You're somewhat conflating two separate positions (people who didn't agree to discuss this at a predetermined time and people who accused you of taking advantage of others duress). I'd also like to point out that there is no "bluff" with everyone involved. China for example has the Great Ten and they can and would argue that they have their shit together enough that if people just let them take control then everything would be fine. Naturally a lot of countries don't want that. Calling the "bluff" of countries that don't want international superhuman coordination and are willing to claim you're "taking advantage of the situation" would literally achieve nothing except arguments about western imperialism and make coordination worse as people are able to start throwing around accusations and escalating if it even makes them uncomfortable in the first place.
To add onto this even if it did succeed in making them uncomfortable, congrats, you forced a bunch of stressed out individuals to feel as though there are clear sides at the table and you potentially radicalized things enough to resume old Cold War tensions that will likely get worse with the advent of metahuman involvement.
I suppose that the two groups aren't one and the same, true, but this isn't what I was talking about.
I think that I should clarify this a bit before we return to the other points.
The issue is that the plan doesn't come across as specific enough to me and is too open to interpretation - it isn't really about leadership, it's about agreeing about a general plan and giving the players within it autonomy to act within the confines of their predetermined objectives and roles.
We did that, of course, but IMO it's too broad and not focused enough which, in my opinion, would lead to us getting in the way of each other.
It could be said that just by pushing our own plan we are imposing our will on countries that don't trust us (for example, don't agree to be teleported by the U.S) and that is true, but if we back off of the idea of further coordination just because our initial suggestion was not accepted then we effectively let "further coordination" (which is the reason we suggested anything at all) be conflated with "giving control to the U.S" (which is not the point at all) and that's equally problematic since it's the kind of rhetoric that, if we accept, we can not win against.
When I talked about putting our weight behind something, I meant about forcing people to accept more specific predetermined roles rather than the agreement to act under certain general guidelines, with the assumption that we will accommodate their particular issues (like with the teleporters example) within reason - and that last part is up to negotiation (and is thus the most problematic)
What did the US do that the US wasn't interested in doing? Not invade other countries in order to fend off Brainiac? Not seize control of other nations military?
I think that the criticisms you're making here are far less legitimate and are rooted more in a desire to "win" negotiations than anything tangible about the reality of the situation and what happened. People didn't roll over for you when they didn't have to and you didn't force them to accept your help in a situation where that might have painted you in a bad light (US intervention in foreign affairs isn't generally looked on too kindly given the US's long history of completely fucking with other countries in the name of their own interests like what they did to help the United Fruit company remain profitable in Columbia or how the US unintentionally funded the Taliban due to Cold War fears. People don't always want the US's help).
We would have benefited from a more specific plan (as detailed above)
Regarding the second part, I'm not criticizing anything - my only real issue with the update was the fact that we don't know where our suggestions stand with other nations, this is purely speculation on my part as to what could have been done differently with the underlying point being that I have no problem with how things turned out overall.
That's not really how diplomacy works. If people accuse you of exploiting the situation and then you turn around and basically say "let us take charge of the defense of your country or else" you've done nothing but prove to every party that was neutral that the accusation levelled at you was 100% correct.
People kind of have an issue with foreign governments "forcing them to do the right thing" and once you show that you're willing to do it once, everyone is going to start thinking "what's it going to take to get them to do it again?".
Like a good portion of why MAD (mutually assured destruction) became a thing was because the US demonstrated that it was willing to drop nuclear bombs on its enemies in order to "force them do the right thing" and the USSR didn't trust them not to do it again.
Plenty of people would have a reason to argue against the logic and arguments you've presented here as it runs the risk of being read as a twisted hybrid of American Exceptionalism and White Man's Burden which is something a lot of people would virulently object to. Like this is the kind of ideology that starts to slowly turn everyone on the world stage against you.
If someone levels and accusation at you, you're generally better off not acting in such a way that makes it seem that they're right even if it might be more satisfying in the short term to do otherwise as all you'll achieve is making people not trust you. If someone called me a Nazi, I denied the accusation and then afterwards attended a Nazi rally, it doesn't matter whether or not I was there undercover or as a Nazi, I've acted to confirm people's biases and established myself in the minds of others as a liar and further defenses of my innocence would likely be ignored.
People would have a strong basis to argue against your hypothetical position and you overestimate how good an idea this is or how convincing it is. If anything I feel that the argument you made would start making your allies start to distrust and dislike you and actually place you in a worse position than just denying the accusations, respecting other sovereign powers wishes and then saving the world anyways but maybe that's just me thinking that most people value the autonomy of themselves and their governments and are distrustful enough of those that violate it to start thinking "that could be me next".
"Letting us take charge" is the kind of rhetoric that I suspect them to give.
The specifics of any given accusation don't necessarily matter as much as the narrative surrounding it, and if our narrative to our actions beats theirs then it's ultimately the one that would be accepted.
I'll continue this in the context of my previous explanation, but what I meant was that an argument could be made that just by forcing people to accept specific roles or act under a certain general plan (any plan that is "too specific" and robs them of some of their autonomy in the situation) it could be argued that we push them to do something that they are uncomfortable with simply because we are forcing them to commit to a more specific guideline than they would like, and that is true, but if they do so and we happen to win via said approach, there would be no evidence to deny the idea that we won through our specific approach or anything to support that our strong-handed approach wasn't needed (even if it wasn't), meaning that we will have a stronger narrative to cling onto.
This presents its own set of challenges of course, but it's too early to tell if it would have been worth it to make this kind of push to begin with.
I also think that your nazi explanation lacks nuance.
In the context of your example: If I was saying something along the lines of "The Haredi Jews in Israel all have tons of children and barely contribute to the economy while we subsidize them" (Haredi families have about 7 children per family on average and very low participation in the work force, as well as lots of special subsidies, just to give you a bit of context) and the Haredi Jews called me out as being antisemitic and as someone who tries to destroy the traditional religious Jewish lifestyle ("Be fruitful and multiply") then the equation of "opposing the modern Haredi lifestyle = antisemtic" would only be true if it is accepted as valid rhetoric.
If it is, then me acting against them or striving to pass laws that would restrict their lifestyle would be seen as antisemitic, and if it isn't then they'd be viewed as unstable crybabies which spout meaningless accusations.\
In fact, it's in their best interests to establish all of those who oppose their lifestyle as "antisemitic" since it delegitimizes any kind of argument against them.
Just because someone made an accusation preemptively towards a certain behavior it doesn't mean that what they are saying is legitimate or that the behavior itself fits the mold that they've preemptively set up.
Ultimately it's also a matter of manipulating the narrative surrounding the events, which is an inherent risk in politics and diplomacy I'll give you that.
I think you've arbitrarily decided on things that in my opinion just kind of don't make any sense. Like you've decided that any approach that isn't through the teleporter would set Brainiac on high alert but that the long range bombardment of Brainiac's ship or the use of magic to isolate him from the rest of his forces (both of which are part of the plan) wouldn't.
Like here is the relevant points of the plan that was voted in
From what I can tell you're saying that neither long-range bombardment of Brainiac's main ship nor fighting off his second wave of drones using any and all means would put Brainiac on high alert, but approaching him without using the teleporter would?
Alternatively, you are under the preconception that you could time a long range bombardment, a global defense against a massive swarm of robots and teleporting a strike team to Brainiac within so little time of each other that none of them would be able to occur in succession so fast that Brainiac couldn't possibly be put on high alert by one of those things in time for it to matter against the rest. Let me dispel this potential preconception. This would be straight up impossible even if the rest of the world were doing its level best to work with you.
And there are potentially viable alternatives to getting the drop on Brainiac besides using the Brain's teleportation device. Every country that wants to assist in the second wave will find their own way of doing so. Yes, it could cause problems that people aren't coordinating but forcing people to work together against their will could also cause problems. Things didn't go perfectly for you and that's fine. I'd still argue that things went more good for you than they did bad and that a lot of the criticism being leveled here is criticism for the fact that people aren't rational actors trying to bring about the best of all possible worlds and an overly unrealistic assessment of the plan that was put into writing.
I'm not really attached to the teleporter specifically, but I would've ideally liked to have a more well-established approach and that's what I'm trying to say.
Discussing the specifics of this given tactical analysis misses the point that I was trying to make regarding coordination.
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This conversation is all rather pointless really, it's mostly "what ifs" anyway without much else to it.
My real issue was resolved so if you want to continue this then it's up to you but I have nothing else to say here.
