha'ria law on individual tribes who otherwise had signficant autonomy. Now that representational democracy has been imposed, there is simply no willingness on the part of an individual tribe to work together to improve the livelihood of all, but merely their own people. Politicians and officials are not corrupt because they are immoral but because political survival means following this creed.

Point is, military interventions don't work in removing despotic governments simply because something can and will go wrong. The only place they are appropriate is preventing genocide or aggressor nations. NATO was correct to intervene in Kosovo, the UN was correct to prevent Iraqi aggression into Kuwait (ignoring Iraqi invasion of Iran was not). Intervention should have occurred in Rwanda and equally in Sudan.

The Powell Doctrine more or less sets out what I wrote above concisely. In short, intervention should occur only with mass popular local support, and be undertaken swiftly and effectively with overwhelming force with a clear exit strategy established.

Thanks to Bush though, the US is overstretched militarily and lacks the moral authority to incite other nations into intervening where necessary. More importantly it's lost the deterrence its successful interventions in Kosovo and Kuwait created.

>> ^bcglorf:

Hurray for anything bringing some attention to the situation over there, particularly in correctly referring to it as Burma and not the Myanmar moniker imposed by the military dictatorship.
RedSky said:
For countries that have essentially had institutionalised repression for a generation or more like North Korea and Burma, I honestly think that the best way forward is to encourage trade with some restrictions in the hope that some of it filters through to the people.
I completely agree with your feeling conflicted on how best to help the poor people imprisoned in these countries. Honestly, I think using a foreign military to remove the regime followed by a nation building program on the scale used in post war Germany and Japan is the best way forward. But no nation on Earth has any reason to spend that enormous amount of money and political good will on something that in essence gains them nothing in the end anyways.
I do dearly wish that when Burma was hit so bad by natural disasters a few years ago the world have reacted more appropriately. Instead of allowing the ruling military to refuse and block any aid from going in, the world should have come in by force with as many soldiers and weapons as needed to deliver the volunteered aid to the devastated areas by force, then simply withdrawn after the aid had been delivered and provided. Sure the military would come and take it all for themselves after anyways, but the people there could've seen for a few months that the outside world actually cares about them and would gladly treat them for better than the junta is. Maybe allowing a base of resistance and opposition to gain wider support.

@Matthu

There's quite a lot of advantages to them, let me list:

1 - Virtually latency free. It depends a lot on where you live but if you reside in say Australia, the average person has 0.5mbps to 1mbps upload if that. That is simply not something that can support 32, let alone the maximum 16 players in MW2. Where it does, you're looking at a ping of 100+, which makes the game feel noticeably imprecise and usually spiky. This is probably less of an issue on consoles since controllers are generally less responsive and lead to slower gameplay than with a mouse. If you don't believe me, google some youtube clips of a cross platform game and compare PC to console gameplay, it's really quite obvious. This is also likely why P2P matchmaking has always been fine on consoles.

2 - Competitive mods. The fact is MW1 was simply not balanced towards being a fair competitive game out of the box. Grenade launchers as an example are cheap, and not really counterable in any way shape or form. 3x nades, especially if used by a whole team and lobbed in particular locations for S&D makes the game Russian Roulette. That's not even getting into the atrocious gun balance or the ridiculousness of perks.

Even in MW1 which was comparatively pretty tame, in Team Deathmatch modes, easily 2/3, if not more of my kills would consistently be Air Strike/Chopper kills. The point is, IW made the game in the interest of appealing to the masses, making it easy to gain kills and generally allowing far too many ways to score cheap kills. MW2 took this 10 steps further. Which is why in the competitive scene on PC, MW2 is a shell of what MW1 was.

3 - Community - Like you said yourself, you can regularly play on the same server and get to know people over time. Without it, unless you /friend them straight away, there's a chance you'll never see them again.

As a game with good graphics, whiz-bang explosions and lots of action, honestly it delivers, but if you're looking for a game that rewards skill, and where half your deaths and kills weren't based on luck then you should really be looking elsewhere.

---

And yeah, like westy said in his usual incomprehensible way, it's hilarious to see Black Ops stealing ideas from PC.

Especially GunGame which as far as I know originated from a mod. You know, the feature they removed in MW2?

Oh sweet irony, which unfortunately will be lost on most.

Thanks. Been away from the internet culture for a long time. Didn't know if I missed a meme or something.

In reply to this comment by chtierna:
Well, someone has edited the ad, taking out a portion where I guess the Israeli and the Palestinians are playing a jolly game of "soccer over the wall" and replaced it with the Israeli ordering an air-strike, presumably on the opposing side, then cheering and celebrating their victory, all whilst keeping the original soundtrack of the ad.

In reply to this comment by MarineGunrock:
What am I missing?

Well, someone has edited the ad, taking out a portion where I guess the Israeli and the Palestinians are playing a jolly game of "soccer over the wall" and replaced it with the Israeli ordering an air-strike, presumably on the opposing side, then cheering and celebrating their victory, all whilst keeping the original soundtrack of the ad.

In reply to this comment by MarineGunrock:
What am I missing?

Bonus feature: a special button to call in an air strike.

>> ^RedSky:
I still can't figure out either a developer or distributor motive for the move to remove dedicated servers/mods.
They're not saving money, the features are clearly already in there since they were unlocked with a hack. It's not like it makes sense to set a precedent for future games either, may as well start it with a game where you don't even consider developing mod/dedicated server support.
It's not like this somehow enables them to charge for DLC whereas otherwise they couldn't. They easily could have done so anyway, because even PC gamers would likely pay for well made content no matter how discontent they are with the decision to charge. It's not like mod support somehow changes this dramatically.
The idea that IW want to restrict balancing and various adjustments that competitive mod makers made is plausible but still comes off as ridiculous considering they have never really made an effort to be competitive friendly and must surely know that people playing competitevely will never settle for the like of AI controlled choppers and air strikes in their game.



they did it with this game because it allows them to more fairly (easily) implement the level and weapon unlock system. (MWF2 is clearly a console game designed around many aspects of console gaming and what the core fps console gamer wants) ( you could design a level up and wepon system that worked on dedicated servers but this is a console game and its cheaper to have users host the games so why bother paying for servers when you can force that on the users)

also the whole non dedicated game lobby server method works well for console games allowing people to jump into a multilayer game quickly without having to do any looking for servers. (console gamers want quick gratification of a reasonable stranded nor necaserally game play that pushes the art form forwards)

I do however think it is just cheep of them not to provide the servers themselves so that users are not hosting them , like how Dice dose it with bf 1943, they host the games but you just jump into them through a quick join system.


I think in general the quick join non dedicated option works well for console games. the reason why they don't work for pc games is this.

1) pc gamers want more sophisticated game play and expects mods and additional content
2) pc gamers normally expects multilayer with 20+ people avrage home internet cannot cope with this
3) pc gamers are all running different kit and require the host to provide a bass line and administratoin to remove hacks cheets and ping advantage (for a host)
4) pc gamers like a solid fixed location that they can go to for the exsperance they want from a game different servers are like different pubs accentually they all sell the same thing but the music setting and bar staff are different.
5) pc gamers use external software with there games for voice (joining games with friends in) and aquiring mod and map content, pc gamers dont like to be forced to use the process that the developer or publisher is inforcing as in most casses its shit compared to a specifcly made alternative.


in the end a PC is OPEN games platform games have to be developed for them with this in mind
console games are a CLOSED platform and there for you develop them specifcly to capatalize on the aspects of that closed platform.

the reasoning why developers simply port the shit over to pc is a) its less effort / risk than designing something that works for pc b) console architecture is much closer to pc than it used to be c) the profits derived from pc are considered a bonus they don't really give a shit due to the profits that can be derived from the console. why bother wasting time doing a decent pc port when you could have the same team of people work on DLC / new games and earn just as much money at almost no risk.

I still can't figure out either a developer or distributor motive for the move to remove dedicated servers/mods.

They're not saving money, the features are clearly already in there since they were unlocked with a hack. It's not like it makes sense to set a precedent for future games either, may as well start it with a game where you don't even consider developing mod/dedicated server support.

It's not like this somehow enables them to charge for DLC whereas otherwise they couldn't. They easily could have done so anyway, because even PC gamers would likely pay for well made content no matter how discontent they are with the decision to charge. It's not like mod support somehow changes this dramatically.

The idea that IW want to restrict balancing and various adjustments that competitive mod makers made is plausible but still comes off as ridiculous considering they have never really made an effort to be competitive friendly and must surely know that people playing competitevely will never settle for the like of AI controlled choppers and air strikes in their game.

>> ^demon_ix:
I was sort of expecting an air strike.


That would be the Israeli one -- an F-16 drops a bomb on your house and the clock screams "ANTI-SEMITE!" when you complain about it.

I was sort of expecting an air strike.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
>> ^bcglorf:
War is bad, but sometimes in our world not fighting a war is worse. Like ignoring dictators that have repeatedly committed genocide against their own people, annexed their neighbors and absorbed them as part of their state, provided international terrorists with not only safe haven, but government offices, and have actively pursued and established WMD programs and successfully hidden them from international inspections. Sometimes not going to war is worse than going to war.

So, in that case the US should unilaterally invade:

North Korea
China
Iran
Syria
Cuba
Burma/Myanmar
Most of Africa, including Sudan

It seems to me that it isn't the US's responsibility, nor within the US's authority to be judge, jury, and executioner for the governments of other nations.

In theory, I'm not opposed to using our military to fight injustice, I just don't think what we did with Iraq ever had anything to do with liberating the Iraqi people. I also don't think terrorism is something you use the military to fight, nor do I think our main focus should be toppling the governments of other countries -- it seems that's more likely to create the kind of violent chaos that terrorism thrives on.

I'm a bit more sympathetic towards using military to police the creation/sale/use of nuclear weapons, but I'm not sure in the long run how effective we're going to be at keeping nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands (i.e. the hands of anyone who would use them), even if we blow up every suspected nuclear facility in the world. But that's really an aside, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan have any nukes.

I find the argument of 'why not country x' to be completely lacking in relevance. I'm not arguing that America chose to remove Saddam because it made the world a better place, especially for Iraqi's. I'm arguing that for whatever unknowable reasons America really chose to remove Saddam, that an Iraq free of Saddam is better for the region and the Iraqi people. So much better in fact that you'd be hard pressed to screw such a war up badly enough to make things worse when you were done. Now the Bush admin certainly tried very hard to screw it up, but thanks in large part to the Kurds the situation in Iraq today IS much brighter than it would have been with Saddam still in power.

Would it be 'better' if America had put the same effort into Sudan or the DR Congo? Maybe, the atrocities in the Congo shock the conscience, but it would also be harder to stabilize than even post-Saddam Iraq. I find it hard to use that as an argument against what America did in Iraq. To play that argument out in a fair way, I would point the finger at the whole 1st world and blame them all for doing nothing to help the people of Sudan and the DR Congo. I would give a slight nod to the Americans though in understanding that they were tied up in Iraq and that their actions there had at least helped a different humanitarian disaster.

>> ^bcglorf:
War is bad, but sometimes in our world not fighting a war is worse. Like ignoring dictators that have repeatedly committed genocide against their own people, annexed their neighbors and absorbed them as part of their state, provided international terrorists with not only safe haven, but government offices, and have actively pursued and established WMD programs and successfully hidden them from international inspections. Sometimes not going to war is worse than going to war.

So, in that case the US should unilaterally invade:

North Korea
China
Iran
Syria
Cuba
Burma/Myanmar
Most of Africa, including Sudan

It seems to me that it isn't the US's responsibility, nor within the US's authority to be judge, jury, and executioner for the governments of other nations.

In theory, I'm not opposed to using our military to fight injustice, I just don't think what we did with Iraq ever had anything to do with liberating the Iraqi people. I also don't think terrorism is something you use the military to fight, nor do I think our main focus should be toppling the governments of other countries -- it seems that's more likely to create the kind of violent chaos that terrorism thrives on.

I'm a bit more sympathetic towards using military to police the creation/sale/use of nuclear weapons, but I'm not sure in the long run how effective we're going to be at keeping nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands (i.e. the hands of anyone who would use them), even if we blow up every suspected nuclear facility in the world. But that's really an aside, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan have any nukes.

>> ^bcglorf:

Maybe there's better ways to empty a building full of explosives?

Great advice, you need to phone the military up right away, I'm sure it just never occurred to them.


Let's say there was a building stacked full of explosives in an american city, would they just shoot a missile at it?

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>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^KnivesOut:
Legitimate war: a war that is undertaken based on unilateral agreement by a society of nations, and for humanitarian reasons. See "WW2".
Illegitimate war: a war that is undertaken on a lie. See "WMD"s.
Did you love that?

I do love seeing someone finally brave enough to try.
I wonder if you have a name for wars that do not fall under either category, what are we to call all of those? You can't define legitimate and illegitimate separately, you must define one, and the other is simply everything that isn't the first:
Legitimate wars are by your definition and illegitimate wars are all the others.
OR
Illegitimate wars are by your definition, and legitimate wars all the others.
Your trying to set your definitions up so you can have your cake and eat it to. Legitimate and illegitimate are the opposite of one another in the English language. You'd seem to like to talk about three types of wars Legitimate,Illegitimate and those that are neither. Don't redefine English to fit your purposes, use the appropriate word to describe what you really mean.


I've said exactly what I mean, that this is an illegitimate war. Blowing up shit in a neighborhood is bad. You're the one defending the war as somehow being righteous or necessary. I don't believe that it is either. If we weren't there in the first place, there wouldn't have been a building full of explosives for us to blow up.

>> ^KnivesOut:
Legitimate war: a war that is undertaken based on unilateral agreement by a society of nations, and for humanitarian reasons. See "WW2".
Illegitimate war: a war that is undertaken on a lie. See "WMD"s.
Did you love that?


I think you mean multilateral, not unilateral. The war we have was a unilateral decision.