Warning: rant
Gnullbegg wrote:
Well of course France only supported the US in their war to weaken Britain's position, and not at all out of some noble democratic sentiment (as was itself still suffering from the rule of an absolute monarch by that time)...
That's pretty hypocrite; when was the last time the US fought a war out of "some noble democratic sentiment"? You pulled a "wir haben es nicht gewuscht" during the Balkan Wars, twiddling your thumbs when you could've made a difference. The official justification was (literally!) America not wanting to be world police..., but as soon as a drop of oil is involved (Liberation of Kuwait, Invasion (near-annexation?) of Iraq) you suddenly do get involved.
Not to mention to War on Drugs which messes up pretty much all of Central and South America because you can't fix your drug problems at home and prefer letting other countries pay the price. Yes, I'm putting the blame for all the victims of drug cartel wars squarely on the USA; without (such a lucrative) market to sell their wares, there'd be no cartel wars.
Regarding that whole bit of the USA having the biggest army in the world...? Yeah cute, but it also just so happens to be (by far) the most expensive army in the world. You do of course realise that you didn't win the Cold War; the Soviet Union merely lost it..., when they couldn't
afford "fighting" it any more.
Now look at the current US economy; are you sure it wouldn't tremendously benefit from cutting offence (or "defence", per official nomenclature) spending by 90% and using that money in a more productive way? Like it or not, even the US can't keep this up forever.
Don't forget, Europe / the Western World will only stay obedient so long; sooner or later our politicians are going to figure out there's no incentive to roll over every time the USA wants us to -- the
current incentive is economical gain; if your economy collapses (even further...) that simply won't apply any more.