This is a false dichotomy, this has got nothing to do with US, it's just Russia invading Ukraine and a whole bloc of countries opposing it. You are being disingenuous about how you are addressing the topic.
As I have mentioned here, years ago now, the English tea trade alone is estimated to have killed 30 million people, by the same kinds of means, direct and displacement, in just one century. That is just one colonial power, one commodity, one century. "Mercantile expansion/globalization" is pretty neoliberalism phrasing for those ongoing colonial processes, not to mention they are in essence the conversion of the world's natural bounty to junk and pollution, a development that looks to threaten civilization itself in several significant ways. Now, I'm going to give the decades and couple centuries before this one a bit of a pass, because it's not until the 1970s we can fairly say the ecological perspective was widespread.
yes, and the Spanish killed millions w/disease, and Stalin killed millions by starvation and repression, and Mao killed 50+ millions doing the same. What's your point? You mocked the notion that Russia is the biggest colonizer (called it nonsense as in meritless), got called out on it (FWIW I disagree it's the biggest but definitely up there), decided to narrow down by saying "ignore this time period, just focus on this time period" and are now pivoting to what exactly, that humans should've stayed in the stone age because firewood is bad and capitalistic?
It's hard to comprehend the horrors that people of China went through during that cultural cleansing. A round number might be 100 000 000 people dead. And the Russian gulags where people would be engaged in active cannibalism. While victims were still alive. Yo. ,,We already seen how low we can go. That's done. Nothing bellow. So why not to find out how much good we can do. Im very curious about our limits there" - Jordan Peterson
Bro, these people aren't extra smart, their politics is an extension of the daily bullshit you see in everyday life. Putin got overconfident and bored after Crimea, so he tried to extend and got found out. It is that simple, if Ukraine didn't repel early Russian attack which they couldn't do in Crimea, US and EU would have waived their hands like they did in 2014. Only reason for their current support is Ukraine's early resolve, there is no need to make this complicated for some fake intellectual chess checkers bullshit.
To Obama's defense, he did want to do more but Boehner, McConnell, et.al. couldn't give the dem a win. We may be there again after the midterms but I hope weapons lobby's already pot committed.
Coming back to this for a second, that's worth a lot, actually. "Nonsense" is not so implausible now.
Being 100% cocksure about the causes of this conflict is the "fake bullshit" around here. You're arguing from a need to be safely cocooned within America the Mighty.
GWB is known for uninformed hyperbole. How do you quantify it? Over what time period? only current countries known as past empires or old empires allowed too? China can be considered a 4k yr country w/long periods of empire building, which dynasty?. When I think old world colonizers, I don't even think England as I find the Spanish and Portuguese much more brutal in their conquest. The Spanish by and large wiped out natives unintentionally but w/o much care either through disease. Does that death count "count" since it was not intentional? Do we consider the death rate in our estimate? Death as ratio of population (I wouldn't think so)? Russia's "ocean" to their colonies was on land and a lot of the brutality remains suppressed or has been lost or unrecorded. FWIW, first thing that came to mind was Ghengis Khan, Spanish, Roman