America's Role In The World

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

What is America's role in the world? I'm the first to jump on the America bashing bandwagon, so one could expect me to come up with a suitably cynical snark response to this. But I won't.

America's role in the world is to be a leader.

In most ways, America is the most powerful nation in the world. Militarily, it's not hard to think that America could fight off every other nation in the world if we all tried to invade at once. They have used this military to become the unquestioned economic and political power in the world as well. Colonial wars have been fought in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America, not to rule directly, but to install governments that will allow for a favourable economic environment for US corporations. Why the hell would you want to run a country when you could just be extracting their natural resources and abuse their labour?

America has actively worked to become the leader in the world. It has been an act of conscious free will. It has been the stated aim of generations of political leaders and the desire of the electorate that votes them in. "We're #1" they cry after singing the national anthem at a "World Series" to find a the "World Champion" in a sport in which pretty much only they play in which only teams from America compete.

With great power, comes great responsibility.

Because the creation of US world supremacy has been a conscious act of free will, then the responsibilities that come along with that power are non-negotiable and must be entered into with a sense of duty, not obligation. The President of the United States has been called the "Leader Of The Free World" (and I've noticed, is still called, which I find a bit of an anachronism). The Constitution is, rightly, held up as one of the grand achievements of humanity. Americans like to believe that the ethics and values of their nation, that all men are created equal, that we have the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If this is so, then their act of conscious free will to become the world leaders and the responsibilities that are the duty of the power that comes with such power, then they must lead with these values in mind as well as in practice.

Acts like unilateral military action and avoiding international treaties that are in the global interest, but may be questionable for the national interest, is failing these values.

Comments

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

America's only role in the world is to secure its own interests and security. The world should be grateful that the world's unprecedented global superpower is America and not Russia or China.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

I'm sure Afghanistan, Serbia, Panama, Grenada, Laos and Vietnam would all agree completely.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Considering the Tibetan, North Korean, Afghan and Chechen experiences, I'm sure they would.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

If only they could step back and think objectively they might see that the US is marginally better than Russia and China in policraticus' view.

What pedantic jingoism.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Not marginally better, fundamentally better. Look at the difference between North and South Korea. Look at the US mission in Afghanistan compared to the Soviet occupation of the 80's. If you can't see a difference there then it is really you who have to step back and think objectively.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

Grenada, Greece and Cuba are all contrary examples.

Besides, I'm not sure if the relative chracter of the puppet regimes to their citizens is a good measure at all. None of the superpowers seem to give a damn about the human rights record - what does seem to matter is the value they can extract from the given states.

And the US is much more overreaching, aggressive and powerful than any of the other states, probably due to its expansive military, political and industrial capital. And that makes the whole "be glad its not China/Russia" argument pretty absurd.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That would be the Afghanistan the Soviets dealt the first human catastrophe by a superpower invasion too, the Serbia that was exterminating Muslims in the Balkans the same way all the other "Christian" states there did but actually for a change got stopped before it succeeded, and the Vietnam which found itself invaded by the PRC due to being a faithful Soviet ally?

Yeah, I'm sure they wouldn't love the USA very much but there was nothing the USSR gave those three societies they'd enjoy very much either.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

Why on earth do you two insist on making this a comparative issue (to nations whose net influence pales in comparison to the US)?

Neither Russia nor China ever had the political or military capital to extend a war to the US's doorstep (or even comparably in S. America) as the US did in the aforementioned cases.

You're both comparing the equivalency of light infantry to ICBMs in terms of military might and reach.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The Russian Federation, sure. The USSR had things like the India-1 virus and the largest nuclear arsenal in the world from the Brezhnev era to its collapse. The Soviet Union, unlike the Cold War-era PRC *was* a superpower, no matter how present-day people try to erase that fact. The USSR fairly earned superpower status. It was always technologically inferior to the USA in some ways, but far superior in others. There's a reason the Kalashkinov is the most commonly distributed rifle today: Soviet weapons of death were superior to the Americans in utility.

The USA was only able to extend the war into Serbia due to retaining bases from the NATO-era alliance. If it had chosen to withdraw troops from Germany altogether the logistics would be vastly different.

And yes, China's never been the military juggernaut people assume it has. The Soviet Union was one. Forget that and a lot of its actions toward the USA and vice versa are rather different.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

It's "Kalashnikov." And yes, there was at one point a real potential for teh USSR to crush the US economically. But I don't the USSR ever recovered from Krushchev's terrible economic policies.

The point, however, was the relative value of their expansionist programs, particularly in comparison to the other superpowers. The USSR time and tiem again has proven that it is weak in this regard: western puppet regimes have come closer and closer to their doorstep, and this influence was lain bare after the dissolution of the USSR, when former USSR satellites quickly turned against Russia.

And now Russia has western puppet regimes Like Georgia at its doorstep.

China and Russia have both failed to expand their sphere of influence toward the US borders. China has managed some degree of normalization of relations as well as apparent shared exploitation of its satellites with western interests.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

There was never a point the USSR could seriously crush the USA economically. Politically, perhaps, militarily multiple times. It lost the ability to do so economically when Stalin ensured debacles that saw 3 million Soviet soldiers herded off to die in Nazi death camps, ensuring most Soviet industry passed into three years of Nazi misrule and their scorched earth tactics. Past that point it never had a snowball's chance in Hell of surpassing the USA economically.

It proved this when the USA was violating international law by flying U-2s over Soviet territory and the Soviet state was helpless to do anything about it. It also proved this in the Berlin debacle in 1948.

And it's rather hard for them to do that given only Russia *has* a border with the United States and for China to do so requires them to give up their insistence on land power for more as sea power, which has not usually been the case but things can and do change.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

Russia was not known for being nice to Afghanistan and Serbia, and Vietnam is probably thanking their lucky stars that the US is still dominant in Asia over China.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't go that far. The Vietnamese walloped the PLA when it tried to re-establish Chinese hegemony over Vietnam.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

For sure, but there is a reason that Vietnam and the US have been staging joint naval excercises: a thousand of years old rivalry with China is weighing much more heavily on Vietnam than a squabble (comparatively) with the US.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not rivalry. Imperialism. The Chinese Empires did a very good job of imperialism in Vietnam and unlike in say, Japan, the Vietnamese were never able to form a serious threat to Chinese military power where Japan once in a while tried that since the Mongol era and actually did a good job damaging China in the 1930s.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not unprecedented. Britain was first.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

While Britain was certainly the unparalleled global super power of its time and clearly the greatest empire of all time, I still think the level of US economic and military dominance is unprecedented.