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I define it as the -capacity of the state to initiate, direct and complete projects.
-enforcement of laws on the books
If any stupid construction projects gets delayed for years, if state continually loses money in weird scams, if laws are not being enforced, that's all a minus.
..politically stable? You've got intelligence services meddling in politics, gigantic loss of legitimacy ever since Trump. Sure nobody's trying actual insurgencies but the regime is considered illegitimate and unjust by half the population, though it changes which half.
And your 'network of alliances' is actually a bunch of provinces you're busy ruining economically. Biden inflation reduction act was offering money to EU businesses to relocate to USA. You blew up their natural gas pipeline.
And as to solidity of economy...... if democrats keep being in office and keep attacking energy supply, that's not going to last.
Ukrainians did that. But I advocate the US government destroying Russian pipelines. Not all of them all at once, but little by little to help wean Europeans off if Russian fuel. The pipelines are impossible to defend. Every now and then a bomb could go off or the pressure could be set wrong causing an explosion and the US could deny responsibility.
This happened back in the Cold War. Every now and then misfortune would strike an oil pipe. Turns out it was the CIA.
Allow me to be skeptical about that. The explosions were very powerful, on the order of useful load for a yacht that size. It smells of a cover story, really.
Don't you think it's up to Europeans to decide who they're going to buy fuel from ?
Are you not worried this kind of thing could result in drones randomly blowing up US nat-gas liquefaction facilities. Attacks on infrastructure are not a good idea, not against people with means.
Especially seeing as US border is pretty much unsecured, US has hugely long coasts and there's a lot of ship traffic and all that.
Russia endlessly attacks Ukrainian infrastructure. It appears to be a great idea and in fact key to winning wars.
Pipelines are entirely undefesible. So let's say any nation with the desire has a veto on this decision.
And yes, Europe is the most feckless and counterproductive allies the US could have. A parasite society hiding under our defense umbrella, using our hard-found pharmaceuticals without paying to support them and endlessly funding our enemies.
Who would be drone bombing American LNG plants? Not Europe for sure. We've seen their complete inability and extreme passivity in this conflict. You think Russia would do it? I suppose it is possible. But the US has historically been extremely shielded from direct counterattack like that. 9/11 being the one exception.
Ukraine is a poor corrupt country with very little means of retaliating. Russia provides up to 10% of world's material inputs in most cases. I don't even mention that it has a steel and chemicals industry with output on par with WW2 US. And that it's currently apparently outproducing NATO as Ukraine is .. not doing very well on the artillery front, and NATO has little reason to hold back artillery and shell production seeing as the next war is a naval and air war against China,where artillery is of little to no use.
Wars. Do you understand what a 'war' is? Attacking infrastructure, outside of a war situation, risks that it becomes a war.
Nice trolling, but the biggest trade partner of China is the United States. Also Europe isn't funding Iran or North Korea - Iran is mainly funding itself with its oil revenue.
You forgot that WTC was bombed, that Muslim terrorists almost blew up a dozen airliners, the LA bomb plot. And then of course, 9/11 itself. A massive strategic victory for Al-Qaeda, in that it gave Americans a blank cheque to waste all their power through sheer stupidity.
And all of these plots were far harder than bribing a particular crewman on a cargo ship to open a particular container, input a code and push a button, watch a dozen drones zoom off and then dump the packing materials off board.
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Your post is a good example of how the discussion goes awry: not really focusing on "state capacity" in and of itself, but rather using it as a springboard to grind the usual axes. Talking about stuff like supposed FBI bias wouldn't be particularly high up on the list of concerns in regards to state capacity, but it can jump to #1 if you wanted to talk about it anyways!
I disagree with many of your object-level concerns, and think they're interesting discussions, but don't think they have much to do with state capacity.
In any case:
The US is certainly polarized, but political stability of the kind capitalism requires to do basic business hasn't been impacted on a widespread scale, outside of maybe the BLM riots of 2020 which tend to be overblown by those on the right.
Equivocating the EU as a "bunch of [American] provinces" or as "puppets" as I've heard other claim is just flatly false. Also, nearly all evidence of the Nordstream bombing points to Ukraine, not the US.
Under Biden, the US has produced more oil than any nation in history. Not just US history, but world history in its entirety.
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