15 ms·

The US never had much interest in territorial acquisition? Ever heard of "manifest destiny"?

microcolonel 9y ago
This whole chain of ideas is ridiculous. Conquest is inherently and naturally legitimate; because you can not enforce laws when the prevailing power doesn't respect them. Sure, it sucks, and yeah there has been a coincidental reduction in wars of conquest after these treaty signings, but one does not make a peanut butter sandwich simply by owning bread and peanut butter. Conquest is down because of a) alliances b) the nuclear deterrent and c) market liberalization, causing an increase in the ability of people to make a living where they are, lessening the relative value of conquest.
- wahern 9y ago
  But the prevailing power has less incentive to skirt laws if nobody else recognizes the legitimacy of their conquests. No country is so powerful that they can simply ignore how the rest of the world responds. Might makes right is a truism, yes, but only under the presumption that somebody is so mighty that everybody else has no choice but to fall into line and internalize the new order. Things are never that cut-and-dry. Vietnam, Afghanistan (now and then), and Iraq should have made it abundantly clear that might makes right is not a concept that has real world application. What really matters is whether and how everybody will internalize a new political order. Power is a big part of that equation--and relative power is perhaps one benchmark by which many people will choose whether to internalize things--but it's nowhere near sufficient alone.
wahern 9y ago
Fair enough. That's an _extremely_ important and obvious exception. But it's not unlike China. Few scholars would classify China as a nation interested in conquest (now or ever), even after considering Tibet and the slow, multimillennial political expansion of the Han people. The U.S. relinquished the Philippines and other significant acquisitions after the Spanish War. The Monroe Doctrine shows that the U.S. was never much interested in territorial acquisition, per se. If anything, I'd argue that our concept of territorial conquest is derived from the peculiar historical evolution of European powers. And it's decline is more a reflection of the world moving on from that peculiar history. The further you get from Western Europe--geographically and temporally--the more difficult it is to characterize and analyze conquest in terms of the nation-state--which was, as a distinct and categorical "thing", a European invention solidified by the Treaty of Westphalia. Thus, I think it's fair to say that neither the U.S. nor China are conquesting nations, but only using the European definition of conquest. The European definition is usually what we use in discourse because it's well-defined and has very specific meanings. If we loosen the term then, yes, I think it's clear that the U.S. especially is a conquesting nation; and to a lesser extent (at least in modern times), China. But loose definitions makes for poor discourse. I think it's enough to recognize the limits of our definitions.

This whole chain of ideas is ridiculous. Conquest is inherently and naturally legitimate; because you can not enforce laws when the prevailing power doesn't respect them. Sure, it sucks, and yeah there has been a coincidental reduction in wars of conquest after these treaty signings, but one does not make a peanut butter sandwich simply by owning bread and peanut butter. Conquest is down because of a) alliances b) the nuclear deterrent and c) market liberalization, causing an increase in the ability of people to make a living where they are, lessening the relative value of conquest.

wahern 9y ago
But the prevailing power has less incentive to skirt laws if nobody else recognizes the legitimacy of their conquests. No country is so powerful that they can simply ignore how the rest of the world responds. Might makes right is a truism, yes, but only under the presumption that somebody is so mighty that everybody else has no choice but to fall into line and internalize the new order. Things are never that cut-and-dry. Vietnam, Afghanistan (now and then), and Iraq should have made it abundantly clear that might makes right is not a concept that has real world application. What really matters is whether and how everybody will internalize a new political order. Power is a big part of that equation--and relative power is perhaps one benchmark by which many people will choose whether to internalize things--but it's nowhere near sufficient alone.

wahern 9y ago

Fair enough. That's an _extremely_ important and obvious exception. But it's not unlike China. Few scholars would classify China as a nation interested in conquest (now or ever), even after considering Tibet and the slow, multimillennial political expansion of the Han people. The U.S. relinquished the Philippines and other significant acquisitions after the Spanish War. The Monroe Doctrine shows that the U.S. was never much interested in territorial acquisition, per se. If anything, I'd argue that our concept of territorial conquest is derived from the peculiar historical evolution of European powers. And it's decline is more a reflection of the world moving on from that peculiar history. The further you get from Western Europe--geographically and temporally--the more difficult it is to characterize and analyze conquest in terms of the nation-state--which was, as a distinct and categorical "thing", a European invention solidified by the Treaty of Westphalia. Thus, I think it's fair to say that neither the U.S. nor China are conquesting nations, but only using the European definition of conquest. The European definition is usually what we use in discourse because it's well-defined and has very specific meanings. If we loosen the term then, yes, I think it's clear that the U.S. especially is a conquesting nation; and to a lesser extent (at least in modern times), China. But loose definitions makes for poor discourse. I think it's enough to recognize the limits of our definitions.