[jaqalopes]

All the facts here are fine but I'm left wondering, what are the stakes of "proving" how great America is? What good do all those aircraft carriers do me? Holding down the Chinese, I guess. But then, isn't holding the rest of the world down while the "American way of life" carries on the whole point of all this "greatness"?

At the end of WWII, America was the last rich country standing and proceeded to go round the world kicking out left-wing governments (unfriendly or not) and installing right-wing ones. The result was unprecedented profits and security for American corporations, and some of that wealth undoubtedly trickled down. But I'm left thinking about the cost. Is it any wonder Russia, Iran, South America, etc. would distrust us and want us out of their business?

The comparison at the end to the Mongols feels apt, since while their empire was undeniably great, it is very difficult to argue that they were a force for good in the lives of the people on whose backs that greatness was won.

[osigurdson]

I don't think any historical power (Assyrian, Persian, Roman, Mongolian, Japan and even Britain) can be compared to the modern US. Those were just different and far more brutal times across all of humanity. If the US had been even remotely like one of these powers at the end of WWII, they would have dominated the entire world as the only nuclear power. Yet, they choose not to do so and allowed their enemies to develop nuclear weapons on their own.

Stop beating yourselves up. The US has been an incredible force of good in the world for the most part - though not perfect of course. Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan governments on the other hand have been objectively horrible. I don't believe the "American way of life" is keeping anyone down other than those that wish to oppress others.

[srvmshr]

> Yet, they choose not to do so and allowed their enemies to develop nuclear weapons on their own.

If they had a choice to not allow them develop lethal weapons, they would by all means. McCarthyism executed a few, incarcerated several & targeted scores on charges of defense espionage, over a decade, including Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Not a great example. If the world has misunderstood this grandiosity, US should be willing to let Iranians & Koreans build their nuclear weapons, no?

> The US has been an incredible force of good in the world for the most part.

Reference needed to make such "exceptional" statement. The natural status quo would have inadvertently kept some power balance with or without US. International policing has just made the waters murkier. AFAIK US has meddled with politics of dozens of countries for political & economic gains. Count almost the whole of Latin America in it. Confessions of an economic hitman is a good read (it exaggerated several claims but the theme is consistent & accepted to be major US policies) Middle East is a quagmire, and hard to comment in this post - but what was the rationale of pitting Pakistan against India militarily for decades & now India against China. This is setting up a war of attrition on someone else's expense. As an Indian by birth, I know the numbers run into thousands of soldiers & civilians killed in conflict, mostly funded by arms & assistance to Pakistan over 80s & 90s. Could you forget Nixon sent 7th Fleet to Arabian sea with an intention to nuke India if IndoPak war persisted to favor a dictator in Pakistan [1,1a, 1b]? Not to forget Taliban was propped up by US [2] & ISIS was created in the vacuum of lawlessness left behind after Opn. Iraqi Freedom [3].

> I don't believe the "American way of life" is keeping anyone down other than those that wish to oppress others.

Space is a constraint for a full scale diatribe, but the Hispanic part of the world would like to have a word about it at least. Trade protectionism & political bullying has affected Latin American countries for several decades. Hispanic workers suffer lower wages in general than Americans, although working harder on most menial jobs [4]

1. https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-indian...

1a. https://www.firstpost.com/world/the-1971-war-when-richard-ni...

1b. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/22/us/nixon-says-he-consider...

2. https://www.agoristnexus.com/taliban/

3. https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/iraqs-power-vacuum-cou...

4. https://universitybusiness.com/press-release/study-hispanic-...

[osigurdson]

> Yet, they choose not to do so and allowed their enemies to develop nuclear weapons on their own

The US was the only nuclear power in the world from 1945 to 1949. My argument is, if the US had acted like any of the historical (and much more brutal) great powers such as Mongolians, Romans, Assyrians, Persians, etc, they would have used this to eliminate geopolitical enemies such as the Soviet Union. My argument is the US represents a fairly significant change to how great political powers operate - which is nothing like the Mongolians as the previous commenter suggests.

[srvmshr]

The US acted with a lot of contempt for "commies" as they called them. The reason they didn't attack was not because of magnanimity but the very fact that world had exhausted itself with the bloodiest war in mankind over the last 6 years. By 1949, the cat was out of the bag with the RDS-1 with USSR. Until 1952, US didn't have a viable means to fly several heavy thermonuclear devices to a heavily fortified Russia & drop it (The B-52 Flying fortress was the first viable delivery vehicle which could fly high & heavy)

And they did try, if you remember Korean War happened in 1950, which was a push to terminate communism in Asia. That failed. It was not because of a lack of bombs - but winning a war takes boots on the ground eventually. And US post-war, as mentioned, had just started ramping on its military might again after the heavy material losses. WW2 was not a PlayStation game fought with cheats. US lost lots of machinery & money in the process- and desperately needed to recuperate. Driving a weathered military to fight the brutal Red Army was unthinkable (Fun fact: Japan did not surrender because of the bombs, but an impending Russian invasion very soon. They were preparing to keep fighting on. Russian brutality was a precedent that the Imperial mandarins were not prepared to face & Sakhalin was already seeing Red Army buildup. They would have exacted their revenge for their 1905 defeat with heavy costs)

Whats the point of dropping a few bombs? US didn't have enough nuclear materials post-war immediately & USSR was a vast country sparsely populated except Moscow & Kyiv. If in doubt, just look at the map of USSR & how spread out the military bases were.

Summarily, it was not magnanimity but a lack of provocation, opportunity & resources to carry out a total annihilation of its adversaries.

edit: more context

[osigurdson]

It is impossible for me to believe that with 4 years of lead time it could not have been achieved if the US were an authoritarian dictatorship, hellbent on annihilating its enemies.

[srvmshr]

Suit yourself. You are expressing beliefs & opinions. I am basing on analysis on reasonable data & facts.