17 Comments

This kind of great power cynism is simply outdated! America is not an Empire, but an Hegemonic country that leads the “Pax Democrática” system.

As a democracy, America do not want annex territory, and land and physical resources are less important in our time, so the historical experience of imperialism is less valuable to understand our world.

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vjQ5BhKnDyY35dXXf/chomsky-vs-pax-democratica

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My "cynical" analysis is correct and doesn't at all contact with your fact about annexation. In fact, I make this point in the article, directly referencing the reason why American as a neo-colonialist empire opposes traditional colonialism and annexation.

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Yes, and consequences are precisely that you have a road to real alignment. I agree with the arguments overall, but America is not a normal country in a normal moment running normal international politics.

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You understand I'm describing events in 1941 and not 2024? What is your point?

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You are right. My point is that probably America was already in a post imperialist mindset, but you are writing about Britain, and that is different.

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Sep 11
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Athenian imperialism, where conquered lands are made to swear fealty and generous deals to the people really in charge. Rather than being directly administered as a colony. How much this distinction really matters is up to you…

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Yes, that happened, it was small and entirely abandoned after WW2. At the end, the most important rule of international relations is “no taxation without representation”. If you have to allow the conquered to vote, there is no point in conquest.

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Taxes have been replaced with free trade and sanctions.

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Well, sounds like an improvement, for sure!

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Like taking heroin, it feels great in the short term.

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You are correct that the whole point of the Buchanan/Cooper school of revisionism is to portray WW2 as a war America was dragged into. People get angry at the implication that it was Jews who dragged America into war, but they are just as happy to blame the Brits, the Poles or anyone really.

In general, WW2 revisionism is one of those cases that points to liberalism being the best of all possible political worlds. The official story is kind of nonsense, but all of the alternative stories that are able to actually get any popular traction are even more nonsense.

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All this zionist blaming conflict with the fact many people with Darryl Cooper mindset believe Hitler was a zionist as well. Since during Tucker's interview he repeated the far leftoid mantra "Israel is doing what nazis did during WW2" not clearly if in a positive or negative way, ask him what does he think about nazis supposed partnership with the zionist movement in Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Side:_The_Secret_Relationship_Between_Nazism_and_Zionism

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I don't think Darryl has any positive commitments toward anyone or anything besides "the dissident movement" in a vague sense. So I assume he would just say "Hitler is complicated, Zionism is complicated" without endorsing or repudiating anything.

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The Finland comparison is a little strange, since they did agree to peace with the USSR.

I will admit to not having a strong sense of how much autonomy Churchill had over the British government of the time. Some documents make it seem like he had significant agency given his frequent personal meetings with FDR that later correlated with how the post war order went down.

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Churchill had degrees of freedom in 1940, but ending the war was outside his degrees of freedom.

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Sep 18
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Good critique.

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Sep 11
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Funny since Buchanan himself basically accused Churchill to want to keep Britain white: https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1833235044116402440

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