Re your concerns about US global domination

Come on now, enough with the hyperbole. The US has been a superpower for 60 years, the beginning of which was marked with rebuilding Europe and Japan insead of enjoying the spoils of war, then turned to creating international organizations like NATO and the UN as a response to Soviet expansion, and then worked to clean up hotspots like Yugoslavia, Kuwait, and Bosnia.

I can't say I approve every US action in that span of time (particularly in South America and Southeast Asia), but the basis of comparison is the Europeans. This is a group of people who, when they had the power to, raped and pillaged the rest of the planet for 500 years, before just about destroying themselves in two wars. Now suddenly they're the moral compass for the rest of the planet?

>>12

The EU's economic co-dominance is obviously very new. Anyway, I don't understand your definition of superpower, and I also don't see why the US has to be the sole superpower in order for global empire (America or whatever) to be a problem.

Back in the cold war it was pretty accepted that both the US and the USSR were superpowers, right? Neither of them would have been able to invade China back then either. Things changed for both superpowers, but the US hasn't lost *that* much ground in it's ability to project military and economic force.

So I don't see how you could question whether the US is a superpower. The only question is whether China is also. Right? *That* would determine whether the US is the "sole superpower". And who cares? Does that make empire-building ok?