I have sympathy for pacific remarks, but you have to keep in mind that warmongering in foreign countries doesn't exactly fit as, let's say, one star a half on a five star ethics scale.
Iraq is not an abuse, becasue the abuse is mass murder; and it's not the only one.
There are a few interesting conceptual problems. It's arguable that this approach favours the smaller guys. Who are the smaller guys? The ones surrounding Russia, because they're important for strategic reasons?
Well, true. But we have to exclude the smaller guys who sit on oil reserves, because if they don't agree with giving their oil at a more than fair price, they get the bombs.
Also, we have to exclude various smaller guys which have been supported when it was convenient for various economical reasons, and then have been abandoned to self-implosion after they've been exploited.
So, who's really the smaller guys?
There are several other problems. One that I find very dangerous is that it's not just a matter of getting/buying "somebody else's" stuff. It's also a matter of exporting corporatocracy, which is an alarming direction.
Up until the Ukraine crisis, the US has been working very closely with Russia trying to become equal trading partners. Case in point: the Space Program and the Rockets the US have been using are all Russian made.
Mind you, US --- Venusuela relations are pretty bad right now, and we certainly want their oil. But the US isn't going to invade Venusuela any time soon. The politics and reasons behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are far more complicated than just oil. Otherwise, there'd be a heck of a lot more countries we'd be invading. (Iran, Venesuela, etc. etc.)
There is a good point made here. The US at worst just wants stuff: it doesn't want to prove its superiority over other countries (although there are factions of the Warmongerers who do wish to do that... it seems like politics of war are more practical than the 19th century "Great Game" period).
There's a lot of people hating on the current approach of global politics. But any studied historian will agree: the US is doing a heck of a lot better than Napoleon, the British Empire, Rising Sun Japan, or other historical world powers. Heck, "Corporatocracy" was the standard Asian power from 1600s to the 1800s. The East Indian Trading Company (a corporation) was one of the world powers that conquered India.
We no longer live in an era where corporations are allowed to have standing armies and navies. We no longer live in an era where world powers wage war over the ability to trade Opium for the explicit purpose of weakening a country. (IE: the 1800s Opium Wars).
Perhaps "benevolence" is the wrong word to use to describe America, but its certainly doing its "Super-power duties" better than its historical predecessors.
Iraq is not an abuse, becasue the abuse is mass murder; and it's not the only one.
There are a few interesting conceptual problems. It's arguable that this approach favours the smaller guys. Who are the smaller guys? The ones surrounding Russia, because they're important for strategic reasons?
Well, true. But we have to exclude the smaller guys who sit on oil reserves, because if they don't agree with giving their oil at a more than fair price, they get the bombs.
Also, we have to exclude various smaller guys which have been supported when it was convenient for various economical reasons, and then have been abandoned to self-implosion after they've been exploited.
So, who's really the smaller guys?
There are several other problems. One that I find very dangerous is that it's not just a matter of getting/buying "somebody else's" stuff. It's also a matter of exporting corporatocracy, which is an alarming direction.