I don’t disagree that it shows these issues, but identifying these empirically is one of the reasons the US likes to constantly inject itself into international conflict.
Given the objectively and publicly known huge part of the US destabilizing other countries overtly and covertly, and similar stories from innumerable other powers throughout history, I would say it takes damn much energy from third parties to generate a conflict between people I would love to see a comment defending US actions, in a way that makes sense, using only its official public narrative. Every damn official point made for justification is full of holes and counter examples.
The blind spots are entirely your own. The very first paragraph of the article includes:
"the period since WWII which has had a low and indeed falling level of war, both inter-state and intra-state. Normally, when I say this is something that has happened, I find I encounter a great deal of incredulity among the general public. Surely they can list off any number of wars or other violent conflicts that happened recently. But the data here is actually quite strong (and we all know my attitude towards certainty on points of real uncertainty; this is not one of them) – violence has been falling worldwide for nearly 80 years, the fall has been dramatic and relatively consistent."
> standard American exceptionalist propaganda-speak
"the USA’s record as a neighbor to Central and South America is not one we ought generally to be proud of"
I don't have high confidence that what the situation feels like based on the media that is readily available to me accurately reflects reality. Especially when it comes to international relations. There's always news about how the sky is falling.
I honestly haven't followed the various conflicts around the world closely enough over the years to trust any gut evaluation I could make of the current situation vs, say, the conflicts in Syria, Afganistan, Iraq, and Yugoslavia, just to make a few, from the last few decades.
These conflicts are terrible, but what that actually means to the international community on the order of years is non-trivial and far from self evident AFAICT
But it shows again that attacking your own citizen and blaming the enemy is a tactic that was considered a few times(or maybe more times) by the US government, this seems disgusting to start a war with false motives, it puts everything to doubt, so some people around the world doubt that US interventions had any other motivation then self interest and not self defense
I think there is lots of evidence of most for the things I claimed.
This is a perspective thing, we each see no fault in allowing the other to be screwed when our own national security is at stake. Then we fault the other for horrible acts of war when they just thought they were defending their national security.
Not to support interventionist policies (or to deny that some of these interventions have cause great suffering) but the fundamental cause-and-effect implication here is highly disingenuous.
For example - counting all 7.1 million refugees in the Syria conflict (which had its own internal roots, and probably would have played out about the same regardless of any attempt at intervention) as entirely due to a "U.S. post-9/11 war".
There is a ton of data around American interventions overseas over the past 20 years, the problem is western media doesn't show any of it and so it's invisible for most Americans. Americans did the same thing to multiple countries that we're seeing in the streetviews in OP
I'm sure they are, but the opposite is also true: every disordered regime or pressured state points to foreign interference as the reason for strife. There are distortions in both directions and not really any reliable information.
Also, it's worth noting that the US has a quasi-stable cycle of invading other countries for about a decade, then a roughly decade long policy of non-interventionism while they try to forget what a horrible quagmire they got themselves into the last decade.
I disagree that they're excellent examples when you consider the difference in terrain, infrastructure, the cultural and religious differences between the combatants and the status of one side as foreign occupying force.
The rest of the world actually doesn't disagree. Just look at what countries supported and participated in US conflicts. And there are countries who don't support openly, but behind the scenes with intelligence and logistics.
It seems as though this notion gets very subjective and gets leveraged to influence policy decisions. Libya and Iraq are the first examples that come to mind.
One might argue that the US at least is a main driver of many of the conflicts in the area, if not by direct invasions and infrastructure destruction then by support to local dictators and puppet governments.
I think the dispute is whether the US (as a proxy for western nations) have historically based their actions on humanitarian reasons or realpolitik, and whether they should base their decisions more heavily on one or the other.
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