Previous to the current unipolar hegemony of the US, it was the bipolar days of the US and USSR, otherwise known as the Cold War. That gave us Vietnam, Afghanistan part 1, Korea, and the Greek, Lebanese, Nicaraguan, Angolan civil wars. Before that it was a multipolar system of competing empires, fighting and carving up sections of the globe, which gave us both world wars, and countless wars before that. Unipolar hegemony provides stability and reduces interstate violence. The idea that Russia, China, and the EU competing for power and influence is a better situation does not ring true for me. The war in Ukraine is the first major interstate territorial grab since the end of the Cold War, and that is only the beginning in a multipolar world.
Right. Next question being, of the current contenders for crown in a unipolar world, which one would you want to live in - and which would you think your children and their children had a chance of improving and being free in, rather than being slaves? Because if there's a better option than America, I'll move there.
Everything changes. The America of 20 years ago is different from the America of today, and will be different in 20 years again (I have no idea how). Likewise for Europe (either individual countries or the EU). Will Argentina finally get of the constant ruin from decades of unchecked leftism and become a world power in 20 years - who knows. Some of the changes will be good and some bad. There are things to like and dislike about every option. So far I'm holding out hope that the US and Europe both overall remain good choices. 20 years ago I was expecting China to become a good choice, but now they are not. I didn't even think of Vietnam 20 years ago, but they have some good signs (I'm not sure if there are enough). There are a few countries in Africa that are doing good things even though the continent as a whole is a string of one bad thing after another.
Unipolarity has however also seen considerable brutality, in the places the empire cares about (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) and the places it doesn't, like Rwanda.
My point was made in frustration at the flippancy of the parent comment. The attitude that "someone has to run the world so it might as well be us" is precisely the source of the misery that the US, and every other empire, has inflicted on the world. It's a justification for untold evil and had to be challenged.
I'd further argue that the war in Ukraine isn't the first interstate territorial land grab, far from it. What else was the War on Terror?
The main characteristic of the (pre-Trump) US empire is that it doesn't incorporate territories, it plants bases and friendly governments. With varying degrees of success.
>Unipolarity has however also seen considerable brutality, in the places the empire cares about (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) and the places it doesn't, like Rwanda.
We should probably view these in context to alternatives. Just looking at Afghanistan, the 20 year “War on Terror” is estimated to have killed approximately 200,000 people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In contrast to the Soviet Afghan War, which was half a long, but resulted in between 1.2 and 2 million people killed, an order of magnitude more bloody.
Your comparison of the US and “every other empire” and equating Ukraine to the War on Terror is the same lack of context argument. The US “soft empire” of economic pressure, military protection, and clandestine regime change is not comparable to empires that literally would invade, conquer, and rule over other countries. The US does not own land in Afghanistan, did not annex and take control of oil or other natural resources in Iraq. Just because something is bad, doesn’t mean it is equivalent to other bad things and I think it is very clear that the US has been much “less bad” than the previous alternatives.
I'm sorry, but going back to my very first post on here, staying in living memory, the US has a vast litany of egregious human rights offences to its name. This is an objective fact of record.
The notion that it's any better than a hypothetical does not address the core point that the US government, has in actuality caused more suffering, to more people, in more countries, over a longer period of time than any other since the end of WW2.
I don't want to see another empire, but the world won't be sorry to see the back of the US.
> going back to my very first post on here…address the core point that the US government, has in actuality caused more suffering, to more people, in more countries, over a longer period of time than any other since the end of WW2.
Lets look at that.
>Vietnam alone, over fifty years ago, ignoring everything that's gone on since was 1.4 million deaths
This ignores that the USSR was on the other side of this war, so those deaths are shared equally.
>Cuba, Nicaragua, Korea, the Congo, Cambodia, Lao
These are all Cold War proxy wars with the Soviet Union, a direct result of duopolistic fighting.
> the former Yugoslavia
The Yugoslavian wars were internal/civil wars over nationalism and involved extensive ethnic cleansing. The US stepped in and ended the wars after a fairly short bombing campaign.
>We don't have a body count as the US stopped counting in Vietnam, but I'd wager if we took all the deaths for which the US is directly responsible, it outstrip would outstrip Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union combined by an order of magnitude.
Mao’s Great Leap Forward is estimated to have caused 30 to 45 million deaths. Stalin’s Great Purge murdered between 700,000–1.2 million. Stalin also forcibly deported 15 million people as part of his Dekulakization, and cause 20 million deaths total. This claim that the US has killed orders of magnitude more people has no basis in fact.
A majority of the wars were proxy wars, and as horrible as they were, they were less destructive than wars of conquest they replaced. The Napoleonic wars killed 6.5 million with muskets and cannons. Meanwhile, the Iraq war, the worst US war since the fall of the Soviet Union, resulted in less than a third of the deaths in Korean or Vietnam wars.
Listing the United States Superpower misdeeds only sound horrible when you ignore the context of what the other Superpowers were doing. At it ignores the amount of violence in a unipolar US world compared to duopolistic and multipolar worlds.
Previous to the current unipolar hegemony of the US, it was the bipolar days of the US and USSR, otherwise known as the Cold War. That gave us Vietnam, Afghanistan part 1, Korea, and the Greek, Lebanese, Nicaraguan, Angolan civil wars. Before that it was a multipolar system of competing empires, fighting and carving up sections of the globe, which gave us both world wars, and countless wars before that. Unipolar hegemony provides stability and reduces interstate violence. The idea that Russia, China, and the EU competing for power and influence is a better situation does not ring true for me. The war in Ukraine is the first major interstate territorial grab since the end of the Cold War, and that is only the beginning in a multipolar world.