In what way. The way I see it if America pulls back, the alternative is either China picking up the mantle of a superpower and enforcing its world view ... or anarchy where local despots enforce a regional order as they see fit. Did you ever wonder why there was/is a proliferation of democracies and the lack of regional wars between local despots?
I'm genuinely curious what you imagine would replace the present American world order.
>I'm genuinely curious what you imagine would replace the present American world order.
The present American world order requires: a) utter ignorance of its war crimes by its people, b) endless debt to pay for war and war machines, c) invalidation of sovereignty of foreign nations according to American political expediency, d) the pretence of a society governed by systems of democracy while factually being run by a cabal of oligarchs, e) more spent on war per week than on health care for its citizens per year, f) the continued degradation of cultures deemed inferior by the ruling cabal.
I'd be happier if the major world power was actually democratic and used its powers to increase peoples health and well-being rather than the wholesale destruction of, and mass interference with, states not towing the American line ..
You're very good at pointing all the things that you hate about America and you're very good at wishing for an Utopia. Guess what! So is everyone else. Every human is a little arm-chair general about everything. What's hard is building something in a complex, gray world.
So I ask again, what do you think will ACTUALLY happen if America collapses or pulls back to only concern itself with what happens within its border?
Exactly. The counter factual to the world order that prevails now is not utopia. It is hegemony by some other superpower. The current candidate is China, a country ruled by a government that doesn’t even pretend to care about liberal values.
Please let me know when China has demolished a sovereign state, at the same order of magnitude as America has in the last 20 years.
China isn't great, and has its low scores in many ways, but America is far, far worse in terms of its sheer destruction of sovereign states.
Just because the iron fist is wrapped in a velvet glove doesn't make it any better for those being smashed in the face by it, and there is a huge, huge pile of dead bodies behind the American smashing...
A counterfactual is something that has not happened, but could reasonably. The question is not what China has done, since China has not been a world superpower, but how they are likely to behave once they are a superpower. When you argue against the U.S., you have to compare it against what is likely to happen, not what you would like to happen. I think Russia, the last superpower, is probably a good example of how China will behave. And there the comparison makes the U.S. look somewhere between ambiguous to relatively benevolent, depending on how you weigh various wars and geopolitical maneuverings.
I'm genuinely curious what you imagine would replace the present American world order.