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

[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.