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Glad we are admiting that Ukraine is just a proxy state for America. So the US can bomb, invade and occupy countries left and right and have proxy states right on Russia's border and there are no sanctions. However, other countries have no real legal protection and are left to the wims of American for whether their dollars are worth something or not.
There is a reason why this system isn't going to be stable.
Russia wanted Ukraine in its sphere, America wants it in its sphere. There's nothing original about this exact kind of proxy conflict, they've been happening between these very parties since 1945. If Russia or China (or anyone else) wanted to sanction the US and allies for supporting Euromaidan, they obviously could. They don't because it's transparently not in their interest.
In other words there is no rules based international order, there is just powergrabs. If that is the case then it is expected that other countries will be weary of the US and their power. Why be vulnerable to a country that is nothing more than extractive empire? The US has a problem and it is that the rest of the world is no longer far behind the US and therefore they can't bully countries to submission.
Yes of course. So strange that this is such a bitter pill for some people.
It's not. It's the people acting like there is such a thing that are hard to deal with.
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“Extractive Empire”
Many a MAGA and probably some leftist would argue we are the exact opposite of an extractive empire. Thru things like free trade and open borders we actually weaken our empire and act not in our own best interest. We sacrificed our industrial base to China. I myself will argue we give too good of a deal to otherwise in terms of security guarantees. I agreed with Trump when he says he would kick countries out of NATO who are not contributing to NATO military strength. America does subsidize the national security of a lot of rich nations (I am looking at you Germany).
We offer a very good deal for a country to be a country that uses dollars. We let them not spend on national defense and dump their products on the U.S. market. While America will flex our muscles with our rules at times we also offer them very good terms that are against our interests all the time.
Both can be true. The US becomes a financial empire with the rest of the world buying lots of money from the US. The rest of the world is forced to prop up American real estate markets and financial markets while the expensive dollar makes it cheap for Americans to import. The US empire is great for finance, insurance, real estate and the military industrial complex. It is not good for manufacturing. The world is has to send products to the US in order to get dollars, the US gets products for free but all the money printing makes the US too expensive for a large portion of the population.
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When people refer to US empire they aren't really referring to a traditional empire in which one country benefits off another. It's more the "globalist" empire, or stateless elite empire. American's are just as much colonists having their wealth funneled off as any of the other vassals in Europe.
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Because it's completely unclear that predation by China or (in some regional cases like Central Asia/Middle East/Caucasus/Baltics/Eastern Europe) Russia would be any better, when in fact it would likely be much worse. Sure, you can be a free agent with no permanent alliances, but that leaves you like the Philippines would be if they went full neutral; completely open to Chinese aggression. Much of the Pacific prefers the US to China. India is obviously fearful of China. In Africa and Latin America the factions are more mercenary, as we see. In Europe the bargain is that being part of the US alliance vs China is necessary to guarantee American support versus Russia.
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