America: The Good Guys or the Bad Guys?

You can make a (in my mind, very compelling) argument that the South was allowed to re-join the Union without ever engaging in any reconciliation of those ideals. There were thousands of racially motivated lynchings after the Civil War ended, primarily in the South (although not exclusively).

Yes, credit where it’s due, and there were a great many people who worked hard for racial equality. But lynchings and a broader context of white supremacy are just as much America’s history, because the Northerners who maintained “American ideals” lacked the will or ability to actually force a reckoning of those ideals with the history of racial violence in America, either in the north, or the south. Race is not a thing America has handled especially well.

I think that this is probably something that could apply to the greater world as a whole as well.

This is an interesting question, the topic, that is, not because of its answer (it’s complicated and meh come to mind as suitable ones) but because of the thinking that generates it.

The counterquestion is: Is America the only contemporary big power that tries to justify its actions morally? The idea of international state actors being “good” or “bad” is laughable from a modern PoV. You will not see France trying to justify its twentieth century behaviour as a morality tale, nor Germany or even the UK.

States are not moral actors and their actions are always amoral. Just the justifications of the Atomic bombings or other war crimes in this thread is symptomathic of a very “American” way of thinking about state actions. A way that shifts responsibility away from the citizenship.

The more powerful an state actor is the more horrible shit it’s going to do unless there’s clear opossition to it from its citizens. Countries are not good or bad, it is citizenship that is either engaged with the “other” to curtail violent intervention by the state or not.

For example, Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement around that time could be construed as the most shining moment for the US in the last century, notwithstanding the horrors of the war itself.

After almost 6 years of war which the loser began with a sneak attack? The winners dictating terms is nothing new, look at the Versailles Treaty, but I think rarely does it work out this well.

“The man who saved a billion lives.” I’m an acquaintance with his nephew and his daughter.

Certainly private charity in the US can be of an impressive scale.

I don’t agree it’s a scale.

This question can only be answered by judging America right now.

Otherwise it’s a bunch of um… Godwins putting Goethe, Schiller, autobahns and Gutenberg on one side of the argument in order to balance out, I don’t know, children in concentration camps.

I think that it is very hard to look at what happened to Cuba, Guatemala, Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq at the hands of the US and conclude that postwar America has been anything but a terrible force for ill in the rest of the world.

The war in Iraq was an inexcusable disgrace, a venal shell game that has driven a modern nation into chaos at the cost of around a million civilian lives while providing cover for the greatest transfer of public wealth into private hands that the nation has ever seen. That we allowed this to happen, and show not the slightest sign of contrition to this day, tells you everything you need to know about our moral compass. We have the blood of a million innocents on our hands and we’re not even upset about what that war did to us.

The usual pro-America argument casts us as a beacon of liberty and democracy. Which would be OK if it weren’t so abundantly clear that “liberty” means “sociopathic selfishness” and that American democracy is in a state of utter and seemingly irreperable failure. The beacon of liberty and democracy has led us to oligarchy and kakistocracy. Our rivals no longer envy us.

And this summary doesn’t even glance in the direction of the horror that funded the birth and early growth of this nation.

I don’t accept the premise of the question because America is not its central government (though in some sense the people tend to get the government they deserve).

Sorry if this was already mentioned.

America is the first benevolent hegemon in human history. 550m people in North America, 400m in South America, 600m people in Europe, 250m people in South East Asia and Australia… 1.5-2b people currently live in developed or developing democracies, all of them thanks to the direct or indirect influence of America. The past 100 years have been not only the most prosperous in history but also the most peaceful (even when including the two world wars). Developed democracies have never gone to war with one another while developing ones are less likely to do so.

While its political influence has been huge, the cultural influence of the US has been even greater. Two metaphors nicely sum up my argument: “We’re all living in America” (Rammstein), “Space may be the final frontier but it’s made in a Hollywood basement” (Red Hot Chili Peppers).

It’s possible that the progress we made would have happened even without the existence of America but I believe that is unlikely. As soon as one steps outside of the country’s zone of strong political influence, there’s not much other than authoritarian regimes, dictatorships and theocracies. And no, I’m not saying America invented most of the concepts, ideas, and ideals that lead to where we are today. All I’m saying is that, without its strength, they would not have expanded or evolved in the same way.

America is not perfect, mistakes (sometimes huge ones, like Trump) were made but those were/are bumps on the road and I firmly believe America will continue to be the America we know (and some love, some hate) until perhaps we all become Terrans.

PS. I am not an American.

We were on the right side in that war, and it is a good thing the Allies won it, though our methods were not always ethical IMO. Also, the nation that bore by far the biggest burden in beating the Axis also had the second-worst government in the twentieth century, so there’s that.

It is very difficult to parse out the lives lost/saved math of civilian bombing, but if you even start to make that calculation, I’m not sure that there’s even any point anymore in distinguishing between civilian deaths and military deaths, as our Geneva Convention tradition has taught us to do. Or at least we need to sort out the math. Is it okay to kill 0.5 enemy civilians to save every 1 of your soldiers? 0.75? 1? How many enemy civilians is it okay to kill in order to save 1 enemy soldier? Talk about a utilitarian rabbit hole.

Thank you, that was very thoughtful.

I think that in part America has one of the greatest governmental systems in place for checks and balances. Though currently one branch is working very hard to check the others right now, in a way that feels imbalanced.

It is also important to think that in all of human history, the last 100 years have been incredible for human rights, lifesaving medical technologies, human prosperity and the general well being of humans on the planet as a whole.

America has been at the front or near the front of a lot of that change, though it often feels like countries in the EU are the most forward thinking in democracy right now. That is a relatively recent change.

Of course, all of this advancement and prosperity has come at a heavy cost: natural resources and environmental conditions. The vast majority of the scientific community would agree that humans, with America at the front or near the front of that change have negatively affected the world’s climate with greenhouse gas emissions.

A lot of this stuff could have been said by British citizens (or British subjects, or British-minded people, whatever) during the XIX century.

Benevolent hegemon, scientific progress, peace… All that stuff they believed (and was true from a certain pov, as it is true now).

However, saying the British empire was “good” might be going too far. I have no doubt some years in the future American power projection will be seen in the same light we see the British Empire now, from the pov of yet a newer power.

Fair enough. Who knows how people will view this civilization 100 years from now? Or 1000 years from now?

Maybe “better” is a more correct term. We are better than we have ever been as a culture. Looking back at how things were 500 years ago, we are definitely “good” when compared, but who knows as to 500 years from now when we are all sentient robotic clouds of nanomachines.

Britain wasn’t a hegemon, it was never strong enough to have a decisive political influence in Europe. I wouldn’t call it benevolent either as it used its zones of influence to siphon wealth back home without leaving much in terms of investments. Unlike Britain, America invests in its zones of influence, it helps create prosperity and shares the newly created wealth with the locals, which would put it much closer to benevolence than Britain.

They would disagree with you in pretty much all your points.

First contemporary quote I can find googling quickly:

Your arguments are word for word the arguments for the benevolence of the British Empire contemporary to British dominion.

It is at least a good indication that arguments of American benevolence from the pov contemporary to American dominance (arguments that are exactly the same, even) should at least be questioned to see if they carry the same distortions of pov.

i think my answer is in two charts

image

And the first chart from this site Democracy - Our World in Data
which show the growth in democratic countries. Now while correlation ain’t causation. I think the fact that hockey stick growth Per Capita GDP and the number of democracy occurs right after 1945-1950 and the emergence of the US as the superpower is no coincidence.

Let’s start with the Marshall plan. I could be wrong but I believe it is unprecedented in human history for the winning side to give money/aid to the losing side of a war. It is far more common to get reparations from the losing side (see Treaty of Versailles). We spent $110 (in today dollars) and $20 billion on Japan.

The US was the driving force behind the decolonization movement. Sure the European colonial powers were experiement with granting independence but the big push was the US. The second inflection point on the growth of democratic countries is after the collapse of communism. Again a result largely of the US efforts.

I’d also make a distinction between America, which I think of more of a concept Reagan aka “Shining City on the Hill”. America is almost entirely good. As distinct from the USA which is the embodiment of the concept. It includes the nativism (chants of USA, USA) and the more naked groups for power and money, like some of the gunpoint diplomacy practiced in Latin America.

I do think what makes USA unique is that we fairly consistently preach our values of democracy and capitalism, even when doing so goes against out short/medium-term interests. (Yes there are many counter-examples). We also push our values without (generally) physically occupying a country, this is very different than British, Spanish, Mongol or Roman empires of the past.

That may be but the arguments and ideas of the politicians in the British Empire and historical facts (which I am refering to) are two different things. The rebuilding and rise of the democracies in South East Asia, Western Europe, and more recently, Eastern Europe, with the American assistance, is an indisputable fact. Making just one step outside of NATO, in Belarus, Ukraine or Russia shows the advantages of being in America’s zone of influence, advantages that can not be disputed or questioned to see if they carry distortions of pov.

What I’m trying to say is that there were also historical facts that are overwhelmingly positive about the British Empire, and about the Spanish Empire, and the Mongol Empire if you want. Whatever. Arguments made contemporary to those Empires, and arguments that can still be made today, except today, when looking back, we contextualize them in the broader context. As in “the British Empire was an outstading force of progress, but…”. We just drop the moral adjetives because things are a little bit more complex than that.

Looking just at the positive influence is misleading. You need to look at the millions of negatively affected lives too. And lives don’t balance out mathematically. You don’t negate an evil with a good, you have to live with both. Talking about Western Europe but ignoring South America, for example, distorts the picture. I’ve happenend to talk with too many Argentinians.

Again, I like progress, and I will never defend American dominance as a negative influence on the world, but I wouldn’t describe it as morally good either and would be really wary of any such claim. Progress has a way of happening no matter what states do.

How many people didn’t die in a massive world war because of American influence?

I’m betting billions considering how things were going

2 things:

1- The lower point in that graph is during the British Empire.

2- If you multiply that with a population chart, during American dominance more people have died in conflicts than in any other period of history.

Utilitarian balancing of theoretical lives saved is a very weak argument.

When I wrote lives don’t balance out, I meant they can’t be balanced out, not that the balance falls one way or another. Grossly speaking, an humanitarian feat does not cancel out a war crime. Both still coexist.