Well, at least global south countries are gonna have to choose between them or play both sides at best to survive the foereseeable future, so at least in some instances it does matter.
What will Nigeria choose? Chinese or US exports, loans, cultural influence etc
No country can be fully independent from the world around, so they do have to choose allies and foes.
I'm on mobile (and sleepy) rn, so I don't think I can properly respond to all your points, but thanks for this comment, I found it overall very constructive!
I'd just like to question one point for now
If 10 people in a group agree to leave 10,000 USD on a table, such that after 20 minutes, they can all split it amongst themselves, and then turn off the lights in the room and plug their ears in the meantime, someone if not multiple people are going to try and take it all for themselves.
Where are these people from? Urban, Rural, which country, which region etc, culture can have a big influence on that, I'd guess more collectivist cultures would have a different approach to this experiment than individualist ones such as you described. The country I live is also individualist so I see your point, but is all of humanity really like that?
A Native American tribe of 10 people would probably coordinate to be able to split the money, or even to invest collectivelly in their own village for example. A group of 10 New York executives with survival of the fittest mentality would probably act like you described.
Just some food for thought, hope you or anyone reading finds this interesting.
More problematic to whom? The US literally changed the political direction of my country and fucked us over real hard.
Where are the chinese wars and regime change operations? At least Russia only attacks its neighbors at most so countries far away have nothing to fear, unlike the US invading and destroying countries all around the globe.
Call them empire or whatever, but being unable to admit that the US is the bigger threat to real freedom in the world only contributes to the causes of the biggest and arguably most brutal empire in history, that is in constant state of war since it was founded.
the ones who prospered were the most aggressive ones, even conquering the whole world by force, it's a survivorship bias situation.
not every group of humans is aggressive, but those eventually get conquered by the agressive ones, military power always ends up winning.
It's unscientific to say that any country, given the chance, would do the same as the europeans or the US empire did to the world.
At least the Chinese century will prove or disprove this theory, given it's the first significant power shift in the last 500 years, let's see if they will be so brutal as the US and its allies (you know who) are to the world.
I firmly doubt it, there are no signs of brutality to other nations coming from the chinese, at most you could argue of some internal issues. There are no invasions, war or regime change operations done by China yet.
As someone from the global south, I don't fear China or even Russia in the least, I only fear what the US or Europe will try to inflict in my country, like the recent regime change operations that I lived through, that was pretty harsh.
Interesting point, based on this I could argue that military might (elephant power) is necessary for peace, if not used to coerce others
a country that builds nuclear power to protect itself but has a no first aggression rule could be a parallel to the elephants