Yeah because obviously the US-Europe relationship is one way, isn't it?
NATO exists because the US won't allow any other global hegemon to exist. US backing of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are for that same reason. I meant that as a neutral statement; large regional powers also do not like each other when situated too close, that's why India and Russia are friendly, and why Russia and China have a complicated relationship despite both being opposed to the US.
Has quite a lot of good also come out of that? To the Europeans, yes. But it's not like the US is doing it from the bottom of their hearts.
And it's not like the US ever intervened in the Middle East for anything other than oil, historically. You go there and piss off the hardcore islamists / dictators, and make use of the Kurds as local fighting forces, and then you abandon them to the revenge of said islamists? Ofc they're pissed.
> NATO exists because the US won't allow any other global hegemon to exist.
this sounds like you are american. NATO is Europe driven, with a goal of keeping the americans involved. the alternative is going back to european powers fighting against each other.
the US the whole time has been basically absent. trump didnt start the "will they wont they" rom com setup. its always been there. NATO didnt go to Afghanistan because the US wanted it. europe demanded that the US invoke article 5, ans insisted on sending help
>NATO exists because the US won't allow any other global hegemon to exist.
The obvious non-US potential hegemon was China, yet we normalized trade with them, which greatly helped their economy grow.
The new one is India. We've been buddying up to them a fair amount as well.
The US also played a role in the creation of the EU, arguably a more potent rival hegemon than any individual European state: https://archive.is/VC2zV
>Has quite a lot of good also come out of that? To the Europeans, yes. But it's not like the US is doing it from the bottom of their hearts.
I don't believe that is true. As I stated elsewhere in this thread, even during the Biden administration, right after Biden sent billions to Ukraine, the US was barely net-positive in approval rating for many European countries:
If a lot of good came out of the relationship from Europe's perspective, you would expect them to approve of the US. And yet they don't.
So we can conclude that US presence is a negative for Europe, and it would be best for Europe if US troops and security guarantees were withdrawn. Unsurprisingly, many Europeans have requested this course of action.
>And it's not like the US ever intervened in the Middle East for anything other than oil, historically.
The Gulf War was rather similar to the Ukraine invasion in the sense of a powerful country (Iraq) invading a weaker neighbor (Kuwait). But you probably think we only aided Ukraine for minerals-related reasons anyways, eh? That's why Europe is aiding Ukraine right now, correct?
>make use of the Kurds as local fighting forces
So the Kurds and Islamic State are fighting. The US steps in to help the Kurds. At that point we become "warmongers" who are "making use of" the Kurds. It would've been better to stay complicit. After all, the only reason anyone would ever oppose IS is due to oil, right? So that must've been our motivation.
> The obvious non-US potential hegemon was China, yet we normalized trade with them, which greatly helped their economy grow.
Of course you present it as a one way street. Nah, you normalized with China to counter balance the Soviets and after that fell your companies benefited, since it is much cheaper to produce in China.
China just wasn't standing by and it also got something out of that relationship (know how) - the US only wanted it as a cheap sweatshop factory, so as soon as they became a real competitor to the US, the US started with sanctions, tariffs etc.
Having failed in China, the US now wants Latin America to stay behind in development terms, just useful enough to outsource to, but not enough to compete.
>Of course you present it as a one way street. Nah, you normalized with China to counter balance the Soviets and after that fell your companies benefited, since it is much cheaper to produce in China.
China's population was about 6x that of Russia in 1970. So 6x the hegemon potential, in the long run.
I'd say that the US alliance with China has been highly vindicated btw. China has proven to be a considerably less oppressive great power than the USSR. I'd say both China and the US are quite herbivorous by the standards of historical great powers like, say, Imperial Japan.
>Having failed in China, the US now wants Latin America to stay behind in development terms, just useful enough to outsource to, but not enough to compete.
Aside from Mexico, the US does not trade a notable amount with Latin America:
"In February 2026, United States exported mostly to Mexico ($28.9B), Canada ($28.4B), United Kingdom ($10.7B), Switzerland ($10.7B), and Netherlands ($8.48B), and imported mostly from Mexico ($44.3B), Canada ($29.2B), Chinese Taipei ($21.1B), China ($19B), and Vietnam ($15.7B)."
The US wants to see Latin America develop in order to reduce illegal immigrant flows. During the Biden presidency, Harris was sent to address the "root causes" of illegal immigration:
You're just making up random conspiracy theories to see what sticks. Note that you don't provide evidence for your claims. The fact that they fit your conspiratorial intuitions appears to be evidence enough for you.
> So the Kurds and Islamic State are fighting. The US steps in to help the Kurds. At that point we become "warmongers" who are "making use of" the Kurds.
You left the part where the US sponsored extremist groups in Syria, but of course you did.
You know, your anger makes sense if you selectively leave out large part of the involvement of your own government in various conflicts.
I don't think people pointing out American hypocrisy are under a delusion that China is a saint. They're just pointing out the hypocrisy.
It's also a delusion to think that the world is free under US hegemony. It's mostly better for those who cooperate, and the incentives are good. But it's not "free". The only entity free to do whatever it wants under US hegemony, is the US.
The unoriginal whining is mostly about China or any country that isn't the US, really. Asia is unimaginative and can only copy. Europe is lazy, blah blah blah. Because Americans who can't take being told that their country isn't #1 in the morality olympics seem to also not know much about other countries at all.
Like look at all the whining about China being communist. It's fcking hilarious. They've been an authoritarian, state-run capitalist country for decades by now. Just google their social spending vs other countries, will you.
there weren't a lot of democracies in the world until recently. And even a good many of them are effectively oligarchies.
if you want a good path to true improvement in civil rights (not a useless piece of paper or declaration) just track the wealth of a country. Wealthy countries that didn't rely on natural resources to get wealthy tend to treat their citizens better because, well, they make up the fcking economy.
most western countries had a shortcut to that via colonialism and slavery. It's very rich to then point at countries that don't have that cushion and talk about being morally superior.
Nice theory, but it seems demonstrably untrue to me. Has China made any major strides in civil rights since their economic miracle? They seem as determined to stamp out the few remaining bastions of civil rights in their corner of the world as ever.
Democracy is a morally superior system of government, because it's fundamentally premised on a moral idea; that governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed". Dictatorships and aristocracies can make no such claim.
People are literally talking about tiananmen square upthread like it's the biggest problem ever with China. Both Taiwan and South Korea had their own version of tiananmen square.
I don't think you realise that much of the world was under de facto dictatorships (eg. absolute monarchies) and it wasn't like people in the years before were living in democracies that then got taken away.
The US doesn't have a higher moral ground to stand on vis a vis many other countries in the world.
China hasn't been communist for a really long time. It didn't truly stay communist for a long time either, it was more of an authoritarian autarky run by a nutjob.
What is is today is state sponsored capitalism. You have cronyism, nepotism, lobbying and rent seeking. All of which are also found in the US.
China's social spending is far lower than many other developed nations.
NATO exists because the US won't allow any other global hegemon to exist. US backing of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are for that same reason. I meant that as a neutral statement; large regional powers also do not like each other when situated too close, that's why India and Russia are friendly, and why Russia and China have a complicated relationship despite both being opposed to the US.
Has quite a lot of good also come out of that? To the Europeans, yes. But it's not like the US is doing it from the bottom of their hearts.
And it's not like the US ever intervened in the Middle East for anything other than oil, historically. You go there and piss off the hardcore islamists / dictators, and make use of the Kurds as local fighting forces, and then you abandon them to the revenge of said islamists? Ofc they're pissed.
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