Discussion topic - rewriting (future) history....?

textfilter: chose text/plain from a multipart/alternative

Dear list

Some points in this arguement warrant a few observations and 
caveats.

> It's always been a problem to conqurer a hostile land. 
England could not
conqurer a hostile afghanistan 100 years ago. Even the 
Norman conquest of Saxon
England too hundres of years and relied on a 
commitment to stay and intermarry
with the local noble houses to breed out 
the original inhabitants.

Depends your assertion is of "relied on a 
commitment to stay and intermarry-" is
corret-- or committment to stay and 
extirpate the existing population. What the
British and everyone else desired 
in Afghanistan is a quiet and quiescent buffer
accepting titular 
overlordship. The Afghan's have from time to time been willing
to accept that 
the more "titular" it was. Once you attempt to get the people on
the ground 
to do what you want- it becomes more difficult.

>
> The british 
colonial strategy was to back a minority and give them support
into positions 
of power, they then knew that if the regime ever fell they would
go back to 
the bottom of the pecking order.

Not original. The Caliphs of the Muslim 
states of the first conquest
traditionally employed minorities or foreign 
tribal groups as outsiders simply
because their loyalty was to the Caliph. 
Unfortunately the Saljuk "slave
soldiers" soon replaced the Caliphs, and 
eventually the Ottoman's the Seljuks. 
Saladin himself was a Kurd, and it 
goes on. The difference in Britishsrule in
India was it was more or less 
interested in extraction of moveable wealth.
Once you decide that you want 
the land-- then you have to move the indiginous
population off it. But that's 
if you want to repopulate the land. If not you're
stuck with accepting 
titular overlordship and hoping for the best.

> One thing I don't 
understand is why would Texas invade Mexico? That's like a
hundred fold 
expansion in their welfare programme. I can see why Mexico would
want to 
invade Texas because there's a lot of wealth there. If you look on
population 
movements as invasion then the central ameras have been invading the
US 
successfully for years. If War is essentially state sanctioned armed 
robbery
then robbing the poor to give to the rich doesn't really 
work.

I assume you are speaking about invasions in some hypothesized 
game. (Texas
invading Mexico?" But you are forgetting-- what if they just 
want the land and
are prepared to exterminate the indiginous population or 
force it off the land
to die in the desert naturally. Again, it assumes that 
"robbing from the poor"
doesn't pay only if you are seeking portable, 
extractable wealth. Simple
occupancy of the land even by hunter-gatherers or 
nomads denies it to thos who
wish to use it in a different way. Vis, the 
North American Indians. See William
Cronin "Changes in the Land." for a good 
history of the asymetrical values and
views of land between the white and 
Amerindian populations.

Further, do not discount the allure of slavery. 
Nothing says there cannot be a
regression where occupying a state and 
enslaving the population simply to be
hewers of wood and carriers of water 
cant resurface. War is a labor saving
device of the highest order when looked 
at in this light. And what matter if
they die off-- there's always more where 
they came from?

>
> There is also now a significant Muslim 
minority in most of the EU countries
(witness the number of mosques being 
built) there is no corresponding shift of
westerners to arab 
countries.

There is no shift simply because quality of life in Muslim 
countries, especially
for non-Muslims is hellish, while in the West Muslims 
benefit from European
ideas such as "equal protection under the laws," 
"toleration," and rule of law. 
Again these are political decisions and not 
economic ones.
>
> I'm not sure that the unification of the Arab 
world under a Saladin type
figure is any more likely that the unification of 
the Christian world under a
new Holy Roman Empire.

Far less likely. 
"Unificaton" in our sense is political unification. This is
impossible in a 
society in which tribal and familial loyalties are far more
powerful than 
nationalistic once. The day of Arab nationalism as under Nasser
and others 
(yes even the late unlamented Khaddaffi Duck) is now over.

>
> 
Beth posed some interesting scenarios about wars over water. Looking at 
NZ
agriculture water use is proportional to intensity of farming and there
is 
even
concern about how water is used and the impacts of farming on waterways.

Dairy
farming is particulary bad as there is a lot of polution of waterways, 
intensive
crop farming needs lots of water and nutrients to support the high 
density of
farming. So I'm not sure that you can wave a magic wand and say 
"make farming
less dependent on water".

For this you really have to 
read Marvin Harris' "Cannibals and Kings" which is a
good basic grounding on 
the History of ecology. Harris and others postulates
food supply as the base 
reductio of power. Again, to give a nod to Marx, if we
are what we eat, then 
the struggle between agricultural models which produce
more calories more 
efficiently-- will be the ones desired. Jarrod Diamond in his
"Guns Germans 
and Steel" and subsequent books tries to go down this road, but
not very 
well. The question is this.

If wars are to be about water and food, or 
whatever they are to be about, they
are to be fought by the good old 
fashioned methods of extreme applicaiton of
violence, whatever the cause. In 
this case the question of conquest becomes
entirely changed if we are talking 
about limited food supplies which (as Harris
and even Diamond assert) from 
inelastic sources (it's hard to see how much more
efficiency we can crank 
into agrobusiness. In this case we are talking about 
conquering food 
production areas, including those whose indiginous population
may not be 
exploiting them efficiently. But such conquest is quickly defeated if
we have 
to support the indiginous population. That is, why conquer more hungry
mouths 
to feed- some other -- dare I say-- "Final Solution" will have to be
found. 
In short wars over food will not be wars of conquest, but rather wars 
of
extermination.
>

> If by invasion you mean political 
control of the country, then you could argue
that Greece has been invaded by 
a German, Belgian, French alliance. With local
greek policies now being 
determined by overseers in Berlin and Brussels all
without having a shot 
fired and now the Greek puppet regime are doing their
masters work and 
oppressing their own populace.

Let us remember that the Germans, Belgian, 
French, and Slovakians did not force
the Greeks to have such a lavishly 
overgenerous and under-funded state. It was
the Greeks themselves, that they 
are now being dictated to by the powers you
name seems to me to be something 
of their own fault. If there is any blame to be
had to the funding powers it 
is that they played the chicanery of debt, making
loans to people who they 
knew could never pay them back, just like the sub-prime
mortgage rate in the 
US. As for the Greeks, this is a mess of entirely their own
making and my 
sympathy is unmoved.

> I can see potential wars over big unpopulated 
resource rich areas (Siberia
comes to mind) all it would need would be to 
discover significant minerals, oil
or gold or crashed spaceship in Antartica 
and then it's all on. Especially if it
was discovered in an area claimed by 
more than one country or by a country that
can't defend its claim.

I'm 
not so sure. The cost of extraction is immense and really the profits to

be
made from them are applicable only to a society that is engaged in 
the
conversion of resources to materials. That's not a big part of the 
economy now,
the most of it being in transfer payments and consumer culture. 
The above is the
"heavy machinery mania that spawned Magnitogorsk and 
Pittsburgh, both of which
are now rusting away. The discovery of gold now 
would-- in fact, be
catastrophic, vast new amounts of gold entering the 
markit place would cause the
bursting of the gold bubble, and DeBeers is 
finding out the paucity of their
strategy of controlling diamonds.

FAr 
more likely is the nature of food.

A bit of fact. In the United States 
today the number of people engaged in the
actual production of food-- that 
is-- in agriculture-- is (hazared a guess?"

It is 5%.

The 
percentage of the population involved in the support of that 5% of 
the
population producing the food (which includes the fertilizer companies, 
the seed
companies, trucking, railroads, food processing, jobbers etc. is 
20%.

Let's consider this. Five percent of the population produces such 
lavish food
supplies that Obesity is a rampant national problem in the United 
States, AND we
can afford to waste millions of tons per day, AND we can give 
it away to every
third world crap hole in the world.

THAT, my friends 
is the poster boy of Autarky. The United States could simply
say to the rest 
of the world "starve" and in three years world population would
collapse. 
Which brings us back to Harris and Diamond-- their point is that in
the end-- 
calories are everything.

> Same for other hotspots. if there's ever 
commercially viable oil discovered in
the Falklands then that could be 
another hotspot that takes off again.

Perhaps. However will oil be that 
necessary? Only if consumer society as we
know it now does not change. 
Remember that most of the major powers have far
more oil reserves than they 
need now IF you are talking only of the military
needs for POL (Petroleum, 
oil, and lubricants). That's for the tanks and guns
and planes. But if on the 
other hand we are into wars where the object of the
war is not to anhihilate 
the enemy army, but simply anhihilate the enemy- then
bio-chemical weapons 
will be far more helpful in producing mega-deaths and not
tearing up the 
environment we wish to occupy for food production. Once for
example high food 
producing nations decide to keep it home and not feed the
rest of the world, 
the best thing to do is exterminate the hungry mouths. In
this case actual 
occupation BEFORE the extermination of the enemy population is
not desired. 
In that case, actuall offensive operations might not be necessary-
simple 
denial of aid and service might be enough.

Political control, therefore, 
may be irrelevant.

Depends on how cold blooded you wish to 
be.

Otto