You're right. To my knowledge, we don't hold citizens hostage to force them to unwind the sale of a foreign company they smuggled out of America into another country to a different foreign company.

But you cannot seriously hold America up as blameless when we've wielded our economy as a cudgel against anyone we remotely disagree with (sanctions against Cuba, Iran, China, Russia, etc; tariffs against everybody), have military bases scattered around the world to invade anyone at a moment's notice, regularly park our navy off foreign shores to coerce desired outcomes, and dronestrike civilians as a final saber-rattling before full-fledged conflict.

The details change, but the fundamental playbook - using state violence to coerce outcomes favorable to said state - is far from new. Hell, take a look beyond the past thirty years of history and there's a glut of incidents where empires used this sort of leverage to achieve outcomes - including the United States! We've traded political prisoners to achieve negotiated outcomes repeatedly, we just use different words to make ourselves feel better about it. We've propped up entire puppet states to ensure American corporate interests were served instead!

Like, holy shit, why do I have to teach you naysayers what's already outlined in history books just because you can't be bothered to do the assigned reading?

Just last year the USA de-banked (from EU banks) EU citizens who are International Criminal Court officials for "opening preliminary investigations against Israeli personnel". The USA wields incredible power over financial interactions.

Of the course the USA does it. Obama was totally ruthless with such economic warfare, including on the US usual lackeys. See for instance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Pierucci

While I don’t agree with your tone, and I’m sure an unbiased reading of history also wouldn’t agree with your tone…

Who would you rather be world police? One or more of Cuba, Iran, China, Russia?

I don't think anyone is holding the US as blameless or perfect, but it gets exhausting to see Chinese propaganda every single time anything like this happens.

When the US does something reprehensible, people rarely come up in droves going on and about China's enablement of the North Korean regime or the many abuses enacted on its population, but every single time the US does anything we had to read a whole lot on how "at least China doesn't invade countries" as if the prime reason as to why China doesn't tend to involve itself militarily isn't precisely American hegemony. The rate at which the country is portrayed as some paragon of human rights, equality and peacefulness is either insane, deluded, or paid for.

> You're right.

You should have just left it at that.

> have military bases scattered around the world to invade anyone at a moment's notice

I wonder how that came about?

What’s that fence analogy called?

Chester-what?

I think people are frustrated with the firehose of whataboutism rather than disagreeing with you with the idea that things are not perfect.

> The details change, but the fundamental playbook - using state violence to coerce outcomes favorable to said state - is far from new. Hell,

There is a massive difference in degree and kind here. Mixing them up at this level is spherical cow territory.