The US by comparison has been quite dedicated to free trade. They abandoned there own production base, imported more culture then they exported and overall been quite friendly an empire.
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Yes they friendly helped install military dictatorships in Latin American countries. They friendly invaded Iraq under false pretenses. They friendly waged wars and used economic sanctions against countries that for on reason or another didn't conform to their dominant position.
Don't misunderstand me. The US has the power to oppress, and is an opressor. It is business as usual. Just cut the crap of calling it "friendly".
On the other hand the 1st Gulf War was unavoidable, and overall with the exception of the 2nd Gulf War over the last 40 years they've more or less tried to do the right thing. Today it's widely recognised across parties in the US that 2GW was a mistake. Still, since WW2 they've sunk vast resources into guaranteeing Western European security, and spent Trillions guaranteeing global freedom of navigation that's benefited everybody.
They've been aggressive economically, true, but that's a whole massive deal better than being aggressive militarily and overall global trade in the last 70 years has had incredible benefits. Global poverty has collapsed to a tiny fraction of what it was, the middle class has risen from about 5% to about 60% of the world population, life expectancy rates have soared. Death rates from war have collapsed. The stats on that are up on the last decade it's still historically low. The majority of this happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
What Russia and China want to do is take the world back to a cold war situation of vying spheres of geographic influence. What the US wants to do is get out of the world police business while maintaining a peaceful global order conducive to business. So we have Russia and China flexing their territorial military muscles, while the US builds networks of alliances such as an expanded NATO, AUKUS, the Quad and such to better share the load.
I say alliances, but for the latter US strategy to succeed it eventually needs to include nations that are not traditional US allies. India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, even places like Vietnam. These will or may never align with the US and Europe the way the US and Europe do, so such relationships will have to be transactional in nature. Partnerships rather than true alliances, based on common interests around eliminating the scope for military expansionism that favours big regional military hegemons.
So sure, a lot of past mistakes for sure, but the question for us now is where does the world go from here?
This is the ruse. The US is a global empire. Except, as history has shown, imperialism is somewhat unpopular to local populations. The US modern imperialism playbook is designed so the population really believes they are self governing themselves. The US doesn’t care who runs the day to day domestic government, so long as they have military bases, are the primary trading partner, and effectively direct this countries foreign and economic policies unilaterally. The fact you think the American empire is limited to a few vestigial takings from the pacific theater of wwii shows how effective this modern and silent hegemony really is.
This is more or less also how the Roman Empire operated.
I have family in the British military at a moderately high level. A friend was a researcher for an MP, and another a government adviser. Sure politics is messy, it's the art of the possible and expedient. Of course it's not ideal, but as the saying goes Democracy is the worst system of government except for all the others. You're never going to get perfect, the best you can get is consensus and the consent of the governed. We have that.
I revile Trump, but he did do one thing for us. He proved that US democracy is real. All the Washington consensus clubbyness was pushed aside, corporate capture and bought influence were bulldozed over. None of the establishment wanted him, but he's what we got through a massive grass roots movement. He was an utter disaster, but it was a genuine demonstration of democracy in action.
In other words the people elect politicians that align with their desires and intentions. And that's a bad thing because.... help me out here.
But there is no coercion here, they are the largest trading partner because they make a lot of great stuff. "Empire" comes with implied negative connotations, but it's a win-win for everyone within this particular "empire".
1. Become a global economic superpower (US 1910s, 20s)
2. ??? (US 1930s, 40s)
3. Military-industrial complex emerges and captures politicians (US 1950s)
4. Political leaders then begin looking at military capabilities and questioning why it isn't being used for military interventionalism (US 1960s)
5. Military interventionalism shows its flaws through failed post-intervention nation-building, and decreases appetite for intervention (US 1970s, 80s, 90s)
6. Reaction to historical interventions triggers occasional knee-jerk interventions (US 00s, 10s)
In the US case, step 2 was WWII, which was somewhat unavoidable.
In the Chinese case, I think it remains to be seen how steps 2-4 go.
Absent an external war they're forced to become involved in, I could see step 2 being a popular consequence of whipping up nationalistic fervor to boost government support... and then that populist tail wagging the CCP dog and compelling military action when a crisis breaks out (e.g. Taiwanese independence declaration or naval incident in the South China sea).
So far China has completely avoided this. The military is very firmly under Party control.
>Military interventionalism shows its flaws through failed post-intervention nation-building
Germany, Japan and South Korea have been fantastic successes in nation building. Sure there have been failures too, most recently in Afghanistan.
For China, their annexation of Tibet is going fine as is their ethnic hegemonisation there and in other regions. North Korea is an embarrassment, but eh.
Dictatorships must continuously work to maintain their legitimacy. This means they need to justify denying freedoms and opportunities to their own population enjoyed in other nations. They can do that by painting foreign nations as being horrible failures but with international travel and many citizens having friends or family living in those nations, that's not viable long term.
You're quite right. That leaves external threats which require such measures, with the added bonus of painting internal dissatisfaction with the government as disloyalty and betrayal. So for Russia, utter nowheres like Ukraine and Georgia have to be dire threats to Russia's security, so intervention can stop them succeeding where Russia failed. The Taiwan situation has to be escalated, and territorial claims in the South China Sea pushed in order to manufacture tensions that justify internal repression.
The point about the military-industrial complex capturing politicians isn't about control, but rather excess procurement.
On the one hand, China has a long way to reach parity with the US. On the other hand, they're building extremely quickly, and that means lots of government money going to corporations.
Subsequent restrictions to that funding flow tend to be when the system pushes back.
> Germany, Japan and South Korea have been fantastic successes in nation building.
These are all nation re-building efforts: they existed as economically and politically strong entities before the respective wars.
> The Taiwan situation has to be escalated, and territorial claims in the South China Sea pushed in order to manufacture tensions that justify internal repression.
I don't pretend to understand China's calculus with either.
With enough shore-based facilities, they can counter the US Navy.
But as soon as there's a shooting war over either, China is the aggressor to international order (Taiwan's sovereignity and maritime law), Chinese international trade evaporates (in terms of both exports and raw material imports), and their economy crashes.
So the only Chinese winning move, to me, looks like saber rattling right up to the brink, but making sure it never boils over.
Which was always the China-in-the-WTO argument -- addict them to the benefits of international trade, such that offending the global order would mean slitting their own economic throat.
The uncertainty bands would seem to be wide, in both more- and less-competent directions, in gazing into the navels of autocratic regimes.
Countries freely choosing to allow allies to put military bases on their territory, generally with wide public support such as in Germany, Japan, and many others, is hardly colonialism.
Every country that has joined NATO did so with public support, even massive public enthusiasm. Public support is actually a requirement to join.
Do Indians and Chinese somehow not count? Both have benefited staggeringly from the global trade system built and secured by the US and it's allies.
On building alliances "and which 2 countries is pushing to bring about that change ?"
Russia and China have a tiny number of genuine military allies at most. NK and Myanmar for China, a few 'stans and Belarus for Russia. All of them horrific brutal dictatorships in their own right. Everybody else anywhere near them loathes their guts, even Vietnam in the case of China, but are sometimes so dependent or weak there's not much they can do about it.
>You cannot just wash away mistakes made in the past, there will always be blow back.
Agreed. America's mistakes will continue to haunt it for decades to come.
None of the actions China resembles European colonialism.
Just a few million in civilian casualties here and there. Because remember, Saddam has WMDs.
When was the last time China went to war with another country on a false pretense and massacred millions?
Remember the whole Native American massacre thing that America has convniently forgotten about.
Glass houses and stones and all that.
Point is, in the living memory of most people on the earth, i.e. people below 30, the only wars waged against non-neighbors have been Americans invading Iraq and Afghanistan. So from the place most non-Americans stand, America is a belligerent and irresponsible power.
What someone did in 1960 is important and can't be glazed over, but as a 30 year old, it's hard to understand and even harder to contextualize. But Iraq and Afghanistan is fresh enough in everyone's memory, to the point that I remember the headlines about the fake WMDs and the numbers about civilian deaths.
That’s not the same as Tiananmen square but it’s far more visceral lived experience for anyone under 45.
The US is not the center of the universe and lots of influence sphere pushing goes down in lots of backyards.
This seems to be what's happening today. China has moved on and is now on track to become the world's first economy (at least by size) and the US is still the war mongerer it always was.
As long as the others did what they want.
See multiple countries in South America and the Middle East.
Even China's lack of human rights weren't a problem until they became a real competitor.
Also that abandoning it own production base was not action of some goodwill, rather just greedy cost optimization which is now deeply regretted and as much as possible reverted back.
I do get this is US forum so opinions are strongly biased towards one side, and I personally am very happy with current US hegemony, but lets be a bit honest here. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin america coups, African coups. CIA starting arab springs and ie war in Syria. The blood trail of innocents is more like amazon river during height of monsoon, all around the world. Now look at China. Not really comparable, is it.