You sir are so completely wrong.
The Soviet Union never developed carriers not because it couldn't do it but because from their geographical position it was easier to develop a land base in the region of interest and so committing resources to carrier development was inefficient. That's what the US did after 2014 with its strategy to counter Russia - they didn't move carriers to Europe but developed a series of bases for USAF in allied countries.
Contrary to your belief Soviet Union did build carriers and is building big ones right til 1991 collapse. There are doctrine difference and the reality USSR is unlikely to match US in terms of carriers directly, so USSR had to play smart with their budget. If they had the option to have a bigger carrier fleet than US, they will.
In 2017 in Syria an airbase of questionable quality was struck by ~50 cruise missiles. It was back in operation after two weeks of questionable quality engineering work. If you struck a carrier with just 10 cruise missiles it would be out of commission permanently. If you destroy an airbase it's still there to be restored. If you destroy a carrier it sinks and years of work are wasted. The logic of tradeoffs is different.
The carrier is protected by CIWS some cheap ass cruise missile cannot threaten a carrier. And that is without escorts. Hey, by your logic maybe Iran can defeat entire US navy with couple couple hundreds of cruise missiles. While there are some drawback to a carrier vs a conventional airfield, this is not how it works.
That's late stage imperialism.
It's what the US has been doing in its decline phase. When US was in its ascent phase it rarely intervened directly.
US has been frequently intervening since the creation of the nation. You need to read up on US history before talking about it. Most imperialistic nations managed to get where they were by intervention. You only notice it as late stage because it kept failing.
The reason why US could unilaterally influence politics had nothing to do with their military power and everything to do with their economic power. Countries didn't want to go to war against the US because it meant being cut off from the only source of economic growth in real terms. The military power of the US is grossly exaggerated while the economic influence is grossly underappreciated. And it's not about economic warfare that most focus on. Most economic warfare by the US doesn't work. What works is the "why fight when you can trade" incentive. All business is carrot and stick but stick only works because of the carrot. All stick and no carrot is what ended the Soviet Union. As soon as US runs out of carrots its stick will be useless. The thing that most anti-US people don't see is that the in most cases US is still offering plenty of carrots in secret for each public display of the stick.
You had it on reverse. Military power are required to back up economic power. Without sufficient military the greater your economic power, the MORE attractive you are a target for war. AKA Qing Empire. Chinese history is the living proof of why you are wrong.
"Why would these barbarians/westerner attack us, don't they like trading???"
Naval expansion always followed economic expansion and naval expansion is always followed by economic decline. Empires were built by high profit margins and were felled by unaffordable overheads. Spain built its fleet after it gained access to Americas with minimal effort and then stagnated into ruin. Britain took over Dutch colonial empire after it went bankrupt in European wars and expanded its fleet in 19th century as it grew then ran into Germany. USN only matched RN after WW1 when economic power moved across the Atlantic, and then it expanded again in WW2 on credit that was paid by Bretton Woods. Without those economic expansions USN has no sustainment and will shrink which is what's happening now after three decades of ~1% GDP funding. If funding collapses so does the navy - see RN. Fleet and power projection must be economically sustainable or it becomes a strategic trap like what happened to USN.
This is perhaps the dumbest take of them all: Navy makes one decline economically. Far from the case, Spain fell due to poor leadership and bad economic planning (imagine being shipped tons of gold from new world and still go bankrupt over poor economic policy), and the fact THEIR NAVY LOST TO A BETTER NAVY by the British. Their big fleet was one of the best investment they made and acquired ridiculous amount of gold and silver. These money paid for the fleet several folds, and will not be available without the fleet to protect. It was so crazy that European continent was running low on gold due to trade with China, and Spain alone managed reverse that trend for entire continent. So the fleet is not the reason of their decline, it is the reason why they rise and they fell because their fleet was weak.
Get your history straight and the logic of Chinese military strategy will become clear, CMC will say "no carriers now" and you will respond "excellent idea comrade".
It is kind of baffling how I recommended slow and steady approach instead of rushing, and you bash me, despite not liking carriers yourself, so what gives.
