I think it's very likely counterfactually better than USSR (now Russian) or Chinese hegemony. Imagine if Al Gore had won 2000 - America at the helm while growing increasingly wary of violent foreign interventions seems like the least bad path for Earth. (I am not sure if such a path still remains.)
China ultra-liberalizing and becoming a democracy and then the hegemon could be an okay path but I am not too optimistic about the prospects of those first parts.
> I think it's very likely counterfactually better than USSR (now Russian) or Chinese hegemony.
Why is it either or the other? Just because the US happens to turn inwards and stop acting like the world police, doesn't mean that other countries suddenly start dreaming of world domination. China and Russian both have plenty of problems in their home fronts and surrounding areas.
> China and Russian both have plenty of problems in their home fronts and surrounding areas.
Do you know how Russia got so large? They started out small.
They solve such problems by doing the one thing they have always done: expanding. Successful conquest temporarily mitigates internal problems, injustices and inefficiencies.
> Do you know how Russia got so large? They started out small.
Do you know how literally any country got the size it is today? They started out small. Some of them are still small today, but they might be larger tomorrow. Some of them will be smaller tomorrow. This is how the world has function and continues to function. Not sure how this could be surprising to anyone out there, even less how you think someone wouldn't understand this very basic fact about countries.
If you are trying to make a counterpoint, try again, hopefully with an actual argument.
And maybe, maybe, you take into account that the size of Russia and its expansionism are on a whole other level and still ongoing, and that other countries are not like that at all, not even remotely.
How is that different from how US acted after 1776? Or China during Qin dynasty?
Yes, today Russia is trying to expand, which they've done before, like most countries in the world. Not sure what makes them special in that regard.
Did any country start out large? Since your main point seems to have been that Russia started out small, in contrast to some other country you're trying to reference that apparently started out large, but I'm not sure which one you're trying to reference here.
> Yes, today Russia is trying to expand, which they've done before, like most countries in the world. Not sure what makes them special in that regard
Sure. Correct. Wishing for the failure of the Pax Americana is cheering on the return of wars of conquest. First and foremost by the great powers.
Russia isn't special. It was–like every other ordinary country–previously restrained. Dissolving the rules that restrained it also dissolves the rules that restrained every other current and aspiring global or regional power.
> Sure. Correct. Wishing for the failure of the Pax Americana is cheering on the return of wars of conquest. First and foremost by the great powers.
So because someone doesn't want the US as a world police, means they want some other country as world police? Can't people just wish/want no one to be world police?
I never understood the lack of nuance in American politics and in lots of conversations with Americans. Just because you don't like A, doesn't mean you suddenly love B, no matter how much you see them as direct antonyms or whatever, what's up with trying to argue in this way? What conversation and discussions are improved by this sort of behavior? What is your goal with doing that, some sort of gotcha?
> Can't people just wish/want no one to be world police?
Yes. This is what happens. Which means various powers fight to establish spheres of influence, regionally and globally.
> Just because you don't like A, doesn't mean you suddenly love B
No. You can hate both. But sometimes, rejecting A implicitly means causing B. In this case, rejecting a world police means–ceteris paribus–incentivizing realpolitik.
(It doesn't mean the only options are America as world cop or anarchy. But rejecting the former without anything to fall back on is embracing the latter.)
> What is your goal with doing that, some sort of gotcha?
Describing reality around power vacuums. Releasing Pax Americana creates a power vacuum everywhere at the same time. (It also releases America from its rules-based obligations, though these pretty much became guidelines after each of the Iraq War, annexation of Crimea and China being China in Tibet and the South China Sea.)
> No. You can hate both. But sometimes, rejecting A implicitly means causing B. In this case, rejecting a world police means–ceteris paribus–incentivizing realpolitik.
Yeah, I think this is the core of our disagreement. Maybe my view of the world isn't US-centric enough, but I don't believe rejecting the US's Pax Americana somehow means I'm implicitly causing China or Russia to suddenly want their own version of Pax Americana played out. But I do know this is a really common view in the US, so I won't really attempt to convince you otherwise, I think it's at this point we just agree to disagree.
> I don't believe rejecting the US's Pax Americana somehow means I'm implicitly causing China or Russia to suddenly want their own version of Pax Americana played out
They don’t. The Pax is expensive to maintain. They want their spheres of influence. Same as America’s elites. Same as India’s, Iran’s, Israel’s, Turkey’s, et cetera.
There is no indication Russia or China want to be world cops. But they—and many others, including America—do want to dominate their neighbours in ways that are restricted by the rules-based international order.
> I don't believe rejecting the US's Pax Americana somehow means I'm implicitly causing
Unless you’re voting in a small handful of European countries, you probably aren’t causing or restraining much in this theatre. (I’m in a single-party state in America. I’m not influencing this through my vote either.)
It seems likely that at least for a few more centuries, humanity and Earth are going to play the typical geopolitical games they've played during the past centuries.
China and Russia are consistently led by ruthless people who like power. Plus, even if China does only just conquer Taiwan and then leaves everyone else alone as the hegemon, there's still the matter of them oppressing ~20% of the humans on the planet (their own people). Even if it's the sort of oppression that you don't necessarily ever notice so long as you always stay in line.
China is the alternative. How many countries has China waged war against, toppled democratic governments, established puppet março-states and invaded since 1949?
There are literally thousands of years of sino-korean wars, so its hard to pin that blame on a specific government. Tibet is a more straightforward case of imperial expansionism from China, although it is also a centuries-old one, dating from Qing dynasty (1700s). The border skirmishes with India stem from mutual dissatisfaction with old British imperial border lines, which both governments disagree with.
Now compare that with the USA list. China's list is, to say the least, much more lightweight, straightforward and understandable. I'd go with that list any day, and most of the world would too.
It could be the case that they become the hegemon and don't ever conquer anyone besides Taiwan and it still sucks due to how they treat ~20% of the Earth's population (their own citizens).
A liberal, democratic China becoming the hegemon is very possibly better than the status quo (especially under Trump and with the surge of far-right mainstreaming in the US), but China as it is now cannot be trusted to be a good steward of a hypothetical Pax Sinica, just as Trumpist America cannot be trusted.
The greatest timeline for Europe in its history? Post WW2 to now.
The greatest timeline for Latin America overall? Post WW2 to now.
The greatest timeline for Oceania overall? Post WW2 to now.
The greatest timeline for India? Post WW2 to now.
The greatest timeline for the rest of Asia overall? Post WW2 to now.
Coming up on 80 years. Here's a short list, please tell me which prior ~80 year period in history these nations had it better overall for their people.
Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Poland, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Greece, Slovakia, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria. Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan. Australia, New Zealand, Canada. China, Japan, Indonesia, India, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand. Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Panama. Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain.
Just most of the world population in that little list.
Even Russia - the people of Russia have far higher standards of living at the median today than they have at any other point in their history. It's not even remotely close.
'But but but the world isn't perfect.' No kidding.
You have a gigantic confounder of general progress, much of it technological.
Just recently I made a post here in some thread to point out that even wein backwards East Germany made huge gains - my grandfather, born early 20th century, lived much, much better even by the end of the GDR compared to when he was born in the Weimar Republic.
Especially food became a non-issue in the modern world, productivity increases were gigantic. The Haber-Bosch process, very important at the start of that development, was not a US invention, nor contingent on anything US related.
It would be hard to disentangle US influence, but one can assume even if the US had not become so dominant, much of those developments would still have taken place, lifting up much of the entire world.
Right, because counterfactuals aren’t provable. It doesn’t seem to stop people from confidently stating that American hegemony was worse than the alternatives.
We know it worked well, that the entire world seems to be better off now than before ww2.
We know that west Germany did far better than east Germany. We know Japan did far better than the Asian states under the USSR’s influence. We know that things went pretty damned well overall for the whole NATOsphere after ww2.
We know WW3 didn’t happen.
We don’t know how it would have gone if it were another country “in charge” or how it would have gone if nobody was “in charge” to the degree the US was.
So just saying “Pax Americana was a pox on the world” is such an utterly asinine statement I don’t even know how to begin to address it, other than to file it under “trolls gonna troll.”
Correlation is not causation. At the same time, the industrial and technological revolutions happened, which are the main drivers of the "greatest timeline".
It's popular to hate the US but I'd like to know what country you think would be better at the role of global hegemon. What country would you suggest would do a better job? Be specific.
> The concept that living in a hegemony is acceptable is incoherent
Wishing upon a star that humans were better is not a solution.
Revoking the Pax Americana frees America to pursue more wars of conquest. Not fewer. It's a revocation of the rules-based international order that America (and the former Soviet Union) put in place following WWII.
It similarly frees every other wannabe global and regional hegemony to assert their spheres of influence.
I'm American. Why would the largest military on the planet not be ready for rule by might? Revoking Pax Americana (and the rules-based international order it was built on, aspirational as it may have often been) just means our elites can go back to 19th-century rules.
> where small groups of well armed people can compete with state on a more equal footing
Yes. This is happening in Sudan, the DRC, Burma, Yemen, Nicaragua, et cetera. It entertains some people from afar, but is generally a miserable state of affairs for the people on the ground.
> I'm American. Why would the largest military on the planet not be ready for rule by might?
Two years ago, I would have agreed.
Today? Given what Trump is doing? Kicking out military personal for being trans, his poor choice for (not only but in this topic specifically) Defence Secretary, his demand to redesign stealth warships because he won't accept the un-"aesthetic" look is driven by functional requirements, demanding a return of battleships this time with a railgun (to go with the lasers)?
I think there's a very real risk of the USA military rapidly following the same path as post-soviet Russian military.
Well, I say "risk": I'm European, so for me it's a good thing if the person who is trying to break up my home is more interested in flashy demos than functional weapons.
> there's a very real risk of the USA military rapidly following the same path as post-soviet Russian military
Totally agree. That said, Russia's military is a joke. It's still more than capable of making messes. Messes which were once constrained by the rules-based international order.
The greatest era of prosperity expansion and peace in world history courtesy of pax Americana. The best decades - measurably - for humanity overall have taken place since the US assumed that role post WW2.
Depends on where you were during those decades. If you're in one of the unlucky countries that didn't do what the US wanted you likely suffered enormously.
Part of it is ideas and ideals. America represents ideas of liberty, liberalism, democracy, and individualism. The USSR/Russia and China represent the exact opposite.
America has failed to live up to those ideals (slavery, plunder, toppling democratically elected leaders to install military dictatorships, unnecessary wars with mass civilian casualties) on multiple occasions, but if you at least look at things on paper, America is selling a better product. And with the (now gutted) aid we provided to the world, and the economic boons of American consumer demand helping to speed up industrialization of poorer countries, benefits weren't just lofty principles.
One nice thing about American ideals is that, domestically, Americans who respect them can fight for them and fight for their preservation and expansion. There exists a noble thing to fight for which can in fact be fought for, and that thing encompasses the principle of not ever permitting people in other countries to suffer so that the United States may gain. Good luck doing any of that in Russia or China in 2025, and likely also in 2050.
“ Part of it is ideas and ideals. America represents ideas of liberty, liberalism, democracy, and individualism. The USSR/Russia and China represent the exact opposite.”
This is just pure John Birch society propaganda and at no point has the US actually ever attempted in any real way to realize this
This just seems pretty wrong. Obviously there were also lots of bad things the Americans did, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t attempting to realize those ideals. The US was quite influential in ending colonialism by Britain and France across much of the world after WWII for example. The US also helped to set up west Germany and Japan as liberal democracies after the war (they certainly weren’t before or during it, and Britain and France were not so fond of helping Germany recover), as well as helping German reunification (again opposed by France and Britain) and post-Soviet states with their recovery (sure, in all these cases the thing that was good for realizing these values was also good in the long run for the US (especially its Cold War political goals) and the affected countries but I don’t think that’s a very good argument that the US doesn’t care about these values).
I think there’s a lot of nuance here, and you have not expressed nuanced or detailed opinions in this thread, so I’m a bit curious about what your actual claims are, but I’m also not particularly interested in debating them.
> The US was quite influential in ending colonialism by Britain and France across much of the world after WWII for example.
The colonized people were a lot more influential there, though the US did exert some force in that direction (as well as plenty in the other direction) depending on its perception of the value of the particular colonial arrangement on its own geopolitical interests.
America has often stomped on the ideas it claims to fight for but to say it has never attempted to realize it is very silly and itself just reflexive anti-America propaganda. Look at FDR's words and actions during and after WWII, look at Eisenhower, look at Carter, look at JFK, imagine a future trajectory where Al Gore won that election.
America has sometimes done the exact opposite of helping other countries become healthy democracies - but they also very obviously have sometimes in fact helped other countries become healthy democracies. America's staunch pro-liberty pro-democracy stance is a big part of why the immediate aftermath of WWII led to Europe becoming a mostly democratic, stable quasi-union.
I am saying it's a gray area but that at least on paper America says nice words. You're just saying it's all bad.
Anything the US does that is beneficial is 1. Incidental to th goal 2. Will eventually benefit them US interest if only because it’s used as further propaganda
