When the international community catches wind of the USA doing something it shouldn’t, such as the revelations from the Snowden incident, supplying guerillas with weapons, economic manipulation, etc – does it lose power in any way? I’m not really clear on the actual outcomes of a world superpower getting “caught” doing something it shouldn’t.
In what ways, and why, are the listed events things that the US “shouldn’t” be doing?
How do you think America would react if another nation was caught arming violent groups in America, instead of America doing that to other nations?
US covert operations certainly has crossed the line many times, and I actually agree with you that they have been questionable. I do wonder what the OP is asserting as to the other two claims.
When in recent times has that happened?
The closest I can think of were the Jewish terrorists who murdered Alex Odeh, after he rather foolishly insisted the PLO had nothing to do with the killing of Leon Klinghoffer or the hijacking of the Achille, and have been living in Israel since the 80s with the US doing nothing but raging impotently.
Well US companies can have indirect losses from things like this. The claim has been made that US cloud companies could lose billions because of the NSA revelations.
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-nsa-scandal-will-cost-us-tech-companies-tens-of-billions
Might makes right in the short term. In the long term there is the kind of erosion of trust that leads to things like it now being political suicide for a UK Govt to align itself with one of the USA’s escapades.
The lies of Iraq, the lies concerning surveillance, the Snowden revelations that while the USA is bitching and moaning about Chinese cyber-warfare it’s pulling the same shit, the undeclared drone wars in various parts of the world.
It’s all drip, drip, drip and it’s lost the UK as a military ally. The problem is of course that some day, the cry of ‘wolf, wolf!!’ will be about an actual wolf and no one wil believe you.
And that’s not the fault of the public it is the fault of successive governments.