Bananas would cost more
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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Most likely some other country (or countries) would simply fulfill the same role of projecting their military and economic power onto the rest of the world to maintain their hegemony. We see this in limited ways already with many other countries, though with a few exceptions, theyβre careful in how much they conflict with US interests. One of these, likely China, would move into that role and while the details would be different in some ways, many of the overall dynamics would be similar.
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History doesn't provide answers to hypotheticals
That's why they're asking people and not reading a history book.
Difficult to say. For starters, we can't know with certainty the full list of countries that were affected. We don't know all the ways countries were affected. There's so much we don't know that it's really impossible to say.
On a tangentially related note, this documentary series from BBC4 is a fascinating insight into the decision making process the US went through over dealing with foreign mass atrocities over the past 40 years: Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Syria etc.
Warning: they do not hold back with the imagery of these events.
Did they also go into mass atrocities committed and initiated by the US? If you go around lighting fires and then come back around to put them out after donning an official uniform, should others consider you a fire fighter or an arsonist?
Is there a single instance covered that wasn't a situation the US directly and purposely had a hand in creating?
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The world would be far more Socialized.
That's actually the really sad story here.
Every "experimental" regime was either toppled (Chile) or had to align with the USSR (Cuba) to survive. There was never a real attempt at democratic socialist politics without interference from superpowers.
There was never a government at all without interference from superpowers.
Of course, but most governments are allowed to mostly be sovereign.
Sweden or Australia play ball on their own, no need for a coup here.
Lol, what? Australia is a US lackee more than anywhere else. And the CIA was definitely involved in the Whitlam sacking.
For real, the US committed a coup in Australia with Whitlam. They don't constrain the CIA to just poor countries.
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Most countries would be socialist.
Other countries would probably still have some similar shit. People are people.
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The US projects its own interests worldwide but those often overlap with the interests of other as well.
For example, the US often stipulates intellectual property and worker rights in it's trade deals. The US actively protects shipping lanes. The US actively negotiates visa-free entry for American passport holders to other countries. The US invests in the economies of foreign countries to stimulate trade opportunities. The US controls the SWIFT banking network which makes it so that we don't need to send gold bullion or pallets of cash to buy things from other countries, and participating in the system requires member countries to have certain controls in place that attempt to block bad actors. The US, through it's embassies and ambassadors, deploys it ideology to foreign governments, and makes deals that allow foreigners to invest in the USA and Americans to open businesses in foreign countries.
The US actively shuns and makes life difficult for menace dictatorships on the global stage by creating trade exclusions.
There have been coups since the beginning of time and always will be, as it's human nature. Many citizens of other countries have no belief that the future of their country belongs to them after decades or centuries of dictatorships or kingdoms. On the whole, history shows that kingdoms rise and fall for many reasons and the people sometimes benefit and sometimes suffer for it.
Obviously it's a highly complex topic, but if the US wasn't doing these things, then Russia or China would be, or there would be more powerful regional factions, which could reduce the size of the world in terms of travel and trade options for many.
Whether the US is the right one to be in control of this at this point in history is a matter of intense debate among some, but it could absolutely be worse than it is now.
Definitely a better place.
It really depends on how far back you want to look.
If the US was to suddenly stop projecting its interests internationally, then as others have mentioned, then likely the world work become somewhat more socialized. European countries would probably step up and try to keep China in check, but without the US contributing to these efforts, it would cause a significant strain on their military resources.
If the US was to take an isolationist policy 100 years ago, then there is a good chance that WW2 would have been won by the Axis. The Allied forces likely would have put up a good fight, but I'm not sure they would have emerged victorious against the combined Axis forces. The war in the Pacific would have raged on much longer, and without nuclear weapons, there would have been an extreme loss of life invading Japan. At the very least, WW2 would have lasted much much longer than it did. Depending on the outcome, plenty of countries might currently be speaking German and debating if they should tear down 80-year-old statues of Hitler.
If the US was to take an isolationist policy 100 years ago, then there is a good chance that WW2 would have been won by the Axis. The Allied forces likely would have put up a good fight, but I'm not sure they would have emerged victorious against the combined Axis forces. The war in the Pacific would have raged on much longer, and without nuclear weapons, there would have been an extreme loss of life invading Japan. At the very least, WW2 would have lasted much much longer than it did. Depending on the outcome, plenty of countries might currently be speaking German and debating if they should tear down 80-year-old statues of Hitler.
The only people who believe this drivel are those who have only learned about WWII via Hollywood and YT videos. Go listen to an actual historian and you will not hear this fantasy. They will tell you that Germany had one foot in the grave by the time the US joined the Western front. The only ounce of truth in this statement is that the Pacific theatre would have gone on longer.
Edit: I didn't touch on this but should have...the whole idea that a nuclear attack on Japan was necessary or even justified in any way is not only incorrect but is a racist, genocidal excuse for not one, but TWO of the most horrific acts in our entire history. You should be ashamed for propagating this tired lie.
he did mention isolationist, so... we'd also have to consider how the eastern front would have evolved without lend-lease. not a historian so perhaps consensus is the Nazis still wouldn't have had a chance, but still
Good points. It's difficult to find a clear answer to how important lend-lease was to the Soviet war effort. During the war, the USSR and US obviously had good things to say about the program, but the start of the Cold War soured this discussion, leading to the US overstating and the USSR understating the impact. Here's an excerpt from a paper by a British scholar exploring the topic. Emphasis is the author's:
It is neither possible nor fruitful to try and put a precise measure on the material value of allied aid to the Soviet war economy, if only because of the unavailability of many Soviet production data. Whatever the value of western aid, the Soviet war effort was measured in human life and suffering incomparable with material aid from outside. Further, the Soviet economy became much more of a war economy than other combatant nations. Nonetheless, it seems that the contribution made by deliveries from the USA and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Canada, played an important part at crucial times and in crucial areas. First, and above all, was a vital margin of food supplies, second was the provision of specialist or deficit products such as aluminium and copper, specialized tools, high quality steels. In this respect lend-lease supplies overcame bottlenecks. However, it must be stressed that the major impact came after the Soviet counterattack and the beginning of German retreat. Such aid directly and indirectly helped defeat the German forces, and was in such a way a substitute for a second front, but it did little to defend the USSR from the initial onslaught. Third, some of the raw materials and more especially machinery and transport equipment was of positive value to the Soviet economy after the war. For this, the tyre plant is the best but not the only example.
It is nonsense to repeat the figure of four per cent of Soviet wartime production and disingenuous to disparage western aid - a feature evident in Soviet literature and one criticized even by Khrushchev. It is nonetheless true (and this is a point repeated in some Soviet works) that Britain and the Empire received far more than the USSR from the United States. Lend-lease, in this respect, may be seen as a temporary substitute for foreign trade. Britain was a major trading nation, highly dependent on imports, especially for food and raw materials. The USSR, on the other hand, was an economy with little trade dependence whose foreign trade turnover had fallen steadily during the 1930s...
The part left off at the end compares repayment of aid sent to the British vs the Soviets. A fairly short read that will give some more context to the conclusions I shared above.
One of the main points the author makes is that lend-lease was used by the US as a stand-in for entering the war and opening a new front in 1942 as the allies (and Stalin in particular) were requesting. In this context, lend-lease was a replacement for reopening the Western front in 1942, an action that could have been far more impactful. The US provided material aid in lieu of entering the war, shifting the human burden of the war onto the other Allied forces and particularly the USSR from 1942 to least at 1944 (note that lend-lease aid extended wider and was provided from 1941-1945).
Overall, the impression I've gotten from sifting through academic writings on the subject is that while lend-lease certainly helped take some of the pressure off of the USSR (mainly in the form of producing food, trucks, and raw materials), it's most likely that the result would have been the same. That said, wondering over historical what-ifs, while fun, should really be constrained to recreational musing and shouldn't be taken seriously.
amazing comment, thanks!
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The "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyland.
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