Controversy inside.

RE: "Haven't we gotten beyond might is right / imperialism?"

Well, I don't really think so. I do think that we are presently in the process of trying out this new 'world peace' thing, but it doesn't work. Too many nations with too different values and cultures. Ideologic conflicts really do not resolve themselves unless one side is eliminated or otherwise pacified.

Also, yes, I do not frown on the displacing or converting of a native people if another nation can better use the resources that are being wasted by a backwards society. In the Middle East, the obvious resource is oil. In Africa, there are hordes of natural resources that are not being tapped. That's the nature of widespread conquest.

And yes, any empire will eventually collapse when it fails to be progressive enough to stay on top, or when it loses its social supports. That is also good. Things should have a shelf life, empires included. However, what can happen under the thumb of such an empire is advances that otherwise would take infinitely longer to take place. Technology, social philosophy, political models.. These things evolve most rapidly at the edge of a sword.


RE: "Not accounting for modern weaponry."

That may or may not be the case. Nuclear weapons can only be used in first and second strike attacks by a handful of nations. As such, those nations without such capability would bow and crumble quickly under an attacking nuclear power.
Now in the case of two nuclear powers attacking one another, that would be perhaps frightening, and it would boil down to who had the strongest will and resolve. And it is that nation who I would prefer to see win such a battle, because they are willing to do what's necessary to maintain power.


RE: "What a horrible thing / no one could possibly agree with you?"

I did state in my opening phrase that I hold an unpopular opinion. I recognize this. Fact is, people have been taught that war accomplishes nothing good. I say that such a view spits on the faces of all the soldiers who have died for various causes, and is infinitely more disgusting than my own view.

I feel that it is the continued division of nations that weakens them. With the UN constantly meddling in conflicts, and no hostile takeovers being permitted, advancement is far slower than it should be.

This view of mine does not deal with abstract concepts like morality. I simply am basing it off the conditions that brought about most all major social and technological evolutions throughout history. They almost all have a war or the threat of war at the root of them.



Further: Lose the idealistic notion that complete world peace can ever be achieved. The only way that could ever happen is if the world were homogenized into one set of beliefs and values. A lot of people would have to die in order to achieve that... You'd need one religion, one political structure which pushed a cult of pesronality and heavy thought control, a non-free media.. the removal of the ability to disagree.

Forcibly holding down someone who's trying to throw themself out of a window implicitly acknowledges that you place your own belief that they should not kill themselves, over their apparent belief that they should.

Also, force is not the final word in anything... force is the option of last resort, used when other methods fail. Very few people past their teens go out looking for a fight, since getting into a fight usually means that you're going to take your lumps, too. This extends to large-scale conflicts, like oil th... er, war. Force is important, yes. Force is the natural way of things, yes. Of course, the natural way of things is also to die before you're forty and live in a cave or hollow tree. We can moderate our primitive lizard-brain responses and at least try to be companionable, reasonable creatures.

I'm honestly not sure where to begin with this. I'm really tempted to start off with something deliberately inflammatory, but I always at least try to stay polite.

I believe that force is sometimes necessary.

I believe that human beings are such a fractious species that conflict is inevitable.

I also believe that anyone who speaks so casually about the use of nuclear weaponry doesn't have the faintest bloody idea what they're talking about. Two nuclear powers going at it isn't a 'strongest willed wins' situation. It's an 'everyone dies, you lose, GOOD DAY, SIR' situation. If the leadership of either the US or the USSR had thought as you do, during the heyday of the Cold War, there would be no living human beings on this planet. Do a little research... Google for five minutes... on the most-likely outcomes of even a limited nuclear exchange between two nuke-capable powers, then come back and make a post as... damn it, I wanted to be polite... stupid as that one.

On top of all that, even a nuclear power vs. a non-nuclear power has a good chance to trigger reprisals from other nuclear powers.

Oh I don't know if that's true at all. Hiroshima was inhabitable relatively soon after it was nuked. Looking into the effects of nuclear weaponry, I don't really believe it would cause the end of all life. You would truly have to nuke every urban and rural area on the planet, leaving nothing untouched, to create the devastation you're referring to.

Hollywood disagrees with that viewpoint, of course.

Would radiation spread a lot? Initially, yes. But it would spread slower than people breed, and then the radiation would be gone.

If the USSR had decided to start a nuclear exchange with the US, I believe the US would surrender quickly to preserve civilian life.

Of course, it's also true that during WW-II, a few carpet bomb runs killed almost twice as many people than both nukes did. Despite this, people don't claim that carpet bombing will end all human life on the planet.

I just don't see nukes as the threat movies make them out to be, due to reading up on nuclear weaponry. It would put a country back quite a bit due to destroying all electrical equipment, but it would hardly eradicate a whole country's population, unless you had millions of nukes to drop.

But then.. it'd be much cheaper to just drop even more dirty bombs, rather than bothering with nukes. Or even dropping biological or chemical agents, designed to kill people and preserve infrastructure.

There's much worse weaponry than nukes, in my opinion.

If by "displacing" you mean "killing" then yes, I think your plan would work. I wouldn't support it, but if you killed all the poor people they wouldn't be able to complain. (see my original post)

Now you're catching on.

Why kill them? They'd make perfect forced labour!

Well, generally speaking they have options. They can flee to another country, convert to your culture (either integrating into it or working under you), or die.

Oooh, I dunno 'integrating' them into your socienty could be seeding dissention. I'd be a shame to waste all those resources by just killing them all. Letting them flee could cause problems with your neighbours. Better to round them up and put them to work if you ask me.

How about we kill all non-natives since they have less experience managing the land?

Because if one group is capable of conquering another, the natives of that land have less expertise in utilizing the land than the invading force. Otherwise, they could have repelled the attack.

Yeah, it looks good on paper, but the first slave revolt and your margins are blown, share prices plummet and you start missing delivery dates. Robots may have a higher up-front cost, but they will work much better for you in the long run. Can I show you our entry model XJ36?

Very nice. I like the laser eyes particularly - trés kitsch. But at that price how do you intend to compete against cyborgs? Expecially when I've got so much raw material for them anyway.

Hell, for the cost of one of you XJ36s I could hire an inhouse lobotomiser for the next half a decade.

ok, first of all you do not know your history, or the fact that the winners have written it, the rich people have written it, skews your thinking, and that's not your fault, you are a product of your society as we all are, but there are plenty of resources, especially these days, that can help you, if you truely want to understand and ultimately make sence when starting a discussion without enough facts on your side to be treated as anything but an unfortunate and ignorant person. But I feel you deserve a chance to learn as you showed intelligence by stating your point lucidly.

I would suggest reading this book first (and forum members please back me up on this) : A People's History of the United States
by Howard Zinn
publisher - Harper-Collins

Until robots show the same zeal for replication that humans do, I'll stick with my organic labour force I think.

We'll have to come up with a really good religion to keep them under control then.

Who wants to play godhead?

Please point out where I have been wrong, in regards to expansionism not bringing about cultural and technological advancements to the geographic regions it claims.

I think the point you are missing is that the Greek and Roman empires spread rapidly over huge areas mainly because they came, saw, conquered and STAYED. Soldiers were paid off with land in the newly aquired regions, married local women, raised families and sent home wheat and taxes to Roma. I don't see many Iraqi war brides coming home or many of our servicemen deciding to stay there and live in a mud hut.
As to cultural expansionism benefitting the local savages, I don't know how British imperialism and genocide helped the Indians so very much. They had to slaughter millions of them to hang onto India during the two hundred years they were there. I can't see any great merit to our popular culture and morays that lets me think that they are in any way superior to those of Iraq.

The error in thinking has to do with nukes being anything like the old WWII variety.

They most definitely aren't as environmentally friendly any more.

The originals were mere pinpricks compared to what a modern ICBM can do, and the fallout of the originals had a really, really short half life (mainly strontium 90). You can walk around at Trinity site too, it's not a big deal.

Nowadays you are dealing with cesium isotopes, and worse.

Think: Vast, country-sized areas hotter than Chernobyl for tens of thousands of years.

And don't forget just how many of the damned things there are.



I'm still more scared of biological weapons though.

Thank you, Desmond and AJ.

As the OP is leaving aside any moral considerations, I won't bring them out, either, save to state that from any reasonable set of ethics his position is somewhere just North of 'Hitler'.

As a practical consideration... okay. Conquest does seem to promote technological advance. Conquerors, historically speaking, were pretty frequently more technologically advanced than the conquerees, such an advantage not only making conquest more likely, but also making the conquerors feel that they had a moral or ethical or religious imperative to conquer. 'Manifest Destiny', as one example. And warfare can drive technological advance... World War II saw a few staggering leaps (not the least of which, of course, was nuclear weaponry).

America does not have that significant an edge, however, on the rest of the world (I'm using America as an example, here; I'm treating this as a thought-exercise, not reacting as if you are seriously suggesting that the US try to impose a Pax Americana on the rest of the planet). This is not gunpowder vs. flint-edged paddles. This is not revolvers against bow-and-arrow. If any of the world's major powers (and whatever allies they might have) began a campaign of conquest, on a larger than 'annex this tiny island' scale, the rest of the planet is going to feel threatened, and will do something about it.

Depending on the weaponry finally used, mankind might survive that kind of scenario. I, personally, would not like to live in the world that results, however. I like having water that is relatively nonpoisonous, food that will not give my children birth defects or lace my bones with strontium-90, the absence of plagues that make the Black Death look like chicken pox, and would rather avoid the very likely loss of technological advancement that would result from such a catastrophe.

Modern warfare only comes in two varieties, you see. It comes in 'limited, conventional, and not pissing off the other Big Boys enough for them to really do anything about it', and 'open the silos, Nelly, the end-time is a-comin'!'. There is a reason that nobody has gone full-tilt conquer-the-world since World War II. I believe it was referred to as Mutually Assured Destruction.

All right, all right, that's a bit simplistic. I can envision scenarios where 'Big-Boy' warfare would only result in rendering smallish (thousands of square miles, say) portions of the planet uninhabitable. Since those bits of Hell would, most likely, include the parts that were being 'conquered', it sort of defeats the purpose of a war-of-conquest. And the casualties to the 'winner', and any 'innocent-bystander' nations would likely be immense, in the forms of fallout drift, toxin spread, and virological outbreak.

So... my opinion (again, leaving out any moral objections I might have... and boy-howdy do I have them) is that it is possible to expand one's territory by nibbling at one's smaller neighbors. Anything on a greater scale is, at best, foolhardy bravado resulting in massive civilian casualties, and at worst, The End.

People that are totally anti-war are pretty unrealistic and silly. They need to read more about history.
I don't understand how people still doubt America's intentions when they look at our history with this sort of thing. America is awesome.

Unrealistic, perhaps. Silly, no. Wishing for things to be better than they are, or are likely to ever be, is not silly. It's called 'idealism', and people used to believe that it was a valid system of thought.

I'm assuming the 'America is awesome' bit is sarcasm.

Wishing doesn't make things happen. There was no sarcasm in my post.