alt Hacker NewsThe idea that America had “goodwill” in other countries before Trump is laughable. Where? Latin America? Africa? In the Muslim world? We bombed the hell out of all those places long before Trump. This most recent Iran war has generated less outrage in the Muslim world than the war against Iraq 20 years ago.
American foreign policy since the 1950s, fixated on fighting communism and then terrorism, has meddled with so many foreign countries that it’s silly to talk about “goodwill” towards America. That is not to say goodwill matters. Clearly the U.S. has done great without it.
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reed1234 • today at 6:25 AM
It is not binary
sneak • today at 1:00 AM
The US is a big part of the customer base of the largest manufacturing economy in the world. China's economy blossomed via US and European consumers.
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Although it is worth pointing out that something changed - prior to around 2010 the US had a financially dominant position and the internet was small. So it was feasible to totally ignore opinion in places like Latin America, Africa and the Muslim World.
What we've been seeing in more recent years is that the US can't get away with that so easily. Countries like Iran, China, Russia and India are capable of pushing back both in terms of the raw resources they can bring to bear and also increasingly in the ability to get their propaganda into the US discourse. The US is being manoeuvred into a one-among-equals position in practice and probably in the discourse too which will be a moral shock.