Saiwania wrote:If I can't spend money on the politics of fear/hatred or both, then I think how I want to spend money is on backing imperialism/empires. This is what I'd truly want, a return to the days of European colonialism only with better technology. If financing domestic issues doesn't pay off, why not play high stakes geopolitical games with money if you look outwards instead of inward? Foreign policy questions could become my bread and butter like is the case with Bill Kristol.
There is so much potential for sabotaging China's progress towards superpower status and so on, with enough funding and playing different sovereign states against eachother. Whoever the people were who sold the Iraq War of 2003 (which never even needed to happen) was so lucky if their aim was to secure perpetual arms sales/boons to the military industrial complex as a result of a conflict without clear end. They got what they wanted and more from Saddam being deposed.
I mean, ~$180bn is miniscule in terms of long-term global geopolitics. America spent around $2tn in Iraq and the result is a far worse Islamist radicalism while the country is increasing being taken over by Iran. There's a reason why China's model of new imperialism, which actually do create infrastructure and growth in victim states, prevails over pinheaded, short-term US national security hawks' model of "bombs everywhere".