Re: Conquests- rewriting (future) history....?

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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.
 
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.
 
That strategy was copied on the back of the Roman legion model of ally
with one tribe against it's enemies.
 
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.
 
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. 
 
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.
 
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".
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.