> This is blatantly false. The 1800 Census has Virginia with a population of 676k persons (~340k free), with Delaware and Rhode Island having only 64k and 69k respectively. Their economies and 'power' (state militias?) were also nowhere near equal.
That's a single order of magnitude from top to bottom.
The smallest states are now the population of VA in 1800, and the largest are now two orders of magnitude larger than that.
> how else do you explain the success and dominance of the US worldwide? It is, without question, the most powerful, wealthy, and successful country to have ever existed in history.
It is:
* Exceptionally large. Russia is twice as large. China, Canada and the US are all approximately the same size. Next is Brazil and Australia, and then there's another factor of 2 drop.
* Exceptionally gifted in natural resources. Between ocean ports and navigable waterways, transportation was easy to exploit. During the agriculture-first age, huge herds of bison roamed free. Oil and gas and coal are available. Most metals and minerals are here. The climatic zones available for year-round habitation are huge, and the deserts are not.
* Exceptionally un-invadable by the powers in the world at its birth. The native Americans were devastated by disease and weapons. Every other human threat needed to lug their troops over an ocean before starting to invade. The War of 1812 was an expensive fizzle for the British.
* Compound effects from the above produced a robust economy.
* Being across an ocean meant that the US could pick and choose when to enter the World Wars. Even after Pearl Harbor, FDR could delay entry until industrial processes were engaged to a wartime footing.
But the American domination really started at the end of WWII, with all the European countries and Russia and China and Japan facing major rebuilding efforts, while the US was largely unaffected.
None of that requires the Constitution to be exactly the way it is. Would it have worked better as a multi-party parliament? I think so. Would it be less effective as a theocratic fascism? I hope we're not about to find out.
The US was an APEX power and had been for a long time. Nobody could conquer it. To claim the US was a nobody is a laughable.
> It was still undergoing the post-Civil War recovery
After the civil war, the US fielded the greatest army in the world and it's economy was growing because it was shifting to westward expansion. We took over territory bigger than western europe. Not only that, the US was the largest producer of oil BY FAR at that time.
> the Industrial Revolution JUST arrived on the continent.
It just arrived in european mainland as well relatively speaking...
> No European nation was interested in conquering the largely agrarian society.
No european nation could. Let's stop pretending any european country had any hope.
A european country conquering the US in the 1800s is like costa rica conquering the US today. It's laughable.
During the civil war, the US developed much of the military technology that was used in the first world war a few decades later.
> the US has always been an expansionist and later empire-seeking country at least for significant (i.e. with enough influence) parts of the powerful.
That’s not true at all, at least not in historical context. The US is the most powerful country in the world never to build an actual empire. It’s conquests are limited to part of Mexico, and some pacific islands. It’s predecessor, Great Britain, colonized India, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, and turned China into a vassal state. The would-be challenger Germany occupied France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, etc.
The US is interventionist—it intervenes in the political affairs of other countries to perpetuate the status quo. That’s very different from being expansionist or Empire-seeking. Take Iraq for example. The US toppled the government. But did it colonize the country? Annex the oil fields? Turn the oil over to domestic oil companies like Exxon? No. (Most of the development rights went to BP, a British company!) The US spent far more on Iraq then it got out of the country. That’s not how an Empire operates.
>The US became absurdly wealthy during the 20th century.
Yes, but it was bootstrapped by the biggest land takeover in history, along with all of its natural resources. It also benefitted from all the western big players of the 19th/early 20th century being exhausted after 2 wars that never touched continental US soil. Neither is easily replicated without a rich in natural resources continent full of easy targets, or massive remote wars.
> America is the greatest economic engine the world has ever known. It's not because we're situated on a mountain of rubies, or that we are intellectually superior to other countries.
It's because of our system of government.
I'm not taking any position against your overall point, and I do think there are many (relatively) uniquely American policies that historically have paid wonderful dividends; but you're vastly underestimating the exogenous geographic advantages of America (and I'm not sure if you're doing this, but most people tend to overestimate how long global American hegemony has existed).
We're sitting on 50% of the world's navigable internal waterways, overlaid over by the world's largest piece of contiguous farmland[1]. We've got ports that allow easy direct shipping access to most of the rest of the world's economy (Western Europe and China/Japan/India; We also have easy direct shipping access to South America and Africa, but those have naturally been less important). We've got enormous natural borders with the rest of the powers that were most recently useful in the fact that we've had the luxury of staying out of the incredibly catastrophic wars of the rest of the world more or less until we decided to enter[2] (and to the degree that we decide to enter). Those also enabled us to escape essentially 100% of the physical destruction of those wars.
[2] Obviously less true for Pearl Harbor, but still true to an extent: consider the impact of a surprise attack for Germany -> France as opposed to for Japan -> US. Crossing the Pacific is infinitely harder than crossing Belgium.
> don’t think the US would do well in a world war where global shipping were seriously and intentionally disrupted
You're describing an energy, food and minerals exporter with internally-navigable waterways and the world's largest rail network. Oh, and friendly neighbours to the north and south--both of whom we dwarf militarily--and oceans on each coast to keep the meanies away.
Adapting to self (more realistically: continental) sufficiency wouldn't be fun. But I struggle to think of a country better situated for a collapse in global trade. (Caveat: agree with you on our political structure being questionable in terms of harnessing these advantages.)
I agree with you that the US was under-powered militarily at the time, but by the 40s the US had been the world's largest economy and industrial power for decades.
It is obviously true. The five permanent security council members are US, China, Russia, UK and France. US, China and Russia are obviously gigantic. UK is gigantic via its ties to Canada, Australia, NZ. After all the silly monarch of britain is the head of state of all these nations. And France has a gigantic empire still. Go check out their EEZ.
> but it’s not like Germany and Japan are powerful because of their landmass.
Germany and Japan aren't powerful. Powerful nations aren't occupied by a foreign power. Germany and Japan are extraordinarly weak. Their economic well being is entirely dependent on the generosity of another nation.
There is a reason why Germany and Japan tried to expand their territories in ww2. They failed and they have to live with the consequences.
> I think judging countries by their size is a mistake in rationality and people shouldn’t do that.
Sure. Landmass by itself isn't everything. As I said, you have to factor in population, quality of land, ports, neighbors, etc.
> It’s only silly people who look at Greenland on a Mercator map and think that they are powerful based on size.
You quoted "the larger and more populous countries tend to be the most powerful and influential."
Do you know what populous means? It's silly to quote something and not understand it.
> The USA was the largest economy in the world by 1890, despite pursing a policy of isolationism for the entire century before that.
The US was never isolationist unless you ignore the existence of Native American Nations; it was brutally expansionist from day one. From the time of the Monroe Doctrine, US imperialism expanded even further, leaving the US “isolationist” in most of the 19th Century mainly only in regard to what happened outside the Western Hemisphere, and not even always there.
> Except that the the US gains tremendous advantages from having such a large military and projecting it's power globally.
Correct, further supporting my claim that there is no other country that can be properly compared to the United States, since no other country has corresponding military might and it is unclear how to value such a thing fairly.
> they’re just a country, not the king of the world.
Militarily and economically the US is an empire (by definition, as its growth is tied to warfare, expansion, and dominance). Just like the British empire was before it.
For example - it has 400 major, and another 400 minor, bases (some with nuclear-ready weapon systems) stationed in foreign countries. While no foreign country has a base in the US.
>US looked like a force of good after WW2, but that deteriorated quickly. Not that other western nation states are holy, but the US seems to be the ringleader.
Humanity has seen the most positive growth by far under Pax Americana.
> If you account at all for the inherent advantages of a unipolar world, the US's record is shockingly poor. I'm fine with rolling the dice on multipolarity in hopes of a less irrational hegemon emerging.
Who?
If you look at past hegemons—Rome, the Mongols, Britain—the US has the best record of them all. And, incidentally, if you look at past periods of multipolarity, you get a series of progressively more deadly and destructive wars.
> Were they? I mean before the 50's you have the 40's the 40's are notable because of WW2, prior to that America was pretty isolationist.
Were we? Then how did we expand from 13 states to 50? What were the wars with mexico, spain, china, etc about? How does that explain commodore perry and his black ships in japan? Did he get lost? We had colonies from china to japan to africa to the caribbean before ww2.
The isolationist propaganda is what we are taught in school. But like most history/propaganda, if you just dig a little bit deeper, it's all nonsense. We were the greatest expansionist force in the world in the 19th and 20th century.
> The USA has the first military power in the whole world and could go and invade a bunch of countries if they wanted to and nobody would oppose them.
This is false. Have you heard of the korean war or the vietnam war? Or the afghanistan/iraqi war? There are ( and have been ) powers that opposed the US ( sometimes successfully ). Look at current day syria.
> Since they are not doing so, its hard to call them belligerent.
What? We have been in a state of perpetual aggressive war ever since ww2 ( frankly since the american revolution war if we are being honest ).
> The British Empire was way worse than the USA all things considered.
It may or may not have been worse. But being belligerent isn't a relative matter of comparison. It's a matter of state. It's like being pregnant. You are pregnant or you are not.
> Empire collapse (has happened with every single empire in history - what makes the U.S. exempt?)
The US isn't anything like traditional historical empires for one. It hasn't built its prosperity on invading other nations to annex them and plunder their national wealth, which is traditionally how empires temporarily sustain themselves. The US built its immense wealth today (just under half of all private wealth on earth is owned by Americans) overwhelmingly through invention, engineering, industry, trade, manufacturing, radical productivity gains spanning two centuries, and lots of immigration. Historical empires have always run out of lands to conquer and wealth to steal from other nations, and then they collapse as they fail to placate their own people or get defeated militarily by the lands they previously conquered.
The USD global reserve is a vulnerability? That's one potential issue. However, the US was the world's largest economy - by about 1890 - long before it had the global reserve currency. Japan has a disastrous situation on its hands economically, and a currency they're very aggressively abusing, and yet they're still the world's #3 economy with a substantial GDP per capita. The notion the US would just wilt without the global reserve currency, is absurd.
What lands has the US annexed that it's going to get pushed out of (and lose the plunder/tax from said nations)? What nation/s is the US stealing all of its prosperity from, such that that is going to end soon? Are we taking $5 trillion annually from Vietnam and Mexico (it's actually the other way around given the vast US trade deficit, we're sending hundreds of billions to the rest of the world)?
Further, the US was the first Capitalist nation. From day one it was heavily built on the principles of the free market and trade, not invasion and plunder. (and before anyone chimes in to loudly proclaim that the US has never been a perfect Capitalist nation: no kidding, such wasn't implied) Otherwise there would be no Canada, at some point in the last century we would have invaded for their natural resources. The US also would have pulled a Russia, and taken Japan and parts of Europe, using its rather wild military & resource advantage at the end of WW2.
>The US managed to create the world's largest economy by 1890, through trade and domestic industry, while almost entirely staying out of major foreign affairs. It wasn't until WW2 that the US emerged fully onto the global stage by necessity due mostly to Europe's disastrous politics and ideologies at the time.
All what this explains is that the potential of the domestic trade in large country such a the US is enormous. Duh.
Japan just like Germany relied on a post-war recovery, the Cold War, the US and invested back into their own growth instead of the military.
In short, no one denied that domestic trade has a lot of growth potential but that isn't an argument that international trade doesn't rely on one's influence and level of defense.
Also, regarding other comments, you always need to properly consider the full context when comparing the past to the present. For instance, until WW2 wars were consider much more of a political tool rather than a disaster. That is a vital point of view the culture of the West only slowly is developing and still in danger to get overthrown.
>States would not have become a superpower, because they did not win the most wars, nor did they murder the most people, at the end of World War 2, when they gained superpower status.
The US suffered less casualties than all the other major powers (USSR, China, Germany, Poland, Japan, France, Italy, UK) in WW2 and their infrastructure was not destroyed. So kill/death ratio and net destruction are quite indicative of the outcome.
Which country would you guess has committed the most large scale invasions and longest lasting wars since world war 2?
>you make the US sound like a Mongol Khanate which is just absurd
That is indeed an absurd strawman. Did the Mongols not achieve their super power status because of how successful they were at mass murder?
> as for spreading democracy I find the track record more horrific than corny
Hang on, in which period of world history did the world enjoy more widespread peace and democratic rule than during Pax Americana?
Or are you claiming that the most peaceful and democratic era of history happened in spite of the US, not in any way due to it?
I don't have any objections to criticizing the US but my read on its history in this context is basically - once it expanded as far as it could militarily it decided the next best thing to do was build up a global network of nations it could trade with and make money off of. Those powers needed to be peaceful and stable so frequently ended up being democracies.
> I'd say the US is a hegemon but not really an Empire except for a few small islands
This is the ruse. The US is a global empire. Except, as history has shown, imperialism is somewhat unpopular to local populations. The US modern imperialism playbook is designed so the population really believes they are self governing themselves. The US doesn’t care who runs the day to day domestic government, so long as they have military bases, are the primary trading partner, and effectively direct this countries foreign and economic policies unilaterally. The fact you think the American empire is limited to a few vestigial takings from the pacific theater of wwii shows how effective this modern and silent hegemony really is.
That's a single order of magnitude from top to bottom.
The smallest states are now the population of VA in 1800, and the largest are now two orders of magnitude larger than that.
> how else do you explain the success and dominance of the US worldwide? It is, without question, the most powerful, wealthy, and successful country to have ever existed in history.
It is:
* Exceptionally large. Russia is twice as large. China, Canada and the US are all approximately the same size. Next is Brazil and Australia, and then there's another factor of 2 drop.
* Exceptionally gifted in natural resources. Between ocean ports and navigable waterways, transportation was easy to exploit. During the agriculture-first age, huge herds of bison roamed free. Oil and gas and coal are available. Most metals and minerals are here. The climatic zones available for year-round habitation are huge, and the deserts are not.
* Exceptionally un-invadable by the powers in the world at its birth. The native Americans were devastated by disease and weapons. Every other human threat needed to lug their troops over an ocean before starting to invade. The War of 1812 was an expensive fizzle for the British.
* Compound effects from the above produced a robust economy.
* Being across an ocean meant that the US could pick and choose when to enter the World Wars. Even after Pearl Harbor, FDR could delay entry until industrial processes were engaged to a wartime footing.
But the American domination really started at the end of WWII, with all the European countries and Russia and China and Japan facing major rebuilding efforts, while the US was largely unaffected.
None of that requires the Constitution to be exactly the way it is. Would it have worked better as a multi-party parliament? I think so. Would it be less effective as a theocratic fascism? I hope we're not about to find out.
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