sure, russia annex part of ukraine a few years ago. but it hasn't attempted to crush and destroy nearly every country in north africa and the middle east
As for China, the rub on them isn't how they treat their allies. It's how they treat their own citizens. Between famines and Red Terror purges, China is not the model I want.
"But at the same time everyone knows if they had work with one ally it'd be the US because they're less terrible than everyone else."
Looking at the next 75years, China and Russia do seem like more reasonable allies for a number of states. Most of the world has observed that if they don't have their own nuclear weapons, they are liable to be the next libya/iraq/afghanistan.. wait the list goes on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involv...
And Russia, which literally annexed a neighbouring country.
I'll take my chances with the US, thank you very much.
...
I thought so.
The area where it does become a discussion is in terms of political prisoners. in the US, political dissent is punished in a decentralised way; people lose their bank accounts, access to payment providers, are erased from social media, etc. This is framed in the idea that large corporations have the 'freedom' to not do business with you. in russia or china, it is certainly more direct.
In specific cases we have different social constructs due to propaganda. Edward Snowden or Julian Assange are of course traitors, but Navalny is a the hero of the hour. the US state department will criticise any third world country, but they run secret CIA prisons in places like guatanemo bay, kandahar .
Why does Guantanamo bay exist? It is totally illegal under both US and international law. Why does the CIA arrest people from third party countries and put them in infinite detention? What about that plane that was forced to land in Belarus, a tragedy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
My central point is that a lot of your ideas here are US centric, perhaps Eurocentric. Most other countries are not actually that bad relative to USA or Europe, it is just that there is immense propaganda to erase any wrongdoing of USA/EU from public memory.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/12/russia.israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia_Airlines_Flight_1812 for instance, you can't even find above article on google if you google "ukraine shoot down russian plane"
Did Biden suffer any of this when he was challenging Trump?
What does someone who challenges Putin suffer?
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/banking-financial-institu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_use_by_Donald_Tru...
If we wanted to look at examples of more small scale political dissent in USA:
https://gazette.com/news/reporter-who-broke-story-on-clinton...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)#...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Valley_shootout#The_sh...
Ok so are anti-establishment politicians in the US targetted? Such as someone from who wants to deconstruct the establishment like Sanders? Oh he's treated with relative respect and allowed to campaign? Oh ok... so that's unlike China and Russia then?
the democrat establishment quietly removed him (edit: bernie sanders, 2016) in the background, and then this was leaked afterward by wikileaks.
That's not even remotely similar to, for example, the state arresting him.
Maybe, but of course this is a deceptive statistic, since the murder rate in Russia is higher than in the US.
> I think one would be more likely to be shot to death in the street in the US than Russia … by a police officer or other government employee.