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"Why do you single out American imperialism instead of talking about imperialism in general?" (lemmy.ml)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/usa@lemmy.ml
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Notes:

The map I used didn't include Turkey (US ally) or Gaza as part of Palestine. Palestine and Lebanon are the only countries that have only been attacked by Israel and not the US directly. Pakistan is technically a US ally and Lebanon has security agreements with the US, but neither host US troops.

For every single country in the oil-rich Middle East, the options are to let the US troops come voluntarily, or to fight them off when they attack.

I did another version for China btw:

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[–] 15 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

Russia has a few military bases in neighboring countries, but it's very limited to its region of the world. That's categorically different from plopping down military bases on every continent and toppling overseas governments. They're militarily irrelevant outside their little sphere of influence.

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  • [+] -8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    So imperialism only exists at a certain scale? I was under the impression that it had more to do with a country's foreign policy objectives, rather than how successful they are at it.

    And for the record, forcibly occupying territory in neighboring countries, is a little more than "having a few military bases". That's military expansionism...and it's a cornerstone of imperialistic practice.

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  • [–] [S] 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    So imperialism only exists at a certain scale?

    The bigger scale a country does imperialism on, the bigger a concern it is and the more attention should be paid to it, yes. Otherwise, you're just cherry picking.

    The overwhelming majority of imperialism is done by the US, so trying to downplay that and shift the focus is no different from cherry picking some crime done by an immigrant while ignoring the general trend that immigrants tend to commit fewer crimes. This isn't a difficult concept, lol.

    I was under the impression that it had more to do with a country’s foreign policy objectives

    Objectives? That's pretty subjective, isn't it? It depends entirely on the country's motivations. So you could potentially look at the decades-long military occupation and plundering of Afghanistan and say, "Well, our objective was to build democracy so it wasn't imperialism."

    You could assign all sorts of nasty motivations to a country like the DPRK, based on your own presumptions, and be like, "Well, they would try to take over the world even more than the US if they had the capability to, so they're more imperialist than the US," even though the US controls half the globe. That's completely absurd.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago

    Did you know that at the school of the Americas agents of the United States, including FBI CIA and border patrol actually, taught fascist kill squads that systematically raping nuns is a good way to cow a populace. Just wanted to put into context what you're defending for some bizarre reason.

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