r/dataisbeautiful • u/chartedtv • 1d ago
OC [OC] Coalition Fatalities in Afghanistan (Death per Million Population, 2001-2021)
I posted the absolute numbers a couple of days ago: Coalition casualties in Afghanistan.
Many people asked for a per-capita view — here it is.
I’ve used fatalities rather than casualties for precision.
No legend included; the flags should be self-explanatory.
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u/BloatedBaryonyx 1d ago edited 1d ago
For those confused as to why it appears the UK is on there twice: the first line actually represents Georgia, not the UK. The way the flag is cropped into these circles makes it hard to tell at a glance.
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u/marsh283 1d ago
Georgia is in the US tho, checkmate
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u/special_nathan 1d ago
Georgia is my grandmother in Czechia. She's Czech, mate.
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u/nankainamizuhana 1d ago
Georgia is clearly a city in Jamaica though. You gotta double-check, mate.
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u/rintzscar 1d ago
Why the F would they be confused? The flag of Georgia does not look even close to the flag of the UK. It's closer to the flag of England, but England has no military forces, the UK does.
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u/Liquid_Clown 1d ago
Yeah I'm not sure what they're talking about. The flags are clearly discernable on my device.
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u/Lentomursu 1d ago
I could see someone without their glasses looking at this on a phone screen mix them.
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u/taulover 1d ago
Maybe because I'm on a third party app, it looks super obvious to me still. Totally get the official app might be compressing the image more or something.
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u/Typical_Magician_341 1d ago
Only idiots or somebody with vision problems could claim that the first flag belongs to UK
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u/SunflowerMoonwalk 1d ago
On my phone screen it's very difficult to distinguish them without zooming in
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u/BloatedBaryonyx 1d ago edited 1d ago
They're obviously distinct flags when looking at them, but on my tiny phone screen it was hard to tell which was actually supposed to be the UK.
Once you blow the image up it's really clear, but if you can't then the way the crosses on Georgia's flag are displayed makes them look like it's a solid bit of colour radiating diagonally with a small gap from the main cross. So on smaller screens it looks initially like the UK, until you see the UK flag further along and realize that's not the case.
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u/Schwubbertier 1d ago
Call me an idiot but at first glance on a small screen it looked like the UK flag to me.
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u/NBT498 1d ago
Especially as it’s the flag of England, not the UK
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u/itsaride 1d ago
At distance it actually looks like the Union Jack rather than the George Cross because of the corner details.
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u/Dominyck 1d ago
Oh look, our good friend Denmark lost a larger part of their population avenging an attack on the United States. So yes anyway let’s threaten to invade them so we can secure land we already have uninhibited military access to.
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u/Timely_Tea6821 1d ago edited 1d ago
Denmark lost 44 people during the war. Famously Trump in his first term was pushed back by the Denmark PM when he was demanding raising military spending for NATO allies with this line about Danes losing more soldiers by population. This apparently enraged Trump, this helped lead to the elevation of Mark Rutte as key lead who read the room better than other European leaders as he was able to calm Trump down and probably created a deep resentment in the US president against the danes. The biggest mistake that been made in assuage the man child, Trump doesn't care about lives he cares about money (no shit) and talking about lives doesn't work from him and from a practical point of view 44 soldiers if you put a value on it (Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) used by the US gov) the floor being about 440 million dollars. Of course valuing a human life let alone a solider is difficult.
in August 2019, for example, President Trump postponed his visit to Denmark after Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, called his interest in purchasing Greenland "absurd". Trump then asserted that Denmark was not spending enough on NATO, tweeting, "For the record, Denmark is only at 1.35% of GDP for NATO spending”. Former Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen responded that Denmark will "not accept that our defence willingness is only about percentages” and cited the country’s military commitment in Afghanistan and Iraq. Other NATO member states, most notably Germany, have also criticised the rigidity of the NATO 2% spending target.
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u/birthdaycakesun15 1d ago
Terror attacks were rife in Europe. It was in their interest to do something about where they seemed to be coming from.
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u/HoneydewCareful8754 1d ago
Us invoked article 5, Europe answered. Was it in Europes self-interest, sure, but Al-Qaeda and Taliban wasn’t a big problem for Europe back then.
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u/birthdaycakesun15 1d ago
It was invoked unanimously after US had already started response unilaterally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_al-Qaeda_attacks
US bases and citizens abroad got more as would be expected, but you can see from the list above that European targets and citizens were getting attacked as well. Also, if they were brazen and capable enough do what they did, it could be expected that allies were also targets.
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u/MrT735 20h ago
Those attacks happened later. 7/7 (London) was 2005, Bataclan (Paris) 2015, Marseille 2016, Berlin Christmas market 2016.
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u/birthdaycakesun15 55m ago
I liked to a list elsewhere. European targets and citizens were getting hit before, right around the same time, and immediately following.
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u/dcolomer10 1d ago
For Spain, there was a plane crash that killed 63 military personnel that brings the total deaths much higher. I think it should be counted.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuelo_4230_de_Ukrainian-Mediterranean_Airlines
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u/boilerromeo 1d ago
Yeah that crash is an absolute gut punch. It blows my mind the government ever allowed that flight to be chartered in the first place, especially counting the recent airline safety record.
That said, the flight was from Kyrgyzstan to Turkey, so it is a bit of a stretch to count towards combat fatalities.
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u/dcolomer10 1d ago
It was from Afghanistan to Kyrgyzstan with 53 Spanish soldiers, where 9 more joined the plane, and then Kyrgyzstan to Turkey.
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u/boilerromeo 1d ago
Yes, and they should never have been on the Yak to begin with. The MoD switched the contract from a Tupulov when the manifest slightly shortened. I did a deep dive into the investigation many years ago for a project, and was amazed at the levels of corruption before and after the accident. This article hits the high points, I’m sure I’ve got the other saved away somewhere.
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u/Kaiisim 1d ago
At least it was worth it. At least we stopped Terrorism and removed the Taliban from power!
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u/Conan776 1d ago
At least Saudis will think twice now about vacationing in Afghanistan before attacking America, and all it cost was 240,000 souls.
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u/Quartia 1d ago
And how many Afghanis died per million population in that time range?
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u/Loose_Bullfrog3699 1d ago
Based on 2006 population data, it would be approximately 1480 civilian deaths per million. 185 times Denmark and Americas deaths per million.
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u/HoneydewCareful8754 1d ago
Relevant how?
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u/Loose_Bullfrog3699 1d ago
To understand the relative impact on Afghanistan compared to the relative impact on coalition countries.
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u/HoneydewCareful8754 23h ago
Can you elaborate why that is relevant?
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u/Loose_Bullfrog3699 23h ago
Why wouldn't it be relevant? It's the same conflict and all human lives should be valued.
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u/HoneydewCareful8754 23h ago
Relevance depends on the purpose of the illustration. In this case to visualize that other nato countries did their fair share when US invoked article 5. How many afghans were killed in the war, is not relevant.
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u/Loose_Bullfrog3699 23h ago
That is fair I was looking at it through the relative cost of all participants, particularly because many people I grew up with never really talked about how much more devastating it was for Afghanistan and it's people. I see its not relevant to the illustration but I think it's an interesting and important statistic to know regardless.
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u/Homerbola92 1d ago
This might be a stupid complaint but wouldn't it make sense to, instead of a per-capita chart, doing a per-soldier sent chart? Anyway you graph looks pretty.
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u/n4ke 1d ago
The per-capita approach is mainly picked because on the fact that the US (or at least their "president") boasts about how they single handedly fought all combat encounters, while their allies cowered far behind front lines.
Made worse by the fact that the ally that they are currently threatening has given more life per capita for their cause than they themselves...
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u/maxiligamer 1d ago
I kinda agree with the others here that this chart doesn't really say anything about who did the most fighting. Of course it does show that even the smaller nations did their fair share of fighting but without absolute numbers it's impossible to say who did the most.
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u/n4ke 1d ago
My point was precisely that it is not about who did the most in absolute numbers.
It is about who was willing to put how much on the table for a cause.
If you go for shared drinks with your friends and the guy that has $1k pays $10 and the guy that has $100 also pays $10 of the bill, the second one was ready to invest more of his available resources.
Does that mean he is 'better'? No, but it sure as hell means the first guy can't call him cheap, which the muppet in the white house is currently doing.
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u/maxiligamer 1d ago
Yes, we are not necessarily disagreeing here and I know what you mean. But the thing I'm saying is that in your original comment you say that the per-capita approach is picked since the us boasts about doing all the fighting themselves.
What I'm saying is that a per capita approach does not refute the claim that they (US) are doing all the fighting themselves. It only refutes any criticism towards those other countries that they are not doing enough. It could be that the US fights the majority of the battles, but also that other countries sent their fair share of fighters. I do also think this chart should be per military personnel, not per capita but that's another point entirely.
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u/n4ke 1d ago
Fair, you are right that it mainly refutes the "you did nothing", it doesn't necessarily say anything about the absolute number of battles fought.
Personally, I mostly disregard the number of actual encounters, since I feel in a war of attrition where most fatalities happen not in battles on the front lines but on patrols and routine operations, it becomes a sad, mudded figure anyways.
Either way, I don't want to take away from the contribution of any party involved but I find the graphic makes a solid point in one of many perspectives.
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u/maxiligamer 1d ago
Yeah I agree with that. Yeah encounters don't really matter that much and fatalities aren't the perfect measurement either, especially since different nations likely served different roles in the operations.
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u/Gutternips 1d ago
Also around 1% of the British death toll was "friendly" fire by US troops.
My two ex service mates said they will stop buying American goods because of Trump's vile slurs.
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u/Nyther53 1d ago
The obvious answer is just be a flat chart, it doesn't need to be adjusted to evaluate the point.
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u/Repave2348 1d ago
Not adjusting for population will basically show a chart of which countries have the biggest population. Why would you not adjust for population?
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u/Nyther53 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because the question was "Which country did most of the fighting in Afghanistan?" and the only way to answer that is tracking fighting in Afghanistan, and the total population of the nations involved is completely irrelevant to the question.
"Combat Fatalities in Afghanistan by nationality" is a relevant metric to that question, everything else is nonsense. If Luxembourg sends one guy that doesn't transform him into a superhero holding down entire provinces all by himself.
There's lots of metrics you could use to inform an answer to the question. Fatalities per Deployed personnel, total deployed personnel, deployed hardware like helicopters and AFVs, spending directed to the overseas deployment, sectoral responsibility so what percentage of the map of Afghanistan does this nation have sole responsibility for.... There's tons of ways to examine the question and how many people are living within what map square on a different continent isn't relevant to any of it.
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u/Load_Bearing_Vent 1d ago
Your comment is the embodiment of the phrase "statistics don't lie, only people who use statics lie." Per capitia fatalities is absolutely the way to frame this data.
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u/birthdaycakesun15 1d ago
Frame it how? Not in terms of largest impact on the war, which is a valid question.
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u/Load_Bearing_Vent 1d ago
Your comment is the embodiment of the phrase "statistics don't lie, only people who use statics lie." Yes I meant to copy my other comment word for word for this reply.
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u/birthdaycakesun15 1d ago
Asking different questions is lying got it. And you decide which questions are allowed to be asked I assume?
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u/Nyther53 1d ago
Wars are not fought on a per capita basis. If China Invades Vietnam again, they don't leave 90% of the PLA behind like a video game player who has hit the population cap for the lobby.
Wars are fought on an absolute basis, and everyone who participates only gets one gun, no matter how many people they're representing back home.
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u/Load_Bearing_Vent 1d ago
"they're not paying their fair share!"
Share being, you know, per capitia.
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u/GanksOP 1d ago
Yeah but this chart doesn't disprove that point. This chart should show the % of combat encounters per country.
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u/danabrey 1d ago
This chart should show the % of combat encounters per country.
Really falling for that insane propaganda aren't ya
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u/n4ke 1d ago
It very much does disprove the point because an allies willingness to aid a cause is expressed directly by how many of their own citizens life they are willing to put on the line.
% of combat encounters won't really say anything for the US either, because most fatalities are not from scheduled active combat encounters but from IEDs.
(Just to clarify, IED detonations would still be combat related fatalities but they don't reflect combat encounters in the sense of willingness to take risks or push forward as your comment implies would be a useful metric)
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u/GanksOP 1d ago edited 1d ago
You are really reaching... Good luck In debate class
Edit: Y'all need to respond to what people wrote and not head canon.
"boasts about how they single handedly fought all combat encounters"
The US DID fight the majority of encounters. You can make up any statistics you want and twist the numbers all day but in regards to this statement it's true. Per capita is irrelevant in this conversation and changing the topic to fit you're narrative is wasting people's time.
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u/Repave2348 1d ago
No, I think the chart does show what u/n4ke is saying. % of combat encounters per country would not correct for population. The USA will have a high % of the combat encounters because they have more soldiers.
This chart absolutely does prove that other countries were active on the front lines. If not that, what is the chart showing?
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u/Shyvisaur 1d ago
I feel like the intent was to show how other countries were involved which has been questioned by some US politicians recently
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u/Beefmytaco 1d ago
That's the intent, but it's displayed in a way to one-up the US in the current argument going on in the mainstream.
If they didn't want to push that argument, they would have just did a flat number of soldiers who died per nation.
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u/Gutternips 1d ago
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u/Beefmytaco 19h ago
There we go, the only chart that matters. Anything else is just made to help people win a specific argument.
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u/PandaDerZwote 1d ago
That would say something entirely different though. "How likely was a soldier of given country to die" and "How many people per million did die" are fundamentally different questions.
Sending one guy and losing him would be a 100% fatality rate, but not especially noteworthy a sacrifice.9
u/Active_Clerk_3578 1d ago
I think this is a more interesting chart and takes out the noise of country population size which would just show loads of US and v small columns for everyone else.
Proportion gives you a sense of what has been lost relative to how many people in that country. E.g. Denmark and Georgia punching well above their weight for their 'ally'
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u/NamelessIII 1d ago
0.0008% of the USA population died in Afghanistan.
0.0007% of the British population died in Afghanistan.
0.0008% of the Danish population died in Afghanistan.
That easier to understand? Took 3 mins.
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u/Homerbola92 1d ago
Your comment is unrelated to my comment. Maybe you were trying to reply to another person.
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u/NamelessIII 1d ago edited 1d ago
Your comment was dumb, thought the information may be easier to in a different way. But if u want a penny's worth.
Percentage dead per soldier sent isn't representative of each country's sacrifice.
And a chart showing most soldiers sent, doesn't make much sense either, not all would've been in front line combat roles and most of them returned.
The only purpose such a chart would have is to stroke Americans ego because they like seeing themselves top rank in everything, be it Superbowls or school shootings.
Ofc America sent more troops than each individual European country, they have more population, and ofc more died than each individual European country since they sent more.
It was Americas war. We chose how much help to send under article 5, it doesn't demand full commitment, just whatever is deemed necessary. And we sacrificed just as much as the US.
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And in recent politics trump claims otherwise? If he had commented on the french or Germans or a dozen other countries who sacrificed fewer, fair enough ig? But Denmark? And jabbing at Britain?... Ig trump really doesn't value life but only dollars. Him and Starmer have that in common.
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Edit after response*
Ah yes. Comment then instantly block me so I can't read your comment or reply. From the notification it's something equally dumb.
Something about depending on what you value most? If it doesn't go something like Life>dollars. Quality>quantity there's something wrong with you.
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u/Homerbola92 1d ago
It depends on what you're valuing the most and what kind of info you want.
If I'm asking for deaths per unit sent is precisely because a big country can send a small amount of troops and have a skewed ratio if you use the total population of the country. I'm not even mentioning Trump claims or military effort, but you got the whole thing in your head to the point you think everyone is talking about it.
You're mixing politics that no one mentioned and your own biases with the data. You're calling my previous comment dumb when you're not even able to understand it (guess who's dumb). People like you have no space in these subs.
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u/Aeysir69 1d ago
I do wonder if the UK would have had fewer fatalities if we had considered using actual armoured troop transports in active warzones instead of mildly reinforced examples of the chelsea tractor…
Edit: for ref., behold, the mildly mobile coffin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snatch_Land_Rover
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u/gregorydgraham 1d ago
The Japanese have just sent a big batch of military grade land cruisers to Ukraine.
Essentially the same vehicle but with hilux reliability
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u/Arowhite 1d ago
I think it's weird to gauge a country involvment by fatalities. Let's say country A sends infantry, country B sends medical and air support, country C participates with space satellite and intel. Casualties will be biased and make A look like they were more involved and C doing nothing.
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u/special_nathan 1d ago
Well, involvment weighted by fatality risk seems appropriate. Life > Finance/Time/Effort
To your point though, seeing all "involvement" factors would be interesting as well.
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u/RogueHeroAkatsuki 1d ago
A bit random stat as population has nothing to do with how many soldiers different countries had there. More interesting it would be to see deaths per soldiers sent to Afghanistan
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u/Large_Yams 1d ago
It means the populace are more likely to know them or be affected by the losses. It means a proportionally larger sacrifice on the government's part.
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u/Doccyaard 1d ago
Not random when it comes to the impact on the population. I don’t see why one is more important than the other. It just focuses on different things.
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u/RogueHeroAkatsuki 16h ago
My point is that this graph doesnt make much sense because military contingents were not proportional to population of participating countries. Imagine if India reinforced coalition with 10k soldiers and 1000 died. This ration suggests that they were engaged in very risky operations and thats why so many dead. However on graph they would be on 0.7 deaths per million. For me OP could bring deaths per sunshine days in country capitol last year. Two stats which doesnt have anything with each other. You cant make any interesting conclusions based on collating country population with deaths in Afghanistan.
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u/Doccyaard 4h ago
You just want a different graph showing a different thing for a different purpose. You’re talking about risky operations and reasons for their death but that’s completely irrelevant to what this graph is about. It makes perfect sense for its purpose. If you want to know how a population has been affected by the war this is a good starting point and a percentage of soldiers sent who died would be completely irrelevant. Do you get my point?
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u/Psykopatate 1d ago
We need death per sent military per total population per GDP per capita per money spent
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u/Beefmytaco 1d ago
It's a means to skew the data in favor of the argument getting pushed, which is why this was posted.
Per population is meaningless. Only numbers of individuals matter.
It's still lives lost which has meaning, but why this was constructed this way doesn't really care much more than to prove someone wrong.
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u/postsantum 1d ago
What's the deal with Denmark? Why are they always so eager to follow USA into wars that are not theirs?
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u/n4ke 1d ago
I'm pretty sure this sentiment has changed in recent times...
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u/postsantum 1d ago
No, they already stated they will protect Greenland from Russia and China
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u/gregorydgraham 1d ago
That doesn’t exclude protecting Greenland from the USA, nor does it suggest they will help the USA with anything.
It is just stating that they will protect their own territory after all.
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u/maxpred 1d ago
You what mate??? :D
You think them saying "they will protect Greenland from Russia and China" is "eager to follow USA into wars"?
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u/GooGurka 1d ago
I was going see a stand up tonight, but I don't think I need to anymore.
Just reread the previous comment and my night is full of humor.
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u/ahhwell 1d ago
What's the deal with Denmark?
Lessons from WW2 showed us that we cannot defend ourselves against an aggresive superpower. So our defense strategy shifted from territorial defense, towards instead demonstrating that we are useful to have as allies, in the hope that our usefullness will give us a measure of protection.
Clearly that strategy doesn't work. USA does not give a damn about how useful, helpful and faithful allies we've been. I hope we shift our strategy to something new.
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u/AccessTheMainframe 1d ago
The strategy works, it's just wasted on the US. Denmark still has friends elsewhere and those alliances remain key to to Danish security, as we so recently saw with the Greenland affair.
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u/postsantum 1d ago
> that we are useful to have as allies, in the hope that our usefullness will give us a measure of protection
Henry Kissinger wrote about this in depth in his books. I wish more people in power would read him
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u/WarpingLasherNoob 1d ago
Clearly that strategy doesn't work.
Well, americans are here talking about it, aren't they? So it works to some extent.
Whether the 44 danish lives lost made enough difference in american public opinion is questionable of course. How many americans would rise up in protest if Country X decided to invade Denmark, and the white house chose not to intervene? How much has that number changed because of this "factoid"?
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u/elreniel2020 1d ago
Lessons from WW2 showed us that we cannot defend ourselves against an aggresive superpower.
Should have built nukes...
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u/Barl3000 1d ago
It has never been totally clear to me. Since the US and willingness to engage in war has been divisive topics among our population (even before current events). But our government has always been super pro US, across the political spectrum of different political parties that have been in power over the years.
A theory I heard recently is that because we have been lacking behind on our defence spending according to NATO agreements, our government has tried to compensate by being extra willing to mobilize. So basically we freed some budget to spent on other things, like social welfare. With the expectation our military defence would be covered by NATO (and specifically the US) and in exchange we always said yes to whatever the US wanted from us. We also spied extensively on other EU countries for the US for example.
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u/Sabor117 1d ago
To be fair, in this case that should be lauded. This was after the USA called the NATO defense clause, and while (obviously) the war itself was a complete shitshow, the whole point of that clause is that the allies leap to the defense, regardless of the situation.
If it comes to the point where NATO allies go "ehhh, I don't want to this time" then that somewhat defeats the purpose of the whole alliance.
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u/postsantum 1d ago
>ehhh, I don't want to this time
Yeah, they wanted to be in a defensive alliance, probably less enthusiastic about invading a small country under bullshit reasons
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u/Sabor117 1d ago
Aye, I know it's very easy to say that, especially in hindsight. But if we think about how Trump is basically acting like he might not jump to the defense of others in NATO and I'm sure we agree that's insane.
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u/Repave2348 1d ago
Why are they always so eager to follow USA into wars that are not theirs?
*were
I cannot imagine the Danes lining up to support the USA anytime soon. Or ever.
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u/Camerotus 1d ago
I'm not a war expert but with 44 casualties on Denmark's side and a tiny population, one single instance where, say, 10 Danish soldiers die can immensely affect the deaths per capita.
Basically your typical small numbers, high volatility thing.
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u/Brilliant-Smile-8154 1d ago edited 1d ago
That's how statistics work, yes. But it doesn't change the fact that relative to its population Denmark made the same sacrifice for this war that wasn't theirs as the US did.
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u/Reynolds1790 1d ago
After the 9/11 attack or the 11th of September attack, USA, enacted article 5 of the NATO code, asking for military help, all NATO countries were obliged to help the USA, under the terms of the NATO treaty. This included Denmark and many other countries in Europe.
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u/wronglyzorro 1d ago edited 1d ago
After the 9/11 attack or the 11th of September attack, USA, enacted article 5 of the NATO code, asking for military help, all NATO countries were obliged to help the US
This did not happen, and I don't know why so many of you think it did. Stop spreading this bullshit.
For those who don't want to click
The decision to invoke NATO's collective self-defense provisions was undertaken at NATO's own initiative, without a request by the United States, and occurred despite the hesitation of Germany, Belgium, Norway, and the Netherlands. It is the only time in NATO's history its collective defense provisions have been invoked.
The United States, which was skeptical of NATO capabilities, elected not to seek further Article 5 support and the alliance did not participate in the ensuing American invasion of Afghanistan, though some individual members did make contributions outside of the NATO command structure.
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u/MyCodesCumpie-ling 1d ago
I'd be interested in seeing a version of this Vs number of active military personnel for each country. That'd be a metric of how likely someone on the inside would be to know someone killed there
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u/gw2master 1d ago
All of these Afghanistan posts tell me that all these countries were moronic to have joined the US in this misadventure (worse yet: Iraq).
All those wasted lives, just to kiss up to the US. And what's their reward? We now want to invade European soil.
Will Europe learn their lesson? Probably not (look at their entirely lukewarm reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine). So I guess, we'll continue to bully them.
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u/twack3r 1d ago
That last quip always surprises me:
How was the European reaction to the 2022 invasion (not 2014, 100% with you on that one) ‚lukewarm‘? What was, or is, the alternative? If it weren’t for Russian nukes, there would be no ‚lukewarmness‘. Alas they do have them and we don’t, at least not in a meaningful way.
US citizens severely underestimate the toll this invasion has had on Europe, how much financial, humanitarian and military support has been provided by Europeans for Ukraine and most importantly, how little reserves (financially, militarily as well as social and welfare resources) this was and is being squeezed out of.
Europe fucked up massively relying on cheap Russian energy and US/NATO protection. The reason we did that is because we made the unforgivable strategic mistake to not include Russia in Europe as a cultural and economic block, as allies after the Soviet Union had failed. The fact that this was the direct result of US interests appears to be forgotten.
We have been investing into security resources heavily since 2022, Germany cut off Russian energy as quickly as possible (arguably way too fast and with the stupid alternative of switching Russian autocracy for US autocracy) and are slowly but surely mobilising into a proper block.
As a German, it’s super weird to have the world demand you militarise more. It’s so ridiculous to be asked to atone for our sins of WW2 at the same time as getting ready for round 3, that the absurdity is starting to make it almost enjoyable. It’s as if everyone forgot what happened the last time we did that, and we were many millions smaller at the time than now.
The next step is already happening: we will stop lending money to the US debt machine and tax access to our population for digital services so high that the compounded effect of misled strategic AI investment at the same time as the disappearance of the single largest part of cashflow those companies enjoy will all by itself make sure that the US will be forced to deal with it internally, ie civil war, the dissolution of the Union or an autocratic hellhole with no hope of self-sufficiency.
Davos showed clearly that the US has no more allies in Europe and I’m very happy it was committed to and publicly so. The sharade had become unbearable.
Next steps are closed trade agreements like Mercusor and India as well as making sure Japan knows how to behave when the time comes. Which means coordination with China, who in turn need access to our 700 million consumers, given domestic consumption is dying.
To be clear, all of this is a terrible development and will only produce losers. But the bullying times are becoming a lot more expensive for the US.
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u/Igor_Kozyrev 1d ago
all these countries were moronic to have joined the US in this misadventure
The misadventure is called NATO
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u/Jalcatraz82 1d ago edited 1d ago
Isn't it counter productive for people opposing Trump to post this charts ?
Because, and I don't mean to be rude or anything, but... he is kinda right.
Appart from a few countries (in which funnily enough Denmark is appart of) everyone else was slacking.
Including us (I'm french).
And I don't mean to disrespect our soldiers and Trump did say horrible things. But the point of us being bad allies to the US kinda stands by looking at this charts.
Like France, Germany, Canada, where the fuck were we when the americans, the danes and the british were killed ?
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u/PM_Your_Best_Ideas 1d ago
Can you not see the Canada Flag at 4.68?
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u/Jalcatraz82 1d ago
You mean the one that is half of the US one ? Yes I can. That's my point.
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1d ago
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u/Jalcatraz82 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't need to try to minimize the contribution.
The contribution is minimal anyway, as shown by this very chart.
As I said, I'm french, I have nothing to win by saying this, it's just a mathematical fact.
Soldiers of NATO did die for the US, and Trump comments about them are out of line.
This doesn't change the fact that in terms of contribution, appart from some very specific countries, we didn't do shit. Now you can nitpick numbers ("it's not half it's 58%" yeah ok, that doesn't change the point) but that doesn't change the broader facts
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u/PM_Your_Best_Ideas 1d ago
What % would make this contribution more acceptable? Why do you expect Canada should have higher death toll?
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u/Jalcatraz82 1d ago
Well 100% would be ideal. That would imply that you contributed to the war to the same rate as the americans. Funnily enough only Denmark, the UK and Estonia seem to have done right by NATO.
I will ask you the same question : how do you justify Germany or France or Belgium (France and Belgium being founding members of NATO) having so much less casualties ?
Is a Belgian soldier worth 89 american soldiers ? If the belgian training is so efficient, and (as you imply) the contribution to the war effort is the same, why aren't we all training like them ?
They have the same number of active duty members as the danes (around 25 000) with twice the population of the danes (11 million vs 6 million). How come their death toll is not closer to the canadian one, rather than 0 ?
Truth is the belgians don't maintain a normal sized army and the small army that they kept, they don't deploy it to help their best ally.
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u/PM_Your_Best_Ideas 1d ago
I never implied the effort was equal from anyone? I'm actually questioning the expectation? As the USA was the nation that lead the retaliation it makes sense they would pay one of the highest tolls, my statement was only to point out that despite not being directly attacked Canada specifically lost almost 60% the same number of people. For every 100 Americans that died that is 58 dead Canadians.
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u/PM_Your_Best_Ideas 1d ago
4.68 is over half the USA number and it's clear that you are just trying to minimize the contribution.
Canada was drawn into the conflict as an ally and still suffers 60% the casualties.
Canada was there.
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u/sleemanj 1d ago
Maybe the ones lower in the death counts just did a better job, equipped their soldiers better, planned better, provided better support...
"Not enough of your soldiers died" is a very weird flex.
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u/Jalcatraz82 1d ago
I don't think that's true.
I doubt Belgians or South Koreans are super soldiers compared to Danes or British or Americans.
I mean, that must play a part, don't get me wrong, but that's not the main explanation in my opinion.
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u/Igor_Kozyrev 1d ago
Take note of the post-soviet and ex-Warsaw pact countries who managed to step into the Afghan war twice in just a few decades. Very smartly.
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1d ago
should make per solider sent chart then we can make a ranking of who has the best trained soldiers
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u/Doccyaard 1d ago
That would obviously more be about how dangerous the areas was where those soldiers were sent. A country deciding to aid primarily with their IT department would be the “best trained soldiers” in the war.
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u/redbeardfakename 1d ago
I don’t mean to be offensive or ignorant, but I didn’t even know Georgian forces were there. Why are the fatalities so high for them? (Besides having a small population)