Senate Pax watever-ia World/Global domination, an epic waste of time?

Indeed there is a diffrence between sucess and domination.

From King Leopold II hellish rubber plantations, to the Bananna republics whom United Fruit gave the name, rubber and fruit could yeild profit just not the rediculious super wealth some seem to crave.

 

True enough many West African kingdoms destroyed themselves when they decided to make slavery their major export and business, and did the United States antebellum south (though the north also profited).

That the center of my questions, I am not saying war is always unnecessary. But why community/society/culture goes from fulfilling a need, to being so compelled by avarice it leads eventually do its self-destruction.

The South and its “King Cotton”, West Africa (pre scramble) and its slave markets are just two examples. But the patterns tend to repay themselves. The colonial Empires of end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, to the crony capitalism and international free trade of today.
It always seems to end the same way, failure. Long term insustanability.

Oddly enough after the Zanj Rebellion the middle east seemed to discontinued mass production farming and stuck to trade, and limited heavy industry. Well until the modern need for oil made them an industrial power.

 

Cato argued for the second invasion. In the first invasion, they blatantly gave the Carthaginians a demand that they knew was unreasonable, to instigate a war, so that they could conquer them. They went to Carthage and demanded that they leave the coast and move to the barren Sahara inland. Or to put it as it really is: they went to Carthage and demanded the Carthaginians to leave Carthage, or they would destroy it. Naturally, the Carthaginians refused, so the Romans kept their word and destroyed it. Basically, they went to Carthage and said "I want this, Give it to me". If that's not law of the jungle, I don't know what is.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter that it took a long time for Cato to convince the crowd. The fact that he at all thought that it was a winning strategy to repeat that line, and the fact that it eventually worked, says a lot about Roman society in itself. Similarly, the fact that John McCain thought that it was a winning strategy to turn a Beach Boys song into "Bomb Iran" during the 08 election campaign, and got away with it pretty easily, also says something about American society. That he lost to Obama in the end doesn't negate that. The demographic that he was pandering to is not minuscule, after all, even though it turned out not to be the majority.

 

I have realized that I have made a huge unforgivable and critical error. The events that I described happened in the second invasion, and must be seen in the context of the lasting trauma that Hannibal's campaign across mainland Italy about 50 years prior, left on the Romans. However, the second invasion was nevertheless unprovoked, as the Romans had won and defeated Hannibal in the end, and sanctioned and collected indemnity from Carthage. They had already had their revenge by defeating Hannibal in his home turf. It was little more than lust for conquest, justified by paranoia.

 

Oh yeah? well, Carthage was originally a Phoenician colony.

BOOM!!!

Sorry, I thought this thread had become the place for us to share random facts we know about ancient history. Also, boredom...

 

Yeah but if we deal fairly for it, are we not then empowering the Saudi monarchy that represses its people? In fact isn't dealing fairly for oil with the Saudis our current arrangement? And we're not the only ones they sell to...there's China and Europe, pretty much any country that consumes more oil than it produces. We're not forcing them to sell it, they sell it because they get revenue from doing so, and that revenue helps them stay in power. If we want to avoid empowering these bad petrostate governments, we've got to give them the Iran treatment...which basically means no more oil for us.

 

The United States does deal fairly with the Saudis from what I understand, But it has had far poorer relationships with the countries of Central and South America, Africa, and south Asia.

The United States and companies based in it make high end goods that reqire materials not found within US boarders. But these raw materials don't net these regions any cash.

Its often like Daimond miners, or Coca plant farmers, they get far less than the value of the good.

 

Great quote. When I despair of the slaughterhouse that is History, I try to find some solace in the fact that death exists. No matter powerful or wealthy these monsters and thugs and fools are, they're destined to be worm-food.

Sadly, nothing good lasts forever; mercifully, nothing evil does either.

 

Do you think the people would prefer an impoverished monarchy that nevertheless represses its people, or a rich monarchy that represses its people, all the while bribing them with wealth and improved living standards (Saudi Arabia)? The answer is obvious. It's not like a regime packs its bags and leaves just because we sanction them. Sanctions have led to precious few regime changes in history. They can be counted on one hand, and even in those cases, the sanctions were compounded by other factors.

If you care about the people under a repressed system, you trade with them, you try to open up the country, you include them in world affairs as much as possible. The most repressive dictatorships voluntarily isolate their citizens by force (cue NK, the Berlin Wall). They know communication and trade with the outside world ultimately empowers the citizens, not themselves. You have to have a full stomach to care about freedom and human rights. A hungry man is in no position to care about these things.