No, these countries would flex their muscles regardless. It’s literally the game of power played out on a global scale. There’s no world in which a liberal bloc coexists with a rising authoritarian bloc without at least a cold war

In fairness, and I don't say this to align with plankton, sovereignty is and always has been a game for major powers.

Most the world would depend on some larger power in a world without America, there'd just be more than one

Unless communism happens of course

what do other countries "flexing their muscles" have to do with the US economic hegemony of which these countries largely partook in themselves regardless? also what does "liberal bloc" mean? social liberalism? economic liberalism?

This. The US Navy is probably the greatest force for good in all of world history tbh

Weird that Saudi-Arabia, Israel, Thailand, the one-party state known as Japan, the state run by 5 mega-corporations known as South Korea, insanely corrupt states like Romania or Bulgaria or Kosovo belong to the liberal bloc...it's almost as if it is just a bullshit excuse for American economic interests

You don't even believe this yourself

i say this to everyone involved in this conversation- the world has been multipolar many times throughout history, it didnt mean most countries were any more sovereign than they are now

if the us abandoned its role- you'd see a fall in living standards in the first world but you'd not see any greater freedom for most. most countries would be dependent on global powers, just there'd be more than one rather than just america

and that's not me dissing china as worse than america or anything, dependency isnt always coercive, im just saying true sovereignty and agency isnt for most countries

Don't you cucks believe that competition is always good? Have these world powers compete for their loyalty. Let's end the US monopoly.

Liberal means democratic and capitalist. I think you know that. Flexing their muscles has to do with it because any move in their favor is necessarily not in ours. We know this now. There used to be a bipartisan consensus in the US that trade with China would liberalize the country. Now everyone sees the game China is playing.

to be fair, the saudis are only kept around cause they have to be. theyd be selling oil to someone else if it wasnt the us. it's a shame theyre needed

Great rationalization of the point I am making

It was never about enlightenment values

yeah you will get multi vector geopolitics for a while- it's what ukraine did when it used to play the us and eu off each other

but eventually spheres will consolidate and you end up with conflict. fact. always been the case

We made a deal with the devil with SA. It is what it is. Thailand is irrelevant. Japan, SK, Israel are all liberal democracies. Central Eastern European states are getting there.

The USA doing this to promote "liberty" is what you first world dweebs tell yourself so you can sleep at night without having to acknowledge the wholesale plunder of the rest fo the world orchestrated by the USA and Europe

I can name you a dozen African states that have absolutely s*** standards for "muh liberal democracy" that Obama, Trump and Biden cordially deal with.

Ffs, France controls the currency of like 10 African states to this very day

That doesn’t make them apart of the liberal democratic bloc.

if it wasnt the us and europe it would be the us, europe as well as numerous other great powers

unless theres something uniquely special about americans and europeans, that's just the core and periphery in action, it would be someone else if it wasnt them

of course, not under communism

Pretty sure this has been debunked

You saying it has been debunked doesn't make it true s***head

Playing ball with MBS is the best way to liberalize SA anyway. So it’s a moot point.

That was a polite way of telling you that you’re mistaken.

why is democratic and capitalist inherently good

ultimately, while this has been one of the better conversations in here- russia is a mafia state pursuing blatant imperialism on almost entirely false pretences. why should they be allowed to do so?

like all these criticisms of the us are good, but this is some neville chamberlain s***

and no, there is no russian genocide or ukraine run by neo nazis or legitimate will to join russia. it's all russia's version of iraq having wmds

That’s another discussion entirely. The point is the blocs formed based around these characteristics, and then they compete for resources and power in a fixed sum game.