> Sweden and Denmark haven't been hegemons because they haven't needed to be.
That's exactly right, and I used nearly exactly those words in a recent comment.
Important to note: The free world - economically advanced democracies excluding the US - is the largest economy in the world, larger than the US by about 30%, with an even larger population.
These countries have a historically unprecedented incentive to work much more closely together now, and there is a massive void to fill.
U.S. hegemony has also destroyed and subverted democracies and propped up very illiberal dictatorships. Protecting democracy for white countries only isn't exactly what I think of when I think "world protector of liberal democracy".
The U.S. hasn't been perfect, but I'll take it over the alternatives.
And, I'd say protecting democracy for "white countries only" is a simplification. If you're talking about Europe, then we have to consider that the U.S. has also pretty famously fought against European nations and that our subsequent "protection" there was to serve as a bulwark to maintain a world order that benefited the U.S. and democracy.
And, you have to consider that we later "protected" the non-white Japan, Korea, and Vietnam at great cost.
In some of the countries wherein the U.S. could be said to have propped up dictators, there tended to be other geopolitical realities. For instance, many of these were in the Middle East and the U.S. elected to align with the most pliable of the available alternatives. And, in spite of this, the U.S. has also promoted democracy in the region.
You have to also consider the sentiment in many of the countries or regions is/was decidedly anti-American and the choice to support regimes less hostile to U.S. interests is a practical one. Many do not want democracy and the alternative for the U.S. is frequently to topple regimes and attempt to stand up completely new governments (i.e. nation-building). This is an extraordinarily costly endeavor with a high failure rate.
And, all of this in the context of adversarial nations doing the same to promote their own interests.
Again, we're not perfect but the world is a messy place.
> Many do not want democracy and the alternative for the U.S. is frequently to topple regimes and attempt to stand up completely new governments (i.e. nation-building). This is an extraordinarily costly endeavor with a high failure rate.
Yes, and this is one of the stupidest things about American foreign policy. Every european democracy spent hundreds of years as an authoritarian regime first, while it developed the underlying infrastructure of state and civil society. America repeatedly trying to short-circuit that process by toppling authoritarian regimes is in the long run bad for the people in those countries. Those countries are not ready for democracy and the fledgling democracies that the U.S. has tried to install, like in Iraq, have led to horrors.
Coups in Haiti, supporting gangsters and strongmen, overthrowing democratically elected presidents multiple times - supporting Democracy!
Pushing fake candidates in Venezuela - supporting Democracy!
Ousting left-leaning governments in Australia - supporting Democracy!
Overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran, returning it to authoritarian monarchy - supporting Democracy!
Overthrowing the democratically elected government of Chile, installing a dictatorship - supporting Democracy!
Supporting the overthrow of democracy and establishment of a military dictatorship in Brazil - supporting Democracy!
And so on and so forth, with plenty of logistical and moral support for mass killings, disappearances, assassinations, and political imprisonment mixed in to boot.
We have never promoted democracy, we've only ever promoted the interests of American corporations and opposed socialism.
You are judging the U.S. in the context of an otherwise utopian world that doesn't exist.
Yes, it gets messy. And, yes, United Fruit Company et. al. happened. We've absolutely had government capture and promotion of special interests. But, even these aren't always so neatly separable from U.S. interests, which are not always so neatly inseparable from promotion of democracy. For instance, a weak economy would make it nearly impossible to have influence in the world.
There's a simplified world view that ignores the good, measures each discrete misstep on its own (or interprets every difficult choice as a misstep), then tallies a final score. But this is not realistic in a world where lesser evils are frequently the viable option. America does not operate in vacuum and you have to look at the entire arc.
You'll not see me defending every egregious thing this country has done or endorsing the instances when it has truly veered from its creed. But, to measure us by only that metric and declare the country evil or completely non-democratic is to exonerate other bad actors on the planet.
Worse, adopting such a simplistic point of view makes it impossible to recognize when we've entered a truly treacherous phase, wherein an authoritarian regime comes to power and eschews democracy entirely. Everyone would just throw their hands up and declare "we were never democratic anyway, so it doesn't matter". And, by the time they're shown the difference between our imperfect democracy and frank authoritarianism, it's too late.
I'm not claiming the US is not democratic - by most definitions of democracy, it is. I'm claiming the US has never promoted or protected democracy.
I'm not judging the US in comparison to anyone else. I'm judging it in comparison to your statement that it has promoted and protected democracy around the world.
US interests justify all kinds of nastiness, sure. But we claim to be civilized, claim to be champions of justice and democracy, and say we act for the good of the world. There is no evidence at all to give any credence to those claims. Claiming that other countries would be even worse is just a strawman. We should be better, and we know we should be better, because we feel the need to hide and deny the things we do. I don't care what other countries do - I don't live in them, have no vote in them, and am not represented by them. I want MY country to be good and just, rather than pragmatically evil because we can't let anyone else "win".
>I'm judging it in comparison to your statement that it has promoted and protected democracy around the world
The point I'm making here is that this doesn't always look like we think it should (though it also frequently has). The world doesn't just cooperate. It's a nasty place filled with competing, often hostile ideologies. And sometimes nastiness is required.
>There is no evidence at all...
Of course there is. If I give you examples, you might wave them off as the U.S. merely promoting its interests versus democracy, but these are frequently directly linked. The U.S. does have an interest in promoting democracy in the world, even if there are counterintuitive scenarios wherein we must take a short term approach that reads anti-democratic. For instance, if a candidate were democratically elected, then ruled as a dictator, removing that democratically elected president would conceivably be a democratic action.
Beyond this, the U.S. must protect its interests (and power) if it is to continue wielding influence in the world.
But, it's true that there have also been grave missteps along the way. I want my country to be perfect too. But, alas. Still, I don't believe it's so binary (though I once did).
In any case, we seem to disagree and I'm not sure that this goes much further without us simply repeating ourselves. Thanks for the chat.
Funny that you chose those two countries. Denmark is a founding member of NATO. Sweden is one of the two most recent admitted, almost a year ago.
My point is that it's U.S. hegemony that has protected its own democracy and that of liberal democratic Europe to a large extent.
Sweden and Denmark haven't been hegemons because they haven't needed to be.