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Comment by tonfa | Hacker News Reader

> There's certainly a case to be made that a strong US military is in the world's best interest. In fact, I would wager that a majority of Americans (and a majority of citizens of democratic countries across the world) hold the belief expressed in the previous statement.

That's probably true for US citizens, but I highly doubt non-US folks share that view (at least from a western European perspective I'd say definitely not).

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Fellow Western European here, and I understand that sentiment. However, it seems that countries which are closer to Russia or China don't mind the American military nearly as much. See: Baltic States, Sweden, Taiwan. Pax Americana is a thing, even if it's usually overshadowed by completely braindead interventions like the Iraq War.

In my opinion it is not Pax Americana.

It is Pax Atomica.

The world leaders will do anything to prevent nuclear warfare. This includes doing war with nations that have no nukes.

I doubt that US would help those countries in the war with Russia. US didn't help Georgia, US didn't help Ukraine. It's naïve to expect that US would protect someone on the other end of earth.

Fair enough, but even a miniscule chance of having to deal with the US makes it a lot riskier to invade a small country.

Did you kind of forget that Russia pretty much controlled half of Europe not too long ago, and sent tanks to fight citizens when it was needed to maintain "order".

Countries under US rule never faced such severe repression.

I understand what you're saying, but you're not quite accurate, there was the Philippine–American War.

Plenty of that happened in US backed, and funded, regimes in Central and South America.

That's because the US already took over and genocided the interesting parts of its continent (+ Hawaii), and used covert operations to install friendly dictators across the hemisphere when it needed to maintain "democracy".

I'm genuinely curious - what do you think the world would look like if the US decreased their military capabilities and stopped involvement in any world conflicts or terrorism?

I'm a US citizen and I would like to see the US stop being the worlds police for 5 to 10 years, just to see what the world looks like at the end of that.

I don't know whether it's the truth, but in my country it's universally accepted opinion among many people that most middle-east terrorists are created and financed by the US. Given the fact that western forces utterly failed to fight ISIS until Russia was involved and then tried to oppose Russia as much as possible (yet Russia still crushed ISIS), it doesn't look very unlikely for me. So one possible way for the world is to have reduced terrorism which might help even the ordinary americans.

Point to ponder: A (small, but potent) bunch of Middle Easterners got very interested in blowing up the USA.

Why did they not blow up Canada, or Mexico, or China? Do you think the US military actions might be a reason?

No idea, but I'm not convinced it would be worse. Maybe we'd try more international consensus and only do UN sanctioned intervention and peace keeping.

Best way to figure it out might be for the US to try it :) (but it seems to go in a different, likely more dangerous way instead: isolationism from the international scene with increased military spending).

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