[reitanqild]

Don't forget that there are a lot of countries around the world that borders to former USSR that are very happy with American military superiority.

My home country is one of them. USSR at some point had stamps where half of our contry was painted in as part of the empire, and rich in resources and strategic as it was there is a fair chance they had invaded us hadn't it been for the Americans. Most of us prefer different degrees of rich as in USA versus everybody equal(ly poor) as in USSR so we are mostly happy.

Understand that I cannot defend everything every American has ever done but on average I'd feel much safer with an American soldier pointing a gun at me than about anyone else.

[insuffi]

We're in agreement. I myself hail from a former soviet satellite country.

My point is that it's insulting to call the US benevolent. The difference between US and USSR is that the US prefers a more subtle way of conquering a country, namely, by causing turmoil and overthrowing the government, letting rebel groups run rampant and financing them. It's always easier to overtake strategic resources during anarchy.

Why do you think all the Iran, Ukraine etc civil wars are happening. Because the BRICS countries want to move away from the dollar.

Would you feel the same, on average, if you were a citizen of a South American country, or how about the middle east?

[anigbrowl]

I think you mean Syria, to Iran. suggesting that their civil war is occurring just because they want to move off the dollar standard is rather absurd. That may be a factor, but you have to weigh it against other factors like long-standing repressive autocratic rulers, demographic pressures with large numbers of unemployed youth, the relatively sudden availability of real-time digital communications and information access.

The 'US as malefactor' viewpoint depends on attributing enormous competency to the CIA and similar agencies to start revolutions, but simultaneously ignoring other factors - like the lack of concrete support for the rebels in Syria, notwithstanding the brutality of the Assad regime or widely-accepted evidence of chemical attacks. If the US were actually intent on toppling that regime it has had ample opportunity to advance that goal, but has chosen not to do so. In a larger context, the idea of moving away from the dollar as the reserve currency is often advanced because that would supposedly make it more difficult for the US to import the oil it needs. But there's no record of the US having adjusted its monetary policy in response to swings in oil price, which you would expect if that were the issue; and in any case domestic US oil and gas production is at a historic high and we've started expanding our nuclear fleet again after a 30 year hiatus.

I'm not American either, and I don't see the US as benevolent so much as driven by enlightened self-interest. Where I differ from you is in thinking that US interests aren't dependent on or even advanced by destabilizing other countries, notwithstanding historical US reliance on that strategy.

[happyscrappy]

>the lack of concrete support for the rebels in Syria, notwithstanding the brutality of the Assad regime or widely-accepted evidence of chemical attacks. If the US were actually intent on toppling that regime it has had ample opportunity to advance that goal, but has chosen not to do so.

Obama, who is hardly a hawk, was politically unable to act due to citizens understandable war weariness. Putin has no such restraints.

[anigbrowl]

Quite, but since he campaigned on skepticism about war from the outset of his presidential run (ie opposing the Iraq war and pledging to extract the US from it), I'm questioning the notion that he would have engineered the civil war in Syria to begin with.