Re:War Is a Racket (1935)
by philwelch on Friday May 26, 2023 @01:18AM
(#36080271)
> At no point in history was Rome, the Mongols, or Britain a global hegemon or even extant in a unipolar world.
I think I actually agree with you. Of course, according to the standards you’re setting, neither is the US. The British were fighting some sort of war every decade of the height of their empire, but so has the US. The Mongols never managed to dominate Africa; neither did we (not even to the point of preventing the bloody Congo Wars of the 1990’s).
The reason I brought up the other hegemons is that they managed to significantly reduce the amount of war inside their own empires. That’s the closest analogy to what the US has done.
> The reason it didn't is #1 the US prevented that from happening, globally, at considerable expenses; and #2 restrained itself, generally speaking, from occupying other countries. Fighting, yes. Conquering and keeping, no.
We do still have troops in Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea, of course. And we have promised to help defend these countries from attack. If you wanted to be melodramatic about it, you could call it a sort of empire. But I think we might agree that it’s not quite fair to say that.
I think I actually agree with you. Of course, according to the standards you’re setting, neither is the US. The British were fighting some sort of war every decade of the height of their empire, but so has the US. The Mongols never managed to dominate Africa; neither did we (not even to the point of preventing the bloody Congo Wars of the 1990’s).
The reason I brought up the other hegemons is that they managed to significantly reduce the amount of war inside their own empires. That’s the closest analogy to what the US has done.
> The reason it didn't is #1 the US prevented that from happening, globally, at considerable expenses; and #2 restrained itself, generally speaking, from occupying other countries. Fighting, yes. Conquering and keeping, no.
We do still have troops in Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea, of course. And we have promised to help defend these countries from attack. If you wanted to be melodramatic about it, you could call it a sort of empire. But I think we might agree that it’s not quite fair to say that.