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The best way to think about US foreign policy in the post-WWII era is as a Sugar Daddy relationship.
The sugar daddy provides for his sugar babies — rent money, nice clothes, fancy dinners — all sorts of nice things that make the sugar babies feel indebted to the sugar daddy, despite the fact that reliance on the sugar daddy is preventing the sugar babies from developing self-reliance via skills and resources of their own.
This means the sugar babies grow MORE reliant on the benevolence of the sugar daddy as time goes on — NOT less. Eventually the sugar babies only know how to be dependents, and must submit ever more of themselves to their daddy, regardless of how their own wants and needs have evolved.
If sugar daddy stops paying, forcing the sugar babies to make their own way in the world, the sugar babies will find themselves forced to do one of two things:
Or
In either case, they no longer need their original sugar daddy, and may in fact resent their prior dependence such that they choose to have nothing to do with him. At the very least, the relationship is irrevocably changed and daddy’s power over them, forever weakened.
For a very long time, America has kept the world just-contented enough to stay on the teat, which means America got to act with essentially zero restrictions everywhere around the globe. Whether you agree with this policy or not, its effectiveness in terms of maintaining heretofore unimaginable global power cannot be denied.
Now said teat is tied-off and the babies must find purchase elsewhere — either their own, or that of a China or Russia. The migration is already in full swing.
And no matter what happens, daddy won’t be in charge of them ever again, no matter how much he siegs or heils.
