The Limits of Number One

The United States has earned a somewhat shameful reputation:

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been by far the world’s most dangerous nation. Although Russia is now a contender for that title after last year’s invasion of Ukraine, America has attacked more countries, created more chaos, and caused more civilian casualties than has Moscow even now. For China, one would have to go back a half century to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to find its government causing comparable human harm, and that was to its own population.

I do not think the peoples of the world are unaware of our record or haven’t begun to fear us. Nor do I think that “we the people” of the U.S. ever told our leaders to cause the harm they have caused.

But here we are.