[specproc]

I think something Brits don't fully understand is the extent of our vassalage under the US.

We do, as you rightly note have quite the history of a policy of imperialist land grabs, now we just play a support function to somebody else's empire.

[foldr]

Ok, but you can say the same for the US. It also has vastly more troops in Germany than Iraq, and it also does not control the Iraqi government. And the less said about Afghanistan the better. So where is the land grab?

[specproc]

One does not need to dictate every item of policy to control a country, one just needs to ensure that there's alignment on strategic issues. I think this was America's key point of learning when it took over the reins of the European empires after WW2.

In Germany, historically the strategic issue was anti-communism, but now it serves as a military logistics hub; in Iraq, it's about trade in oil in dollars and access to Iraqi oil fields for US companies.

The UK is more complex and more total, ranging from support in the security council, to access to markets for US goods and services, to stationing of US troops and hardware. Most of our economy is geared up for the benefit of US investment funds.

Any government, whether it be Germany, Iraq or the UK, which tries to alter any of these fundamentals will quickly find out the extent to which their land has been grabbed.

[foldr]

Or, to put it more succinctly, Iraq is occupied by the US in about the same sense that Germany is. And while the US no doubt exerts influence over Germany in part via its military power, I think the position that the US military presence in Germany is part of a “land grab” would be a rather fringe one.

[specproc]

It depends where you're sat and when. It's almost certainly a fringe perspective in the US, because I don't believe American's really think about it that much.

Whether troop presence is viewed as occupation or not in each of the >50 [1] countries currently "hosting" troops is very much a matter of personal perspective, the fringeness of which will vary from country to country.

I don't believe that it really changes the fact that yes, US troops occupy the UK, Germany and Iraq, and many more. The most substantial deployments, e.g., Germany, Japan, South Korea, and until recently Iraq and Afghanistan, were very much the product of invasions. At the time of those invasions, many of those on the receiving end would have very much felt on the receiving end of a land grab. It's just their grandchildren have been conditioned to view this state of affairs as natural.

The general pattern is "bomb the bejesus" [2] out of a country. Plant base. Install a friendly government and ensure a favourable operating environment for US interests. The UK is an exception in that it wasn't bombed by the US, but the upshot is the same. We're a wholely-owned subsidiary of corporate America, and a giant aircraft carrier on the other side of the Atlantic -- as the US's latest adventure in Iran has clearly demonstrated.

You may quibble over the "land" in land-grab, but the strategic bits (e.g., oil fields, bases) are very much owned, and the territory as a whole controlled by pliant governments.

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea...

[^2]: Kissenger, 1972

[thegrimmest]

I don't think it's fair to compare US foreign policy to actual imperialism as practiced by the Soviets, the British, etc. The US does not maintain colonies, and, as you point out, does not even attempt to exert total control. Pursuing your interests and forcing total political and cultural domination are not equivalent. The US is more than happy for Germans to be German, Japanese to be Japanese, etc, as long as US interests are prioritized. This is clearly not the case for other major powers.

Nations (and people) exist in an ecosystem, and so will always behave accordingly, and always in their own interests. There are some emergent properties of ecosystems, one of which is that optimal behaviour is to acquire the maximum you are physically capable of defending, not the minimum that you need to survive.

It's perfectly reasonable for the US, the big fish in the pond, to leverage its advantages accordingly, and to the maximum. It would be a disservice to the US people if it did not. Smaller fish should indeed be glad that the big fish is as placid and strategically (rather than ideologically) motivated as it is, given the historically experienced alternatives.

[specproc]

> I don't think it's fair to compare US foreign policy to actual imperialism as practiced by the Soviets, the British, etc.

All empires function differently. The modes of empire were very different between the British and other recent European empires, which were very different to the Soviets, the Ottomans, the Romans.

Empires are heterogeneous even within themselves over time and across Geographies. The British empire took a very different form in Ireland, to the Americas, to India, to Kenya.

Similarly the Soviet experience was very different between the Ukraine, the Baltics, Georgia, Tajikistan; or in non-Soviet Warsaw pact countries, which were -- as for most countries in the American empire -- nominally independent, but practically not, see Hungary and Czechoslovakia for particularly pertinent examples.

Ultimately, this is a duck test thing. The American empire looks like an empire, acts like an empire, so to my mind it very much is an Empire.

> The US does not maintain colonies

This, I'm sorry, is categorically false. America has colonies in American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

I'd go further to suggest, that as Israel's most substantial economic and political backer, Israel could be considered something akin to a US colony in the Middle East.