Right. But I’m not saying people are dying to attack the US. They largely don’t care about us. I’m saying that you can play games with, say, Austria, that you can’t with the US. And yes, we will hunt you down. Does that make us bad people? No, it’s the consequence of power. If you don’t use it, someone else will. And the US has done a lot of bad things - but name what other country capable of doing it you would prefer to be in charge. Monaco isn’t an option.

I get your point of view, but I believe in a multipolar world where no single country can set the rules unilaterally.

China has shown us that you can modernize a country and make it a global actor without imposing yourself as a hegemon, and I choose that as a role model.

> China has shown us that you can modernize a country and make it a global actor without imposing yourself as a hegemon, and I choose that as a role model.

Don’t tell China’s neighbors this. The reason they are so friendly with the USA ATM is that China has long aspired to being (and often is) the regional hegemon (and it’s a huge region).

Well why shouldn't China aspire to it? The US are the regional hegemon of the americas anyway, and we all know how much blood was spilled to accomplish that.

Latin americans had to be subjugated with brutal anti-communist dictatorships and the US are the ones who made it happen.

Look at what they're doing to Cuba as a punishment for freeing themselves from Batista, the fascist puppet the US forced as a leader in order to protect their interests there.

China has around 2-3 thousand years of history in trolling its neighbors, so this is just a normal thing, they've never really been a "peaceful" country (but very few countries have). America has only been around for 2-3 hundred years? Oh, it isn't peaceful either.

You could say the same thing about China invading Vietnam because the Vietnamese overthrew their puppet Pol Pot in Cambodia, that guy said to be even worse than Batista because he literally killed a few million people. But then again, the USA and China were allies at the time (the USA tacitly supported Pol Pot as well, as the enemy of their enemy I guess).

" believe in a multipolar world"

There is nothing to believe here, such a world certainly existed before, and will likely soon exist again, but don't rely on it being peaceful.

Competing superpowers, even if avoiding direct confrontation between themselves, will start a lot of proxy wars to push out their adversaries from country X or region Y. See also the entire Cold War 1.0. In multiple places, said war was actually very hot.

Well we have so many wars going on anyway that I start to think the US are a pretty bad hegemon after all, if the goal of hegemony is to prevent conflicts.

So I'll gladly keep some conflict but without Uncle Sam's oppression, thanks.

It is interesting that two people can observe the same situation and come to such different conclusions.

We have so many wars going on precisely because Uncle Sam is slowly losing its hegemonic status - which is not a boolean (true/false), but more of a continuum. If you look at the wars going on, many of those involve US allies vs. allies of smaller powers hostile to the US (Russia, Iran, Venezuela), which is precisely the sort of proxy wars that I was talking about.

IDK where you live, if you're a Latinoamerican, you've had real US oppression - though, let me tell you from the former Eastern Bloc, don't expect Russian or Chinese influence to be any more benign than American one. It is a "choose your poison" situation.

If you are a European, there is no US oppression here. The last European power that was forcibly suppressed by the US was Nazi Germany.

But anyway you can be glad as you wish, because if the current trends continue, you will have a lot more conflicts than today. I am not really sure if "less US influence" will be an upside. Perhaps to you, in your situation, yes.