The US military do not, and never have, acted as world police.
The US can be relied upon to act militarily when its geopolitical interests are involved or when a US corporation buys off enough politicians to allow them to use the military in their own interest (e.g. Guatemala, UFC). US troops were stationed in Europe because it was in the US’s interest to keep the battlefield of any possible conflict with the USSR as far from the American homeland as possible.
The appropriate analogy is “mafia enforcer”, not “police”.
Of course there have always been hot spots and smaller wars. Not all of those have anything or very little to do with the US directly. We don’t police EVERY conflict.
I still contend the deaths from the proxy wars were less than an all out WWIII in Europe that we were preparing for. I wonder if the Freakonomics guys have ever done a what if scenario. I also don’t know if the middle east would have been any better off with out our effort. Probably fundamentalism wouldn’t have risen as much, but maybe it would have. They were IN CONTROL of Afghanistan. Pakistan always had pockets. Saddam kept them in line, but it too was with violence. But now Iraq has traded the terror of the state with the terror of fundamentalists.
Yeah and the BIGGEST difference between Rome and Britain and the US, is the first two had control over the lands they conquered and the people within them. They may have set up local governments, but they were under the thumb of the ruling body in charge. Remember the colonies? They were British citizens. The soldiers who were walking around were British. If asked “What country rules you?”, you would have replied “Britain”. They levied taxes. They called the shots. If they made a new law that affected them, they had to obey.
One could say we called the shots directly in like Iraq right after ousting Saddam. But it was never in the plans to control the nation after taking it over. And Iraq now has it’s own government with it’s own army (same with Afghanistan).
But all those other places we have bases, Germany, Japan, South Korea - they have their own government. Their own army. We don’t have any power to tax them or create laws. If you asked any of those nations, including Iraq, who rules you, it wouldn’t be The American Empire.
And that there is the big, stark, contrasting difference.
No, which is why you’ll note I said the Soviets too. Add in the chinese and the British during the Cold War, and they were fomenting a fair amount of global violence, in order to maintain the Cold War “peace” in Europe.
You could be right… but it’s a counterfactual that we’ll never know. It also seems disrepectful to the millions of human beings killed to keep Europeans safe, as if their lives don’t matter. I know that’s not what you mean, but to just shrug our shoulders at what actually DID happen isn’t helpful or empathetic, especially since the collapse of the CW order continues to haunt us right now in the very conflicts you’re talking about.
My point about differences in empire is that they aren’t always apples to apples. You’re assuming that the definition of an empire is static. considering the influence we exert over world markets, as well as our cultural influence, coupled with the fact that as @anon15383236, we have a hell of a lot of military bases, not to mention the variety of actions we’ve taken over the years to ensure the proliferation of our preferred economic order, and of course we hold ourselves about reproach and refuse to take part in world order in equal measure… Well, I don’t know what that could be if it’s not an empire?
But not equal citizens, but any stretch of the imagination.
Well, not directly no. We imagined we install a friendly interim government, who could guide an election to a friendly outcome to our economic and regional needs. And why does only intention matter here, instead of what actually happened?
You keep mentioning these, but what about all the other military bases around the world. There are well over 100 of them, of varying sizes. The situation in those countries, our allies are relatively stable and the government, if not always the citizens, welcome our presence. Do you think that’s the case in all the other bases?
Do you only listen to the voices which don’t call us an empire? What about the ones that do? Are they illegitimate because they disagree with your assesment?
Incidentally, I’m hunting around to see if I can find a total of those killed in the Cold War. I’d argue that would not just include hot wars that had either our or Soviet direct involvement, but also wars that were indirectly funded by us, the Soviets, Chinese, or even the Cubans (they had a huge involvement in the Angolan war, which was bloody, violent and long). If I can find something reaching a total, I’ll post it here. If we include events like the great leap forward/cultural revolution in China, you’re talking about tens of millions… But I’ll see what I can figure out on that front.
[ETA] Okay, no numbers so far, but here is a list of conflicts from the Cold War era - the list of conflicts covers all kinds and has :
[quote=“anon61221983, post:90, topic:74489”]
Do you only listen to the voices which don’t call us an empire? What about the ones that do? Are they illegitimate because they disagree with your assesment?[/quote]
Maybe I am pulling a “semantics”, but it doesn’t line up with what the definition means. I guess language changes, but it often changes through MISUSE. You can say the US is a bully. You can say it has empire like qualities, but while we have bases all over the world, we haven’t made an effort to actually, you know, take over and control those areas directly. The only places like that are our handful of territories like Guam and Virgin Islands. Give me a few countries we run like that that aren’t spits of land in the ocean, and I will be more inclined to agree.
Look at it this way, even when the British had an Empire, they had other areas where they had influence and bases, but they didn’t actually control that area. It wasn’t part of their Empire.
Just because it has feathers, doesn’t mean it’s a duck. There are all kinds of birds. I think the core of my argument that the US doesn’t exert the direct control and governing that every other Empire of the past has is the main and most valid reason it disqualifies. That control and governing is what MAKES an Empire.
One could argue though that even with out the US or Soviet’s direct involvement, many of these conflicts were inevitable. And the mass killings in Russia and China were the things we were TRYING to prevent in Korea and Vietnam. China and Russia and others have calmed way down, but remember it was less than 60-70 years ago people were killed because they wore glasses.
None of this is cut and dry. There are gooder guys and badder guys, but everyone has blood on their hands.
An empire can assert power abroad via chaos too, not just control. And an empire also doesn’t have to know precisely what it’s doing everywhere it asserts its power:
Destabilization and what I call the “creation of black holes” is the principal aim of the Empire of Chaos in the Middle East and elsewhere, but it is also clear that the US is sailing in a turbulent sea with no sense of direction and is, in fact, quite clueless in terms of what needs to be done once the task of destruction has been completed. . . . The chaos and destabilization are real, but I don’t think that’s the aim. Rather, it is a consequence of hitting fragile systems that one does not understand with the sledgehammer that is the main tool, as in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
I guess the Athenian Empire wasn’t an empire, since Athens’ hegemony was based on influence through alliances, pacts, cultural influence, and economic power, but Athens didn’t control the territory of that empire, merely having a strong influence based on the risks of not kowtowing to Athens.
The Athenians would have insisted that the Delian League wasn’t an empire, oh no, it was a cooperative mutual defence pact.
Just like the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was about free trade.
Empires that refuse to acknowledge their imperial ambitions are so common as to be a cliché. The USA is a not-empire in the same way that East Germany was a Democratic Republic.
American exceptionalism means never having to say you’re an empire. After all, these are only used to reluctantly protect the causes of justice, freedom, peace, security, and democracy worldwide out of global benevolence:
Re: “stability.” If anyone recalls the 2000 presidential campaign, there was a moment that was widely dismissed as “gotcha journalism” when a journalist asked Dubya to name the leaders of 4 countries. I think he got one right, maybe. The buried lede from that story was when Dubya strained to tell what he knew about the leader of Pakistan: “The new Pakistani general, he’s just been elected – not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that’s good news for the subcontinent.”
That’s what should come to mind when you hear the word. Bush was saying that “stability” is what happens when a dictator takes control after a coup.There was little or no comment about that, just jokes about how he failed the quiz.
