The US projects its own interests worldwide but those often overlap with the interests of other as well.
For example, the US often stipulates intellectual property and worker rights in it’s trade deals. The US actively protects shipping lanes. The US actively negotiates visa-free entry for American passport holders to other countries. The US invests in the economies of foreign countries to stimulate trade opportunities. The US controls the SWIFT banking network which makes it so that we don’t need to send gold bullion or pallets of cash to buy things from other countries, and participating in the system requires member countries to have certain controls in place that attempt to block bad actors. The US, through it’s embassies and ambassadors, deploys it ideology to foreign governments, and makes deals that allow foreigners to invest in the USA and Americans to open businesses in foreign countries.
The US actively shuns and makes life difficult for menace dictatorships on the global stage by creating trade exclusions.
There have been coups since the beginning of time and always will be, as it’s human nature. Many citizens of other countries have no belief that the future of their country belongs to them after decades or centuries of dictatorships or kingdoms. On the whole, history shows that kingdoms rise and fall for many reasons and the people sometimes benefit and sometimes suffer for it.
Obviously it’s a highly complex topic, but if the US wasn’t doing these things, then Russia or China would be, or there would be more powerful regional factions, which could reduce the size of the world in terms of travel and trade options for many.
Whether the US is the right one to be in control of this at this point in history is a matter of intense debate among some, but it could absolutely be worse than it is now.
Other countries would probably still have some similar shit. People are people.
Not to mention some other country would’ve been doing this instead. Other countries do, the US has just been the most notorious and the king of colonialism
I’m not even sure the US counts as king but that’s for historians to argue I guess
Or colonial empire for that matter
Definitely a better place.
Most likely some other country (or countries) would simply fulfill the same role of projecting their military and economic power onto the rest of the world to maintain their hegemony. We see this in limited ways already with many other countries, though with a few exceptions, they’re careful in how much they conflict with US interests. One of these, likely China, would move into that role and while the details would be different in some ways, many of the overall dynamics would be similar.
Now you got me questioning if China ever got involved in foreign politics and back a coup which was more favorite to them?
Who needs to do that when they lare oan sharking the countries
You might get to see that in Russia with how Putler is screwing things up.
Chinese foreign policy has been fairly cautious and covert compared to other world powers. I think this has generally been a good strategy as it has avoided major conflicts with the US and Europe in recent times.
I can’t think of any coup they’ve directly supported but they certainly have supported military movements and governments in other countries, including Vietnam, North Korea, Myanmar, and Venezuela. So they’ve been a bit less prone to overthrowing governments but they aren’t afraid to use similar tactics to keep friendly regimes in power, to helping those factions expand power.
China’s history goes back thousands of years. Scratch even the surface of that and you will find horrors, genocides, brutality, and atrocities.
I was speaking specifically of regime change efforts by the CCP, but I imagine that would be true of any empire. Yes, China is an empire—the fact that it is one nation doesn’t change the underlying political dynamic of exploitation of subjugated peoples in the periphery by the ruling elite.
I think the modern American empire is seen as much more dangerous than the modern Chinese one.
In the current moment I would agree. I’m not sure that would be true in comparison to a hypothetical sole superpower China. But who can say for sure.
China’s foreign policy model seems focused on making deals with the existing power no matter what. Part of that seems to be that China does not believe in odious debt like a lot of Western countries do. When settling debts, Chinese institutions have been far more insistent on keeping write-offs from occuring.
China has also generally pushed for more one on one transactional deals with countries. There have been some international institutions made like the AIIB, but I don’t see the institutional creation of systems like the USA tried to do.
What do you mean by keeping write-offs from occurring?
A lot of times, the IMF will lead all creditors of a country to restructure, reduce, or reschedule existing debt. What is happening is that Chinese institutions appears to be less willing to write down bad debt, holding up a lot of negotiations between debt holders. So, the debt doesn’t get reduced.
Is this a bad thing somehow? I would think reducing debts is generally beneficial, especially in times of economic crisis.
Difficult to say. For starters, we can’t know with certainty the full list of countries that were affected. We don’t know all the ways countries were affected. There’s so much we don’t know that it’s really impossible to say.
Those countries would have been taken over by communist regimes due to support from hostile nations… So like Cuba but all over the place.
Didn’t realize I was on .ml till I saw this
You and me both. WTF is rule 1 in this context even?
Well, like Cuba without the embargo.
Most countries would be socialist.
The world would be far more Socialized.
Just imagine how scared and hungry we could all be
That’s actually the really sad story here.
Every “experimental” regime was either toppled (Chile) or had to align with the USSR (Cuba) to survive. There was never a real attempt at democratic socialist politics without interference from superpowers.
All Socialism is democratic, including Cuba and the USSR. Trying to reform the system along Socialist lines from within the system like Allende is why he sadly failed and was couped by the US Empire.
The US tried to invade Cuba as well, and tried to kill Castro, several times. That’s ultimately why he did align with the USSR - choosing the bully that’s slightly more on your side.
This is a non sequitur. It doesn’t follow that Allende choosing reform over revolution is what resulted in the US interference. The US has been known to interfere in revolutionary movements as well.
There was never a government at all without interference from superpowers.
Of course, but most governments are allowed to mostly be sovereign.
Sweden or Australia play ball on their own, no need for a coup here.
Lol, what? Australia is a US lackee more than anywhere else. And the CIA was definitely involved in the Whitlam sacking.
For real, the US committed a coup in Australia with Whitlam. They don’t constrain the CIA to just poor countries.
History doesn’t provide answers to hypotheticals
That’s why they’re asking people and not reading a history book.
Well the troubles would have continued. So there that.
Ooh I think you need to read more about history. For once, CIA wouldn’t need to support drug dealers to finance its operations in Central America. Guess where those drugs were being consumed?
What?
the cia admitted to starting the cocaine epidemic so that they can use the money to fund rebel fighters to keep central american countries weak and dependent on the united states.
I probably should have capitalised The Troubles shouldn’t I
given that the question doesn’t stipulate that the ussr stays out of other countries’ politics, probably more red at least until the fall of the ussr, and then who knows?
the question kind of assumes a success of the truman doctrine and an accuracy of the domino theory, which i don’t know is correct
i dont think it’s likely that the us won the cold war because democratically-backed-capitalism was worse than non-democratically-backed-state-capitalism
I am just wondering if the US stayed Isolated after WW2 and did not intervene in any countries business like over throwing dictators or supporting or starting rebelens and suchwhat would the world look like today? Would they look at the US and see that democracy works or would they go with some other type of governance?
On a tangentially related note, this documentary series from BBC4 is a fascinating insight into the decision making process the US went through over dealing with foreign mass atrocities over the past 40 years: Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Syria etc.
Warning: they do not hold back with the imagery of these events.
Did they also go into mass atrocities committed and initiated by the US? If you go around lighting fires and then come back around to put them out after donning an official uniform, should others consider you a fire fighter or an arsonist?
Is there a single instance covered that wasn’t a situation the US directly and purposely had a hand in creating?
You should watch it and find out for yourself.
I will, but this is an 8 hour series.
I know, I watched it all.
Any chance you’d be willing to provide answers to any of my questions based on what you saw?
Bananas would cost more
America genociding Gautemala avoided in such a timeline?
Oh did America “genocide (verb)” Guatemala?
no more banana for $10
There’s always money in the banana stand.
Germany would have taken over Europe.
Lol, only if you learned history from Hollywood.
Funny that you think Germany would have stopped with Europe.
The “It’s a Small World” ride at Disneyland.
