Brazil just want to stay a developed and sovereign country. Why can't they do that ?
I have to agree with Aeth here. If Brazil has the means why can;t they join the club. Tjhey are not a threat to the US and West. If anything they are another member of the club. It is not like they are coming out of nowhere with this. You guys do know that Brazilian troops fought with the Allies in Italy in WWII don't you?
WHAT IS GENOCIDE?I stand by my assertion that genocide is a politically and emotionally laden term invented to give emotional cover to the WWII victors for executing their former enemies.As to statistics, I remember a line about "numbers don't lie but liars use numbers." Any use of statistics or numbers in history are suspect and historians must be careful about using figures and most hedge when they do use numbers, especially about such things as war dead and population. That does not mean we must eschew demographic and casualty data because they are inherently unreliable. It means that historians must be careful about their assertions regarding such things. We have to use them, or what should we use in their stead? Vague statements like a lot, and a few don't seem to cut it.
Then what else would you call a government sanctioned mass killing of another ethnic group?
Genocie is an artificial term invented to make what the Nazis did a punishable crime. It has subsequently been used for all kinds of reasons. It is just as politically loaded as calling something/someone racist. If you object to its use than you must be heartless, therefor I am a heartless, pitiless rogue because I object to tis use.
I'm talking about all the wars and skirmishes between GB, the Dutch, France, Spain, and Germany over their colonies and ports. Smith's theory is as flawed as Kant's theory that democracies do not go to war with each other.
Yes. Genocide is an artificial term coined in the wake of WWII to justify prosecuting Nazis. I don't think what the Nazis did was right but I also don't think we needed to make up crimes out of whole cloth to put those same Nazis up against a wall. It has traditionally been the victors right to do with his enemy as he sees fit. That should be plenty good enough. The Nazis were in our power and we detested what they did, therefor we executed them.
You do realize that prior to the outbreak of WWI Germany and England were each others largest trade partners don't you? High levels of trade do not equal interdependence.
Well, the walls of Ancient Samarah are now about three feet tall in most places. In order to chase insurgents we often drove over and destroyed walls thsat had been standing for somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 years. I did not like doing it but I was not going to eat a bullet to save a world landmark.
I would have to agree with Smith on this. The more invested a nation is in the international market, the harder it is to go to war (i.e. instigate a war). This does not make war impossible; just less likely.
What does trade and it's volume have to do with the impulse to war? The decision for war, especially war initiation, is inherently irrational. Therefor rational calculation only plays a peripheral role, if any. People and nations go to war when the think they can achieve their aims through violence more easily than any other method granted, there are qualifications to that statement but it generally holds true. Hitler went to war because he thought the only way to achieve European hegemony was through war, ditto Napoleon, the French Revolutionaries, Genghis Khan, Mohammed, Sulieman the magnificent, Urban II, Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick the Great, JFK & LBJ, George W. Bush, Henry V, Charlemagne, Caesar, ad infinitum. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. You have to grant that people often make irrational decisions for supposedly irrational reasons, why would statesmen be any different?
What amazes me is that there seems to be an awful lot of wars in that list that pre-date the use of reliable firearms.
Why? Because it takes firearms to kill lots of people? Don't fall victim to the myth that mass wars and mass casualties only happened after the advent of firearms.
How invested were the Central Powers in international commerce at the outbreak of WWI? How much did Germany rely on the free market going into WWII? I know that the process of globalization was beginning to gain some popularity in the very early twentieth century but WWI hindered this development. Still, I am not sure that the Central Powers were the ones invested in this.As for colonization, were the aggressors the colonizers or the ones receiving the colonists? I should add that international trade and the free market do not eliminate war; rather, they decrease the likelihood of it. Trading partners have more to lose if they enter into war. The fact that globalization has occurred at a much more rapid rate in the world post-1950, and the fact that another world war outbreak has not occurred, may support this idea. Notice how the nations which are the biggest threats today are the ones not participating in the free market system to a full degree (China) and those that are isolated from the international market (North Korea, Cuba, Iran).
International trade did not reach the same level as 1914 until the 1970's. (I have a cite fot his if you want it) Globalization is nothing new. International trade stimulates competition. The distinction and impetus for war has not changed it was and is, the haves against the have-nots. At root, every war is a resource war of one type or another.
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