I guess my question is who gave the Americans the right? I say this as an American. But would not the world be a better place if we just minded our own business and quit nation building and stoking non existant fires?
Pretty much when the US was the only super power to survive WWII unscathed.
Also, having developed atomic hellfire, and the will to use it (twice), kinda makes you the big kid on the playground.
This right here. The US was isolationist prior to WWII but then got attacked and drawn in to active war.
Since the mainland of US was untouched by war directly, and industry boomed post depression and during the war they came out of it better off than Europe, which had a lot of rebuilding to do.
As a result of the war and the need for defense they established bases all across the globe and for the last 80-90 years as the political system grew more corrupt the increase of American hegemony followed.
The US was isolationist prior to WWII
South America wants to have a word with you.
They love to take credit for WWII while completely ignoring the part Canada played
Many countries played an important role, not just Canada. And no, not all of us take credit for it.
Canada’s role is adequately acknowledged, our Nederland brothers send flowers every year
The US taking credit at all in Europe is silly but they did help with the Japanese theatre
There will always be a Nederland Canada bromance.
Because people in power only want one thing - more power. They only fear one thing - loosing power.
*Losing
Because authoritarians convinced the American people that military interventions prevent terrorist attacks to distract them from the reality which is that terrorist attacks are caused by American interventions.
It’s only possible to convince Americans of that because they are shockingly ignorant of history and they believe whatever the warmongers tell them.
I’m German and went to the US for a year as a high school student.
My US history teacher literally told us that the US is the world police. Because of that I believe that many Americans think that way.
Put South Park comment here.
Because it’s an empire. Everything else is clever marketing.
Kinda how they were “last man standing” in WW2. Everybody else got severely fucked and they won them over by with the Marshall aid program which got us to a bi-polar world with NATO in which the US was the hegemony.
After the fall of the Soviet Union and before the rise of China there was only one superpower that could act as such militarily and then US continued their power trip.
The citizens, in general, don’t. We want to do the same thing every other country’s people want - live our lives and hopefully give our kids a good or better one.
I have no fucking clue what the government is doing to make these decisions.
No one, powerful countries just assume that they are needed everywhere in the world so they start acting like narcissistic bitch like US.
Nobody gave ‘murica any right, they just imposed themselves. The simple answer is imperialism. USA was always a power and money hungry bitch and has been putting nations, populations and markets under their boots (not always thru military force) for profit since the late 1800s. Yes, they’ve been an evil empire for that long. Latin America as a whole has suffered many hells so uncle sam could keep commodities’ prices super low.
I think you’re setting the timeline about a century and a half too late. The people that would become the first US citizens were genociding the Native Americans as early as 1750
Every empire has those aspirations.
There are many ways to achieve it through the complex relationships between countries and societies (e.g. soft power, cultural influence, militar control, etc) but an empire willing to try it at any cost with any means will always succeed for longer as an empire…
Anybody who thinks about that question enough always realizes they don’t want that kind of power and control. Sometimes people think about it partly, get excited by the promises of power, but only misrepresented by their own misunderstandings, and mistakenly think they do.
Nobody actually does, just not everybody realizes it fully.
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I’m gonna answer from the perspective of someone who believes the world is a better place when it is led by America without reverting to a thin jingoist ideology. These aren’t my views, but a steel man of someone I would disagree with.
Why does America feel the need to control the world?
In the wake of the world wars, we realized that the world is best off with one power to lead the world. No powers and multiple powers will result in another world war. We were the best position to take that role after WW2 and resist the Soviet union’s attempt to gaining that position.
Do what they say?
Many of these countries don’t do what America says because America says it. Heck, many go against what we say. But they believe in a better world and when they remember that, they undtand that America is putting themselves in the most danger by clearing that path for the rest of the free world.
Instead of taking care of their own problems at home?
The problems we have at home are pretty limited. Most of these problems are born out of laziness. But we keep the criminals in check both at home and abroad.
When did the US become police officer of the world and enforcer?
If we didn’t step up after ww2, the world would have slipped into another world war or deem communism run rampant.
I guess my question is who gave the Americans the right?
The civilized world at the end of WW2. And under our leadership, the world is safer and healthier for it.
I say this as an American. But would not the world be a better place if we just minded our own business and quit nation building and stoking non existant fires?
From communism to extreme religious views, we are the only ones who are capable and willing to step up and protect the world against that. It’s a difficult and thankless job.
I also believed the world was a better place when the US led, but when anyone other than Trump was in power. At least with the US, we had a clear ideal of justice being normalized, and you could feel the progressive momentum with every passing year. We don’t get that among the other contesting world superpowers. But I don’t think the US stands for that anymore, thanks to meddling countries like Russia, but that doesn’t mean I want China or, especially, Russia to succeed them. They lobotomized the US and they showed their real face in return.
This is a very America centric veiw and even if it is a steel man it deserves a counterpoint.
After WWII most of the nations who were old empire builders were decimated. The general feeling was even those on the winning side didn’t feel like they’d won. The rebuilding was slow and economic austerity lasted for decades.
The American prosperity of the 1950’s and 60’s wasn’t “normal”. America didn’t have international competition it otherwise would have and that power gave them bargaining rights which made them both culturally dominant as they projected a sense of prosperity and politically powerful due to the resources at their disposal. Opposition to America was potentially disastrous and America threw their weight around like crazy. They expanded their military with these resources and established bases in countries too weak to oppose them.
America came out of the war with something of a Big Damn Hero complex. Communism, for all it’s perceived threat was also a handy excuse to pursue expansion and in keeping American supremacy in place. Whether countries wantes to be “protected” or not really has a lot of across the board nuance. A lot of American political will was coercive and a lot of the things done in the fight for “democracy” were disproportionate and horrific.
Really a lot of the American supremacy at bottom was might makes right. With the world finally recovering economically and now able to speak as equals the US is using measures that demand a return to that economic supremacy and stranglehold. The larger sore points are growing. The world doesn’t need one big power in charge. They don’t need a king with a standing army. They want to make their own choices and have freedoms to not conform to whatever America wants and the attitudes Americans show to disregard that will is garnering response.
After world war two, Europe was busy putting itself back together. It left an opening that the US stepped into. And who wouldn’t like to be the big dog in the yard.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis
Took 10 years until 1956
Pretty much this. Up to that point, it was Britain and a few other European nations that were doing all the management* in various places in the world. After WWII, they realised: “You know what, we’re tired and worn out and everyone wants us out anyway. We’re going low energy to rebuild at home. Someone else can step in if they want.”
* a.k.a. “Colonialism”. Management is an odd choice of synonym I grant you, but once you’ve got a colony, it’s in your interests to run things in good order. Until the locals rightfully kick you out, that is.
After WWII, they realised: “You know what, we’re tired and worn out and everyone wants us out anyway
This is a very naive understanding of the history of decolonisation. Decolonisation wasn’t a western initiative, it was done because the colonies were literally rebelling against their European oppressors, great part of that through Soviet funding and arming.
Someone else can step in if they want.
…unless they oppose western control of the region like Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro or Mosaddeq.
This is also an oversimplification.
Colonies were always rebelling. The main issue that led to decolonisation was that there was no longer the resources required to maintain these big empires.
Coal was more expensive, troops were more expensive, everything now cost too much to maintain.
It’s the end phase of every empire.
They (the USA) got to be the big dog, protecting us in europe, and we let them the hard & soft power. Everyone was happy (in the US and Europe) until americans started to believe their own hype that thay are in fact better than other people, and thus the breakup began.
It’s not over just yet with the usa supremacy but trump fucked things up so bad that IMO ten years from now the world will be a different place.
protecting us in europe
Protecting Europe from what exactly? What military threat did the US fight against in Europe? There hasn’t been an attack to western Europe since WW2 until the US bombing of Yugoslavia.
You can’t be this dense right?
Against the URSS 🙄
Edit: BTW URSS = USSR = CCCP before any homeschooled troll tries to be smart.
Against the ones who saved Europe from Nazism?
Lol nice try
What on Earth are you talking about? My country, Spain, only received weapons and military aid against fascism from the USSR years before WW2 started, during the Spanish civil war. The Soviet Union was the most antifascist state in Europe, and I wish my country would have been next to the Soviets so that we wouldn’t have endured almost 40 years of fascist regime.
Sure, just forget about Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, and so on and on and on.
The soviet union teamed up with the nazis and started the second world war, check out the molotov ribentrop act.
Also: why chose between two bad things, Franco and the USSR when you can aim for the free world? Are you unhappy i the EU?
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The USSR that invaded east Europe.
The USSR that saved Eastern Europe from the almost complete genocide of Slav “untermenschen” according to Nazi genocidal plans such as Generalplan Ost, at the tremendous cost of 27 million deaths of Soviet citizens in the brave struggle against Nazis.
And it did so by means of rape and genocide. Our Soviet aligned government took 2 years to get rid of an epidemic of syphilis after they were through.
It was just another conquering imperialistic power
There are privileges to being an empire and the capitalists in the US continue to use that empire to get access to those privileges. Favorable trade, commercial, and financing terms are a big one.
Also the US war industry pushes the country to intervene. You can see how there are interventionist and isolationist movements in the US fighting right now over how much the US gets directly involved in Iran-Israel.
