SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/goodbye-to-the-dollar/
The inept and corrupt presidency of Donald Trump has unwittingly triggered the fatal blow to the American empire—the abandonment of the dollar as the world’s principal reserve currency. Nations around the globe, especially in Europe, have lost confidence in the United States to act rationally, much less lead, in issues of international finance, trade, diplomacy and war. These nations are quietly dismantling the seven-decade-old alliance with the United States and building alternative systems of bilateral trade. This reconfiguring of the world’s financial system will be fatal to the American empire, as the historian Alfred McCoy and the economist Michael Hudson have long pointed out. It will trigger an economic death spiral, including high inflation, which will necessitate a massive military contraction overseas and plunge the United States into a prolonged depression. Trump, rather than make America great again, has turned out, unwittingly, to be the empire’s most aggressive gravedigger.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @07:52AM (5 children)
You missed the world wars. I can't say much about the first one, but in the second one we can safely say the US saved the world from a pretty bad place. Technically it was long-term self-interest, but it doesn't change the fact that most of the world was better off as a consequence of the US's actions.
They kind of started to fuck it up right there though, with the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but still.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday February 05 2019, @08:27AM (3 children)
You missed the world wars. I can't say much about the first one, but in the second one we can safely say the US saved the world from a pretty bad place.
The Soviet Russians under Stalin have a good basis for arguing they were the ones that saved the world in the Great Patriotic War. In fact, Hitler lost the war by opening the Eastern front. Had he not done so, there is a reasonable argument that The UK could have been starved into submission and/or successfully invaded. Admiral von Doenitz's U-boats were remarkably effective in the early stages of the North Atlantic campaign, and with the materiel available by not invading the Soviet Union, the German army had a very good chance of successfully invading the UK.
The USA practised, and practices realpolitik - a peace deal with Hitler would have been a real possibility, once the UK had fallen - the logistics of opposing Hitler from the other side of the Atlantic without the UK as a staging post would have been pretty much insuperable.
If Hitler had not invaded the Soviet Union, Allied victory would not have been assured.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @09:46AM (2 children)
Please don't take the following as condoning the actions of the US in general, or as a generic condemnation of the russian people.
I lived for seven years in communist Romania, and twenty more years in post-communist Romania.
I can tell you that the real meaning of "communist", as well as "post-communist social democrat" is "corrupted and under the control of the russian power structure".
The fact is that without the US we wouldn't even have the corrupted sort-of freedom we have now.
I can also tell you that when the soviet army went through Romania, most of them basically raped and stole everything that they could.
They didn't intend to save anyone, they just wanted to pay back the germans and bad luck for anyone who got in their way.
By the way, it is true that (part of) the Romanian army joined the German army when they invaded Russia; I don't know their actions there, I'll try to find out for future reference.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday February 05 2019, @01:15PM (1 child)
Oh quite. I don't hold up the politics and ideology of the Soviet Union under Stalin as something to be admired or emulated. It was Hitler who tore up the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with Operation Barbarossa, although the Soviets had not fully respected it beforehand, so it was 'under strain'. Nonetheless, attacking the Soviet Union was a strategic mistake, and evidence of well-formed plans by Stalin for invading the German sphere of influence agreed as part of the pact is still argued hotly>/a>. [wikipedia.org]
The behaviour of the Red Army is well documented - the depths to which parts of humanity will sink when given power without responsibility are truly horrifying. The Wehrmacht weren't exactly angels during the invasion of the Soviet Union, so a wish for revenge by the Red Army is understandable.
It was by no means guaranteed that the USA would enter the war. Roosevelt had a significant non-interventionist lobby to deal with [wikipedia.org], and from a pragmatic point of view, a war that diminished the power of the British Empire without noticeably affecting the USA served the USA's interests greatly. If anything, the USA was more concerned about constraining the expansionist tendencies of the Soviet Union under Stalin - once Hitler had started a war against the Soviet Union, it was in the USA's interests to ensure that if/when he lost, that all of Europe didn't become Sovietized. Had Hitler been able to wait until he had finished beating the British, he would likely have got support from the USA to prevent Soviet influence increasing in Europe. Realpolitik, and the USA doggedly pursuing its own interests, as it continues to do, often to the apparent surprise of allies who think special relationships count for something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @01:39PM
If hitler hadn't invaded russia then russia would have invaded him. Stalin was going to stab him in the back. Crazy dictators can't hold a peace. Rest is history.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @09:34PM
Actually, unlike Hollywood makes you think, the USA didn't won the europe wars, not even close... they did won the pacific war, but in both world wars, the USA stayed in the back getting the European country money ,supplying then, and entered the war on a stage that they only helped germany collapse... but it would collapse anyway.
Notice that i'm not saying that the USA armies were useless, soldiers number is always important... but in europe, they arrived to help the cleaning, not to shift the war.
in WWI, Germany and the other central empires had wasted almost all resources and was harder and harder to replace then. Russia collapse did help for some time but the true was that everything in the front line was being destroyed. Germany and the central empires had all resources internally and they were harder to get by each day... but France and UK had all their colonies supplying the war from far away. Other smaller countries, like Portugal and Brazil, while didn't had big armies deployes, did provide needed goods for the allies. All the starving inside the central empires were starting igniting the forced unification of those countries. It was just a matter of time to either they had no more resources or internal revolutions would spark. The USA army was just one more army, like all those colonial armies. Good or bad soldiers, it didn't matter a lot, they were there to kill and die, to wasted resources on both sides. Allies won in the end because they had more resources and could buy things from other places. Notice that the USA were also supplying the allies, even before entering the war. Germany surrender when they tried a all-in attack (in the french zone) and failed to even feed enough food for those soldiers, they could not sustain one more year in the same game.
On WWII, USA was still supplying the allies and helped a lot for the UK to not starve to dead... but who defeated the Nazis in the WWII were the Soviets. They managed to sustain, then stop Germany armies... they managed to build up new armies and counter attack, destroying the main Germany armies and a huge amount of precious resources... resources that germany again lacked. The UK did help too, but as a decoy and intel source... their main victory was stopping Rommel from taking the Suez channel and reaching the Oil fields. Soviets did the same in Caucaso. You then fall back to WWI, where any resource lost by Germany was much harder to recover.
If the USA didn't entered the European war, the soviets would (more) slowly eat the Germany resources. Italy had little resources to help and the occupied countries, while "helping" Germany, couldn't be trusted alone, forcing a huge amount of resources to be wasted all over the europe. A free UK alone was enough to keep several armies occupied in the western europe. The D day did help Germany collapse faster, but at that time, Germany had already lost their main armies and could do little to stop the Soviet armies... they could slow it down for a few more months, but the Soviet were investing EVERYTHING to win. They lost 10M soldiers... Germany had lost 5M... Stalin and their top militars didn't care about their human lost, they could replace then, but the Nazis couldn't anymore.
So in Europe, in WWII, the USA only accelerated the collapsed, but even without the Italy invasion, D-Day, south of France invasion, Germany were already using their reserves to retreat from the eastern front... losing those reserves, a normal government would surrender... for Hitler... they had to go on until he died
So if there is a place where the USA can say they saved everyone is in the pacific... European powers where too busy to fight there. The USA also won by lack of resources for the Japan. The USA could replace their ships, carriers and planes, Japan couldn't.
USA main contributions to both wars in europe were extra resources (that they sold, not free, UK only about 10 years ago finished paying the USA for war resources used). Military actions helped only speedup the German defeat. But they can say that Europe was not Soviet thanks to then... Without the D-day and the other smaller invasions, the Soviets would probably keep control of all Germany and maybe Italy, pushing for socialist in France and surrounding countries. And without the USA and UK army in the ground, Stalin could be tempted to push directly to France, Spain and Portugal (both still under fascist leaders)
Finally, i'm also not saying that the Soviets were saints, Stalin was just like Hitler... but also remember that after losing 15M of civils, Soviets soldiers wanted blood and loot from those that supported Nazi armies, fueled by the hate that soviet propaganda promoted to make people accept the sacrifice sustained.