From the book:
> American disinterest in the world means that American security guarantees are unlikely to be honored. Competitions held in check for the better part of a century will return. Wars of opportunism will come back into fashion.
It sounds like a narrative where a powerful monopolistic entity backed by military power bullies everyone else and claims to provide “protection” for them.
When was the last time consolidated power in one place ended up to be good for people?
I believe a world with US as a powerful country along with other equally powerful nations (an equilibrium) is a much better place for everyone to live in (also for people of US). Maybe it’s naive, at least for now, but one can only dream.
An interesting example is the number of ICBMs programs on both sides. The engineering culture within the USSR meant that it had many different missile designs, some only ever resulting in a handful of missiles. Missiles would have short service lives and then be replaced by a new model. The Americans were different. They stuck to a smaller number of designs but mass produced and maintained them for decades. Both sides perceived that the other "had more missiles" because they were effectively counting them differently. The USSR saw American missile factories churning out missiles. The US saw a flood of new designs on parade and assumed they were being mass produced. Such cultural splits continue to inflate budgets today.
But I just don’t think humans do equilibrium well. We seem to have a constant need to seek control or to be controlled.
And importantly we can't know the counterfactual, so we can't claim that the US is responsible for all those good outcomes with any real certainty, and it's entirely possible that the incentives were there no matter which nation had the resources to control global affairs.
Backup these results with data is not the way to go. You have to proof the same results could have not been achieved without force. Which is impossible to proof IMO
Sadly? It's about time. Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, most of Latin America, many places in Africa. They all have a US hangover.
> US felt invincible after it and tried to do the right thing.
Serious? What propaganda outlet do you read? They try to help their big biz make max profits. That's all. That's not "the right thing". Yeah sure they sell it as "the right thing". Who does not...
Not really - the US looks really attractive from the outside - Hollywood propaganda probably does the heavy lifting. The reality is disappointing. Before I immigrated, I told an American expat friend my plans and he asked me a bewildered "Why?!" and that surprised me a little because "The greatest country on earth" and all that. After my first month in the US, I was legitimately depressed, and I finally understood why he had asked. The reality of living in the US is not close to being as good as it appears from the outside (or as a visitor). Fortunately, I got better at coping but I'm still very much aware of how abnormal and batshit crazy some things are in the US that most Americans are inured to.
The (gross) salary and tech scene are good, but almost everything else is worse compared to other developed nations. I probably would have been better off moving to Canada, Germany or the Netherlands (I might do that yet - the 2020 elections were pivotal in my decision to stay put for now)
I'll take the Gollywog and Schwartz Pete over anxiety-inducing traffic stops any day.
Yes, because they are richest natiom in the world. How is that statement not a complete non sequitur to what was being discussed?
My point was the US is more than that, and “good” as illustrated by its popularity with immigrants. You can, actually, in this court system receive justice, you can speak your mind at least legally without reprisal. You can leave this nation if you so choose.
Being just a “rich” nation isn’t it. There are many rich nations and many not as accommodating.
This is such a bad argument I dont even know where to begin with unpacking.
Regimes being bad to their own people (US is also in this category, but not like some poorer countries), is separate from it behaving bad to other nations. Internal affairs vs foreign affairs.
Also before US involvement all countries were colonies, do you think being repeatedly invaded and bombed has any negative effects?
I agree bombings, chemical warfare and the like are some of the worst outcomes for people, but what would you suggest for the Koreans under attack? Not my problem? I don’t have the moral authority to get involved? Send aid? What about the Cambodians massacred? No help from anyone and they were absolutely brutally destroyed by the millions. Millions. We haven’t even spoken of the millions in the 20s in Eastern Europe or the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I can’t so easily write off those dead, and I don’t think inaction is the answer, but war.
Right there is half of the animosity behind the cold war. Try telling a Russian that it was the US that "ended" WWII. Remember to duck. The US bombings of Japan were bad, but worse was the threat of a Russian invasion of the home islands. Japan decided that it would rather be occupied by Americans than Russians. And it was Russian troops on the streets of Berlin. They suffered far more losses and killed more enemies. It isn't "WWII" in Russia. It's "The Great Patriotic War". Despite what Texas highschool textbooks say, the US did not end that war solo.
But an interesting thought experiment, imagine, after ending WWII the US and its people simply sunk into the ocean.
Then you’ve got a massive imbalance of power tilted towards Stalin and the Soviets with nuclear weapons and allied with China, vs a weak UK and France.
While it’s impossible to prove the USSR wouldn’t have started caring about democracy and human rights and stopped caring about expansion on their own...I don’t think it’s a leap to say the world would be a worse place.
Wait, you think that was the motivation for US actions?
But for a contrarian view on the “US Bad” narrative, check out a book called The Accidental Superpower
Here’s a good summary of the book: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-a...
It presents an interesting case that the relative peace of modern society is entirely due to US military over-investment brought on by the Cold War—which allows for uninterrupted global supply chains, safe global trade, and enforces the intertwining of economic interests through global markets.
Absent the US existing, the world doesn’t suddenly become a utopia of people living happily ever after. Humans don’t have a great track record of being nice to each other. Unfortunately the alternative options to US power don’t look all that great.