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Comment by ajmurmann | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grant Chessboard. It describes how the US secured its empire. China is not only building for economic growth but also building up valuable relationships and influence. Also keep in mind that one of Rome's greatest military innovations might have been its roads.

Meanwhile the US is seems to be played by everyone from the outside and tearing itself apart from the inside. It seems like we aren't only losing the fight for global hegemony but barely actively taking part.

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The global hegemony is still being maintained, there still is 800 US military bases around the world despite those in Afghanistan and several in the Middle East being shut down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military...

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/us-military-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea...

Could've said the same thing about the British Empire in 1946.

Not really, no. There is a difference between conquering a country and forging an agreement to build a base. The U.S. form of influence, while still questionable in its morality, is a lot less intrusive. For all that America gets a bad rap for subverting world culture, it’s largly the case that it’s the result of selling people things they want, including movies, music, food, etc. for all that the French rant about American Imperialism, they still like McDonald’s fries.

The Brits tried to crush the cultures of their conquered nations through violence and forced indoctrination. If you want to compare that to something in American history, see the treatment of natives. Today there is no real comparison. That’s not to excuse the many downsides of the current U.S. system, but comparing it to the British empire is facetious.

This thread isn't about morality, it's about decline. I was comparing the state of American hegemony to that of Britain in 1946.

This thread isn't about morality, it's about decline. I was comparing the state of American hegemony to that of Britain in 1946.

Right, and I ignored the morality of both and focused on the massive practical differences. So what’s the problem? They are manifestly different in almost every way, except possibly for aspects of the moral dimension which were both agreeing to ignore.

The original comment about 800 military bases has a pretty strong parallel to an overseas colonial empire in 1946.

Expensive, prestigious, and dubiously 'worth it' in terms of profitability.

That wasn’t my comment, it was from another person entirely.

Morality is orthogonal to their main point, which is that American influence in the world isn't built on military strength but by forging (usually) mutually beneficial military and trade relationships. It is through those relationships that the US is able to project force and maintain hundreds of forward operating bases, not by invading the countries and putting down fortresses that then have to be constantly defended against the local populace (for the most part).

>Meanwhile the US is seems to be played by everyone from the outside and tearing itself apart from the inside. It seems like we aren't only losing the fight for global hegemony but barely actively taking part.

The entire point of this story and many like it is to make people ignore anything concrete and think US dominance is in question. They don't accurately report the worldwide situation, and they wouldn't even begin to question whether continuing the US form of neocolonialism is a good idea. They just create small pockets of fear that someday some other country may treat the US like the US has treated them.

>It seems like we aren't only losing the fight for global hegemony but barely actively taking part.

We've actually shot ourselves in the foot with a shotgun in the last few years. We're doing everything we can to cripple ourselves and let other powers take over.

The U.S. lost claim to leadership with Vietnam, and then doubled down with Iraq. It is common in history for the most powerful leaders to mess things up. It is the cycle of life.

The U.S. lost Vietnam because rural farmers thought U.S. troops were working for land lords. Land lords would take control of rural areas and start charging farmers rent after it was cleared of Viet Cong. There is a similar problem in Afghanistan: the Afghan government raises most of its revenues from sales and excise taxes, and doesn't tax land owners on property privately seized from rural residents. Since it doesn't tax land and has not centrally issued titles to rural residents, it doesn't have good records on land ownership and can't prevent private land seizures effectively.

These are not inevitable problems. Our politicians just don't understand the difference between land and capital and have undermined U.S. efforts to promote land reform in Asia after it worked so well in Japan.

Interestingly, before it went downhill, US advisors told the S. Viet gov that the one thing they had to do to stave off revolution was land redistribution, in the least in the Mekong Delta, (I believe land redistribution was done to some extent in SK), but the S Vietnamese refused, and so the NVA had an “in”.

Sounds like one of those scenarios where the side we picked to support was itself corrupt, so the general population saw no good reason to support our side over the opposing side.

Yes, but it’s not so much the side we “picked” but the team that was given to us. Just as the Soviets often times had no choice but to work with truly bad people.

It seems like, in that case, you should just opt out. We didn't have to get involved in that war.

Hard to say, but given the realpolitik of the time, there doesn’t seem to have been much choice. The world was hostage to an indeological foe which took no prisoners and was looking to aggressively take over control of the world. That was their stated objective.

That’s mostly surface talk. They invaded fewer countries than the US has, sticking mostly to supporting rebellion.

The US and Europe squashed home grown communism mostly through things like social security, unemployment insurance, and a helping of good old propaganda. Yet, we where suckered into fighting ideology on foreign soil with military force.

I don’t think it was obvious at the time, but going forward we need to learn from these mistakes.

I think you’re missing some history there.

Such as?

Korean War can be viewed North Korea as a separate country attacking South Korea, or a civil war. But, Vietnam war (including invasion of Cambodia) and a host of South American wars where much more clearly started as civil wars with Forein support not really invasions.

PS: Afghanistan is something of a wash with the US also invading the country.

This scenario seems distressingly common in post-WW2 U.S. foreign policy.

I agree with Iraq, but Vietnam, as messy as it was, I think, was necessary. Even Vietnamese I’ve spoken to believe it was the right thing. Sometimes things are clear cut and easy, other times they are messy and problematic.

Yep, every powerful nation or empire in the past has collapsed or faded in significance after some time. The question is, in our case, will it be a rapid collapse or a slow fade (like the British empire), and when?

British empire was a rapid collapse. From really starting in the 16th century it reached a peak in 1945 -- nearly 400 years. It collapsed within 20

Rome by comparison took 700 years to grow, and 200-plus to collapse

For the British, I don't think you can say it "collapsed". The empire fell apart, sure, but it's not like life for the British people turned into living hell; they still enjoy a very high standard of living, among the best in the world, surely better than the Americans.

By comparison, when Rome fell apart (which admittedly took some time), the standard of living was objectively much worse for average Romans. They went from a civilization with plumbing, toilets, cities, aqueducts, a Coliseum with water shows, and probably the highest standard of living in the world, and a society with specialization of labor, education, rule of law and a well-developed legal system, to feudalism, where they lived under feudal lords as uneducated serfs living in huts and working in fields. It took over 1000 years for western society to get back to the level of technology and development they had under the Romans.

> British empire was a rapid collapse [...] It collapsed within 20

It would be better to treat the British Empire and the United States as two forms of the same empire, as they both speak the same language The capital of the empire simply moved from London to Washington via an internal revolution, a process that's happened many times in the past, e.g. Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, St Petersburg to Moscow, Xian to Hangzhou, Kyoto to Tokyo. So the British Empire/United States reached a peak after 400 years, and is now declining for perhaps a few hundred.

With that reasoning, you could argue we are still an extension of Rome.

The British Empire and the United States spoke the same language. Their homelands, i.e the places where they make up the majority of residents, are the same: the British Empire with its American colonies then, and the United States and its "special relationship" with the U.K. and other Five Eyes nowadays. The leaders of the American Revolution were leading British Imperialists immediately before, e.g. George Washington led the 1760's campaign against the French in the Mississippi valley.

Partly it was a change in politics that it was no longer the done thing to take up the white man's burden and order Johnny Foreigner around.

Cant be the leader of the world with a trillion dollar deficit... in a supposedly economic boom.

Rome doesn't exist anymore. They got attacked on all fronts.

What China is doing is modern colonization through loans and I can only see it backfire.

It's a great scheme though, but at least Rome owned the places where it builded roads.

Edit: downvotes, please comment why. I'll rather discuss :)

They built roads to invade those places in the first place, long before they "owned" them, dug out the gold and sent it to Rome.

I'm not sure the Chinese strategy will work or if they'll see enough growth to support it. It's quite scary. I think I'd much rather prefer US bases to Chinese loans.

I don't think it's about ROI for railways. Economic logic doesn't make sense versus container ships.

It's more likely an excuse for investments along the road. Bait and switch

US economic hegemony will last as long as they retain the strongest Navy, by a huge margin, and world commerce veins remain to be the oceans and seas.

Which, unless blimps take over soon, will be until the advent of the space elevator.

The military buys you political influence.

Economic power (and that also buys you political influence) comes from the size of the economy. The size of the economy enables military power.

China (and India) have 4x the US' population. China's land area is the same as the US'. It's simply a matter of time for them to be more powerful economically than the US, and then it's really up to them to also topple the US militarily.

And China's planning for this. See their DF-26 "carrier killer" missiles.

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