I never understood the good effects of American hegemony until they started breaking down. While I can’t approve of the evils, e.g. Iraq War, creating an international security order has enabled secure trade between countries and continents that has brought 75 years of peace to Europe, allowed the rise of China, and brought billions out of poverty by removing many of the limitations of geography. That is a great good, and it’s falling apart. The near future is going to get scary unless everyone begins cooperating in a way they don’t seem willing to do.
It's not clear whether you mean it this way or not, but the impression I get from your post is that you're implying millenials are to blame for the downfall of America. It's hard not to take offense to that.
No need to take offense when Millennials control such a small share of wealth and political power, though I can't decide if that makes it better, or worse.
I can't figure out how to deep link my Data Cube, but you can see from the Office of Personnel Management that the Federal workforce is old: https://www.fedscope.opm.gov/
> Can we please get this engraved on the headstone of the millennial generation?
The order started breaking down in the 90s when the oldest Millennials were in elementary school, accelerated in the 00s when the youngest Millennials were in preschool, and was formalized in 2016 mostly by older generations. The big problem that I see is that while bits and pieces get taught the artificial trade security brought on by the Bretton Woods order were never taught! I only just started learning about it recently and I'm a bit pissed off that this wasn't in 20th Century History 101.
People have no intuition for the incredible bubble we live in, the historical uniqueness of it, and the immense work it takes to keep it alive.
The living memory of the post-WW2 order is fading and most people basically don't understand that we're living in that house, that it's very real, and that it takes maintenance.
Peace isn't the absence of war, it's the balance of power, and the recognition that not all powers are the same.
Without US relationship with Egypt, it would fall and with it the Suez, and they'd be at war with Israel very quickly. 'Real War'. Without US support of House of Saud and 5th fleet, Saudi Arabia and Iran would be probably at war. And that's just one region.
It's complicated and there is no way 'not to play the game' as in a power vacuum it will definitely be total chaos - so we have to figure out how to balance the power in some reasonable way.
Your neighbours with the biggest houses, that they built themselves, have a lot of tools and even a few weapons. They have a pretty good peace between them, and sometimes intervene in domestic disputes elsewhere.
If they didn't patrol the roads then it would be way too dangerous to go out on them, and many of your neighbours would be in vendetta wars.
The best thing you can do is act responsibly, and join the group of responsible acting neighbours. They frankly don't really have a lot of interest in patrolling the streets in general. It makes them feel good but it's really, really costly.
The 'new players' can only emerge with baseline security and they do not 'take' a 'piece of the pie' - they make it for themselves.
Europe is not rich because it has 'natural resources' - it's rich because it has stability and it's organized: NATO/US Nuclear Umbrella + social and moral order, and institutions from liberal democracies, to education, to industry etc..
Poor nations are mostly that way because they are completely corrupt and have a hard time building standards, institutions and regular order - and / or - they can't have those because they have security problems, often which go hand in hand.
Without that, money and equipment invested is squandered.
Korea and Japan made very efficient use of post-war re-investment, because they knew what to do with the electricity grid, and how to put it to good use, and to maintain it.
Rwanda - not so much.
The only people trying to challenge the Post WW2 order are 1) toxic and corrupt states and 2) naive people among the proles, on reddit.
There is definitely a 3rd grouping, with some degree of legitimacy, but they are more rare. The biggest group among them would be isolationist types. But usually they are not in good faith, usually they are just in group #1.
This is a naively exceptionalist view of America‘s role in the world.
> enabled secure trade between countries
Unless you’re Venezuela, Iran or (until recently) Cuba, or anyone that didn’t play ball with the US in the Cold War era and after. Then you get sanctioned to hell and your ships seized for daring to trade with anyone else.
> brought 75 years of peace to Europe
If you’re referring to WWII, the US had very little role in ending the war in Europe.
> allowed the rise of China
It is Chinese economic policy that allowed the rise of China. The US literally engaged in a trade war against China.
> brought billions out of poverty by removing many of the limitations of geography
Economic globalization was brought on by the development of nuclear weapons, not by the generosity of any individual country.
Which included British, Canadian and French forces. Still, US military contribution was bigger than in WW1. The main US contribution was industrial and financial, the blood in Europe was mostly from the USSR.
The war in Europe was won with Soviet blood. The failure of the Germans to take Moscow in 1941 effectively ended any chance of a German victory. While the U.S. made major financial and material contributions it's clear the Soviets were going to win the war before the Americans entered it.
I'm arguing against your assertion that the belief that America had little to do with the victory in Europe is bonkers level delusional. We did supply the Soviets with food and trucks but Soviet industrial output was greater than Germany's and when the Germans didn't take Moscow the chance of victory was zero. American aid didn't arrive to the Soviet Union soon enough to change anything. It just helped end the war sooner.
"Nikita Khrushchev, ... addressed directly the significance of Lend-lease aid in his memoirs:
I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war."
Just how much lend-lease contributed for the Sovjet war effort is still debated. I wouldn't go with memoirs, but numbers. And in 1941, the USSR received very little from the US. Later on, sure. Especially aviation fuel and trucks.
That's why I said, US money and gear, Soviet blood and British stubbornness.
Edit: My personal opinion is, that lend-lease ended the war early. Germany was outproduced by the British and the Soviets alone, they also had the raw material advantage. And the man power. It would have taken a lot longer, with a the dire consequences. In 1945/46 so, the Soviets would have taken Berlin, one way or the other, D-Day or not.
Don't forget that at least one of those first gen nukes was initially earmarked for Germany, before VE. Even if they decided not to use one in Europe, the demonstration in Japan would still be persuasive.
Anything that required a time frame of later than 1945 would've likely been too late to matter.
Yep. IMHO Germany lost WW1 when they failed to take Paris early on. And they lost WW2 when they were stopped before Moscow. Everything after that was just delaying the inevitable. And killing millions. Same for the Japanese, Yamamoto got his timeline quite right before Pearl Harbor.
I recommend reading "Wages of Destruction". Historiography doesn't rely on just one person making a claim. That's just one small quote. The German war plans indicated that they simply didn't have the ability to sufficiently supply forces as far east as Moscow for a prolonged period of time. That the Soviet army was not utterly destroyed by the time the Germans go close to Moscow effectively meant there was no chance for a German victory.
American food and trucks didn't arrive in vast numbers until well after the Moscow 1941 campaign. America helped end the war sooner than it would have ended had it just been the Germans vs. the Soviets but America was not the reason for victory in Europe.
If you read "Wages of Destruction" you'll see a greater number of references. I don't dispute the fact that we did create and distribute a lot of supplies. I claim that those supplies didn't win the war but rather shortened it.
EDIT: I corrected a mistake on the number of references.
> If you’re referring to WWII, the US had very little role in ending the war in Europe.
While today we understate the role of the Soviet Union - who suffered the highest casualties by far - in winning WWII, Britain and the Soviet Union probably wouldn't have survived without American Lend-Lease aid. While the famous quote attributed to Stalin - "the British gave time, the Americans gave money, and the Russians gave blood" - may be apocryphal, Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs:
"I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponso...
"The United States has at various times in recent history provided support to terrorist and paramilitary organizations around the world. It has also provided assistance to numerous authoritarian regimes that have used state terrorism as a tool of repression"
most importantly of all though it is unclear why the USA invaded middle east and directly caused the deaths of millions of people, and has engaged in 20 years of non stop warfare. 23 years if you count yugoslavian intervention.
But at the same time everyone knows if they had work with one ally it'd be the US because they're less terrible than everyone else.
I'm not American but I know if I had to put my life in the hands of one other country than my own it'd definitely be the US, and I'd be pretty confident in doing that.
are they? It seems like russia and china are far less militarily destructive as an ally than anyone else, and much more stable. this might sound like a propaganda talking point, but it's true!
sure, russia annex part of ukraine a few years ago. but it hasn't attempted to crush and destroy nearly every country in north africa and the middle east
I think one would be more likely to be shot to death in the street in the US than Russia or China. Especially if I was darker than a paper bag. (edit: when considering being shot by a police officer or other government employee, not any shooting).
The area where it does become a discussion is in terms of political prisoners. in the US, political dissent is punished in a decentralised way; people lose their bank accounts, access to payment providers, are erased from social media, etc. This is framed in the idea that large corporations have the 'freedom' to not do business with you. in russia or china, it is certainly more direct.
In specific cases we have different social constructs due to propaganda. Edward Snowden or Julian Assange are of course traitors, but Navalny is a the hero of the hour. the US state department will criticise any third world country, but they run secret CIA prisons in places like guatanemo bay, kandahar .
Why does Guantanamo bay exist? It is totally illegal under both US and international law. Why does the CIA arrest people from third party countries and put them in infinite detention? What about that plane that was forced to land in Belarus, a tragedy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
My central point is that a lot of your ideas here are US centric, perhaps Eurocentric. Most other countries are not actually that bad relative to USA or Europe, it is just that there is immense propaganda to erase any wrongdoing of USA/EU from public memory.
> in the US, political dissent is punished in a decentralised way; people lose their bank accounts, access to payment providers, are erased from social media, etc
Did Biden suffer any of this when he was challenging Trump?
Biden is however the establishment. Trump is the outsider which has had these things occur. This is really not within the sphere of 'dissent' in any case, as we discuss here major politicians.
Ok so are anti-establishment politicians in the US targetted? Such as someone from who wants to deconstruct the establishment like Sanders? Oh he's treated with relative respect and allowed to campaign? Oh ok... so that's unlike China and Russia then?
But that's a private party deciding their own internal party issues. That's private individuals, not the state. I don't really mind or care what a private party does within their own systems.
That's not even remotely similar to, for example, the state arresting him.
If we're talking about the US over the last 75 years, let's talk about Russia over the last 75 years. That means things like Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia 1968.
As for China, the rub on them isn't how they treat their allies. It's how they treat their own citizens. Between famines and Red Terror purges, China is not the model I want.
Yes, but I wasn't talking about the US over the last 75 years. I was responding in particular to this:
"But at the same time everyone knows if they had work with one ally it'd be the US because they're less terrible than everyone else."
Looking at the next 75years, China and Russia do seem like more reasonable allies for a number of states. Most of the world has observed that if they don't have their own nuclear weapons, they are liable to be the next libya/iraq/afghanistan.. wait the list goes on:
So China, which is currently bullying all its neighbours in southeast Asia, most of which have good ties with the US? The same China that constantly pokes at the boundaries of every single nation it borders?
And Russia, which literally annexed a neighbouring country.
I'll take my chances with the US, thank you very much.
It's probably the result of Hollywood propaganda but even after US had done terrible things to our country (listed above too), I have the sentiment most people here would welcome the US right now.
If I have to put into words what makes the US feels different, maybe it's the racial diversity of the US? You could see people that look like you in the US doing fine* so you can imagine that you can work it out with the US too. You need to learn and change a lot to integrate with more homogeneous superpowers.
*Yes I know the US is not perfect on the racial equality front but I do feel like the homogeneity of other countries mask their problems in this area.
American hegemony drastically reduces the power of local warlords, the sovereignty argument is exactly that. That's also how you have the peace.
The problem is, you don't have a say on it. This will upset the people who disagree with the American way of doing things and everything will crumble when US falters.
Not having a say on it, also makes you susceptible to internal US politics. You can find yourself in a war or under an ambargo due to the election campaign of an US president. Iran, for example, had their deal for normalisation of the relationship however they become a part if the internal US politics and election campaign(Trump v.s. Obama) and everything changed for 83 million people of that country.
There’s also the risk of a corrupt US president actually trading with the aspiring local warlords, enabling them for personal gains. in that case you are both out of peace and control over your fate.
S. Korea, Japan and Germany are not vassal states.
Neither is Egypt, Israel or Saudi Arabia.
It's different in every case, and there's a lot of factors, but mostly it's for mutual benefit.
The Japanese and German elite are very happy to have the Americans there because it serves as a buffer.
It's probably more complicated in Egypt, but the military is one of the only civic institutions with integrity, the citizens actually know that, and that it's because they are backed/supported by the US. Even on the 'Arab Street' they have an instinct for what that balance means even if it's obviously more difficult for some.
But if Egypt really wanted the US to leave they could make them leave. Same in most places.
I would attribute those good things to the ideological competition during the Cold War. America could not win by force alone, but it had to win people to its side and show that their way of living was better than the alternative. Things started going downhill soon after America won and became a hegemony. While the 90s promised a better future for everyone, the 2000s saw the beginning of the "war against reality", as there was no longer any existential threat to keep various political ambitions in check.
The article is behind a paywall, so I can only comment on the first paragraph. But man, is that a misrepresentation of history. Totally ignoring the EU predecessors, the German reunification...
Sure, the Marshall Plan was probably the best idea the US had after WW2. But drawing a direct line between that an the current EU? Really?
Edit: Thanks to archive, I read the article. No idea where it wants to go. American security against the USSR? Culture? Economy? Finance? Choose one! Never mind that during the Cold War the current EU didn't exist in its current form. Nor did the Euro. And were is the explanation just how American history of running a continent can be applied to Europe?
This article is very light on substance and has a questionable premise. A European customs union was a German aim of the first world war, not something foisted in them by America. To paraphrase Timothy Snyder, an actual historian, the best way to understand the EU is as a soft landing place for empires that have lost their possessions. He does some very good lectures about this available on YouTube.
Depends on where the definition for "internet" is coming from. I, for one, do believe that from the point of view that the foundation of the internet resides in ArpaNet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET), which is indeed an American invention.
71 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] threadThis is a one-sentence forward to some future history of the 21st century yet to be written.
Can we please get this engraved on the headstone of the millennial generation?
I can't figure out how to deep link my Data Cube, but you can see from the Office of Personnel Management that the Federal workforce is old: https://www.fedscope.opm.gov/
Screenshot for those who don't want to wrangle the Data Cube UI: https://i.imgur.com/0XQ1LEj.png
The order started breaking down in the 90s when the oldest Millennials were in elementary school, accelerated in the 00s when the youngest Millennials were in preschool, and was formalized in 2016 mostly by older generations. The big problem that I see is that while bits and pieces get taught the artificial trade security brought on by the Bretton Woods order were never taught! I only just started learning about it recently and I'm a bit pissed off that this wasn't in 20th Century History 101.
The living memory of the post-WW2 order is fading and most people basically don't understand that we're living in that house, that it's very real, and that it takes maintenance.
Peace isn't the absence of war, it's the balance of power, and the recognition that not all powers are the same.
Without US relationship with Egypt, it would fall and with it the Suez, and they'd be at war with Israel very quickly. 'Real War'. Without US support of House of Saud and 5th fleet, Saudi Arabia and Iran would be probably at war. And that's just one region.
It's complicated and there is no way 'not to play the game' as in a power vacuum it will definitely be total chaos - so we have to figure out how to balance the power in some reasonable way.
Your neighbours with the biggest houses, that they built themselves, have a lot of tools and even a few weapons. They have a pretty good peace between them, and sometimes intervene in domestic disputes elsewhere.
If they didn't patrol the roads then it would be way too dangerous to go out on them, and many of your neighbours would be in vendetta wars.
The best thing you can do is act responsibly, and join the group of responsible acting neighbours. They frankly don't really have a lot of interest in patrolling the streets in general. It makes them feel good but it's really, really costly.
The 'new players' can only emerge with baseline security and they do not 'take' a 'piece of the pie' - they make it for themselves.
Europe is not rich because it has 'natural resources' - it's rich because it has stability and it's organized: NATO/US Nuclear Umbrella + social and moral order, and institutions from liberal democracies, to education, to industry etc..
Poor nations are mostly that way because they are completely corrupt and have a hard time building standards, institutions and regular order - and / or - they can't have those because they have security problems, often which go hand in hand.
Without that, money and equipment invested is squandered.
Korea and Japan made very efficient use of post-war re-investment, because they knew what to do with the electricity grid, and how to put it to good use, and to maintain it.
Rwanda - not so much.
The only people trying to challenge the Post WW2 order are 1) toxic and corrupt states and 2) naive people among the proles, on reddit.
There is definitely a 3rd grouping, with some degree of legitimacy, but they are more rare. The biggest group among them would be isolationist types. But usually they are not in good faith, usually they are just in group #1.
> enabled secure trade between countries
Unless you’re Venezuela, Iran or (until recently) Cuba, or anyone that didn’t play ball with the US in the Cold War era and after. Then you get sanctioned to hell and your ships seized for daring to trade with anyone else.
> brought 75 years of peace to Europe
If you’re referring to WWII, the US had very little role in ending the war in Europe.
> allowed the rise of China
It is Chinese economic policy that allowed the rise of China. The US literally engaged in a trade war against China.
> brought billions out of poverty by removing many of the limitations of geography
Economic globalization was brought on by the development of nuclear weapons, not by the generosity of any individual country.
Wow. Except, you know, for Normandy.
This is bonkers-tier delusional.
> very little
You:
> major
But you're arguing... against them? Right?
"Nikita Khrushchev, ... addressed directly the significance of Lend-lease aid in his memoirs:
I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war."
That's why I said, US money and gear, Soviet blood and British stubbornness.
Edit: My personal opinion is, that lend-lease ended the war early. Germany was outproduced by the British and the Soviets alone, they also had the raw material advantage. And the man power. It would have taken a lot longer, with a the dire consequences. In 1945/46 so, the Soviets would have taken Berlin, one way or the other, D-Day or not.
Anything that required a time frame of later than 1945 would've likely been too late to matter.
American food and trucks didn't arrive in vast numbers until well after the Moscow 1941 campaign. America helped end the war sooner than it would have ended had it just been the Germans vs. the Soviets but America was not the reason for victory in Europe.
if you follow the link then you can see additional assessments.
EDIT: I corrected a mistake on the number of references.
I don't think you're making the point you think you're making.
While today we understate the role of the Soviet Union - who suffered the highest casualties by far - in winning WWII, Britain and the Soviet Union probably wouldn't have survived without American Lend-Lease aid. While the famous quote attributed to Stalin - "the British gave time, the Americans gave money, and the Russians gave blood" - may be apocryphal, Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs:
"I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponso... "The United States has at various times in recent history provided support to terrorist and paramilitary organizations around the world. It has also provided assistance to numerous authoritarian regimes that have used state terrorism as a tool of repression"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia "they werne't civilians, they were policemen, promise!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinwiesenlager operating their own concentration camps, not reporting the deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Agent_Orange_on_the...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_U.S._...
it is still not clear why USA completely destroyed libya either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_...
most importantly of all though it is unclear why the USA invaded middle east and directly caused the deaths of millions of people, and has engaged in 20 years of non stop warfare. 23 years if you count yugoslavian intervention.
But at the same time everyone knows if they had work with one ally it'd be the US because they're less terrible than everyone else.
I'm not American but I know if I had to put my life in the hands of one other country than my own it'd definitely be the US, and I'd be pretty confident in doing that.
sure, russia annex part of ukraine a few years ago. but it hasn't attempted to crush and destroy nearly every country in north africa and the middle east
...
I thought so.
The area where it does become a discussion is in terms of political prisoners. in the US, political dissent is punished in a decentralised way; people lose their bank accounts, access to payment providers, are erased from social media, etc. This is framed in the idea that large corporations have the 'freedom' to not do business with you. in russia or china, it is certainly more direct.
In specific cases we have different social constructs due to propaganda. Edward Snowden or Julian Assange are of course traitors, but Navalny is a the hero of the hour. the US state department will criticise any third world country, but they run secret CIA prisons in places like guatanemo bay, kandahar .
Why does Guantanamo bay exist? It is totally illegal under both US and international law. Why does the CIA arrest people from third party countries and put them in infinite detention? What about that plane that was forced to land in Belarus, a tragedy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
My central point is that a lot of your ideas here are US centric, perhaps Eurocentric. Most other countries are not actually that bad relative to USA or Europe, it is just that there is immense propaganda to erase any wrongdoing of USA/EU from public memory.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/12/russia.israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia_Airlines_Flight_1812 for instance, you can't even find above article on google if you google "ukraine shoot down russian plane"
Did Biden suffer any of this when he was challenging Trump?
What does someone who challenges Putin suffer?
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/banking-financial-institu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_use_by_Donald_Tru...
If we wanted to look at examples of more small scale political dissent in USA:
https://gazette.com/news/reporter-who-broke-story-on-clinton...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)#...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Valley_shootout#The_sh...
Ok so are anti-establishment politicians in the US targetted? Such as someone from who wants to deconstruct the establishment like Sanders? Oh he's treated with relative respect and allowed to campaign? Oh ok... so that's unlike China and Russia then?
the democrat establishment quietly removed him (edit: bernie sanders, 2016) in the background, and then this was leaked afterward by wikileaks.
That's not even remotely similar to, for example, the state arresting him.
Maybe, but of course this is a deceptive statistic, since the murder rate in Russia is higher than in the US.
> I think one would be more likely to be shot to death in the street in the US than Russia … by a police officer or other government employee.
As for China, the rub on them isn't how they treat their allies. It's how they treat their own citizens. Between famines and Red Terror purges, China is not the model I want.
"But at the same time everyone knows if they had work with one ally it'd be the US because they're less terrible than everyone else."
Looking at the next 75years, China and Russia do seem like more reasonable allies for a number of states. Most of the world has observed that if they don't have their own nuclear weapons, they are liable to be the next libya/iraq/afghanistan.. wait the list goes on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involv...
And Russia, which literally annexed a neighbouring country.
I'll take my chances with the US, thank you very much.
If I have to put into words what makes the US feels different, maybe it's the racial diversity of the US? You could see people that look like you in the US doing fine* so you can imagine that you can work it out with the US too. You need to learn and change a lot to integrate with more homogeneous superpowers.
*Yes I know the US is not perfect on the racial equality front but I do feel like the homogeneity of other countries mask their problems in this area.
American hegemony drastically reduces the power of local warlords, the sovereignty argument is exactly that. That's also how you have the peace.
The problem is, you don't have a say on it. This will upset the people who disagree with the American way of doing things and everything will crumble when US falters.
Not having a say on it, also makes you susceptible to internal US politics. You can find yourself in a war or under an ambargo due to the election campaign of an US president. Iran, for example, had their deal for normalisation of the relationship however they become a part if the internal US politics and election campaign(Trump v.s. Obama) and everything changed for 83 million people of that country.
There’s also the risk of a corrupt US president actually trading with the aspiring local warlords, enabling them for personal gains. in that case you are both out of peace and control over your fate.
S. Korea, Japan and Germany are not vassal states.
Neither is Egypt, Israel or Saudi Arabia.
It's different in every case, and there's a lot of factors, but mostly it's for mutual benefit.
The Japanese and German elite are very happy to have the Americans there because it serves as a buffer.
It's probably more complicated in Egypt, but the military is one of the only civic institutions with integrity, the citizens actually know that, and that it's because they are backed/supported by the US. Even on the 'Arab Street' they have an instinct for what that balance means even if it's obviously more difficult for some.
But if Egypt really wanted the US to leave they could make them leave. Same in most places.
e: "ME" just means "collectively remembering something one way despite it being another", not an attempt to speculate why. Relevant: https://www.vintag.es/2016/08/walter-botts-man-who-modeled-u... :)
Sure, the Marshall Plan was probably the best idea the US had after WW2. But drawing a direct line between that an the current EU? Really?
Edit: Thanks to archive, I read the article. No idea where it wants to go. American security against the USSR? Culture? Economy? Finance? Choose one! Never mind that during the Cold War the current EU didn't exist in its current form. Nor did the Euro. And were is the explanation just how American history of running a continent can be applied to Europe?
Choose all of them.
But it's British.