So, Germany, Japan, Italy, South Korea, Austria, and the Phillipines are vassal states of the US. France to their credit broke away from our evil influence by ...what? Asking us to leave, right? No I don't see an implied threat there.

How do you qualify this tens of millions? In the countries as we've taken them over? No, in wars right? The USA is far more likely to buy friends than to exert influence thorugh military force. Now you're turn, not only haven't we been the worst hegemonic power. We've actually been the best. What other hegemonic power, after a war that cost millions of its citizens' lives, was committed to treating their enemies fairy (the fourteen points), giving the former combatants a forum to discuss their greivances peacefully (the LEN, a body in which we had no voice), and instead of asking reparations actually invested billion in rebuilding our former enemy (the Marshall Plan). Thoroughout history it has not been the case that the victor invests money in rebuilding the vanquished. What was Rome's response to Carthage?

**vassal states to the US?**

**retraction- not millions, hundreds of thousands**

@Bob

Just thought I'd point out that Mao Zedong is responsible for the deaths of more humans than anyone else...ever...being responsible for 40-60 million deaths. That's at least twice as many deaths as anyone else...ever.

@Bob - Once again, if we are the puppet master of all these European governments that we installed, we're pretty f*ing piss poor as global tyrants. Europe is hardly subservient to the US! Wow...of all the mindless tirades against the US, yours has got to be about thw stupidest I have seen yet! Dude...get a life.

Also...we've killed *tens of millions* of people? Wow...ridiculous bogus claim if I have ever seen one. You are truly an idiot.

@Draugnar "And remember that when we finally decide to make our current phantom presence known in the UK"
Have you read "The Ghost" by Robert Harris (filmed as "The Ghost Writer")?

Can't say I have. But I know a little something of shadow governments, I just can't say where they are or when I was involved (really don't feel like "disappearing" for committing treason).

@draugnar: look it up. The book is a couple of years old, the film came out a few months ago, was directed by Roman Polanski (one of his best I think). It is obviously fiction but it's impossible to read without thinking of Tony Bliar. Good holiday read.

Will have to hit it at the library for one of those I read around the pool when this damned Diplomacy game/site lets me escape the house and go there. :-)

@ Ghost - I know this thread has moved on, but I have to comment on your dislike of FDR. While the New Deal may have sucked (economically I agree with you) he did do one thing that no one can take away from him especially a British person. Namely, he saved your asses. He a) fought tooth and nail against the isolationists to get the first peace-time draft in American history, b) greatly increased military spending, which helped get the country prepared for mobilization, c) arranged for us to sell you destroyers at a time when the RN needed them more than Nelson did frigates and d) most importantly for you guys, he got Lend-Lease through despite the fact that it was less popular than feces-flavored gum. Fiscally I am a solid Republican and on that front hate everything Roosevelt did, but I still like and respect him, if only for his actions surrounding the build-up to WW2.