this is my first post on this forum, i am pro-american as much as i am pro-british, i would like to know if people would say the british and americans have more say then the UN or any other nation on the planet?

Unfortunately the amount of influence a nation has in the world is directly proportional to its military power. While the UK does not have a large military, in terms of quality is among the world's best. The UK is also second only to the US in terms of force projection around the world, which ultimately is the real measure of how powerful a nation is militarily. There are only 3 nations who are actually capable of significant force projection anywhere in the world...the US, the UK, and France. I don't think it is a coincidence that it was these 3 nations which have been at the forefront of the Iraq debate.

Welcome notarealme to AD.

The short answer to your initial question is.........YES
Paladin gave a fair and considered reply to you but I believe it goes somewhat deeper than the visible projections.

Is it really these Nations who hold the power?.
Or are they motivated and manipulated by something a fair bit more powerfull?.
Now I am certainly not a believer in conspiricys, although it would be comfortable to put myself in one of those clubs .

A simile...........

What you observe can be somewhat likened to an egg.
To all intents and purposes it projects itself as an oval object.
Only when the projection (shell) is opened the true intent of this oval object is revealed.
Thus it is with your question.

There is a need to look beyond and beneath these projections to find the truth and
a simple way of doing this is to ask why of a statement or apparant fact. Do it until it can't be asked again then you are adjacent to the truth.

Debating is a tool of learning.

Regards.....Alan

We have been encouraged to believe that the U.S. and the U.K. control the world.
But Alan's right, whose agenda are we following? Who are the investors who stand to gain the most from our military interventions? What is their citizenship? They are the powerful ones.

I think our countries are being used. This invasion of Iraq did not make sense with the trumped up reasons Bush gave for doing it. But it looks like the U.S. and the U.K. will swim or sink together, now that this messy occupation effort is underway and the terrorists of the world have been invited to Iraq to take them on.

It's been used in military strategy before--let your opponent be worn down before you ever take him on. The question is, who's going to step into the ring after we're done with Iraq?

i would say i agree with the iraq war, not for the reasons the President or Prime minister put, but for the reason saddam needed to be taken out of power, i dont think iraq would be good with no sanctions under saddam, and plus once his sons took control from saddam they made him look like a day care teacher from what i have heard of them.

my thoughts for saddam is, he shouldnt have been in power as long as he was, its was his birth right, much like the royle family in the UK, i dont believe anyone should be above anyone else, i mean the reason the queen of england has her place is because her family way back when charged people to live, i dont think very high of the royle family as they have nothing to show for being in the place they are in apart from people coming to see them every year, as for saddam the same applys, he ran the country in to the ground, and gave nothing to it, took money from the food for oil, and 60% of his country had to rely on countrys like ours to provide food for them.

Welcome, notarealme, to America's Debate.

Saddam Hussein wasn't part of any dynasty. He was born in Tikrit a poor commoner and worked his way up. There is no comparison between him and the Royal Family in England. Saddam Hussein had no birthright to be dictator. He did whatever he had to to get there.

The subject of this thread is: Do the US and the UK control the world?

that was my point of the comment, he wasnt elected by the people for the people, but you are right, i went off alittle, my bad

I don't think that you can talk about 'Control'. If you mean to say : military projection, Paladin answered some of your questions.

The US are the most powerful country on the face of the Earth at the moment, thanks to their economy (locomotive of the world), their political system and their military might.

That doesn't mean that them and the UK control the world. If they did, terrorism would be a memory. It's not.

You're mistaken. The United States and the United Kingdom do not control the world. The United State's controls the world, including and above all the United Kingdom.


Any British nationalists who seriously thinks that there is such a thing as an Anglo-American hegemony should look at the actual balance of power in the "special relationship"

Campbel resigned. Hoon will resign. Blair will be forced out. The British public never supported the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Tony Blair did it anyways, to protect the "special relationship," he showed that pleasing the United States was more important to him than pleasing his own subjects (Incidently, Blair is considerably more popular in the United States than he is in the United Kingdom, Americans on average regard him better than their own president). This shows British dependency on the US for status more than anything else.

The strangest part about it is that Britian is in fact a world power in its own right. Lady Thatcher demonstrated that the UK could wage war on the other side of the planet successfully by itself. The UK is the 4th largest industrialized economy, a nuclear power (with the most sophisticated missile system next to the United States), a power with aircraft careers and considerable overseas bases and a perminant seat on the security council it could very well be the most geopolitically capable power after the United States, or at least after the United States, China, and Russia.

No power equal to Britian is so subserviant and many lesser powers are far more autonomous.

Really, the USA controls the world. Hmmmm... I wonder why our soldiers are still being killed in Iraq? Someone needs to tell them guerilla fighters that we control the world and they are just wasting their time.

In think this debate has lost the focus, Does the US and Britain control the world.
Do we have the last say on any global issue because The US is so big and has the most military might.
Is the world controlled from the whitehouse, through the British Parliment.

I would say that the US has the power but not the durestiction or the will to control everything, it has a strong (very strong) say about what goes on in other countries because of its size and in my opinion because it keeps an almost unbreakable tye to the UK through which it controls the UN, the governing bodies of Europe and can do what it pleases against any of them (or anyone else) because of this tye it still has something to hold on to after it does its deed. It will have the support of a major influence in europe (the UK) and so can negotiate and silence the next greatest power (Europe) through this.

So I do not think that the US and the UK actually do control the world but if they made it there business to do so, they could do it without too much trouble (and then america would ditch the UK and take that as well, but here's just my ideas).

You do not win by waging war, You win when the war is over.