I guess my question is who gave the Americans the right? I say this as an American. But would not the world be a better place if we just minded our own business and quit nation building and stoking non existant fires?
I guess my question is who gave the Americans the right? I say this as an American. But would not the world be a better place if we just minded our own business and quit nation building and stoking non existant fires?
The main reason is that if we stop being the biggest shark in the tank, the next two biggest sharks (China and Russia) can’t be trusted to not feast on the smaller sharks. And if they do feast, they will become too large for the American shark to deal with.
I think it’s even simpler than this. I think any government/state/group with power wants to hold and expand it. I’m not sure there is a group of people that exist that wouldn’t work to exercise control if they could. And I’m not defending the US, I just think it may be an inherently human thing to do.
Then you’d be wrong. Famously, after the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics, under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, created the first constitution in history that granted the unilateral right of self-determination and secession to all peoples of the former Russian Empire. This is how Poland gained its independence in 1918, as well as Finland and many other countries formerly part of the Russian Empire. Interesting episode of history.
So how did they get from 1918 to 1968?
I’m sorry, this seems to imply the US doesn’t “feast on the smaller sharks”. It went as far as threatening Japan with sanctions because they were considering “digital sovereignty” with TRON OS as opposed to Windows at some point. Japan is almost a non-optional ally.
And also one good solution of preventing someone from doing that is arming the smaller sharks. Yet USA seems even more against more equal spread of technologies and weapons than the “next two sharks”.
The US is already feeding on the smaller sharks, and has been for decades. Look at their foreign policy in Central and South America, South East Asia, the Middle East.
The only difference is that they’ve been feasting on other nations and not the West. China and Russia don’t have those restraints. All three of them are horrible, but America hasn’t been horrible to us until just recently.
Centuries*.
I understand why you’d say that about modern Russia, but how on Earth are you comparing China to the USA? In what war has China been in the past 40 years? What countries has it been exploiting?