The ideal espoused by The League of Nations .

I remember taking it in history class, but could you refresh my memory?

I believe there is some middle ground between the two of you (orathaic and Hannibal).

I do agree American foreign policy is one of the most terrible and perverse things of the past 70 years. You might not care about the people in Grenada, or about the people in Guatemala, or about the people in Lebanon, though that makes you a terrible person, if those incidentes were isolated. But when you consider these, along with Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay (and earlier Colombia and Venezuela and, at some point, the vast majority of Latin America), Iran, Vietnam, South Africa (remember who backed the apartheid regime?), etc., it becomes absurd to defend American foreign policy as something good to its neighbours and 'partners'.

It is absolutely unacceptable for a country, especially one who claims to stand for freedom and democracy, to topple so many democratically elected governments to foster its own interests against those of the said countries. Like, really, it requires incalculable doublethink to accept these actions as 'reasonable'.


However, while I loathe all those responsible for these atrocious, however swift, actions, one can't atribute them to the US being a singularly evil nation.

All Great Powers, from the Romans to the British Empire a century earlier, would seek similar objectives. It just happens that it was deemed acceptable, say, in 1898, to invade Sudan as Lord Kitchener did, or to invade Afghanistan when the British did, while it rightly generated an outrage when the Soviets went there, or when the American invaded Iraq.

The Americans just happen to do it more efficiently. For comparison, how successful was the British attempt to oust Nasser, in 1956? And how effective was the ousting of Mossadegh three years earlier? More importantly, was there a general outcry when American-sponsored coups deposed democratically elected left-wing presidents in Brazil and Chile, in 1964 and 1973, respectively? What was, on the other hand, the reaction to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968?

Obviously, Russian imperialism was no better than American imperialism, in several senses, but it is somewhat perverse that the CIA managed to orchestrate things so subtly that large parts of the affected countries populations's continued to see the US as a friendly partner, and not as the very nation responsible for pushing its own development, freedom and independence back.


However abhorrent that is, though, it's hard to argue Soviets would have been kinder, or Chinese will be friendlier. Unless we (meaning general population) manage to change how we see the world, in terms of moving our differences and all sorts of aggressive nationalism aside, and become overall way more peaceful and concerned about political and economic issues, it's unreasonable to expect Great Powers to behave differently.

Thus, not only it becomes clear, in the absence of radical change in people's mentality towards a wide variety of things, that any other nation in such a position would behave similarly, but it should also be noted that it could hardly be good if the US simply vanished from the world scenario, as that would simply give room to China and Russia to fill that gap. It seem having this sort of counterpoint makes things less terrible, in general.

That considered, my stance on this year's election depends on the angle from which I'm looking at things.

If I lived in the US, or, when I think of those I know who live there, I'd do all in my power to avoid a Trump presidency. Like volunteering to join Clinton's campaign, whatever.

But, not being American and living elsewhere, the idea of hawk-interventionist-warmonger Hillary in the White House is almost unbearable. Not that things were far nicer when she was Secretary of State than they'd be if she was the one in charge, but it would hardly be comforting to have her pulling the strings. It would make me, while sorry for those under his reach, more comfortable to have a more isolationist Trump, in spite of all the terrible things he represents, in charge.


Besides, being throughly optimistic about basically everything, I do hope a colossal failure of his presidency might weaken the force of bizarre right-wing movements currently gaining steam in the rest of the western world.

It would be great if just afterwards you could elect someone like Sanders, or he himself, and just stop toppling governments elsewhere, even if not democratically elected (I'm afraid Iraq, Libya and Syria can't possibly be considered improved by recent American actions).

I get what you're saying and with regards to the behavior of imperialist nations: yes the US is doing what any powerful country would do in its place. However I didn't mean the US should just disappear off the intentional stage. That's impossible. The US is in a decline of sorts. Sooner or later it won't be the nation it is now. When that happens, I do believe the world will be a better place. Instead of one great power, there will be several world powers. The US will most probably be one of those great powers I'm talking about. Russia, China, Britain maybe as well. The world won't have to answer to one nation at the end, and countries will have to actually sit down across the table from each other and talk things through. It won't be like Europe back in the day when a war would break out left and right. Countries rely on each other for trade more now than ever. Wars are more destructive. It wouldn't come down to countries destroying each other left and right because the US isn't there to keep everyone in line.

And peterlund still hasn't told me the exact location of the fantasy world he lives in

Tussia is in a perilous position. Despite the inpression you may get from its military actions.

Putin has no successor, his popularit is built entirely on military success. The population is aging and that will cost hugely in the future, the economy can't support more old-age people, and is struggling to pay off regional cheifs who are used to getting money from moscow - mostly due to the dramatic drop in the price of oil. Russia's economy is running a huge deficit. (This has a huge amount to do with increased US oil production and Saudi Arabia's responce to that)

With military victories, Putin looks strong, but he can't do anything to magically change the demographics or economics or his country, so it is the only option he has. And it is working very well. Georgia, Ukraine, Crimea and Syria. All great 'victories' for Putin. But Putin will die, and with no-one to replace him there may be a political crisis following.

There is no opposition political party either, no-one with practice opposing Putin's United Russia. So returning 'normal' multi-party political system seems unlikely. Trade sanctions from the EU damage Russia's economy further; so the combined political, economic and demographic crisis heading for Russia in the next decade or two leaves it unlikely to be as strong as it appears today.

In the middle east, Iran may become an emerging world power, particularily if the deal with the IS hilds, the economy picks up (due to a removal of sanctions and increased trade) if Iraq continues to act like a client state. Demographically they are doing great, politically they have a robust four party system. New agreements reached with India (bypassing Pakistan as a trading partner) will see the rise of Iran as a regional power.

And yes, i think there is some difference between the US and the British Empire, though there is a political class in the US who thinks the invadion of, for example Vietnam, was just as 'right' as Lird Kitchener's intervention in Sudan; the general public tend to oppose the use of military force. And in the US there are two differenves.

One the general public actually have some power. Anti-war protests during the Vietnam war were widespread. And the government can't use violence and repression to shutdown peaceful protesters. (Though perhaps the militarisation of the police is making this less true) but secondly, the government has to do something else instead of biolence to convince people - hence manufacturing consent - the tools of manipulation and propoganda are more sophisticated and effective in the US than anywhere else in history.

They have to be, because it is a very free society. Something was needed to replace the use of violence. So i suspect that many Americans don't see any common interest with the average Syrian, the way a British citizen in 1898 could have felt used by their government in the war in Sudan. IE the average lower class Brit had less in common with their upper class rulers than they had in common with Sudanese public.

I think this is a significant development in how imperial power behave.

Wait, everyone in the thread just let ND get away with a bogus claim about growth rates under Reagan by citing numbers that explicitly don't account for inflation? At the tail end of the *stagflation* period? The fuck.

This is not to say that Reagan-era growth was shit. Reagan went from recession in the early years to solid growth in the later years and presided over pretty average economic growth overall. Give him some credit for an upward arc. And while the debt increased massively, that's in large part due to the interest rates imposed to keep inflation under control (which also played a large part in the aforementioned recession), which meant large interest payments on the debt. Reagan's fiscal philosophy had relatively little impact.

More notable is Reagan's contribution to American mistrust of the political system, but that's happened for pretty much every American president post-Nixon (Watergate, 'malaise', 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help', 'It depends what the meaning of 'is' is', 'Mission accomplished', and conservatives can pick a narrative for Obama since I'm unlikely to do justice to their perspective). So, uh, thanks to Ford and Bush Sr. for not fucking up too much?

Sorry to bring this back after it's been dead for pages, but it's a huge oversight and needed to be addressed.

I mentioned stagflation. Give me +1

Hannibal76 wrote "And peterlund still hasn't told me the exact location of the fantasy world he lives in"
I have no idea of what fantasy world you live in Hannibal, but in my fantasy world it is clear that the rampant dishonest liar Trump is a disaster to our world and to all values we in the civilised liberal democratic west hold dear.

In my country USA id the most hated country, and at the same time, the most admired one.
But there ar *LOTS* of idiot people in my country.
What I think of USA? There are many (important) things that ar better than here. There are things that I personally wouldn't suffer. And it's very improvable. And that won't really change regardless who wins. But it will certainly alter the way and pace it will change in years to come.

Oh, yes, naturally. I'm under the impression, however, the US is not keen to accept this new non-hegemonic role in the 21th century, in a way similar to Britain and France after the second World War. I mean, in my humble opinion, American diplomacy should long have abandoned its imperialistic approach to Latin America and instead started fostering the growth of its neighbours so that they can be useful partners when - and that's likely inevitable - China gains the upper hand.

@orathaic

I totally agree regarding Russia. It's very impressive how they've managed to remain so relevant in geopolitics in spite of its economic difficulties, but they could hardly hope to keep up an arms race against China or the US, just like in the 80s.

On the oil issue, don't forget how Iran and Venezuela suffer from it as well. A very effective blow, I think.


Again, agree with you. But do you think American general population will ever actually realize to which extent they've been manipulated? When will that happen? Popular pressure was indeed essential to end the Vietnam War, but, from my distant point of view, it seems to me the American population was only mobilized against it due to the strong impact it had on their own lives. As things are, I struggle to see how the average American would suddenly start to care about covert CIA operations orchestrating coups in countries they could hardly hope to find on a map by themselves. But well, I'm optimistic, who knows!

no because their ****ing idiots

They won't realize their lied to and manipulated.

Some of my fellow citizens seem brain dead. Stuck on stupid glued to entertainment world following a dumb whore Kardashian around while complaining the gov't is taking care of enough things for them.

+1, Kardashian is a whore.

This website is full of misogynist fucks. Disgusting.

To be complete with my opininion, all world leaders are idiots and the people in their country's are munipulated by them. You think your fellow citizens will ever realize that? Everybody is being stupid. You think the worlds general population will ever admit that?

.The world could be so different.

USA has its problems and we created it by claiming it the land of the free to the world that has many opposing veiws. Little by little Products of those environments find their way to live here and they bring a little of those clashing environments with them.

"when - and that's likely inevitable - China gains the upper hand."

Welllll, I beg to differ. Time is actually on our side here. The 1 child policy did a lot of both great and terrible things to China. In the short and medium term, China is on the ascendancy. But in the long run, they will not match the wealth the US has. Just look at what demographic decline has done to Japan.

Oh, certainly people are manipulated all around the world, and have always been. But, talking about 2016, American population being manipulated into supporting an aggressive and despicable foreign policy has a much deeper impact on the world than, say, African and Latin American populations. And, besides, the Americans have managed to do it perfectly. I find it amazing how the modern world shapes itself as a mix of Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984.

@goldfinger

Agree with you on one hand, but I did not mention wealth. The amount of wealth the US has managed to produce and accumulate is unique among Great Powers, and I doubt any Great Power will ever match that, especially while remaining so hegemonic. But, China's population being five times bigger than the American, it's reasonable to assume they'll eventually be more powerful, though they'll hardly become a rich country.

@"leon1122
+1, Kardashian is a whore."

Fuck off. I don't care one twit about Kardashian. But that whore-phobic language is offensive. The Kardashians get a tonne of attention, and the worst thing they deserve is to be ignored, or maybe taxed. They are not worth mentioning... You on the other hand are a problem, your language hurts people, and i wish you would stop.

@stefanodangelo

I think a longer term view of china/india and gdp may be useful: https://infogr.am/Share-of-world-GDP-throughout-history