Fasces wrote:No, I didn't blame their failures on the Americans.
I simply stated that you judge the American experiment by its intentions and the communist experiments by their results. You hold these societies to a standard to which you do not hold your own. The great nation of the Founding Fathers was a literal slave society built on the back of genocide and the repression of the poor and women - the constitutions of the PRC and the USSR are both strong, principled documents. Either compare intention with intention or result with result.
Comparing the idea of America with the reality of the Soviet Union in 1917, or the principles of the Soviet Union with the reality of American society in 1783 are both dishonest.
LOL when did I do this "dishonesty"? Please quote it.
Also, regarding your previous post quoting me on American hegemony, if you're going to quote me then at least quote the entire sentence, and ideally the whole paragraph with a clue of what I was responding to instead clipping part of a sentence.
It is an objective fact that at no time since the establishment of the US has the USSR or China been anything but far, far, far more horrifically brutal, undemocratic, and severely lacking in their intentions or actions regarding human rights. It's not even worth discussing. You're trying to say it's America's fault that international law and relations are the way they are, that's a joke when they're trying to deal with such horrible lying cheating bad faith actors like Stalin and Mao and Putin and Xi. Do you think Obama didn't try to improve relations with Putin and Russia? Putin is a lying sack of shit who will knife anyone in the back at every turn and has made Obama/Clinton his mortal enemy because they call him out on his BS.
Do you really think it's a coincidence that the US gets along with just about every true democratic regime in the world while the most scumbag dictatorships in the world like Russia, China, North Korea, Syria, Iran, the Taliban, Saddam Hussein etc don't get along with them and most are diplomatically isolated from most democracies in the world? I mean you're the one who actually thinks China wants to help African nations because they want to be nice as opposed to trying to secure all of the rare earth minerals they need to win the tech/AI war.
You are shifting the goalposts.
You stated:
The US had three nukes built in 1945 - one was a prototype used at the Trinity Test, and two were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
They built 7 more in 1946, and 4 more in 1947, before really hitting their stride.
First, the US was in the middle of building another atomic when Japan surrendered. Also, clearly the point of my argument wasn't to specifically argue 1945, it was to argue that post-WWII the US had a monopoly on nuclear weapons and could have forced the surrender of any other country it wanted to just like Japan, starting with its biggest threat the USSR. But rather than doing this they decided to stop fighting and build the UN. That's more than just "intentions". And like i've said numerous times, it takes 2 to tango. It's not all on America. Having Stalin, one of the most brutal and repressive dictators of the 20th century, is I would imagine not the easiest or trustworthy partner to have, I'm sure even lightyears more scummy than Putin is.
Putting aside that they didn't sign any UN human rights document before the Carter Administration, it remains clear: you excuse American imperfections and deficiencies but don't do the same for others. It's a hypocritical approach, and it erodes trust. The US, and its defenders, hold other nations to a perfect standard - but not themselves.
My argument has always been that the US, China, USSR, and every country in the world has and does do shitty things, but that per unit of power the US does much less of it than the USSR/Russia or China.
The US hasn't been perfect on human rights, far from it, they deserve criticism, but on the grand scheme of things compared to who? You seem to think China has a chance to behave more humane to other countries and peoples. That's insane. Human rights within China are a joke, they have the brutal warlord called Dalai Lama exiled in India for decades because *omg* people tend to like him and some might listen to him over the CCP, there is zero evidence whatsoever that China will come within light years of behaving even on par to how the USA has. Even compare the US to military powers the last 250 years like the British Empire or imperial France (including Napoleon), Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal....none of them are even in the same ballpark. Every great power has behaved like savage monsters far beyond the crappy things the US has done.
The vast majority of its military power since WWII has been used to prevent Stalin, Mao etc from spreading their evil dictatorships and brutal repression, human rights, and batshit crazy economics all over the world, to tell annexation imperialists like like Putin, Xi, and Kim Jong Un to suck it, to defeat evil leaders and religious extremists like Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda, ISIS etc while trying to secure oil reserves so an oil dictatorship can't hold its economy hostage like the Saudis did during the 1973 oil embargo, and prevent those nations from holocausting the Jews again. The US has done a bunch of other bad shit that deserves criticism and they should somehow be held accountable, but it also needs to be kept in perspective. Your solution is insane and extremely dangerous given the history of repressive and powerful dictatorship regimes. Your "intentions" might be good but the "results" are going to mirror the Cold War.
The US, in order to build trust in a rules based international order, needs to live up to its own standards regardless of whether or not other powers do, and this involves accepting constraints on its own sovereignty.
Yes there is some truth to this. But when it comes to regimes like Russia and China I think it could help a bit but they are still shitbags and will behave like shitbags and they have no intentions of limiting their own power, they just want more power. I am not naive to think they will ever change until their leaders change and they show they can actually treat their own people somewhat well instead of behaving like an abusive father to everyone. You're a hypocrite because you accuse me of having double standards and yet you typically post like a shill for the CCP. Why don't you criticize the CCP as much as you do America? I have almost 15 years of posting of my criticisms of US foreign and domestic policy. Its not like I was supportive of the Iraq War, or Libya, or how they handled Afghanistan and the Gitmo torture abuses.
Yes. This is necessary to build trust and create a true rules-based international order. The US, as the hegemonic power, needs to be better than the others.
In some regards, like human rights, yes. But you speak like the US hasn't tried 100 times. Why would the US limit its own power while Russia and China lie and cheat the rules they agree to and increase their own wealth and power while the US looks like a bunch of suckers, over and over again? I had a landlord several years ago who constantly tried to rip me off despite me being very nice to him and being a great tenant. Some people are just self-serving assholes and incapable of acting in good faith no matter how nice you are to them and you don't seem to understand this.
Doesn't matter. It is the Western obsessions with its supremacy and invincibility that breaks down these institutions and erodes trust in them. You are so terrified of assuming even a minor amount of risk that you are willing, in your fear, to undermine the very value system you claim to uphold. It is poisoned from the beginning, and you shouldn't be surprised when other countries don't buy into what is obviously a two-tier system of 'rules for thee, but not for me'.
Putin and the CCP are giant pieces of shit who seek to increase their wealth and power by any means necessary and the US shouldn't be wasting its time trying to broker much of anything with them because every single time they try they lie and cheat. They are not good faith actors, they never will be, they're assholes to the very core. The US should seek to undermine these regimes by any means necessary save starting unnecessary violence because that's exactly what China and Russia are doing to them. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result makes someone an idiot and a naive chump. When a bunch of abusive dictators are trying to crush you and have never had any interest in peace despite countless attempts you tell them to go fuck themselves and then you crush them. You can keep searching for peace, and the intent is admirable, but it's also extremely naive. If you tried 100 times and always got fucked over maybe you would see things differently.
You're Neville Chamberlain, and I'm Winston Churchill, and that's the long and short of it.
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