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Comment by ThrowawayR2 | Hacker News Reader

> "Also, why is US hegemony a good thing?"

If you review history, large wars broke out between the major powers vying for dominance on a regular basis in the 19th and early 20th century, culminating in the First and Second World Wars. For all the negatives of what the US has done with its military since then, they're not a hundredth as bad as what went on before by any objective measure.

The Pax Americana has been good for stability and with stability comes prosperity. If the United States truly gave up its hegemony and turned isolationist, you'd see a resurgence of rearmament and jockeying for power among nations, inevitably followed by a new era of war after war.

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Complete BS. The US has unilaterally kneecapped the U.N. and every other international organization capable of facilitating a fair world order. We don’t need the US to build a fair world order, contrary to the neocon ‘Pax Americana’ crap. Honestly I was surprised to see that phrase in a hacker news comment.

I'm a European lefty, and I always hated the American imperialism. I was kinda happy about Trump talking about pulling out of all the foreign wars.

Then I thought about it a bit more, and realised (and the last four years have shown) that if America withdraw, the Russians and the Chinese will move right in, and while I'm not a major fan of American imperialism, I'm even less of a fan of the Russian or Chinese flavours.

And the US built the UN and all the other multilateral organisations post WW2, so yeah they work for the US, but they're also pretty good for everyone else.

The UN only "works" because everybody understands that either you do what the US wants or you have a problem. Now? As terrible as the US is, I don't see how a country like China having the space to expand its influence is a good thing, considering the CCP's values compared to the West's values.

> For all the negatives of what the US has done with its military since then, they're not a hundredth as bad as what went on before by any objective measure.

I owe that to hundreds of years of human progression and development, not to the US.

What Pax Americana? The US has been in multiple wars every single year[1] since the end of World War II.

Not to mention the Cold War, which only stayed cold because of the nukes holding both sides back.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

Rome was involved in multiple periphery wars during the "Pax Romana" as well. Instead, the historical term refers to internal peace within the empire.

Pax Americana usually means the same thing, though the borders of the empire are a little less clear.

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