>Which artificial islands did the US build in eg the Gulf of Mexico to steal all of Mexico's gulf territorial waters? It didn't. Instead, the US has maintained a fair split of the gulf with Mexico, despite being a superpower that could take it all anytime it wants to. The US could take most of the water territory in the Caribbean if it wanted to, any time it wanted to.

This is the case only because Mexico and the rest of Latin America are relatively poor and subservient nations of no threat to the U.S. The Monroe doctrine and its 1904 corollary [1], both precursors to U.S hegemonic domination of the Western Hemisphere, ensured that the cards would fall this way. These policies have have directly resulted in multiple humanitarian disasters the effects of which are still being felt in Latin America to this day [2].

As far as the question of building islands, neither the Russians nor the Chinese are conducting war-games 10,000km from home, inviting Mexico, Cuba and Canada to come sail their warships around the Gulf of Mexico in the name of freedom of navigation. Neither the Russians nor the Chinese are installing advanced radar and missile systems in Canada and Mexico. Neither the Russians nor the Chinese have declared a “pivot to the West”, selling billions of dollars in military hardware to Cuba, Canada, Mexico and the rest of Latin America, proselytizing their political ideologies while doing so. Neither the Russians nor the Chinese have any military bases in America’s backyard that have previously been used as launching grounds for conducting illegal wars. Neither the Russians nor Chinese have ever exerted a policy of containment - an act of political and economic strangulation. America doesn’t have to worry about any of these things, and thus the question of why it has not built artificial islands becomes largely non-applicable.

> Where are the vast number of examples of the US getting its military tech directly - via hacking - from cloning it from the USSR, Russia, Britain, Germany and France. Is that where the US got the F22, by stealing it from Russia? Is that where the US got the B2, by stealing it from France? Is that where the US got its 20 year lead in drone tech (eg Global Hawk 25 years ago), by stealing it all from Germany? Or how about the innovations in carrier technology over decades, that was stolen from which country, Spain? Italy? Japan? None of that happened.

Is it common for a technologically superior nation to steal technology from technologically inferior nations? What could they hope to steal? Nonetheless, there are still a few examples of it happening, as mentioned in the other comments.

> When did the US send a large army of labor into Africa to extract resources there? It didn't. What the US has done for Africa, is push hundreds of billions of dollars in aid into the continent and save millions of lives with programs like PEPFAR. And its cure (thanks Pharmasset) for Hepatitis C will save millions more over time (see: Egypt).

I’m not going to denigrate the contributions of programs such as PEPFAR, as they have undoubtedly improved the lives of millions. This is objectively a good thing in terms of reparations for the destruction the U.S government and corporations have wrought upon the continent for the past few decades [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. We have everything from facilitating coups and assassinations to the backing and arming of genocidal warlords (responsible for the death and suffering of countless millions during endless civil wars). We’ve seen American corporations doing everything from conducting illegal human experimentation [11] to bog-standard corruption [12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and other types of exploitation [19]. We don’t really need to talk about the long-term, multi-generational effects the slave trade had on Africa [20].

If your first line (flooding Africa with labor to extract resources) is referring to China, then you’re wrong: the overwhelming majority of labor employed in Africa by Chinese corporations is local [21][22].

The West has provided hand-me-downs to Africa for decades now, crushing local industries like textiles [23] and suffocating food producers [24]. It has pumped billions of dollars of aid into Africa which has objectively not achieved much more than feed corruption and erode government-taxpayer accountability [25]. No western nation has been willing to lend to “junk” rated African nations anywhere near the amount of capital or provide infrastructure development on the terms the Chinese have.

For the first time in history, a country is willing to come to Africa as an equal partner, signing deals that provide the people with real, tangible benefits like world class airports, highways and high-speed rail systems [26]. No hand-me-downs, no pitiful TV ads begging for a dollar a day on behalf of starving, fly-laden black kids. Just mutually respectful and beneficial business deals. Economic corridors are now opening up between African nations that have never been connected before and brand-new high-capacity ports are doing the same thing for international trade. And before you mention the tired old debt-trap diplomacy trope, it has so far been nothing more than a groundless accusation based on paranoia and sour grapes [27][28][29].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_Corollary#Use

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/19/central-amer...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiss%C3%A8ne_Habr%C3%A9#Suppor...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_engagement

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Savimbi#United_States_su...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberation_Council#Ac...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_the_Democrat...

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_the_Democrat...

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame_Nkrumah#Overthrow

[10] https://www.npr.org/2016/05/16/478272695/retired-cia-agent-c...

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trovafloxacin#Nigerian_clinica...

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Jefferson_corruptio...

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InVision_Technologies

[14] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/business/worldbusiness/27...

[15] https://www.salon.com/2015/04/06/big_oils_sleazy_africa_secr...

[16] https://www.wsj.com/articles/ex-och-ziff-deal-maker-faces-ch...

[17] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kbr-bribery/ex-kbr-ceo-ge...

[18] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/business/goodyear-agrees-...

[19] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershe...

[20] https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3710252/Nunn_Lon...

[21] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/middle-east-and-a...

[22] https://www.reporting-focac.com/myth-1-chinese-workers.html

[23] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/world/africa/east-africa-...

[24] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14iht-food...

[25] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/13/why-t...

[26] https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/industry/public-sec...

[27] https://rhg.com/research/new-data-on-the-debt-trap-question/

[28] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/04/...

[29] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/opinion/china-belt-road-i...