No. of Recommendations: 4
As I said. It's not unlike the high school cheerleader who thinks she needs to run through the senior class so that people like her.
Yes, it is unlike that. We have had good, solid reciprocal economic and military relationships with our allies that vastly inured to our benefit for decades. We got to set up the entire world economy, and to design it to our benefit. We got to assume unparalleled dominance in military affairs, and therefore got to the be the guiding hand in international relations for decades. Being "The Leader of the Free World" came with massive benefits for the United States, not just costs.
Mutually beneficial relationships - not "running through" the senior class so that people will like you. That's not what our 80-year economic and military alliances with the other western democratic advanced economies have been like. In your metaphor, it would be like having a lot of good, close friends that you had been close to ever since you were in kindergarten....and then deciding that your friends are holding you back, so you start shaking them off. That can be either a good move or a bad move, depending on whether these were in fact good friends or not. But there's pros and cons to ditching your longtime friends.
One of the consequences is that once you start shaking them off and treating them like rivals rather than friends, they're far less likely to do favors for you. So if you call them up and ask them for something, they might tell you to buzz off.
