Are you aware that this is how America is increasingly perceived around the world?
It's not a 'free world' when America dictates and the others are supposed to just take orders.
May be you're fine with that, feeling on top of the food chain, but everyone needs friends at some point.
What does the 'free' in 'free world' even mean any more? You're not allowed to express your opinion on college campuses anymore, (lack of domestic freedom), and if you're a country, you're increasingly facing trade barriers from the US, (lack of freedom in commerce).
I'm not saying that as a sovereign country you don't have a right to impose these restrictions. I simply wish the US would treat other countries as sovereign.
"That same ice cream shop owner thanked me repeatedly for my help in invading and ultimately overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003. I told him that Canada didn’t take part in the invasion, but he didn’t care. Kurdish people were brutally persecuted by Saddam for over 30 years, and look back on the Saddam years with pure terror. The shop owner refused to take payment for the ice cream and offered that I stay with his family in their apartment upstairs."
https://goodperson.substack.com/p/notes-on-my-travels-in-ira...
In Afghanistan, you saw their desperate attempts to flee the country as the US withdrew. Nonetheless, it was necessary to reduce our warmongering and military footprint. Afghani women being forced into burqas is ultimately not our business.
In Venezuela, apparently, the main complaint is that Trump didn't go even further: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas...
In Cuba, on the subreddit, there is a discussion of Trump saying that "Cuba is next" (after Iran). A mod of the subreddit writes (translated): "I am in Cuba, and I would say that 95% of the people here—those I know or have spoken with—are reacting to this with hope. That is something that many people on the outside do not see." See link below:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cuba/comments/1s5s1ip/trump_cuba_is...
And I'm sure you could find a few Greenlandic Inuit who are tired of Danish colonialism as well.
My point is that simply "asking people" is not a particularly reliable or effective method. It's much better to stay complicit, reduce military spending, and avoid being a warmonger.
It's also a delusion to think that the world is free under US hegemony. It's mostly better for those who cooperate, and the incentives are good. But it's not "free". The only entity free to do whatever it wants under US hegemony, is the US.
The unoriginal whining is mostly about China or any country that isn't the US, really. Asia is unimaginative and can only copy. Europe is lazy, blah blah blah. Because Americans who can't take being told that their country isn't #1 in the morality olympics seem to also not know much about other countries at all.
Like look at all the whining about China being communist. It's fcking hilarious. They've been an authoritarian, state-run capitalist country for decades by now. Just google their social spending vs other countries, will you.
The existence better critique out there is irrelevant if you don't take the argumentt in front of you on its strenghts.
> Day every day the same unoriginal whining because it is hard to call it something as sophisticated as critique, can be heard all over the reddit.
Criticism of a country with military bases across the whole world doesn't have to be hip to be correct. No one cares what you think about reddit or how hipster you like your political takes to be and this doesn't exempt you from having to argue about the concrete facts in a discussion forum.
> While at the same time no one bothers to critique CCP to the same extent because we simply are not paid for doing this. No one is interested in non profit repeating the same facts about china every single day.
You are so wrong about no one criticizing the CCP that's it's difficult to believe that this statement is sincere. Maybe I could attribute it to selection bias as you're on an american forum? There's also a cottage industry around anti-Chinese propaganda besides the western funded government propaganda machine that is in place for the last decades.
> We are just content knowing that china is not some sort of “saviour” or alternative.
Oh but they are! China is a concrete alternative for an economic partner for most parts of the world, but only if the US doesn't sponsor a military coup or invade your country in response. If they you can get away from Americans threats, China is also a more reliable partner with much more stable policies and much less likely to sabotage your elections, secretly pay your politics and judges and manipulate your markets.
> It is an enemy of the free world. I try to not use things produced by my adversary to not fund my own doom.
This has no basis in reality. The US is the actual enemy of the free world and has been since ww2: occupying countries, sabotaging their domestic politic disputes, staging military coups, bombings, etc. Whatever justifications for those actions after the fact do not make any other country more free.
Another reason I'm eager to leave NATO is leaving will help cut down on our military base count.
I expect some Europeans will protest, the same way Kurds protested when Trump pulled us out of Syria:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz-WKu881Yc
We'll have to stay strong and ignore their protests. It's the only way to reduce our military footprint and warmongering tendencies.
NATO exists because the US won't allow any other global hegemon to exist. US backing of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are for that same reason. I meant that as a neutral statement; large regional powers also do not like each other when situated too close, that's why India and Russia are friendly, and why Russia and China have a complicated relationship despite both being opposed to the US.
Has quite a lot of good also come out of that? To the Europeans, yes. But it's not like the US is doing it from the bottom of their hearts.
And it's not like the US ever intervened in the Middle East for anything other than oil, historically. You go there and piss off the hardcore islamists / dictators, and make use of the Kurds as local fighting forces, and then you abandon them to the revenge of said islamists? Ofc they're pissed.