Is it possible to reach superpower status without doing those things?
Inevitably, to reach superpower status requires bending others to your will. And there will always be those that oppose you.
Inevitably, to reach superpower status requires bending others to your will. And there will always be those that oppose you.
Personally, I think once the US is gone and whatever happens afterwards happens, if history somehow remains accurate, I think people will see the last 75 years as a world-wide Pax America with the most benevolent world leadership that has ever existed. I'm sure I'll get downvoted to oblivion for this statement, but, big picture, the US has done more to provide peace and prosperity (and even freedom and justice) for a greater percentage of humanity than any other nation ever.
If you look over human history, the natural human state is generally oppression, warfare, starvation, and disease. We just might be reverting back to the mean.
I agree that the USA has impacted many many lives very positively. I don’t think this extends to an overall net “peace and prosperity” claim.
I didn’t downvote FWIW
As for razing entire cities, the Korean War saw the US essentially raze a country. To quote General LeMay
>We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too.
I don’t actually understand how you can even compare “transfer of wealth” and mass civilian casualties, let alone decide that the former is worth more.
The WW2 reference is a bit of a captain hindsight addition and easily the most controversial. I only said contributed, I would leave that out to make my point clearer next time.
the US was the only country on earth that had nukes for 5 years and was unscathed from WWII. We could have demilitarized and enslaved the entire planet under threat of nuclear death, but instead we gave away billions to help Japan and Europe rebuild. There's never been a more selfless act in human history as far as a country not seizing an opportunity to gain power is concerned. There's probably never been a larger power disparity between a single country and the rest of the world than post WWII USA, and they did exactly nothing to take advantage of that disparity.
US is far from perfect, mainly due to unconstitutional actions by our intel community and military, but as far as superpowers go there's really no comparison.
Oh come on, you cannot seriously believe that. Anyhow, I recommend you watch 'The Untold History of the United States' by Oliver Stone [0]. He has done a great job of telling people the stories that are not told in your history classes.
It was nice, sure, but don't confuse it with some greater selfless act.
> It sure was very selfless and noble of America not to wage world war 3 im a quest to enslave humanity, with your limited supply of first gen nukes and increasingly war weary population.
Maintaining a strong, authoritarian grasp on the entire world would require technology that (fortunately) did not exist during WWII and probably still not today. You'd just have civil wars, coups and terrorist attacks every other day. Your military would be spread thin across the globe. You'd basically have hundreds of countries in continuous state of insurrection like Afghanistan right now. It would cost the USA a fortune (and not just economically).
Giving these countries money in order to stabilize them and maintain "soft" influence makes a lot more sense in many cases.