Senate The US Politics discussion

Is it that farfetched to believe that America may be the most dangerous country in history? Between our nuclear arsenal and our unwillingness to join the world community in confronting climate change, couldn't a lucid case be made?

 

Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are still #1 and #2

 

Trump is doomed now.

&^$% just got serious.

 

Thanks, Larry

 

Priebus has been interviewed by Mueller.

 

What utter nonsense.

First of all, the notion that lead-poisoning was a major problem in Ancient Rome is a myth, that has long since been debunked.

More pertinently, the idea that the United States, the country which has used its navy to guarantee the security of the world's sea lanes as a global commons since the 1940s, which provides the primary reserve currency for the global economy (if you live in a Eurozone country you can thank Uncle Sam for keeping you solvent), which has enabled its allies to maintain historically low levels of military expenditure for decades because they live under the U.S. defence umbrella, and which remains the only world power with the means and the will to deter the rogue states and revisionist powers that would happily tear down the rules-based international order that has prevailed across much of the world since the end of WWII, should be pilloried as the "most dangerous country" is the sort of claptrap that drives me to despair over what otherwise smart people are credulous enough to believe.

"Most dangerous country of the last 50 years." *snort* Ever heard of an entity called the Soviet Union? The United States is dangerous all right - dangerous to the sorts of regimes and non-state actors that deserve to be afraid.

If there's one thing even more aggravating than the spectacle of a vulgar, demagogic nincompoop like Trump occupying the office of Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy, it's seeing people who style themselves as his opponents and fancy themselves his moral and intellectual superiors, sinking to his level of ignorance.

Raise your game, people. Try to exhibit a better grasp of world affairs than the President of the United States. It's a depressingly low bar to clear.

 

Oh boy, where to start with that post...

*pulls out blue candles and lights them*

Ender Sai, our Dark Lord, I summon you...

 

Yes, from Korea to the Congo, from Vietnam to Chile to Iran to Nicaragua to Haiti to Iraq to Indonesia to Colombia, the United States has been nothing but a good actor since World War II and only Bad Guys need fear its might.

 

Go and watch John Pilger War on Democracy documentary. It is about US foreign policy, in Central and South America, during the Cold War.

 

So in other words, nothing has changed.

With regards to Iran joining the club of nuclear powers, the horse was out of the barn long before Trump was even elected. Obama saw to that back in 2011 when he wiped out Gaddafi in Libya. There wasn't a single regime with an adversarial relationship to the U.S. anywhere in the world that didn't absorb the lessons of that little episode. If you want a guarantee that the Americans (probably) won't bring some well-deserved regime-change down on your head, there are only two options: become a vassal-state to another great power dangerous enough to protect you, or stockpile some nukes.

Even if it didn't fear the United States, in the long term Iran almost certainly would have pushed to become a nuclear power anyway to counter-balance Israel. As it stands, the great conceptual flaw that doomed the JCPOA from the very beginning was that it did nothing to change the fundamental geopolitical calculus that incentivises Iran to acquire a nuclear arsenal. Even if all parties followed the deal to the letter, as soon as the key clauses in the deal reached their sunset (just 10 years after the ink dried on the agreement) Iran would have gone nuclear, and there would be no way to stop them short of a military intervention. In the meantime, they get significantly enhanced economic resources to funnel into their pursuit of regional hegemony.

It would have been better to preserve the sanctions regime, even at the cost of seeing Iran reach nuclear breakout, the better to hobble their regional power. But that's water under the bridge now.

 

The Soviet Union is a strong contender based on the size and range of their nuclear arsenal, but the USA has actually used nuclear weapons in war, and has a proven history of not backing down from nuclear stand-offs. The world dodged the bullet via the succession of US presidents, but Trump's finger on the button is an imminent existential risk to humanity, we all know it, we all knew it before the election.

 

*yawn*

Yep, America has done some seriously morally shady stuff in the name of realpolitk. Read some history and report back to me when you can find an example of a great power that hasn't. The best anyone can ever expect in geopolitics is least bad options, and by that yardstick the U.S. is so far out in front it's not even a contest. And I don't see too many regimes on that list you compiled that are worth shedding tears for. Shed tears for the humanitarian collateral damage, by all means. But the funny thing is that even your best attempt to list instances of American foreign policy at its most villainous contains episodes that are better suited to the other side of the argument. Visit South Korea, for example, and feel grateful the Americans did what had to be done in that conflict.

And speaking of Iran, the Middle East would a much better place today if the U.S. hadn't fecklessly allowed the Shah to be toppled from power in the 1970s. Tragic consequences can flow just as easily from American inaction as from the proactive global role that so many like to sneer at.

 

I know that every country teaches its own history with a hefty amount of bias, but I'm always baffled by people who swallow it hook, line and sinker.

Good grief, man. Open a book.

 

lol, wow.

I took history as a major in college and I'm quite well-read, thanks. It's a big part of why I have a negative view of the United States and the world order in general. And what makes you think I support any great power at all or even the concept?

 

Joke's on you. I'm not even American. (Although I do have family who live there.) I'm an Australian and an international relations student who understands what the U.S. has done and continues to do in world politics.

 

Australia is basically U.S. lite, so I'm not surprised. Ender Sai

 

Until you can describe to me a feasible path to a world system in which great powers aren't the fundamental determinants of geopolitics, I suggest you learn to love them and what they do for you.

 

Yes, I'll learn to love Big Brother.

 

Axrendale

The username Jingo Fett is still available. You can ask the admins to change your username here.

Oh, damn, looks like it's our joke on you.

 

I'm enough of a realist to accept that any country which is powerful enough to uphold of any sort of world order, is inevitably going to use that power in ugly ways from time to time. I'm just grateful that it's a country that's as relatively benevolent as America rather than the various alternatives.

You can't have the nice things America provides (the world's sea lanes as a global commons, reserve currency and guarantee of solvency for much of the global economic system, defence umbrella, management of geopolitical crises, etc) without American power. And you don't have American power without the sort of attitude which says (as Franklin Roosevelt once commented to an aghast Joseph Stalin) that there is literally nothing on Earth that is not part of the interests of the United States.