> How does one even go about disagreeing with a comment like this? I guess I'll go for the obvious: If the U.S. wanted to "claim dominance" at any expense, we certainly would have felt much less constrained in the use of nuclear weapons in past conflicts.
You're the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons in anger. Next?
> What you are describing is a mythology. One no better, and probably less accurate, than the mythology that the U.S. is an angel of hope and freedom on the world stage.
It's an objective reality. Point at ONE positive thing the US has done on the world stage since 1945. It's all coups, black ops, war, more war, war, and war.
> hn is going downhill faster than I'd ever imagined possible.
HN is diversifying and taking a particular political bent because global politics and US foreign policy are suddenly at the core of what we all do. The Iranian coup is just another data-point in a big, long, ugly picture.
You can bury your head in the sand if you like, and just talk about the best sorting algos until the cows come home, but the very medium through which HN operates is being threatened, and if we don't discuss said threat, and the history and background surrounding it, we are doomed to succumb.
> It's an objective reality. Point at ONE positive thing the US has done on the world stage since 1945. It's all coups, black ops, war, more war, war, and war.
Marshall plan. Defense of South Korea. Support for Taiwan. Public and private responses to natural disasters throughout the world.
Argument by hyperbole isn't very interesting or useful and analysis of historical events is always difficult because the alternatives not taken are hard to evaluate against the actual choices that were made.
Little to do with reconstruction, lots to do with ensuring economic dependence. Why not talk about the Dawes and Young plans?
>Defense of South Korea.
Again, not doing objective good, protecting American interests, and a direct result of USAMGIK.
>Support for Taiwan
This is solely to piss off PRC, and always has been, and again can't really be seen as "good" as the principle mode of this support is in selling them lots and lots of guns.
>Public and private responses to natural disasters throughout the world.
Public responses good, yes, but the government responses to natural disasters - not so much. Lots of ODA, but that's just an economic shackle, rather than helpful aid.
>Argument by hyperbole isn't very interesting or useful and analysis of historical events is always difficult because the alternatives not taken are hard to evaluate against the actual choices that were made.
This is true, and it's hard to condense decades of thinking into a single post, but I stand by my assertion that US foreign policy sucks.
You seem to be arguing that there is some sort of utopian national policy mechanism that would benefit its receipent(s) but would be independent of the sponsor's national interests, would provide economic assistance but not create economic shackles, provide assistance without creating dependence, and so on. Obviously you don't think US foreign policy satisfies any of those criteria.
I'd be interested in knowing what such a policy would look like or even if you've got any historical examples.
It was wildly successful in getting European economies rolling again, but the hook was that it ensured penetration into and possession of European markets by American business interests. It also served as a cultural hook, by massively upping the volume of American goods exported to Europe. Either way, it was pretty successful in its publicised goals, but also very successful in the less spoken about goals of US hegemony.
D&Y were overtly intended to make Germany dependent on the US, and the great depression pretty much directly precipitated the fall of the Weimar republic and the rise of National Socialism, as it absolutely buggered their economy and caused huge resentment.
Dawes of course got the Nobel Peace Prize, even though his work would ultimately set the stage for the bloodiest conflict the world has ever known.
You're the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons in anger. Next?
> What you are describing is a mythology. One no better, and probably less accurate, than the mythology that the U.S. is an angel of hope and freedom on the world stage.
It's an objective reality. Point at ONE positive thing the US has done on the world stage since 1945. It's all coups, black ops, war, more war, war, and war.
> hn is going downhill faster than I'd ever imagined possible.
HN is diversifying and taking a particular political bent because global politics and US foreign policy are suddenly at the core of what we all do. The Iranian coup is just another data-point in a big, long, ugly picture.
You can bury your head in the sand if you like, and just talk about the best sorting algos until the cows come home, but the very medium through which HN operates is being threatened, and if we don't discuss said threat, and the history and background surrounding it, we are doomed to succumb.