That seems rather Whataboutist to me. I never claimed this only ever happens in the Middle East. We are, however, talking about the Middle East, so local examples would seem apposite. You seem to desire to make this conversation so abstract that it becomes about nothing.

> resistance to the US-led order magically seems to invite instability

Or perhaps 'resistance' is an awfully popular rallying cry for demagogues who bring instability, and the US is just the hegemon du jour. "It's the US' fault your crops are wilting! And international capital! And immigrants! And, oh, I don't know, the gays, why not. Rise up for El Generalissimo! Enlist your sons in the blood struggle, that will definitely improve things!" /s

Much sexier to be a revolutionary fighting shadowy foreign forces than to actually fix any of your own problems. No, no, tomorrow's problems will be America's fault too.

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oa335 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> I never claimed this only ever happens in the Middle East.

you said

> Arab democracies are unstable because they will elect Islamists.

whereas my claim is that governments (democracies or not) that run afoul of their local hegemon tend to have a short shelf life. this is not unique to US hegemony.

see: Brezhnev doctrine (USSR), or the canonical example of Athens and Melos from Peloponnesian war

> Rise up for El Generalissimo! Enlist your sons in the blood struggle, that will definitely improve things!" /s Much sexier to be a revolutionary fighting shadowy foreign forces than to actually fix any of your own problems. No, no, tomorrow's problems will be America's fault too.

I'm sorry, you seem triggered by this discussion, it doesn't seem productive to continue on my end.

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nixon_why69 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Real heads know that the strong do what they can while the weak suffer what they must.

	▲	oa335 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		lol yes exactly. Realism has more way explanatory power in geopolitics than idealism. Idealist explanations are typically incoherent (e.g. above thread).

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troad 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I'm sorry, you seem triggered by this discussion, it doesn't seem productive to continue on my end.

I suppose shall have to make do without 101-level instruction in Chomskyian anti-Imperialism, woven through with whataboutism and international conspiracies.

> whereas my claim is that governments (democracies or not) that run afoul of their local hegemon tend to have a short shelf life. this is not unique to US hegemony.

Wow, big if true. Someone let Iran know.

How many trillions of dollars and gallons of blood did the US expend to make Afghanistan non-Taliban, or Vietnam non-Communist? And who rules Afghanistan and Vietnam today? You mention the Brezhnev doctrine, and yet literally not one of these countries is Russian-aligned today. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan failed just as hard as the British and American ones, all at the height of those respective countries' powers. Not very powerful, these alleged hegemons.

My overall point is that the Middle East (and Latin America, etc) has many local issues (e.g. corruption, misgovernance, sectarianism, organised crime), and an unhelpful habit of blaming some ill-defined global hegemony for misfortunes that are readily explicable as the consequences of these local phenomena. The US is no innocent lamb, but it does no service to the people of any of these regions to pretend that another hundred years of anti-Imperialist rhetoric will somehow bring benefits that the previous hundred years did not.

In these countries, this brand of tired anti-Imperialism is a figleaf for authoritarians. In the West, it is masturbatory politics for a certain type of narcissistic Westerner with a saviour complex, who fundamentally believes only Westerners have agency in the world, and everyone else are just motes of dust floating in the West's shadow. It's this confluence that results in absolute travesties like Chomsky supporting the Khmer Rouge, a far greater evil than all the worst allegations against America stacked together.

If you want to help the Middle East, get involved in civil society building efforts that help bridge the gap between sectarian communities; support charitable and poverty relief efforts that are not affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood; get involved in civil rights advocacy on behalf of the oppressed in the Middle East (women, LGBT communities, religious and ethnic minorities, the list goes on); partake in initiatives aimed at tackling corruption, organised crime, etc. Or at the very least encourage and support the people who do these things, rather than regurgitating half-remembered anti-Imperialist tropes from your polsci 101 class, as though that were a contribution of any value whatsoever.

The one thing that will absolutely not help them, at all, is more meandering, false narratives about how they have no agency in the face of shadowy global hegemons, and how should just lie down and wait impassively for some sort of new, more just world to be given to them by their Western betters.