Quote:
Originally Posted by The Batlord
Pretty much my opinion exactly. I can never justify American imperialism to anyone who isn't an American, but... without some kind of military something or other... wouldn't it just be chaos? I know it's easy to say that as a citizen of the imperialist country, but... in some form or another... even if it's not how America practices imperialism... is it so out of the realm of conception that the Roman Empire isn't in some way beneficial?
Again, I can't justify that to a non-American, cause it's bull**** that it may or may not have to be us, but if it does have to be somebody, then it is us. Maybe in ten or twenty years it'll be China, but it's not right now.
I say this as someone who's just indifferent to everything at large rather than someone who's weighed and measured all the political realities, so take that as you will. I'm not really willing to defend it if anyone can respond with anything reasonably good.
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Yeah, we do live a privileged kush life at the expense of other nations, but I think the majority of it is through economic imperialism (exploited 3rd world workers making clothing and other goods cheap for us, forcing trade deals that can override national policy and public interest in exploited countries - e.g. TPP, and having allies that will flood markets - e.g. Saudi Arabia with oil <-- this one is really lame because I feel like we allow KSA to be pricks without blowback from the US because of they way they help us manipulate oil markets. Who the **** decided KSA should represent human rights for the UN anyway?
US defense is bad and deserves criticism, but I do think there is some good that comes out of the US military force in terms of global stabilization. Granted, we do a lot to destabilize the middle east, including losing our loaned out tech to insurgents - to some extent I wonder if just letting the totalitarians sit in power would be better in the long run as it would allow at least some stabilization to occur in the region - but again, I'm not foreign policy expert.