I guess my question is who gave the Americans the right? I say this as an American. But would not the world be a better place if we just minded our own business and quit nation building and stoking non existant fires?
Pretty much when the US was the only super power to survive WWII unscathed.
Also, having developed atomic hellfire, and the will to use it (twice), kinda makes you the big kid on the playground.
They love to take credit for WWII while completely ignoring the part Canada played
Many countries played an important role, not just Canada. And no, not all of us take credit for it.
Canada’s role is adequately acknowledged, our Nederland brothers send flowers every year
The US taking credit at all in Europe is silly but they did help with the Japanese theatre
There will always be a Nederland Canada bromance.
I want Finland to rule the world.
I also want that, but only for the future generations to know that “we were Finnished”
The main reason is that if we stop being the biggest shark in the tank, the next two biggest sharks (China and Russia) can’t be trusted to not feast on the smaller sharks. And if they do feast, they will become too large for the American shark to deal with.
The US is already feeding on the smaller sharks, and has been for decades. Look at their foreign policy in Central and South America, South East Asia, the Middle East.
The only difference is that they’ve been feasting on other nations and not the West. China and Russia don’t have those restraints. All three of them are horrible, but America hasn’t been horrible to us until just recently.
I think it’s even simpler than this. I think any government/state/group with power wants to hold and expand it. I’m not sure there is a group of people that exist that wouldn’t work to exercise control if they could. And I’m not defending the US, I just think it may be an inherently human thing to do.
I’m sorry, this seems to imply the US doesn’t “feast on the smaller sharks”. It went as far as threatening Japan with sanctions because they were considering “digital sovereignty” with TRON OS as opposed to Windows at some point. Japan is almost a non-optional ally.
And also one good solution of preventing someone from doing that is arming the smaller sharks. Yet USA seems even more against more equal spread of technologies and weapons than the “next two sharks”.
After WW2 the US became addicted to being the world police and many other countries were happy to have the US cover the cost of their defense or income from hosting US bases. Selling arms is also big business and the DOD justifies it by saying that it keeps personnel and manufacturing lines for weapons running.
The citizens, in general, don’t. We want to do the same thing every other country’s people want - live our lives and hopefully give our kids a good or better one.
I have no fucking clue what the government is doing to make these decisions.
America was the standard for a Democratic Republic after WW2.
after the war we helped most of Europe return to normal and even improved quality of life and living standards. part of that help came with stipulations on how the US had control within those countries that had help.
Had the US not stepped in at the time to stabilize Europe, another war would have likely happened and another, and another.
My guess, most of Europe would have fallen under Russian rule, or at the very least heavily influenced by, if the US didn’t step up.
I suppose European’s don’t look at how bad the war left Europe and often just want to forget the atrocities, but that’s not an excuse for blaming the hand that helped you in your time of need.
I’m German and went to the US for a year as a high school student.
My US history teacher literally told us that the US is the world police. Because of that I believe that many Americans think that way.
Put South Park comment here.
I have an answer different from the others.
US economy depends on the US intellectual property system, a few US monopolist companies and the US dollar, and the financial system.
Especially the intellectual property system. However different laws can be in various countries, in fact everybody tries to follow US law.
It means that a lot of things produces elsewhere mean royalties to US companies, and a lot of things can’t be produced without permission, control of markets, planned development of microelectronics and tech in particular, yadda-yadda.
So - if, in some hypothetical situation, that IP system is undone, with some countries having similar laws, some more like USSR’s “public domain by default with some fixed payment to patent holders”, and all the intermediate variants, then you’ll just have a second depression. Because a huge part of the economy will shrink.
US foreign debt is a meme subject, but honestly, if USD stops being the world’s most reliable currency, you’ll also probably have a default.
US actual industrial production (what doesn’t shrink as easily) is not so impressive when looking at its size. A lot about US level of life doesn’t really match the efficiency of the economy. Say, if you look at Germany, life there is very different. In some ways better, maybe, but many things normal in the US are not achievable there.
My point is - the American IP laws were spread around by pressure. Not just that, but sometimes the monopoly roles of American companies. Part of that pressure is the military guarantor role.
If that stops being relevant, a lot of things which were a given for your economy for many years will stop existing. And for a few other economies too. It might not look as bad as the USSR’s collapse, but it will probably look as ruined and unpredictable as the 1960s world.
I’m curious what is normal in the US and not achievable in Germany.
Food delivery as something normal, I’d think. Plumber coming soon after being called. Appointment with doctor to a close enough date.
Those things affected by actually having labor rights and less dependence on colonial mechanisms.
We’re taught to compete with each other basically at birth cos that’s what benefits capitalism and no one will break the cycle of this evil shit
Because authoritarians convinced the American people that military interventions prevent terrorist attacks to distract them from the reality which is that terrorist attacks are caused by American interventions.
It’s only possible to convince Americans of that because they are shockingly ignorant of history and they believe whatever the warmongers tell them.
Every empire has those aspirations.
There are many ways to achieve it through the complex relationships between countries and societies (e.g. soft power, cultural influence, militar control, etc) but an empire willing to try it at any cost with any means will always succeed for longer as an empire…
Meanwhile in another thread I saw some Brits bitching about America not entering WWII until the end of 1941.
You’re the bad guy for trying to stay out of international affairs, you’re the bad guy for getting into international affairs. If you find yourself forced to play a game you can’t win, Just start hurting people.
This drives me nuts with the news cycle. “The US won’t get involved in X”. The media shows how awful fighting/revolt/etc are in X. “Why won’t the US do something about the horror in X!?” The US gets involved and, of course, some civilians die. This is guaranteed in war. The media then goes “The US is awful for killing civilians in X!” The US pulls out of X. The media goes “Why has the US abandoned X!?”
Whenever I’ve seen that, it’s usually in response to America taking the credit for saving the war despite “barely being there”. On the other hand, you could say adding the American force weighed the odds into the allies’ favor, so the swift end wouldn’t have happened naturally . On the other foot, America wouldn’t have built up enough arsenal to have that much effect had they not waited. And on your neighbor’s hand, America seemed to sit idly as they watched nazis be nazis because no no, the guy has some valid points
So you want us to instantly invade any country whose leader we don’t like. KAY!
If that’s your takeaway, sure. It’s more about the 1939 invasion of Poland, the French/British declaring war the same year, the 1940 Blitz bombing of England, and 1940 Battle of France.
Which were America’s problem…how exactly? I will 100% grant you, Germany deserved a swift lead pipe to the mouth for how the 1940’s went. The United States of America, an independent nation in a different hemisphere to which none of that happened, was trying to stay out of it because Europe is not our fault.
We had no mutual defense treaties with anyone in Europe in the 1930’s. It wasn’t our fight. In what way was the safety or sovereignty of Poland our problem in 1939? Precisely how many American lives did we owe Poland at the time?
All you little European nations are so big and proud until the goddamn krauts start getting uppity then it’s “Why didn’t you invade a foreign nation that didn’t do anything to you, Uncle Sam?”
This is why we have NATO. Now we do have a mutual defense pact with much of Europe, so if anybody invades a member country, the rest of us come running.
City on a hill bay bay /s
Kinda how they were “last man standing” in WW2. Everybody else got severely fucked and they won them over by with the Marshall aid program which got us to a bi-polar world with NATO in which the US was the hegemony.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and before the rise of China there was only one superpower that could act as such militarily and then US continued their power trip.
No one, powerful countries just assume that they are needed everywhere in the world so they start acting like narcissistic bitch like US.
