Quote from ShoeshineBoy:
Another example: The U.S. could easily take over Mexico or Canada in the last fifty years. We could roll across their countries with the speed and precision of any military campaign in the late twentieth century and we would most certainly be unstoppable.
I forgot to ask. While what you say is true, why would we want to do that?
In centuries past, people fought for "country and king". Meaning essentially looting whatever "value" there was in conquering new lands. Natural resources, be it gold, gems, spices, crops, and very often the people themselves.....(slavery).
Now we just buy what we want or need (in general). Canada and Mexico are actually pretty good examples (after the laughter is over).
Canada has the kind of natural resources that come out of the ground. So we buy them. Metals, lumber, petroleum, (bacon?) . Mexico provides us with some oil and we buy that too. Cheap labor? We buy it. Both legally and not. Crops too. It is so much easier to buy than to take.
All without the hassle of having to administrate all that territory.
You take Islamic fundamentalists out of the picture, and no one wants to "roll over" anyone.
North Korea likes to rattle their sabres. Maybe they have issues with their country being split like Vietnam was. That is more along the lines of a civil war (like Vietnam). Same with (Red) China and Taiwan. Same happened in East Pakistan (if you are old enough to remember such a place ...now it's called Bangladesh). Same in Kashmir.
Yes, North Korea seems to enjoy intimidating Japan. All bluster. You have a country where everyone is named Kim, and you have to expect some in-bred craziness. So they bark like overbred Cocker Spaniels. But in reality, they know they have to behave to survive.
Stalinism is dead. Stomping out uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia is "old economy" politics. Ruling countries where the languages are different can only be a giant pain in the ass. I always wondered during the Cold War why Russia wanted to control places like Estonia, Latvia, Armenia, Azerbaijan? All the rest? It had to be a fucking Tower of Babble. I think in Estonia alone there are 4 or 5 different languages spoken. Imagine the administrative nightmares. We can't seem to effectively deal with the issue of so many spanish speaking Americans. That is just one "extra" language. The USSR must have had a hundred. (Actually, read the threads on ET, and you see we have serious problems with just ONE language)....and we don't even have dialects to deal with. Except for Murray T. Turtle, but I am not sure if that is a dialect or a language issue. Interplanetary communications are not yet well developed. But I digress.
Now in places like Bosnia? Kosovo? Ubekestan and all the other "stans"? Ethnic "cultural/religious" disputes that have festered for centuries. It's about "taking BACK" not "taking" (at least in their heads...just like "Palestine").
But can you give one single example of any country that would want to conquer another country for it's resources? (Or to show how tough they are?)
The last example that comes to my mind is Japan (one of the countries you named as never having been an unprovoked aggressor.....they were. But they were not a "modern democracy" at the time).
I don't know why I found history to be boring in school. Now I wish I paid more attention. Then I would know what I was talking about.
I was never good at memorization. Math and music and science made sense. History was just dull facts. Now they don't seem so dull. Of course there was never much demand in the job market for historians. Unless you studied at West Point or Annapolis.
Suggested movie: "The Mouse That Roared".
Peace,
RS
