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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

What the U.S. does is to use military force to preserve the international status quo. E.g. if we go into an oil rich state like Iraq, we don't just take the oil, we just ensure that it continues to be sold in the market as usual. This isn't "war" but it's not "conquest" either.

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The thing is that the status quo is in the favor of the US, and they ensured that the oil continued to be sold to the US.

Sure, the status quo is in favor of the U.S., and we ensured that oil continued to be sold to the U.S., but it's also in favor of France and Germany and the U.K. and Australia, etc, and we ensured that oil continued to be sold to those countries too. It doesn't really make sense to call that "conquest."

Sounds like conquest by NATO vs solely the United States.

Since when does conquest have to benefit just one party to be called conquest? If Russia and China split the US amongst themselves, would you call it conquest?

Did we split Iraq amongst the U.S., France, Germany, the U.K., Canada, Australia, etc? When many beneficiaries are involved, a military action seems less like conquest and more like an attempt to maintain a certain balance of powers.

"maintain a certain balance of powers" and "conquest" are not mutually exclusive.

"many" really just means "more than one", but okay: if 50 nations invaded and split up the US, would that be conquest?

The other thing is, it's not just the US that benefits from the status quo. Lots of allies get to ride on their coattails.

Isn't that generally what goes along with allying yourself with someone - the parties agree to do mutually beneficial acts and let each other benefit from each other's actions? I don't see how benefiting your allies makes an action less self serving.

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