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Comment by rrggrr | Hacker News Reader

About as many major conflicts ignited from fear and desperation as from territorial ambition. 90 years of US hegemony acted as an effective firewall that prevented countless conflicts, although bloody, from becoming regional or global wars. There is no record in history of any hegemonic power, League of Nations or even knights of Camelot bringing stability and security to the world as has the US. Celebrate your new multipolar world, if thats in fact the transition taking place. But I am with Hobbes on this one... Without a Leviathan we will descend into a state of nature where life is nasty, brutish and short. On this point, history sadly agrees.

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bringing stability and security to the world

This is highly disputable. To the extent that it was true during the Cold War, it certainly isn't true post 9/11. The middle east is neither stable nor secure, and Russia has managed to start a deniable proxy war with the west by destabilising Ukraine and Syria resulting in a huge number of refugees.

Meanwhile US anti-drug and anti-communist efforts have left much of south America plagued with violence and recovering from dictatorships.

The thing that is holding the world together is cross-border trade. Both sides in the Ukraine are dependent on keeping the pipeline open, so they've not blown it up. China depends on exporting to the US. I'm not too worried about the Russians nuking London because half of it belongs to Russian oligarchs.

The last major war was WWII and no war since is comparable in terms of loss of life, cost adjusted to inflation or number of men at arms.

Stability as absence of conflict is a utopian measure. Stability as the truncation, resolution and containment of confict is a realistic measure attribuatable largely to the United States. Recent events and the US economic situation suggest the US cannot continue to play the same constructive role, and as such I fear greater instability is a certainty.

>suggest the US cannot continue to play the same constructive role

Tell me more about that constructive role in the Honduras coup as late as 2009.

How about stability as not initiating conflict, hardship and disruption, such as overthrowing Allende?

The scorecard for "truncation, resolution and containment" really does not look great. The unambiguous successes are probably just Yugoslavia and the UK's intervention in Sierra Leone.

Maybes: Kashmir, Afghanistan, Sudan?

Ongoing failures: Ukraine, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, South America ("war on drugs") esp Mexico and Colombia, Libya, etc

Restating your argument: American is an arsonist and an incompetent global fire fighter who is responsible for resolving every local and regional conflict, corrupt goverment and ideological struggle. Yes, Russia, China and the UN will do much better job as American power declines. Brave new world.

I hear you, but personally that strikes me as unduly pessimistic. Geopolitics is not a zero-sum game, the rise of one power does not necessarily come at the expense of another. Britain was eyeing the rising United States in 1900 as warily as the U.S. eyes China today, but the emergence of the U.S. as a world power eventually proved to be a development of great benefit to Britain.

No it didn't. It was just the least worst option. The other were USSR or the Axis.

Britain was beaten hard in the two wars.

The cultural differences between the US (especially in 1900 as you say) and Britain, and the US and China today are much more significant. I don't think these two periods are comparable.

I didn't say that it was inevitable that a rising China would have as good a relationship as the one that emerged between Britain and the U.S. In fact I would classify it as unlikely, precisely because America and China lack the cultural bonds. My point was more limited -- simply that waning hegemons always see rising challengers as great threats, which they don't always turn out to be.

EDIT: To see how the U.S.-U.K. alliance was not necessarily the sure thing it appears to be in hindsight, look into War Plan Red (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red). The U.S. actively maintained a strategic plan for fighting a war with Britain as late as 1939.

Geopolitics is not a 0sum game *for the US.

It is absolutely a 0sum game for China.

And what values or inalienable rights does China stand for? Self determination? Environmental protection? Protection of minorities, children, women? Perhaps... Yet there is zero evidence the rise of any world power other than the US that has brought about as much good in the world? There is evidence geopolitcs is very much a zero sum game for many nations.

speculation. you can't know what was prevented. the chains of events are too many and complicated to predict. but what is the end goal anyway? preventing conflicts is good, so your goal is limiting suffering? then also consider how much more suffering exists now because of US and see what is the net effect.

your assertion is equally speculative. the two things you say should be compared cannot concurrently be measured.

correct. I meant that even if we pretend we can measure these things, then at least try to measure the whole effect.

There is no objective measure that can encompass all. For example take Libya, under Gaddafi it enjoyed relative stability but individuals suffered from the regime. Now certain groups have more than what they had before, but as a whole Libya is in ruins and getting worse by the minute. How do you measure this impact? Is it unequivocally wrong because there is more visible suffering or is it right because there is a chance things will end up working out to less violence and more prosperity? (Which is far from guaranteed.)

These are philosophical discussions and large depend on your own perspective and bias in judging the outcomes.

My personal take is that some evidence exists in that last global open war with direct fighting on all fronts being 70+ years ago (WWII) the world is doing something right.

Edits to fix spelling.

The European concert and Pax Britannica worked quite well, also for roughly a century without a major war.

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