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> Are they trying to pen themselves into a corner where the entire world ends up standing against them? http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/media/50646/us_vs_world.gif

There's not many outcomes to that scenario if you look at the budgets involved.

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That may be the case, but if you cut off America's access to oil, food and other things they're a net importer of, you'd pretty soon restrict their military abilities regardless of their military spending - they can't let their non-military population starve and go homeless. A huge expensive military with billions of dollars worth of machinery isn't going to run very long without food/water for its personnel, supplies and fuel - even if they have almost half of the global military spending. The first rule of a fight is never fight someone at their own game. They'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. At some point you have to say "Hey, enough of this bullshit. You may think you run this planet, but you're one country of 196. The rest of us are tired of your shit, we all deserve to be treated with respect. If you want to be part of the team, step up and be part of the team, but you're not going to dictate to the rest of us how you want it to be."

> if you cut off America's access to oil, food and other things they're a net importer of

Not sure where you got that idea but the US is a net exporter of both.

> The rest of us are tired of your shit

But apparently not tired enough to actually do anything.

Except make pissed off assertions on Hacker News :P

I believe that the US is a net exporter of food and could probably be self sufficient in oil too if need be. Also, with that huge military the US could pretty much take whatever we want from whomever we want. It reminds me of a scene from the Rome TV series when Caesar is in Alexandria trying to collect the money owed to Rome (Pompey the Great). He is explaining his calculations to the Egyptians when the minister of Egypt protests that is based on Roman law, and Caesar replies "Is there any other?"

That whole "take whatever we want from whomever we want" has failed a few times. Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, etc.

It hasn't failed. If you disrupt the balance of power in a tribal state, you're going to have a lot of contingencies making power plays. The U.S. accomplished its short-term goals at least in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Changing hearts and minds" is good propaganda but everyone knows it's eminently unrealistic, and not why we invade countries.

if we suddenly stopped caring about human rights and political consequences (I.e., we're starving), it's a different approach completely. It's not like we unleashed the full force of our military (our came anywhere near).

Of course, your entire premise is flawed as we could support ourselves Not sure where you got your numbers from, but they're wrong.

> with that huge military the US could pretty much take whatever we want from whomever we want

It's exactly this attitude that is gradually turning the world against them.

"Is there any other... You wretched woman"

The full quote :)

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