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Comment by Zigurd | Hacker News Reader

So many commenters here assume US global hegemony that, in reality, expired after the 1980s. Without its allies in Europe and Asia, the US can't act effectively.

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> Without its allies in Europe and Asia, the US can't act effectively

They’re all vastly mutually beneficial systems of alliances. That said, America flipping out over the ICC is basically as old as the ICC.

And yet, they imposed FATCA and the whole world asked "how high"?

Isn't it similar to how many countries kept using Russian gaz after the invasion in Ukraine, they weren't ready to turn the switch off?

The US seems "winning" right now because its imposing measure that need time to be bypassed, but will be bypassed.

FATCA turned 15 years now, nobody bypassed it, although everyone whined a lot.

Yeah, for instance: even if Trump's bullying works for now, he made sure that most governments in Latin America, including right wing ones, will prioritize uncoupling the country from the US economy. Even if they won't say this quiet part out loud.

It seems odd to me that the US supposedly isn't a major power, yet still finances both NATO and the UN primarily and if it lowers it's support it's "leading the destruction of those things".

Likewise if it backs off it's foreign support, hundreds of millions will die.

Are we singularly carrying the worlds on our backs - which sounds hegemonic - are is the US free to stop spending our money on everyone elses problems?

Perhaps the UK or Germany can fund everything for a few decades and be the next major world power for a bit.

The premise is off. These aren’t "everyone else’s problems", NATO, the UN, trade stability, and foreign aid exist because they serve US interests too: security, markets, alliances, and predictability. The US isn’t benevolently carrying the world; it’s investing in systems that reduce the cost of conflict and instability later.

The question isn’t whether the US is allowed to stop spending, but what it wants the world to look like if it does.

It's just the case that some people at the top don't seem to understand that.

The US accounts for a share of the UN budget roughly equal to the US share of global GDP. The US accounts for a fairly small fraction of the NATO budget. Very little of the US defense budget is spent via NATO. The US being "ripped off" has no basis in fact. Letting Russia impale itself on Ukraine is a pretty good bargain compared to meeting our NATO obligations should Russia invade Europe. We've been getting a good deal, which makes throwing that away pretty insane.

This "It seems odd to me that the US supposedly isn't a major power, yet still finances..." does not mean what you seem to think it means. Soft power and alliances are vastly cheaper than hard power. We are in the find out phase of having lost soft power.

despite how common this opinion is, it fails to recognize that the US itself wanted to structure things that way. this was a politically viable way to continue to funnel huge amounts of money into weapons development and research. its not unlikely that European dependence on the US was a bonus.

were the host countries in Europe pushing for US base deployments or was it really the US and its insane desire to land explosives anywhere in the world in 30 minutes or less and sustain two simulateous land conflicts.

none of this is that simple. were the Europeans happy to take the security and invest more in their civil societies? absolutely, but they eroded their own sovereignty by doing so and the US was more than happy to act like the big brother in control of the whole situation.

the US wanted worldwide military dominance and the dependence of its allies. it really quite weird to say its all their fault.

Trump is fixing the UN glitch: https://www.cfr.org/article/funding-united-nations-what-impa...

Whether NATO still exists as a defense organisation is a good question.

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