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Comment by genocidicbunny | Hacker News Reader

> The US's foreign policy - in all its aspects including trade - has generally been extraordinarily mutually-beneficial / positive-sum. The biggest exceptions to this have been US policy in the Middle East and with respect to state-level adversaries.

Yes, but that does not at all preclude that said actions would be largely ones of self-interest. Is it not possible that the US realized that by not maximizing their benefit all the time, they could ensure a much more stable environment for their own growth and power gain? Grease the squeaky wheel and it'll work for you longer than if you just force it to keep going until it completely breaks.

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>>Yes, but that does not at all preclude that said actions would be largely ones of self-interest.

Yes, it's entirely possible. Regardless, this strategy that the US has-pursued/pursues makes it preferrable to most other comparable historical states as a global hegemonic power.

Well it makes it preferable to some, and really distasteful to others. It's rarely a good idea to make moral judgements on history or international politics. They don't really operate in the realm of morality. To those of us in the USA or west Europe, we have benefited a lot from the US' global power over the last near-century. On the other hand, I am sure China could argue that if the US wasn't as dominant, they could have benefited more. Considering that those two cliques have similar populations, we can't even go with what the majority thinks -- there isn't one.

> It's rarely a good idea to make moral judgements on history or international politics

Ultimately, you are forced to make rational decisions based on history and international politics. What hegemony is more aligned with your interests?

It is blatantly obvious that the chinese governance is immoral, and that it is not even controlled by the chinese people. Say what you will about the US, the bigger picture is that one nation is a free-democracy-with-exceptions and the other is a dictatorship that murders political dissidents and harvests their organs. There is no reasonable moral judgement that can be made that considers US dominance to be comparable to Chinese dominance.

In the same sense that there is an asymmetry in the freedom of US/Chinese markets, there is an asymmetry in the freedom of US/Chinese marketplaces of ideas. Just consider the preconditions of this argument: There is simply no equivalent chinese forum where they openly discuss the misdeeds of their own nation, so the anti-American argument is globally over-represented.

Agreed, but I think we also have to consider where we come from and where we're going.

As a citizen of a Western nation, living in a liberal democracy, wouldn't it be logical to wish for a nation of similar values to maintain high global influence? Wouldn't it be reasonable to be against the rise in influence of an authoritarian nation that wants the rest of the world to allow it to dictate their cultural norms?

I frankly do not give a damn whether or not China could have benefited more over the past several decades if it would have meant the spread of the Chinese government's values to other nations.

You don't give a damn, probably most of your countrymen (assuming you're from the US) also don't give a damn. And there's probably over a billion Chinese that don't give a damn that you don't give a damn.

I don't wish for the US to lose their global influence either, I rather like what I get out of that. But I am under no delusion that this is a lucky happenstance and that the interests of the US could change to ones that I am not happy with, and that China, and any other nation will have their own interests that they pursue; Within their moral codes, within their systems of values, interests that we here may judge as wrong or counter to our beliefs, may well be the opposite and acceptable in their origin nations.

So if you want to interact with those nations in any fashion, you need to throw away some of these notions of morality, or at least reify them to things that are relatively universal, of which there aren't as many as one would think on a geopolitical scale. You say that we need to consider where we come from and where we're going. I say that we cannot do that in a vacuum, so if you want to really understand, you have to understand the other side too.

Does it really matter why? I would much rather be under the soft control of a nation whose self interest largely consists of things that benefit me and increase my independence, rather than one that favors subjugation and domination.

To a degree, yes, it does matter, because you might need to also understand the context and motivations the other side operates on. If for nothing else, than just so you understand the risks and dangers to your position. And from a more individual standpoint, you might also want to understand the motivations that your government has because they are very unlikely to factor you at all.

You're saying that the US has taken a "a rising tide lifts all boats" approach and apparently that's a bad thing for people not in the US?

Nope, not at all. A rising tide lifts all boats, but the tide spends more energy lifting the bigger boats.

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