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"Would it be beneficial to the developing nations of the world for the U.S. to abdicate its hegemony, leaving a power vacuum for Russia or China?" The US is no

"Would it be beneficial to the developing nations of the world for the U.S. to abdicate its hegemony, leaving a power vacuum for Russia or China?" The US is not limiting itself to keeping Russia and China in check, and that is the problem. Hardly anyone would claim that the US should abandon Taiwan to its fate. Yet at the same time, why is the US military being used to expand the reach of US businesses? Why are we in the business of support cruel dictators, and even overthrowing democratic governments in favor of dictatorships? Why continue the embargo on Cuba? Why do we ignore the UN when it suits us, then use the fact that a country ignores the UN as a pretense to attack it?

tptacek 13y ago
The answer is that we shouldn't be doing these things, but that the 50 years that have elapsed since the peak of the Cold War, in which both the Soviets and the US had influential voices espousing preemptive nuclear strikes, is in world-historical context the blink of an eye, and it's going to take time and effort for us to shake off the strategies and positioning we (often foolishly) adopted to win that war. Except for the UN thing. While I agree that the UN is used (on all sides) as a fig leaf, we haven't waited for countries to disobey the UN as an excuse to attack them, but rather used the UN fig leaf as part of a justification for wars that had already been decided on. In the case of Iraq II, that was a grave mistake on our part, but the mistake has little to do with respect for the UN. The UN is simultaneously important and undeserving of much respect.