China, Russia, Iran, and the ressurection of empires

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https://www.aei.org/op-eds/china-russia ... ode%20Asia.

I guess this is why we are headed for World War 3.

Empires never went away. The British pulled out of their colonies, so political empire was substituted for economic empire. Ruling a foreign land against their will is imperialism which most will consider Bad. But ruling a foreign land indirectly through corporations and NGO's and diplomacy to put pressure on lawmakers is considered very acceptable. Many would argue that a state is within its rights to intervene violently to protect those economic assets which corporations use to maintain empire in all but name (eg: any number of countries in the Americas that the USA intervened in on behalf of corporations). It's the same as when feudalism was ending. As the nobility were losing their monopoly on political power, Thomas Hobbes advocated the nobility maintain their influence through capitalism. The nobles maintained their power not only by trying to undo democracy, but also by using economic influence to maintain the social hierarchy that benefits them. So too do former colonial powers maintain influence in these places with money rather than subjugation. It's soft power, rather than hard power.
It's funny to see someone from the America Enterprise Institute lament these countries spreading influence in other countries through soft power, when that's exactly what is done by the US government and US corporations--the same corporations whose interests are furthered by places like the AEI. If you don't think America is still an empire, then idk what to say to you. Many Americans seem to think it's perfectly okay when they do it but not when anyone else does. It's part of why we have so many enemies to begin with.

How about you simply stfu and quit generalizing all Americans as bad people? And I'm well aware of the fact that we are an empire in all but name. We're probably in the process of our own collapase which causes me to despise the people like you all the more.

I didnt generalize all Americans (of which I am one) as bad people. I said Americans often are fine with these things when America does them but clutch their pearls when another country does it. You don't have to be a bad person to not realize that in America and most other countries we are raised to have a double standard where it is more okay for our country to do X than it is for other countries to do X.
I'm not sure what I've done to earn your hatred here. Cheering the decline of the American Empire always struck me as a perfectly logical, moral thing to do. I'll cheer just the same when Russia or China finally balkanize.

can confirm from experience, two of my american friends criticised the historical british empire, but when I pointed out their own complicity in current acts, just as bad, through working at US corporations they stopped replying.

You just answered your own question right there. I'm very tired of all the self-loathing Americans online demoralizing their own countrymen by saying our country needs to be destroyed because "Drrrr America is capitalist and racist!! !". Who in the holy f**k gives the people like you the authority to decide that it would be "moral" for my country to suffer and be destroyed?

I wish people like you really could leave this country and go live in North Korea or anywhere else and let the few sane Americans left figure out how to fix this deep mess we're in without going full fascist with Trumpism or letting the entire damn country burn to the ground.

But I'm wasting my breath here. You can't fix the MAGA cult and you can't fix the people who are so brainwashed by [insert some other word besides leftist/progressive/"woke" here] propaganda into thinking that their own country needs to be utterly destroyed.

Yeah, I don't care if I get ridiculed or in trouble for saying this truth. Americans have a right to exist too and I hope more of us start standing up to the people like you who wish to see their own country destroyed. Every society has a right to protect and feed itself, empire or not.

You do not acknowledge that I cheer the decline of any empire--America or otherwise. What, would I seem less biased if I cheered the decline of other empires, but believed that my own country is a special case where the same standards don't apply? Is that more objective? Do I seem reasonable if I treat my own country like a special snowflake?
I don't want all Americans to suffer, I just don't want America to have the disproportionate influence it has had on world affairs for the last 200 years. That doesn't strike me as particularly sadistic.
America is not some irreplaceable unique snowflake country. Me going to North Korea or wherever else and being tortured isn't going to change by belief in that. Americans' belief in their own country's exceptionalism is insulting and makes us seem obliviously un-objective.

I didnt have to, because wishing destruction on those empires is equally sh***y of you too.

And you are twisting a bunch of words around here.

"Blah blah blah I don't want ALL Americans to suffer! But I still want this country destroyed!"

That's the biggest full-of-shit statement I ever heard. You're clearly clueless about exactly what happens any time an empire falls. It causes a LOT suffering for everybody both benefiting from the empire AND those living under the rule of the empire.

Oh and quit treating me like some flag-waving yankee doodle tooting nationalist just because I call people like you out on their crap and because I DON'T want MY country destroyed by the useful idiots who do the bidding for our enemies overseas by exploiting that annoying collective guilt that we only find in Western Civilizations.