The payment is simply provided through more complex means than a direct fee. It's still a protection racket though, if you don't pay you lose that protection and they get what they want through violent force. Also the entire thing was installed with violent force to begin with.
Some refer to them as vassals, others "client states", others colonies. It's intended as "an extension of the US empire whose sovereignty and decision-making power fundamentally lies in US control if they don't do what they're told" at the end of the day.
You pay with your sovereignty, your economic prospects (look at Japan after the plaza accords), control over your trading partners, control over your relationships to the outside world, control of your culture, the pay and conditions of your workforce, predatory IMF loans, the presence of toxin-spewing US military bases, the prospect that you and everyone you know can be fed into the meat grinder at any moment for political gain like Ukraine...
Limiting one's idea of "payment" to "a sum of money" can easily make you miss other forms of exploitation.
Go tell people in the Phillipines, in Manila, the homelessness capital of the world, that the US is actually doing them a favor. Go on. Go tell the people of occupied Korea that they actually love having drunk marines assaulting them and running over their kids. Obvious they just don't understand our magnanimous intentions.
The payment is simply provided through more complex means than a direct fee. It's still a protection racket though, if you don't pay you lose that protection and they get what they want through violent force. Also the entire thing was installed with violent force to begin with.
Some refer to them as vassals, others "client states", others colonies. It's intended as "an extension of the US empire whose sovereignty and decision-making power fundamentally lies in US control if they don't do what they're told" at the end of the day.
There's no payment. The US pays them. Whatever it is, it's not vassalage.
You pay with your sovereignty, your economic prospects (look at Japan after the plaza accords), control over your trading partners, control over your relationships to the outside world, control of your culture, the pay and conditions of your workforce, predatory IMF loans, the presence of toxin-spewing US military bases, the prospect that you and everyone you know can be fed into the meat grinder at any moment for political gain like Ukraine...
Limiting one's idea of "payment" to "a sum of money" can easily make you miss other forms of exploitation.
Removed by mod
Go tell people in the Phillipines, in Manila, the homelessness capital of the world, that the US is actually doing them a favor. Go on. Go tell the people of occupied Korea that they actually love having drunk marines assaulting them and running over their kids. Obvious they just don't understand our magnanimous intentions.