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.
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.