For instance: Switzerland has maintained permanent political neutrality since 1815 as they refuse to join military alliances (not a member of NATO), avoid participating in foreign wars and treating warring parties equally under international law. Even though Switzerland has their own military, they rarely get deployed outside their borders (not invading a ME country to commit war crimes) & definitely don’t have over 800 military bases worldwide.
It’s not a question of difficulty, it’s a question of intention. The US does not want to be neutral. It hasn’t wanted such a thing for a very long time. If there was a sincere desire for that, they would have no difficulty doing so.
The current US dominated world order, with, as you note, US bases all across the planet and all of the other ways that US influence is felt, is something that was built by design. The US intentionally and carefully cultivated a world order that was subservient to their interests. They did this by recognising the values of both soft and hard power when used in the “right” (meaning most effective) ways. They used their economic power to lure other nations into their sphere of influence, drawn by the temptation of access to that wealth, and they used their military power to offer safety and security in return for compliance. This was perhaps one of the most genius innovations of the American Empire; where previous global hegemons beat their subjects into submission, America did something smarter; they offered to beat their subjects enemies into submission instead. And yes, where both of these approaches failed, they would always happily resort to other applications of power; invasion, assassination, regime change, whatever was necessary.
But above all else, the American Empire flourished because it offered reasonable, acceptable terms; bend the knee, and you will maintain your freedom, your democracy, your wealth. In fact, all of those things will generally flourish under their dominance. They offered to be kinder, gentler overlords, and the world acquiesced, because the cost was little enough, and the benefits seemingly great enough.
This is a system that took decades to build, and it firmly established America as the per-emminent power on the globe. And it’s that system that Trump is in the process of utterly destroying, because he has never understood how it worked. He cannot grasp any form of power that does not take the form of a boot on a neck. He cannot imagine the idea of mutually beneficial arrangements, even when the “mutual” part skews heavily towards one side. He is so beset by all his imagined grievances that he looked at a global system carefully constructed over decades to benefit the United States and decided that it was completely stacked against them.
Except in South East Asia and China where most people don’t give a fuck about the US, nor has the US any influence whatsoever. This kind of thinking in your comments, is exactly the faux superiority complex Americans grew up with. Nothing is further from the truth.
This is a super biased, liberal, western centric perspective. The US does not work nicely across the world to achieve it’s goals. It uses it’s coercive power as the global super power to punish those who do not fall in line. We use sanctions more than any regime in the past. We embargo countries for decades when they speak out against our interests and routinely go to war through proxies or by way of clandestine attempts to overthrow them. We have violently subjugated the world not benevolently worked with them.
I beg you to go to the global south and see how impoverished those nations are largely at our expense as we extracts resources through ever more violent and coercive measures.
Pay close attention to exactly what I said. You’ll notice that the word “nice” was nowhere in there. And I was perfectly clear that America was more than happy to use political, military and economic force where necessary;
When I say that America’s terms were “reasonable” and “acceptable” I assumed it was apparent that this was in contrast to the alternative; direct and violent subjugation. At no point was my argument that America was in any true sense “kind” or “gentle”, and I don’t think that could actually be construed from any of what I said.
We engage in direct and violent subjugation is my whole point its just spun well by the complicit media apparatus who manufacture consent for it. There is nothing reasonable about imperialist conquest. Full stop.
I’m curious; what part of my referring to the USA as the “American Empire” gave you the impression that I was describing this as anything other than blatant imperialism?
The part where you made it seem like anything less than oppressive for everyone involved. You make it sound like the US exerting force across the globe is good for some nations because they get to uphold a facade of Democratic expression that largely does not exist anywhere because of these forces at play.
It is good for some nations (depending on the specific standards of “good” that we’re using). The American global hegemony was infinitely preferable to, say, the Nazis. Exactly how preferable varies wildly depending on where you live, but there aren’t many places where the two could be said to be equal. This is the problem with taking everything in black and white terms; it robs of you of the capacity to recognise nuance.
Everyone here agrees that America sucks. That’s really not a fact in contention. But if you’re coming at this from the perspective that America is the greatest evil that the world has ever seen then you’re really not going to be able to engage in this conversation in any meaningful way.
The Nazis literally drew inspiration for the Holocaust from the US. Directly. They loved how we treated minorities particularly black people. Also US global hegemony has quite directly led to the rise of fascism globally by the exportation and promotion of 3rd way neoliberalism.
To call the US one of the greatest evils of all time is not even kind of an exaggeration.
And this is the point where I peace out on this conversation.
You’ve made it very clear what your position is; nuance does not exist, anything that is not objectively morally pure is therefore pure ontological evil, end of discussion. The USA circa 1950-2000 is exactly as bad as the Nazis at their height. That’s not a position that allows for any kind of debate. It’s a ‘my way or the highway’ absolutist philosophy that makes any kind of interaction as useful as trying to have a serious discussion about morality with a fundamentalist evangelical. If that’s how you want to live your life I can’t stop you, but I don’t have to engage with it.