The US gained almost immeasurable power and influence by virtue of the 2 World Wars and being largely directly unaffected by those wars, whereas Europe was levelled, particularly by WW2. And that power came from selling weapons.

The world order was reset after 1945 and designed largely by the US for the benefit of the US, particularly the financial system. People will often mistake cause and effect. A common one is the petrodollar. The US dollar isn't strong because oil is traded in it. No. Oil is traded in the dollar because of demand fo the dollar. The world oil market could switch to Euros or RMB tomorrow and the net effect would be that people would hold USD and trade it for whatever currency as needed and convert any such currency immediately back to dollars.

But underpinning this has been the appearance of integrity in the US financial system and, in particular, the Federal Reserve and the SEC. That trust and that system is being rapidly destroyed for a few billion dollars in personal profit. All of this was enabled by an ideological Supreme Court who invented out of thin air the concept of presidential immunity to make the president a king in a country that rebelled against a monarchy.

We're living in times that will be written about in history books as the end of the post-1945 era, particularly with the Iran War. I, for one, called this the most disastrous US strategic defeat in the entire of US history and it's not even close back in April. And I stand by that.

There was a time when corrupt heads of state kept up appearances of not being corrupt. It was done in secret through layers of secrecy. That's gone now. The corruption is very much out in the open.

It's not to see this as anything other than China's rise to global prominence and the irony is they just had to do nothing while letting the US commit suicide.

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ihumanable a day ago | parent | next [-]

I think that's been the most baffling thing about the rise of MAGA.

It was a global order built by the US to place the US in positions of power and privilege in every way imaginable.

And the MAGA group looked at it and said "we are being taken advantage of! We have to spend a rounding error worth of money on food aid and Voice of America?! I don't want soft power, I want rock hard power!!!"

They looked at a game with unfair rules that were written by them to benefit them and said "this is unfair.... to me!" Then went about dismantling nearly a century of work that unfairly stacked the deck in America's favor.

The US-Israel-Iran War is an interesting inflection point. They pulled out of every soft-power play, putting every chip in on hard-power military strength and now they are getting wrecked by cheap drones and Iran just being willing to stick it out and not fold. Venezuela will probably go down as the point in which they believed their world view was winning, no need for any diplomacy, just go in and abduct the president and take the oil. Iran showed them the limits of that kind of thinking, if they were more introspective they could learn from it.

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everforward a day ago | parent [-]

The outcome in Iran was obvious to anyone paying attention. We knew Iran would close the strait, but we also haven't truly won a guerrilla war yet. Vietnam went poorly, Afghanistan went poorly, we've only historically done well in the more economically-defined traditional wars where there's an obvious target to fling a billion dollars worth of arms at.

Iran isn't stupid, they know there's not much point in building massive arms factories to make complicated weapons. The factories will just get bombed, and the weapons will probably still be inferior. They can just sort of stand there, though. We don't have the appetite for a boots on the ground invasion, and even then they can just kind of wait til we leave and go right back to it. We don't really have a winning hand here without resorting to war crimes, and the costs of that vastly outweigh any successes. We'd be international pariahs to a degree that I don't think most Americans realize is possible.

	▲	ElevenLathe a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Arguably Iran's ability to manufacture pretty sophisticated weapons in relatively large quantities (and faster than the US) is one of the main reasons they won.
	▲	AnimalMuppet a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Nit: We have won a guerilla war, as the guerillas - the US Revolutionary War.

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saturn8601 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Your intro contradicts your conclusion and thats why I think this story isn't as clear cut as you make it. The US gained that reputation because of trust. China does not magically have that same trust. The relationships that countries build with China appear to be built on a bed of sand. Case in point: A lot of African/ME countries took bribes in the form of Belt and Road(among others). Then came the public show of support for China. When China started to struggle after Evergrand, they slowed down support or asked for repayment. All of a sudden, a lot of support for China disappeared from these countries. Can you provide any clear evidence that China is really building a lasting trust that is mutual with any country? Even the EU is treating China as a potential short term economic partner and not as an ideological ally.

Its really sad how the US has acted these past few years. Its an insult to the sacrifices of those that came before us. But time is long and it appears China has to do a lot of soul searching to see where they really want to be. I don't feel confident the more I look. They have serious problems that dont seem solvable anytime soon.

	▲	jmyeet 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's funny that you call Belt and Road "bribs" when it's basically the World Bank/IMF playbook with one difference: it's a much better deal for the recipients. The WB/IMF playbook is to pressure or bribe leaders into taking on debt that forces policy changes. Somalia is the posterchild for this. They force the country to produce export crops and the result is the country ends up being unable to feed itself and then the currency inevitably collapses and the country can no longer service its debt. They did the same to Haiti and elsewhere. It's economic colonaialism. The WB/IMF are a tool for American foreign policy. China offers a significantly better deal [1]. US influence ("exploitation") in Africa is fading [2]. It's such an issue that the US Africa Command is headquartered in Germany. China's foreign policy is largely offering to build ports, airports, roads and power plants. You know, infrastructure that actually helps and doesn't just enrich the leader and drown the country in debt. [1]: https://gga.org/china-vs-the-imf/ [2]: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-us-is-losing-africa...