Loosely speaking, probably not right now. A lot of countries avoid war because they are worried about the potential response from the United States. With an isolationist-focused US that isn't the dominant military power (in order for the US to not be the dominant power it'll have to undertake more isolationist tendencies like reducing military spending) there's nothing to fear from invading your neighbor.
But this is just an examination of practical reality. Ideally we wouldn't have a hegemon. Ideally maybe we wouldn't have countries either.
The wildly different allocation of resources and population (on a country border basis) suggests some country will always have the means to be hegemonic (especially if other contenders all decide not to be).
Which in practice means there will always be a hegemony.
If the US ceded its role tomorrow, China would step into it. If China ceded it the day after, Russia or the EU would step into it. (I'm skipping over India and Japan, as both seem to have cultural aversions to strongly projecting power overseas)
This is laughable. The US initiated way too many wars and other offensive / disruptive actions. If you call this stability then I have a bridge to sell. The only stability it provides is it's own. Well maybe some to the allies.
The US Navy ensures that global shipping routes stay open and safe, the US economy provides the globe with advanced technological research and products, and the US's natural resources allow for it to export tons of commodities including food and energy.
During pax americana, we've seen massive increases in quality of life around the world. Do you think the world is going to be more stable as the US retreats and other players fill the power vacuum and we have to deal with the rising threat of climate change?
I think the world will be more stable when there are few major players around with not a single one having complete control / dominance. This will insure competition and cooperation between our "masters" and will keep them on their toes.
I do not want to argue too much here. Here is my point of view - I believe that a single country controlling the world will end up with dictatorship on a world scale. It will not prevent wars either. If instead we have few majors they might actually get to their senses and establish some workable order.
You have your own take on a subject and we do not have to agree
I appreciate your desire for the world to be ruled by the US. I do not think the rest of the world will agree. And if you enforce it using military means you are no better then the rest. Are you American by any chance?
I think if the choice is China or America, the majority of the world would choose America. America is less hostile to other countries than China.
Do you think the world would rather have China in charge?
I assume you are going to claim that we can either have no major power or that the EU could be that major power. I highly doubt either of those could occur.
I believe some wars can be just and as such enforcing things through the military can be just. The idea that military use has to be bad is ridiculous.
>Replying here since reply to your last post is not available.
Typically when that happens I have to click the time posted on a post and then I have the option to reply. Not sure what causes that.
>I prefer the world "ruled" by few major entities / blocks. No need to be either US or China alone.
I don't think that is possible.
Do you have any historical examples where this has happened? Please don't bring up a time when there were multiple major powers but they were so far away they couldn't reach the other, assuming they even knew the other existed.
If you do not have any examples of this occurring, why do you think it would work in the present?
>Like bombing the country that refuses to trade in certain currency?
I am not suggesting that the US has only done good and just things. Only that the US is better than China.
China is currently taking over Hong Kong (despite having a 50 year agreement for autonomy starting in 1997), attempting to take land from India, trying to dam a river that provides water to India, is consistently threatening Taiwan, etc. China does the same crap. And all of that is within the last few years. If you want to go back further we can.
I would also note several of the US invasions were not in fact US invasion but NATO invasions. This likely means one of those blocks of country you support to be a world power were involved with these invasions.
Let's talk about internal affairs. China has a terrible record and potentially holds the record for causing the most deaths of its own citizens. Obviously they don't care about the people. What about freedom? Do Chinese citizens have more freedom than US citizens? Why would China treat people who are not its own citizens better than the citizens?
The US is better for the world and the people under its control than China.
>"The US is better for the world and the people under its control than China"
Once again you are pushing a choice that should not be there in a first place. I do not want to choose between either. Period. If you let any country run free and control the others it will devolve to a dictator. So I prefer to have the US, Europe, China, BRICS and whatever else is coming.
Do you have any historical examples where this has happened? Please don't bring up a time when there were multiple major powers but they were so far away they couldn't reach the other, assuming they even knew the other existed.
I believe it is temporary. China is massively build up their military and are consistently threatening their neighbors. I believe it is just a matter of time until war occurs.
Also, you are advocating for more than 2 blocks. As far as I can tell there are only two super powers right now.
MAD, as insane as it may sound, actually works. Everyone being fearful of massive retaliatory strikes keeps everyone in line. You get all sorts of bad behavior when nations have no fear of massive retaliatory strikes.
The world map has been mostly frozen the last few decades precisely because USA is the global hegemon and world police.
Regional powers (which is what we would devolve to) are demonstrating exactly what the world would look like without America running the show: conquest and genocide in Ukraine, saber rattling in the south china sea, genocide of the Kurds.
We don't have an interest in solving for all the world's ills, and we are the source of many.
But the world has been less stable and more dangerous in the past.
If you think the world is stable as a result of the US, you should think again. It is exactly the contrary. The US itself is involved in wars since basically its foundation. The reason you say this is because you probably live in the US or one of its rich close alies. Everyone else will tell you that life under US hegemony means constant wars, coups, and political instability.
Could you give some examples? The US has certainly abused its power (notoriously, in the 60s and 70s at the height of the Cold War), but "constant" appears to be stretching historical fact to fit a narrative.
Are you forgetting that the US has been actively involved in non-stop wars around the world for the last 20 years? And before these wars started, it was doing "special operations" in eastern Europe, parts of Asia and Africa? And in Latin America it never really stoped its coups, military dictatorships and the such, especially in central America. And then of course there was the "cold" war and all the crimes in South Asia...
Look at the hundred years before that. Everyone was fighting, all the time, not just one country with roughly one skirmish (by historical standards) at any single point.
All nations are, at heart, "evil" in this regard. Essentially, nations are just scaled up street gangs with more destructive weapons.
The only proven method of keeping these street gangs from getting too far out of hand, of keeping all our war at the level of low intensity conflict, is MAD. Nations behave only at the barrel of a gun. To argue that America is "evil" is as irrelevant as it is to argue that America is "good".
For instance, I know that all nations can be said to be "evil" at root, and "good" at root. Here's the thing though, do you think it matters to me if China is "evil" and "good"? Of course not, they're just a different street gang. The US has a responsibility to humanity to keep them in line. Should it matter to China that the US street gang is "evil" and "good"? No. They have a responsibility to humanity to keep the US in line.
In the age of weapons of mass destruction, only mutually assured destruction has ensured these street gangs don't come into conflict. Relying on sunshine and rainbows and unicorns that crap out skittles is nonsense. This is not a children's game of "good guys-bad guys". There are no good guys or bad guys. Only nations, (street gangs), pursuing interests. They are kept in line only at the barrel of a gun. Take that gun away and they will run rampant.
I mostly agree with you, except I don't believe that MAD is a sufficient deterrent, or that low level conflict is unlikely to evolve into large scale war.
The best way, in my mind to minimize conflict is through a global monopoly on violence, one street gang to rule them all
The reason the US and Russia haven't run rampant the last 30 years is because the US and Russia can blow each other away. So Russia satisfies itself with Georgia and now Ukraine. And the US satisfies itself with those nations in the MidEast region. Remove Russia, and the US would have been all over the yard. Remove the US, and Russia would have been all over the yard.
And now with the rise of China, mankind is even safer. Not only that, but more of mankind have begun to enjoy the benefits of safety. The US and Russia were perfectly willing to fight a proxy war in Korea 70 years ago. They wouldn't dare do that today. Why? The Chinese presence in any MAD calculations.
Today Africa is much safer, it is developing much faster. A large part of the reason for that is the presence of China. Now instead of proxy wars, the great powers compete to see who can deliver Africa the most undersea bandwidth for instance. This is a much better situation for Africans than the situation that existed when only the US and Russia were superpowers. And this situation exists because of MAD. It proves that an armed society is a polite society.
The US, China and Russia are all fulfilling their responsibility to keep the peace by maintaining lethal arsenals of weapons of mass destruction so that they are each confident in their own ability to destroy the others. And that is good for all of us "little people" in the world. Whether we are American, Chinese or Russian. (And even good for us if we are Korean, African, or from South America.)
I agree. The result of N. Korea acquiring nuclear weapons was the cessation of the idea of direct war against the Korean regime. I believe if Iran already had nukes we wouldn't be talking about the possibility of war there, either.
The difficult calculus with Iran is trying to decide if they're actually pious enough to immolate themselves to take out Israel. Or whether a group could come to power who might be.
North Korea is insane in its own way, but hereditary personality cults do have a history of acting in the interest of self-preservation.
Russia specifically developed their "de-escalation" policy of tactical nuclear weapons use under MAD assumptions.
Basically, betting that there were scenarios where the US wouldn't risk escalation to nuclear war in response to a calibrated Russian tactical nuclear strike in a third party country, thus allowing Russian nuclear effects to nullify superior western precision weapons without consequence.
A) NATO's air campaign in the Kosovo War (1999) certainly scared the shit out of Russia.
B) That Russia is currently bombarding Ukrainian cities with repurposed surface to air missiles doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in their ability to produce sufficient quantities of precision missiles for even a moderate scale conflict.
C) The majority of Ukrainian platforms at this point still aren't Western, and thus incapable of firing NATO precision ordinance.
It's sad but not surprising that you think that the US did not promote, finance, or execute dictatorships and all kinds of destabilizing tactics against democratically elected governments for the sole reason of not agreeing with their policies. They even sent agents to my country to teach the military how to torture civilians.
The only difference is that they were careful to not do it directly, or do it in secret. Exactly the same way they are doing in Ukraine now, where they avoid giving the weapons directly to Ukraine, but instead they use the well exercised muscle of influence.
Ukraine is a terrible example. Russia started that, not Ukraine or the US. Giving weapons and funding it would have been completely absent without Russian aggression.
Promoting a better way for countries to adopt, partnering with them in economic activity and education, and helping them to defend themselves when neighbors try to use aggression to oppose that partnership is a much better mechanism for bettering the world than outright war and conquering other nations.
Does the US do shady stuff that bites them later? Yes. Is the world overall better with the US as one of the biggest out there for now? Also yes. Both things can be true.
By all means shine a light on, and oppose the shady stuff but don't make the mistake of thinking that the world doesn't need a strong entity who can both promote and also defend better ways to govern.
Yeah, we do a bunch of fucked up shit, like fueling the civil war in Yemen, the banana wars, and much, much more.
We're less extractive than the alternative, and the US having an effective monopoly on violence has been a stabilizing force.
Europeans really don't deserve a voice in this whole conversation given that they rely entirely on the US for protection. Germany's decision to build Nord Stream 2 demonstrates how detached they are from realpolitik.
There are plenty of regional powers that aren't particularly violent or unstable; the traditional concern--regardless of whether it's true--isn't that the US itself would devolve into chaos, it's that by suddenly ceasing to be able to project force in other countries, it would leave power vacuums.
>what the world would look like without America running the show: conquest and genocide in Ukraine, saber rattling in the south china sea, genocide of the Kurds.
Meanwhile with America running the show: entire regions - South America and Middle East - largely destroyed, with tens of millions of victims.
America isn’t the “world police”, they are just the main bully.
The strongest argument for the US destroying South America, aside from the obvious propping up of strong men, is probably training and supporting right-wing militias to combat communism.
The effect of their existence as a power base then cascading into politics, etc.
That said, most of South America's recent woes have generally been economic (Guatamala, Venezuela), and the rise of Chavez (and the US not directly acting against his movement for decades) undercuts the "US is responsible for what happens in South America" position.
> Are you sure?
Would you rather have someone else / some other country (other than the US) be the hegemon? If so, who? And are they willing to do it?