Why does US trade with other countries when it can just loot their resources?

[Krsps]

US has the highest number of nukes. It is the most powerful country in the world.

Yet it continues to trade and compete with other countries. Even with smaller negligible countries.

It raises a question in my mind that what's keeping it from using excessive forces to just be the bad guy and loot everything xD

Am I missing something? Or is my assumption too generalising ?

No reply with statements like "US is very good in heart" pls. I need some opinions on it

The Atomic Bomb. That is the reason that came into my mind immediately.

Please excuse this totally intuitive argument for why we, the U.S.A., do not loot and pillage and take what we want. I am sure it will be ripped to shreds by the razor-edged brilliant minds here, but this is my humble opinion.

We as a nation know up close and personal what Nuclear War does, from the attackers perspective, having blotted out 146,000 plus people in the blink of an eye at Hiroshima and 90,000 plus people in Nagasaki. We have that woven into our fiber, our collective consciousness, whether we ever think about it or not, because enough people, (at least at one time), witnessed these atrocities first hand or we lived through the events.

Below is a video made of interviews of our  Veterans who did witness nuclear testing in years after the war.  Self-described guinea pigs, they were silenced by the government for 50 years. Thank God there are still enough alive to bear witness.
Their horror is visceral as they describe the nightmare we have created for our planet. Please watch this.

https://youtu.be/qbBu6cWczTY


I do think we are still shaped by the ideals of our Founding Fathers, and that we still have the sense that we, as a nation are moral, and a light for the world of darkness. So that was why we created this horror to save the world from another horror. That's was Einstein's thinking and justification for its creation.

And we knew after we had used it, that it should never be used again in war. Of course, you would hope that everybody understands this logic, but we as a nation have this understanding in our core.

We were creator's and attackers.

We did indeed "became death, the destroyer of the world," as Robert Oppenheimer so accurately called it when he quoted the Bhagavad Gita.

I believe it did something to the soul of our nation, or maybe it did at one time.
The in the soldiers in the first video mirror the haunted expression and demeanor of Robert Oppenheimer, in the video below as he describes the realization of what they had created.

"I become death, the destroyer of the world."

https://youtu.be/lb13ynu3Iac

On a side note, I have also talked with a scientist who worked creating the plutonium with a centrifuge in Arkansas. One of my music therapy patients's described how several times over the period of months, the government would secretly send an unwitting soldier alone, to hand carry a  lead-lined suitcase filled with plutonium from Arkansas on a regular non-military passenger train to  Los Alamos, New Mexico, to build the bomb.  My patient was still haunted with tremendous guilt and cried about it frequently. He visited Japan several times after the war.

Yes, economics may play a big role in our dealings in the world. But we also have, or I believe, at least had, a deeply tempered understanding of the potentially horrific consequences of indiscriminate barbaric bullying around the globe.

[squatz1]

The big reason why this isn't a thing -- where large nations just come in and steal your companies resources, then just use it as their own to benefit their own nation, is that this is only a short term plan of benefit. It doesn't provide benefit to both nations, and at some point the nation that is being looted is going to revolt. When they revolt, they're not going to want to diplomatically trade with your nation (in this case, the US) because they don't trust them in the least.

If you maintain a diplomatic relationship with countries, and trade with them fairly, you're going to have a long term benefit towards both nations and you're both going to prosper. If this isn't the case, only side will be prospering for a short amount of time.

This isn't the colonial times anymore where we just colonize parts of the world and take their stuff. We're civil, we trade.

[yuria3]

Countries like Japan and Germany tried that approached. Conquer countries and take anything they wanted. But what happened to them? Annihilated by Allied forces. United States of America cannot take all countries at once without allies. And many countries right now have their own nuclear arsenal. There is no real VICTORS in war.

[Cootie]

US has the highest number of nukes. It is the most powerful country in the world.

Yet it continues to trade and compete with other countries. Even with smaller negligible countries.

It raises a question in my mind that what's keeping it from using excessive forces to just be the bad guy and loot everything xD

Am I missing something? Or is my assumption too generalising ?

No reply with statements like "US is very good in heart" pls. I need some opinions on it

It's more of like practicing diplomacy. We are in a era where technicality is more powerful than brute force. And also, the country is a part of the largest peace keeping organization in the world. Isn't it quite irrational to wage war on other country just to loot on them. Technically it would be a war if you forced to gather resources from other countries. And I don't think they would come up to this. They are strategic and simply don't rely on violent and forceful tactics. I think they would choose to go covert on these stuffs and indirectly achieve things.

[iamsheikhadil]

The USA got to be this powerful because it is more of an idea and an ideology than it is a nation. Part of that ideology includes the preservation of basic rights and sovereignty. While the USA might be able to just steam roll everyone and take their shit now, eventually a bigger fish would manifest, and no one would shed a tear because they would be losing fair and square at a game of might makes right, a game that they had started. The overall ideology is more resilient than might makes right could ever be.

Would disagree respectfully. It's true that it's more harm than good to directly annex other nations, the reasoning that it's an ideology of full freedom and respect for rights is a bit odd. While the NSA tracks and checks every citizen out there and polarization is at peak, I wouldn't call it an ideology full of freedom anymore. But, one thing that keeps the ideology floated is immigration and diversity. When it is a melting pot, it's hard to stay biased and morally wrong as the world looks upto it

The US government is not monolithic. I was commenting more on the culture and the common law form of government rather than the corporation known as THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Ssshhhh.... we don't take his name..... beware Tec, now the big corporation maybe spying on your devices

[Spendulus]

Countries like Japan and Germany tried that approached. Conquer countries and take anything they wanted. But what happened to them? Annihilated by Allied forces. United States of America cannot take all countries at once without allies. And many countries right now have their own nuclear arsenal. There is no real VICTORS in war.

With the help of the US after the war, Japan became the economic power house of Asia, and Germany the economic power house of Europe.

Rather curious, isn't it?

What they strove to accomplish with military force they accomplished with manufacturing, trade and finance.