Jake below makes some good points. I recall when the former USSR began imploding several decades ago. _Time_ had an excellent editorial on the legitimacy of secession. The author wrote "the principle of secession in our own country [the U.S.] wasn't decided by political science professors at an academic conference, but rather on the battlefields of Gettysburg and Antietam." When I was taking my required U.S. Government course at UT Austin in 1960, a student asked the prof: "What is a legal revolution?" Without giving it a second thought, the prof answered "one that succeeds." One can say the same thing about secession: one that succeeds. Why is South Sudan an independent country today? Because the Sudanese government had neither the will nor manpower to crush it.
I don't think US colonial possession of the Philippines is what led to the war with Japan. That war was due to Japanese desires for its own empire. Japan would have attacked the US anyway, in my opinion, in order to dominate the western Pacific.
HW Brands, my favorite historian author, does a great job of highlighting the "big" conflicts and use of US military as well as the pitfalls and downsides of those conflicts.
But we have used our military to equally dubious means for, well, almost 200 years with numerous incursions into Central American nations and Caribbean nations to preserve corporate domination for our leading companies, install dictators and tyrants friendly to US interests. One can readily get a list of of these interventions on Wikipedia. These interventions still plague us now with the result of migrants and asylum seekers trying to get into the US from these long-destabilized nations! My biggest pet peeve is those knee-jerk pundits who want to "close the border" or "build a wall" - both of which are ludicrous talking points. If people really want to solve the so-called "border crisis" then the root cause needs to be addressed- unstable governments and economies of those nations we have meddled in for a century or more.
We also have military involvement in a sort of shadow mechanism which genearally does not involve our troops but does involve US money and equipment:
- backing the Saudi war in Yemen
- backing various governments or insurgents in Africa
- deploying troops overseas in low level conflicts
That said, I do think our support for Ukraine is completely just and justified.
Hawks in both major parties criticized DeSantis for saying the conflict in Ukraine is a territorial dispute. However, that's precisely what it is. If Kosovo had a right to secede from Serbia, then why don't the ethnically Russian areas of Ukraine have a right to their own nation? And why don't the Turks in Cyprus have a right to theirs? When I think of Putin and Zelenskyy, I'm reminded of a line from a Marx Brothers movie (Groucho chiding Chico for giving Harpo a hard time): "Hey, you big bully! Quit picking on that little bully!" I consider both Putin and Zelenskyy to be thugs.
Interesting point, Charles. But on the topic of oblasts in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine trying to secede and form independent pro-Russian countries, is it really the will of those oblasts to become independent, or the work of pro-Putin agents who are fomenting rebellion? Lincoln referred to secession in America as being the "essence of anarchy," but that seems to apply to every country. I don't know of a single country who has a clause in their constitution allowing for regions/and or sections to break away whenever they want to become independent nations. Kosovo may not have the constitutional right to secede from Serbia, but they do possess the natural right to revolution if they are truly being oppressed by the Serbian government. If the eastern Ukrainian oblasts have the right to secede because they have majority Russian populations, then it's the Sudetenland crisis all over again, except that now Putin is Hitler (yes, I know that Luhansk & Donetsk claim to be independent republics, but they are really just Russian puppet states...more so than even Belarus is).
Jake writes "on the topic of oblasts in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine trying to secede and form independent pro-Russian countries, is it really the will of those oblasts to become independent, or the work of pro-Putin agents who are fomenting rebellion? " A couple or so decades ago, I gave a paper at an academic conference on the question of the legitimacy of secession. I interviewed a professor of history at my school on the issues involved in our own Civil War. He said that Lincoln claimed that the average southerner was anti-secession, and that pro-secession feeling was on the part of a few rabble-rousers who had grabbed the headlines. I don't think that "Johnny Reb" would have enlisted in such numbers if it had been just a few rabble-rousers waving the southern flag.
Jake below makes some good points. I recall when the former USSR began imploding several decades ago. _Time_ had an excellent editorial on the legitimacy of secession. The author wrote "the principle of secession in our own country [the U.S.] wasn't decided by political science professors at an academic conference, but rather on the battlefields of Gettysburg and Antietam." When I was taking my required U.S. Government course at UT Austin in 1960, a student asked the prof: "What is a legal revolution?" Without giving it a second thought, the prof answered "one that succeeds." One can say the same thing about secession: one that succeeds. Why is South Sudan an independent country today? Because the Sudanese government had neither the will nor manpower to crush it.
Great article. Some thoughts, however.
I don't think US colonial possession of the Philippines is what led to the war with Japan. That war was due to Japanese desires for its own empire. Japan would have attacked the US anyway, in my opinion, in order to dominate the western Pacific.
HW Brands, my favorite historian author, does a great job of highlighting the "big" conflicts and use of US military as well as the pitfalls and downsides of those conflicts.
But we have used our military to equally dubious means for, well, almost 200 years with numerous incursions into Central American nations and Caribbean nations to preserve corporate domination for our leading companies, install dictators and tyrants friendly to US interests. One can readily get a list of of these interventions on Wikipedia. These interventions still plague us now with the result of migrants and asylum seekers trying to get into the US from these long-destabilized nations! My biggest pet peeve is those knee-jerk pundits who want to "close the border" or "build a wall" - both of which are ludicrous talking points. If people really want to solve the so-called "border crisis" then the root cause needs to be addressed- unstable governments and economies of those nations we have meddled in for a century or more.
We also have military involvement in a sort of shadow mechanism which genearally does not involve our troops but does involve US money and equipment:
- backing the Saudi war in Yemen
- backing various governments or insurgents in Africa
- deploying troops overseas in low level conflicts
That said, I do think our support for Ukraine is completely just and justified.
Hawks in both major parties criticized DeSantis for saying the conflict in Ukraine is a territorial dispute. However, that's precisely what it is. If Kosovo had a right to secede from Serbia, then why don't the ethnically Russian areas of Ukraine have a right to their own nation? And why don't the Turks in Cyprus have a right to theirs? When I think of Putin and Zelenskyy, I'm reminded of a line from a Marx Brothers movie (Groucho chiding Chico for giving Harpo a hard time): "Hey, you big bully! Quit picking on that little bully!" I consider both Putin and Zelenskyy to be thugs.
Interesting point, Charles. But on the topic of oblasts in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine trying to secede and form independent pro-Russian countries, is it really the will of those oblasts to become independent, or the work of pro-Putin agents who are fomenting rebellion? Lincoln referred to secession in America as being the "essence of anarchy," but that seems to apply to every country. I don't know of a single country who has a clause in their constitution allowing for regions/and or sections to break away whenever they want to become independent nations. Kosovo may not have the constitutional right to secede from Serbia, but they do possess the natural right to revolution if they are truly being oppressed by the Serbian government. If the eastern Ukrainian oblasts have the right to secede because they have majority Russian populations, then it's the Sudetenland crisis all over again, except that now Putin is Hitler (yes, I know that Luhansk & Donetsk claim to be independent republics, but they are really just Russian puppet states...more so than even Belarus is).
Jake writes "on the topic of oblasts in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine trying to secede and form independent pro-Russian countries, is it really the will of those oblasts to become independent, or the work of pro-Putin agents who are fomenting rebellion? " A couple or so decades ago, I gave a paper at an academic conference on the question of the legitimacy of secession. I interviewed a professor of history at my school on the issues involved in our own Civil War. He said that Lincoln claimed that the average southerner was anti-secession, and that pro-secession feeling was on the part of a few rabble-rousers who had grabbed the headlines. I don't think that "Johnny Reb" would have enlisted in such numbers if it had been just a few rabble-rousers waving the southern flag.