I don’t think that opposite argument works given the current geopolitical situation which has nothing to do with the US being aggressive. Russia would have very likely completed its conquest of Ukraine by now and moved on to the Baltic states (NATO relies on US military spending to compensate for lack of spending of other NATO members). Taiwan would belong to China yesterday, along with the rest of the Indo-Pacific.
The EU and European countries in general have in total provided more aid to Ukraine than the US, it's just divided across multiple countries, not that it's a competition. I'm not sure a military budget 200 billion vs 600 billion is going to make such huge a difference if the goal of your military is actually defence instead of force projection, it's not like they're giving Ukraine the fancy pants expensive stuff and both the US and Europe probably both ran out of (or significantly depleted at least) their stocks of regular old dumb artillery ammunition, rocket launchers, etc, and that stuff is what's used and actually useful.
It's disingenuous to ignore the effect the aggression of the cold war and its aftermath had on the current Russian situation.
With Taiwan, it's a delicate situation and I'm not familiar enough with it to comment on it.
But I notice you conveniently left out all the times the US just did interventionism because it was convenient. Iraq? Most recently Venezuela? If we go back long enough, how about literally all of South America?
What military interventionism in Venezuela? The US applied sanctions when Maduro started suppressing democracy, sure, but that's not the same thing as airstrikes or invading. This sounds like goalpost moving, since we were talking specifically about military force.
The US has a shit history of intervening in Latin America from the 20th century, no argument there, but it's been several decades now at least since the US overthrow a democracy in that region.
The US backed Guaido's illegitimate claim to Venezuelan presidency as recently as 2022.
You're right that it wasn't outright military interventionism. In my mind, there's little difference between supporting a coup covertly through the CIA, by providing weapons and training, and invading a country. Maybe we disagree there.
> but it's been several decades now at least since the US overthrow a democracy in that region.
Isn't because it takes several decades for the secret documents being declassified? Of course the official discourse of USA is that they did nothing. However, we have several accusations of interference in Latin America in a lot of soft coups and more direct attacks like in Bolivia (2019) and Venezuela (a coup in 2002 and a mercenary attack in 2020).
Ok? What's so bad about speaking Russian? English isn't my first language, I have no attachment to it. If Russian had become the lingua franca of the world I'd have learned that instead.
Forcing Russian language and culture upon conquered nations was and remains one of the main methods of extermination of conquered peoples. There's even a word for it, Russification.
Your question is the same as asking what was so bad about "speaking English" in the context of American native population and European settlers. Most of modern-day Russia is a land conquered from natives the same way European settlers conquered the Americas and wiped out native population using a wide range of tools from direct massacres to forced cultural assimilation.
The question is culturally as insensitive and uneducated as asking a black person in the Americas what's so bad about working on a plantation, or why they're not happy with sitting at the back of the bus - does it rock too much there or what's the problem?
Buddy, I'm from South America and I had to learn English and move away from my continent in order to have a chance at a good life. I've already been colonized by the USA. Don't tell me to be thankful because Russian would have been worse.
Nowhere did I tell you to be thankful. But I do find it hypocritical how oblivious and dismissive you are of the similar suffering caused by other countries, in even wider scale, over a longer time, in other parts of the world.
You're literally dismissing the fact that the USA executed a coup in my country because I didn't acknowledge that it would be bad if Russia did the same thing.
Nope. Unlike you, I am very sympathetic to people who have suffered from countries with imperialistic behaviour. I just don't restrict the list of such countries to only one entry.
If you want to educate yourself on how Eastern Europe suffered in the 20th century, then I recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465031471
> Ok? What's so bad about speaking Russian? English isn't my first language, I have no attachment to it. If Russian had become the lingua franca of the world I'd have learned that instead.
