Nato faces 'dim future', warns Pentagon chief

[K. A. Pital]

I don't think Stalinist or theocratic measures are a solution in any situation. Immigration can always cover the deficit. There's plenty of poor places in the world.

Oh, and as to whether forced sterilizations were ever successfully carried out to bring about the destruction of an ethnic minority (outside of Nazi Germany)... Hmm... That's a tough question, because a lot of information on the precise ethnic compsition of the victims and their share (for example, in Sweden - how many of the Roma who lived prior to the immigration of Finnish Kale were sterilized? There's just around 50000 Roma in Sweden now, the majority of them immigrants, while in the 1920s where was much fewer Roma, and if they were sterilized in the 1930s, that's clearly a case of genocide) is hard to find. I think Peru's Fujimori managed to decimate the Quechua and Aymara inside Peru with his 200 000 forced sterilizations - as I gathered, that was about the share of these particular ethnicities in Peru. Of course, that didn't bring about their complete destruction since there were other members of that ethnicity outside Peru, but still it shows that compulsory sterilization can be efficiently used as a tool of utter genocide.

BTW:

As for "justified intervention" - the First World commited so much genocide and mass murder on its own historically that it lost any right to anything.

I think that even if you count all the mass murder that occured in the Third World in the XX century or the XX and XIX century combined, that would not be on par with the mass murder commited by First World nations in the same timeframe.

In fact, just two First World nations like Germany and Japan by their actions in the mid-XX century have been the reason for the death of such an enormous number of people that DPRK, Khmer Rouge, Rwanda, Congo Civil War, Mozambique and all other nations' wars and famines combined would barely (!) scratch that plank of... how many million again? Fifty? Sixty? Even excluding soldiers and civilians of their own respective nations, there'll be still well over 40 million non-First World victims of World War II. This only proves my point - two or three First World nations (Germany, Japan, Italy) in just a few decades killed more people than ALL OTHER NATIONS OF THE WORLD COMBINED killed in a whole century.

The high technology and the enormous potential of imperialism for causing mass death is such that a vast minority of nations constituting less than 10% of the World's population at the time caused more deaths than the 90% of the world's other population combined in just 10-15 years or so. The rest of the world killed, went to war and commited genocide for a whole century and still it was only barely enough to reach the levels of deaths that Germany, Italy and Japan caused.

Arbitrarily setting the bar at "50 years prior" excludes one of the greatest genocides in history and presumes that such a high-technology genocide may never repeat. Thankfully enough, I'm not willing to take chances. Imperialism should die, and relative power of nations should level out so that invasions and war become untenable or at least mostly undesireable as conditions for victory could not be fulfilled by either party.

[Block]

I think that even if you count all the mass murder that occured in the Third World in the XX century or the XX and XIX century combined, that would not be on par with the mass murder commited by First World nations in the same timeframe.

In fact, just two First World nations like Germany and Japan by their actions in the mid-XX century have been the reason for the death of such an enormous number of people that DPRK, Khmer Rouge, Rwanda, Congo Civil War, Mozambique and all other nations' wars and famines combined would barely (!) scratch that plank of... how many million again? Fifty? Sixty? Even excluding soldiers and civilians of their own respective nations, there'll be still well over 40 million non-First World victims of World War II. This only proves my point - two or three First World nations (Germany, Japan, Italy) in just a few decades killed more people than ALL OTHER NATIONS OF THE WORLD COMBINED killed in a whole century.

The high technology and the enormous potential of imperialism for causing mass death is such that a vast minority of nations constituting less than 10% of the World's population at the time caused more deaths than the 90% of the world's other population combined in just 10-15 years or so. The rest of the world killed, went to war and commited genocide for a whole century and still it was only barely enough to reach the levels of deaths that Germany, Italy and Japan caused.

Arbitrarily setting the bar at "50 years prior" excludes one of the greatest genocides in history and presumes that such a high-technology genocide may never repeat. Thankfully enough, I'm not willing to take chances. Imperialism should die, and relative power of nations should level out so that invasions and war become untenable or at least mostly undesireable as conditions for victory could not be fulfilled by either party.

This is only true if you ignore Russia and China, who both commited crimes against humanity that dwarf even Japan and Germany's disgusting display.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm going to ask for a citation on that claim of "dwarfing," Block. Show me the numbers, please.

[MarshalPurnell]

The suppression of the Taiping Rebellion killed maybe 20 million Chinese over a decade of the mid-19th century, and it was only the largest of several interlocked rebellions over a period of roughly two decades. One would probably be hard pressed to say that the Western powers killed that many people in the entire century. Of course the moral calculus of people killing one another in a civil war is different, but the difference in scale compared to, say, the Sepoy Rebellion is still there.

[K. A. Pital]

The suppression of the Taiping Rebellion killed maybe 20 million Chinese over a decade of the mid-19th century, and it was only the largest of several interlocked rebellions over a period of roughly two decades. One would probably be hard pressed to say that the Western powers killed that many people in the entire century. Of course the moral calculus of people killing one another in a civil war is different, but the difference in scale compared to, say, the Sepoy Rebellion is still there.

The Taiping Rebellion was in the XIX century. Pay attention to what I am saying.

This is only true if you ignore Russia and China, who both commited crimes against humanity that dwarf even Japan and Germany's disgusting display.

Throughout the entire XX century neither China nor Russia managed to achieve a death toll close to the deaths caused by the Axis, and that's with tens of millions of people perishing in China due to famine. Now, if you sum up the XIX and XX century for China, I'm not sure even then that would top the Axis. Once again, paying attention to years and numbers is important.

I haven't done a precise calculation, but the general order of magnitude of the Axis killings makes it quite sure that they are one of the single biggest sources of mass death in the history of mankind, utterly dwarfing many things - even the dreadful toll of the Taiping Rebellion is smaller than the number of victims of just Japanese actions alone. It is also smaller than that of Germany alone. Germany and Japan lead the way here, you pretty much can't beat 35-50 million + 20-30 million. That's a lot of dead people.

Also, 90% of the deaths were in nations which aren't First World. I can exclude British, French and US deaths from the picture entirely and it wouldn't change much at all.

P.S. Thanks to your morbid curiosity, folks, I'm now doing an excess death calculator for two whole centuries, which would have the ability to sum deaths by region, deaths by nation, etc. This calculator will only use document-proven data wherever possible (e.g. American Indian deaths in the XIX century will be documented according to US Army records, etc.) to avoid excessive megadeath bias.

[Thanas]

Define nation state then and show me how it does apply to the Golden Horde then. A state is something more than personal allegiances.

How about, uh... common law? The Golden Horde had the (Great) Yassa. That's a bit more than just "personal allegiances" indeed. Common currency as well - the balysh. To say that something as complex and clearly unified as the Golden Horde was not a nation-state is to claim that all ancient nation-states weren't really "states". I think the pre-Ghengiside Mongols aren't a nation-state, but post-Gengish Khan? Clearly they were.

Your insisting they are does not make them nation states. Also, if you go by common law and common currency, then nearly every ancient state was a nation state, even at times when the concept of "nationality" was utterly foreign to them.

Morality should consistently ensure the protection of the weak, whereas legalism failed to consistently ensure the same. Once again, I try to follow a system that would consistently be in favor of the weak. If you don't like it, fine.

The problem is that your system is completely and utterly impractical. It also allows one to deny rights to others because they are "not good people". This is a very idiotic way to conduct international business.

What, legalism? How is it "integral" if you could legally run racial forced sterilization? The law is not the primary source of respect. That source is morality and moral norms (new moral norms, especially) which then get codified in the law. The law itself is just a formalization of existing relations in society, of existing social and moral norms. It is not "integral" for respect. A lawless zone may not have racist violence if the two ethnicities in said zone already get along good with each other.

Of course it freaking is integral for international business. Otherwise you would have no way to conduct international business and agreements would only be kept if there would be force of arms to back them up. I think we have grown beyond those barbaric times.
That however does in no way legalize any abuses and I cannot understand how you consistently fail to get that point.

Whoa. So I guess the defeat of the Reich was a "net negative"? Or you don't consider German civilians "innocents" and Germany's utter demise "the destruction of a country"? Clarify this. And thanks for admitting that Russia's apology to Poland for Katyn is a "net negative", because it is bought with the destruction of a country - the USSR - and blood of innocents - hundreds of thousands of 'em.

My point (but thank you once more for immediately jumping to the extreme end of the spectrum, how very good of you) is that if you kill hundreds of thousands of civilians to rescue 10 people being exploited, then you are using and advocating disproportionate means.

Also, what the heck has Russian's apology to Poland to do with the destruction of the USSR? That dictatorship did not exist anymore when the apology was made and Russia is still standing. As for the Germany part, I find it insulting that you would even begin to think I would consider the destruction of Nazism a net negative. Are you interested in a honest debate or are you just flaming me?

Yes, many uprisings turn into civil wars because there are lots of collaborators and opportunists which fight for the invaders or prior government. The "invaders" may occupy a place for a long time and set up their own government, which would have law enforcement and military units ready to defend it against rebellion. Civil war is a war between citizens of one nation over the subject of government, more often than not.

How does that apply to your orginial example?

I have not defended the civil wars in Libya and Yemen. I am ambivalent about both of them, though I freely admit that Ghaddafi (as a person) does deserve bad things happening to him for things like this.

So you think that bad things happening to Muammar Qaddafi justify the civil war, suffering and destruction in the entire nation? *eyes
suspiciously*

Learn to read. I said no such thing.

At which point will you admit that civil war can be a net benefit if the prior government discredited itself or is willing to continue horrendous acts?

I have already stated that they can, however that I am not willing to ascribe to your extremist interpretation of that stance. For example, the Serb genocide in the Balkans certainly did justify civil war.

Besides, aren't honour killings a big problem in Turkey - a NATO member and a EU candidate? Does their huge rate in Turkey justify a civil war in Turkey and bad things to happen to Erdogan?

Are you an idiot? Why yes, you are.

No, Thanas, they aren't "too far off" - a civil war would leave the nation in a crippled state and make it lose its colonies. Usually restoring economy and military after a civil war takes decades, in case of less industrialized nations like the USSR and Japan especially. So the likelihood of a civil war contributing to decolonization and collapse of foreign imperialism is quite great. It is not absolute, but it is clearly more than 50% probable. Even the mere overthrow of Salazar in a bloodless coup ended Portugal's colonial wars. Surely a ravaging civil war would make the imperialist power absolutely unable to hold on colonial posessions. Admit it, or you're just being dishonest.

I am not willing to admit to any such absolutes. The civil war in Britain did not make them lose their colonies, nor did the civil war in France. You are pretty ignorant of history if you believe that a civil war will leave a nation lose its colonies.

You seriously think the Thirty Years War - a "most destructive conflict in Europe" caused more deaths than "any of the British famines in India"? The death toll of the war was 3,5 to 11 million at the very high end. That's comparable to just one British India famine in 1876–78, where the death toll ranged from 6 to 10 million. If we go a bit further to the Bengal famine of 1770, in which the British played no small role by plundering Indian lands via the East India Company and raising land taxes fivefold - getting double the revenue from poor Indian farmers and then taking it all out of the country - we'll see ten million deaths, a death rate of 1/3rd of Bengal population.

Proportionally, that is about the same thing as the 30 years war. Also, the British had some positives in India - eradicating pestilence, for once. No such thing can be said about the 30 years war. My point, which you consistently missed, is that one cannot engage in such absolutes as you are doing here. Nor will a civil war essentially result in freedom and more liberties, which is another point you claim.

Besides, why the fuck are European lives worth more than Indian lives? Who are you to judge?

Why the fuck are they supposed to be worth less? After all, I am not the one advocating civil wars upon European nations that will kill millions for even the smallest colony. Your argument is disproportionate and extremely callous.

Only if the death toll would be greater than the death toll otherwise resulting from imperialism would I ever wish for an imperialist nation to remain intact.

How funny for you then that the 30 years war resulted in more death than hundreds of Habsburg "oppression" upon the states they "oppressed".

Maybe this should have recurred and saved countless millions from European opression.

Because the thirty years' war did? The destruction of the Habsburg empire left the other nations (like Russia, France) to expand unchecked and built their colonial empires. Turns out that it would have been more beneificial to keep that empire in place? But you do not see such considerations. All you see is a blind rage against anything European, because Europeans are evil.

You seriously fail to see how this would be beneficial for the world? Like, India and Punjab never experiencing what Britain unleashed on them in 1920-1940s?

I fail to see how the destruction of every empire in history would be a net negative, yes. Case in point: The Soviet Union also oppressed political dissidents. Was its destruction a net benefit? If you want to be ideologically consistent in your condemnation of all empires, then you have to agree that its destruction and utter ruin of it and its people, in fact a complete culling of the Russian population (because that is after all what you are arguing here), would be a net benefit if it contributed to the freedom of even one baltic state.

I never said that this scenario needs to be entirely realistic. I am asking if you admit that the destruction of opressive governments through civil war or coups - preferrably coups, of course - may be justified and beneficial.

Depending on the cirumstances, yes. As I said numerous times in this thread.

But your Eurocentrism once again betrays you - you have no interest in what happens outside of Europe. The fate of Germany, Poland, France and Britain concerns you. The fate of Cyrenaicans murdered by Italy - not so much. The fate of Chinese murdered by the Japanese Empire - a very "stable" government, you know, for centuries - not so much, as it seems. The fate of Indians and Irish murdered by the British - not so much. But the British? The Germans? What if they die in the millions? Oh noes! Oh sorry, Thanas, but I'm honestly sick of this.

And I am sick of your continued attempt to accuse me of Eurocentrism when I only use European examples because I know about them.

You claim to take into account "all the consequences" - so far the only "consequences" you're taking into account are the possible deaths of Europeans. No worries that a civil war in any imperialist European power - from Portugal to Italy to Britain to France - would automatically cause a collapse of their empires, liberate millions of people and prevent millions of deaths at the hands of the colonizers.

Because it would not automatically do so. It might also draw the colonies in or lead to other, more harsher empires forming. My point is that I will not subscribe to any such hypothetical theory. I will consider certain scenarios, but I will not assume this theory to be right under any circumstances.

And before you accuse me of playing the racist card - consider your own statements here. Despite my scenarios clearly preventing colonial conquests and deaths of Latinos, Indians, Irish, etc. - the opressed groups, you chose to center on possible European deaths as a result. Why is that?

Because the only empires I know of are European.

That said, I find it quite funny how you can argue for the destruction of Empires on one hand while on the other hand you live in an oppressive state and enjoy the fruits of oppression. That is a bit hypocritical, isn't it? Where is your argument that china should be destroyed because it oppresses the Uighurs? Where is your argument that China should fall into a civil war, to be forever crushed and unable to project its territorial ambitions with regards to Vietnam, Taiwan, Tibet and the various islands?

[K. A. Pital]

Your insisting they are does not make them nation states. Also, if you go by common law and common currency, then nearly every ancient state was a nation state, even at times when the concept of "nationality" was utterly foreign to them.

So multinational empires weren't nation-states? The Mongol Empire was multinational and ruled over a variety of nationalities. Just as the British Empire, which was composed by lots of ethnicies, which included Chinese and Hindus, for example. Is the British Empire a nation-state because it had common law (as I gather, it didn't even have common currency with the British Raj and other colonial territories)? If it is, then why is the Golden Horde not one? Why is the Roman Empire a nation-state, but not the Horde? Can you consistently argue your point and explain just what you understand as a "nation-state", why Rome is one and the Mongols aren't?

The problem is that your system is completely and utterly impractical. It also allows one to deny rights to others because they are "not good people". This is a very idiotic way to conduct international business.

Whoa. "Deny rights" to others, nothing less. So it does not matter if someone is infringing on the rights of another constantly, he still deserves to have the same rights as the victim of his infringement. Which "rights" am I depriving "others" of? Do explain.

Of course it freaking is integral for international business. Otherwise you would have no way to conduct international business and agreements would only be kept if there would be force of arms to back them up. I think we have grown beyond those barbaric times. That however does in no way legalize any abuses and I cannot understand how you consistently fail to get that point.

Iraq could not have kept his sovereignity without force of arms. That was less than 10 years ago. Iraq was simply crushed using brute military force and no amount of legalistic blabbering helped it. End of story. The consistent infringement on the sovereignity of other nations continued in the latter half of the XX century and doesn't stop even now. Sometimes it is excused for moral reasons, at other times it is just blatant militarism and war of agression. International law has failed to prevent war. International law can legalize a war post-facto, too.

My point (but thank you once more for immediately jumping to the extreme end of the spectrum, how very good of you) is that if you kill hundreds of thousands of civilians to rescue 10 people being exploited, then you are using and advocating disproportionate means. Also, what the heck has Russian's apology to Poland to do with the destruction of the USSR? That dictatorship did not exist anymore when the apology was made and Russia is still standing. As for the Germany part, I find it insulting that you would even begin to think I would consider the destruction of Nazism a net negative. Are you interested in a honest debate or are you just flaming me?

So Nazism clearly warranted destruction even if it was bought with millions of German lives, but Japanese, French or British imperialism did not? *shrugs* I'm not flaming you. I want to understand just what sort of a position you're holding. If I kill hundreds of thousands to rescue 10, clearly that is disproportionate. However, the Japanese, French and British Empires destroyed millions of people and opressed dozens of millions. How is my idea of a beneficial de-colonizing coup or civil conflict "disproportionate"? To be disproportionate, tens of millions of Japanese, French or British would have to die to even compare with the damage their empires wrought.

How does that apply to your orginial example?

You mean the Raj? It obviously applies. The Raj was a government. People committed terrorist acts against it to overthrow said government. Was it worth it?

Learn to read. I said no such thing.

So then you think the civil war is not justified?

I have already stated that they can, however that I am not willing to ascribe to your extremist interpretation of that stance. For example, the Serb genocide in the Balkans certainly did justify civil war.

By genocide you mean the mass murder in Srebrenica? Because during most of the Balkan wars, the ICTY has not found any other incidents that would fall under the definition of genocide. On the other hand, there are instances where genocide has been found to apply (retroactively) to events that occured before the legal creation of the genocide concept. Would a civil war in Britain be justified if it would prevent the genocide of natives in Australia?

Are you an idiot? Why yes, you are.

You said mass honour killings justify bad things happening to Qaddafi. Do mass honour killings in Turkey justify a Tomahawk flying into the window of Erdogan, killing him and only him?

I am not willing to admit to any such absolutes. The civil war in Britain did not make them lose their colonies, nor did the civil war in France. You are pretty ignorant of history if you believe that a civil war will leave a nation lose its colonies.

I said there is a high probability, not any "absolute" as you're trying to strawman. The civil war in Britain happened before they conquered and took direct control over most of their colonies.

Proportionally, that is about the same thing as the 30 years war. Also, the British had some positives in India - eradicating pestilence, for once. No such thing can be said about the 30 years war. My point, which you consistently missed, is that one cannot engage in such absolutes as you are doing here. Nor will a civil war essentially result in freedom and more liberties, which is another point you claim.

Once again, do "some positives" justify megadeaths? If yes, then I could find some positives in the Thirty Years War, too. You know, like that whole concept of "sovereign nation-state" you're so drooling about coming into existence with the peace of Westphalia.

Besides, why the fuck are European lives worth more than Indian lives? Who are you to judge?

Why the fuck are they supposed to be worth less? After all, I am not the one advocating civil wars upon European nations that will kill millions for even the smallest colony. Your argument is disproportionate and extremely callous.

"Smallest colony"? You got to be crazy or you unlearned reading, I advocated civil war and coups on the great European powers like France and Britain, under whose colonial yoke were hundreds of millions of people. Was India, which I brought as an example, a "smallest colony"? I never said they were worth less. Although, if you're willing to push me to the extremes of my argument, I will go to these extremes. And here's this extreme: the life of the opressor is worth less than the life of the opressed. The life of an SS-man is worth less than the life of a person in the concentration camp. Therefore, it is morally valid to call for the death of as many SS-men as the number of people who die in concentration camps, and possibly even more, because clearly posturing the moral equivalence between the murderer and the murdered is not acceptable. There, I hope I concisely explained my position. Just FYI, I consider lives neutral for that reason. I even once said that the destruction of the Third Reich wouldn't be justified if it caused 80 million deaths (more than the actions of the Reich itself caused). You can't fault me here.

How funny for you then that the 30 years war resulted in more death than hundreds of Habsburg "oppression" upon the states they "oppressed".

There were other states than the Habsburg Empire, and their opression summarily resulted in many times the number of dead in the Thirty Years War. I never said misdirected violence is justified. If the Habsburg Empire wasn't slaughtering people in the millions, the war was not justified. End of story.

Because the thirty years' war did? The destruction of the Habsburg empire left the other nations (like Russia, France) to expand unchecked and built their colonial empires. Turns out that it would have been more beneificial to keep that empire in place? But you do not see such considerations. All you see is a blind rage against anything European, because Europeans are evil.

Europeans have commited a lot of evil. It does not mean they are evil, but their technical progess and military power, combined with nationalism and militarism, gave them the capacity to commit lots of evil. The Thirty Years War is a clear example of misdirected violence. But then, of course, you can prove with numbers that the "unchecked" expansion of France and Russia was less beneficial than the continued existence of the Habsburg Empire?

I fail to see how the destruction of every empire in history would be a net negative, yes. Case in point: The Soviet Union also oppressed political dissidents. Was its destruction a net benefit? If you want to be ideologically consistent in your condemnation of all empires, then you have to agree that its destruction and utter ruin of it and its people, in fact a complete culling of the Russian population (because that is after all what you are arguing here), would be a net benefit if it contributed to the freedom of even one baltic state.

Heh. Maybe I should. Every sin should be paid for. And yes, the destruction of the USSR in many ways was brought about because of Stalin's agressive policy in Eastern Europe, the inclusion of nation-states into the USSR and Soviet sphere of influence by force. I already said that attempts at such empire-building always blow into the face of their creators. Abstract "freedom" doesn't justify mass violence, but, say, if the USSR was going to massacre thousands and starve millions of people in the Baltics - like Britain did in India and Pubjab - in the 1990s, clearly their freedom was justified, even if it would be brought about by the collapse of the USSR.

Depending on the cirumstances, yes. As I said numerous times in this thread.

So why did you rail against me at all? I said "sometimes" - you know, SOMETIMES - coups and civil wars can be good. You chose to talk about it, despite me putting a clear fucking clarification in front of the whole sentence. You know what, that's fucking boring. I said "sometimes", but you heard "always" and "everywhere".

And I am sick of your continued attempt to accuse me of Eurocentrism when I only use European examples because I know about them.

Not my fault you chose to ignore "sometimes" and accuse me of wishing death and destruction upon every nation-state which ever opressed anybody on earth.

Because it would not automatically do so. It might also draw the colonies in or lead to other, more harsher empires forming. My point is that I will not subscribe to any such hypothetical theory. I will consider certain scenarios, but I will not assume this theory to be right under any circumstances.

Neither would I, big surprise. You continue to ignore me clearly saying that in the very first post which caused you to fly off the rails.

Because the only empires I know of are European. That said, I find it quite funny how you can argue for the destruction of Empires on one hand while on the other hand you live in an oppressive state and enjoy the fruits of oppression. That is a bit hypocritical, isn't it? Where is your argument that china should be destroyed because it oppresses the Uighurs? Where is your argument that China should fall into a civil war, to be forever crushed and unable to project its territorial ambitions with regards to Vietnam, Taiwan, Tibet and the various islands?

Maybe if Chinese occupation of Vietnam or Tibet was carried out with the same destructiveness, cruelty, sadism, torture and mass murder as some of the European occupations I mentioned - India, China, Ethiopia, Cyrenaica, etc. - the destruction of the PRC would be much desireable. You disagree? I said "sometimes", you tried to picture it as some sort of universal rule. Oh, and "while on the other hand you live in an oppressive state and enjoy the fruits of oppression" - at least, you know, unlike you I'm actively supporting the destruction of this opressive state and its government. You may not like what I have in mind as a replacement, but you can't accuse me of complacency.

You know, despite my near-universal hatred of empires, I put that "sometimes" word right fucking there, in the very first post. You admitted that sometimes coup or civil war can be beneficial and justified. My point stands, while you have not had a point in the first place. You wanted to find me a hypocrite, but instead you only displayed the fact that you don't want to pay attention to my posts.

[Kane Starkiller]

You're crazy if you're saying that with a straight face after the carnage in Georgia and US military bases popping in Central Asia. The end of the USSR didn't stop imperialism or war from occuring. In any case, where did I say the WARPAC or even the USSR itself must be restored? You must be inventhing things. But once again - the collapse of one imperialist does not excuse the other imperialist. *sighs and puts hands up* Am I clear?

Conflict in Georgia is a direct result of unresolved ancient ethnic hatreds between Georgians, Abkhazians, South Ossetians and Russians not because of US. US military bases popped up in Central Asia after 3000 Americans were burned alive 10 years ago remember? And unlike former WARPAC if those countries decided to kick the Americans out they would simply have to leave.
Also when did I say that the collapse of one imperial power excuses the other? I said that USSR's oppressive reign over Eastern Europe was not replaced by an oppressive US rule over Eastern Europe. Thus the situation is better now after the collapse of USSR, at least for Eastern Europe, then it was when USSR "balanced out" the US.

Global power is a codeword for imperialism. Economic desire to make other nations to conform to your wishes (enable stable supplies of oil, food, or cheap jeapns) is the economic foundation of imperialism. Through political will it manifests then in political action - either diplomatic or, if circumstances demand it - military. Germany had economic interests - it had to take over France for economic reasons in WWII and it needed Russian grain and oil for it's economy. Economic interests do not excuse imperialism. How many times should this be repeated?

No global power is not a codeword for imperialism. Most of US trade is with Western Europe, Canada, Japan and China which are today aren't in any way subjugated by US. Most of US food is produced either domestically or comes from Canada, most of US oil comes from domestic sources Canada or Mexico. Imperialistic adventures were exceptions and not rule for the last 50 years as far as US is concerned.

Why? Brutality can explain the state of integration. If you utterly destroy and disperse the ethnicity and prevent them from travelling and organizing, living compactly for a large nationalist movement to be born, you can succeed. If all American Indians were living in one place as opposed to dispersed reservations, an ethnic enclave like Chechnya, their resistance would be harder to crush. And things like that city capture thing would be far more common. Would the religion and philosophy of the Natives allow a jihad-like movement to incite an ethnic civil war inside the US? I'm not knowledgeable enough to say. Are you?

Wait a minute you are saying that US giving the Native Americans many reservations spread all over the country instead of compressing them in one tiny mountainous enclave like Chechnya was more oppressive? I think we are using different definitions of what "oppressive" means. When travel bans were lifted Native Americans were then free to move to other reservations right? To organize themselves and initiate some kind of independence movement. But they didn't since they were treated better and were better integrated. This is a fact you can't escape from.

Yes, it is possible. I merely said that relocation of minorities does not betray a desire for extermination (I doubt the US wanted to exterminate Japanese Americans, for once). Whereas measures such as forced sterilization clearly do betray a desire to exterminate - they aim to destroy the ethnicity. Hence why forced sterilizations or baby-theft are included in the convention on genocide as descriptors.

How exactly does sterilizing certain parts of a minority group betray a greater desire to destroy a population than forcibly relocating them en masse to a remote harsh location? Neither US nor USSR never wanted (or dared) to employ the outright direct extermination like the Nazis did but they clearly did target certain minorities. In the end 60,000 or so sterilized people in US over a period of several decades could not actually make a significant dent in a population size and sterilizations in the end were not killings. On the other hand transporting an entire ethnic group consisting of hundreds of thousands to a harsher location did in fact result in thousands of deaths and did affect the long term future and well being of an entire ethnic group.
Naturally what happened to Japanese wasn't exactly Americans finest moment. But they were put into concentration camps as a temporary measure while the war lasts. For all its racism, brutality and unfairness this is not equivalent to rounding up Japanese Americans and then transplanting them wholesale to some unfriendly location in Nevada desert to remain there as a nation indefinitely after the war is already over.

Seriously, Kane, you're getting boring and repetitive. Yes, the slaughter would be much more direct and brutal (although I honestly don't know if I'd prefer to be hacked down by a machete or to die of starvation, the former is at least a fast death). I never disputed that. However, how are 800 000 hacked down by a machete different from 800 000 who starve to death? The number of deaths is the same. Sure, you might argue that a greater percentage of Rwanda's population perished, but that would sadly meet up with the unfortunate fact that about the same number of Irish perished in the famine as the number of Tutsis relative to Rwanda's total population perished in the genocide. *rolls eyes* It might be a bit hard to grasp this concept for you Kane, but a human life lost is always a human life lost. But in case of Rwanda, the damage was limited to Rwanda. In case of Britain, the damage spread to Ireland, India and elsewhere.

The reason I'm getting boring and repetitive is your dishonesty. Not every single death from famines is a direct result of British uncaring or incompetency. Some would die either way. Getting killed because your government doesn't care is not the same as getting killed because your government is going door to door looking for you. Britain held an empire for a century, if Rwandan regime held control over its own country for a century they would exterminate every last Tutsi. And this is one country. There were plenty of other "small poor" countries that killed their own populations by the hundreds of thousands and invaded other even smaller and poorer countries.

No, Kane, not okay. Most deaths if not all are the result of the government's policies and, sometimes, direct action.Not engaging in exports and hoarding would alleviate famine and perhaps create a state of mass malnourishment but not that of mass starvation. Hence why the responsibility lies with the government. That is especially clear in, say, the case of the Bengal famine of 1943 - the harvest was as large as in 1941, only hoarding and exports were the cause of death, not a crop failure.

Oh, and as to your claim that famines in India are not relevant because India "continued development and experienced population growth", how would you explain this:

The dominant fact of Indian demographics in the post-independence era has been rapid population growth. However, this was not the case in the 1871-1911 period—on the contrary, many areas experience significant population decreases during this era. Of the districts surveyed in 1881, 25% had decreased in population since the previous census6. While only 5% lost population in 1891, 41% decreased in population in 1901, and 24% decreased from 1901 to 1911. Most strikingly, the total population of India in areas for which Census data exists from both 1901 and 1891 actually decreased from 199,724,321 in 1891 to 198,248,257 in 1901. These decreases can be directly attributed to the series of droughts that affected large regions of the country in the years from 1896-1900. Thus the demographic effects of famines, especially those in the late 1890’s, is large enough to be visible even in district-level census data.

And the fact that since 1872 to 1921 the annual growth rate was merely 0,37 percent for India, whereas it became 1% in 1921-1951, thanks to the absence of major famines (excluding Bengal) and a further 2% after India freed itself from the British yoke? The true "population explosion" happened after the British left India.

Finally, if you look here, you will see that the absence of any population explosion in British India was tightly connected with colonial exploitation. The labourers' wages did not keep up with the prices - Britain was pauperizing them.
http://www.celdf.org/downloads/NATURE%2 ... RTICLE.pdf
I think no one could disagree that British policy was the cause of mass deaths through famine and starvation in India in the latter part of the XIX century, British policy maintained the poverty of India and used it as a resource extraction point savagely, whilst precluding Indians getting richer or more industrialized through the policy of supplying them with ready products of British manufacturing.

If you seriously want to argue this point, feel free to do so. Point me to the data that would show the British policies were not destructive, the cause of famine was an absence of food or crop failure (not the inability of labourers to purchase said food thanks to British policies)?

Except India's population grew from 110 million in 1500 to 135 million in 1600 for a growth of 0.2% per year. It grew to 165 million in 1700 for a yearly growth of, again, 0.2%. In 1820 population was 209 million, yearly growth 0.19%. By 1900 population was 284 million meaning 1820-1900 annual growth was 0.38%. By 1946 population was 415 million thus 1900-1946 growth was over 0.8%. It is clear that population growth of India largely follows the standard pattern of long period of low growth and then a rapid rise with introduction of medicine and technology. Growth rate does not decrease after the British conquest of India which starts in 1750s and later. Growth rate starts noticeably increasing beginning in 1900 and later and not only after Indian independence. Therefore it is not strictly British oppression that holds Indian growth rate down but low technology and high mortality that was to be expected for any nation at that development level.

No, I didn't claim that poor countries had "less victims", Kane, what I said was that the damage a poor nation can do is usually limited by the size of its population. The damage a global empire can do is not limited by the size of population. There was no crop failure in 1943 in India and the rice harvest was larger than in 1941. Japan's invasion of Burma could cut off no more than 15% of India's rice supply - that's the number Burma supplied in 1940, or 1.234 million tons of rice. In 1941, the production of rice in India fell from 8.223 million tons of prior year to 6.768 million tons. In 1943, the harvest was 7.628 tons. Which means that India's harvest was a million ton greater than that of 1941, exceeding the size of Burmese imports. I am sorry, but the math simply does not support claims of Burma being critical to prevent mass starvation in India, nor the claims of a crop failure.

If they don't have less victims then who cares how "limited" their victims are? You cite research that was disputed by other researches on the very wikipedia article you cite. The reliability of harvest size is in dispute. Not to mention that the total yearly harvest is not the end of the problem. Was there an exceptionally good spring and winter harvest but a bad summer harvest? Were there certain parts of India which had an exceptionally good harvest but other parts had bad harvest? How easy or difficult was it to transport harvest to place that needed it? Your math is simplistic not to mention disputed as to what exactly were the causes.

What? My original point is well proven. The number of excess deaths in Iraq - 600 000 - is well on par with the 800 000 Tutsis who died during the Rwanda genocide. The Bengal famine claimed about the same number of lives as the Khmer Rouge slaughter of Pnom Penh and other cities. The number of Algerians who died in the Algeria war is around 900 000. You may not like that fact, sure. You may say "but these people died in a less gruesome manner, and they died serving the well-being of the First World, so that doesn't count, because they died as a collateral damage". They're still dead. Death is the ultimate negative utility. If not for war or famine, these people would still be alive, just as you consider that all Tutsis and Cambodians would be alive if not for the actions of the Hutus or the Khmer Rouge. You may take a particular distaste in the method of slaughter (famine vs. machete), but since the end result is the same and it is reasonable to conclude that without a war or a famine, these excess deaths would not have occured, I don't see how I could "concede" the point I singlehandedly won. Once again - your distaste for the machete or your idea that slaughter should be sensible as opposed to senseless is absolutely irrelevant for those who died. The Iraqis, Indians, Egyptians, Algerians, etc. were sure delighted to know that they died due to a sensible reason as opposed to without any sense whatsoever. Whoop de fuck.

It seems you don't understand why you can't compare different categories so let me try to explain it a little more closely. Let's use a simplistic example. Say 10,000 doctors are killed in a country. Those are direct deaths, that is they were killed by some oppressive force directly. Now those doctors had certain amount of patients depending on them. Say that each doctor had 4 patients in critical conditions that couldn't survive without their help. So 40,000 people died because doctors were killed but those people weren't killed directly. Those are excess deaths. No let's say country A is invaded and 5000 doctors are killed resulting in 20,000 excess deaths. Then country B is invaded and 15,000 doctors are killed resulting in 45,000 excess deaths. If you compare direct deaths from country B with excess deaths from country A you'd come to the conclusion that invasion into A was more bloody which was not the case.
The same goes for Rwanda and Iraq examples. Rwandas 800,000 are DIRECT deaths. Those deaths inevitably caused further deaths since those 800,000 had elderly, children, patients etc. they needed to take care of.
This has nothing to do with which death is "better" or "worse". There are simply different categories of data. Like for example counting how many women of child bearing age were killed. You can't compare that to total number of casualties in some other invasion again not because they are less dead but simply because they are a different category of data.
Furthermore those 600,000 excess deaths were not all caused by direct killings by US troops. Many were caused by sectarian violence between Iraq's various religious and ethnic groups.
Therefore to compare those two numbers directly is simply not valid your rhetoric about death being death being death notwithstanding.

Ah, so starvation is caused "by the regime" now? I see. In any case, if people are dying of starvation at such an enormously fast rate, I doubt their relatives (who as we know were slaving in the fields, to improve crop harvests in the name of Cambodia's Agricultural Future) had any chance to bury them not in mass graves. Especially a whole million of them. When the siege of Leningrad was broken, lots of people were found in mass graves, you know. Their starving relatives could not bury a significant fraction of them in ordinary graves.

In this case clearly yes starvation was caused by the regime. Moving around population from the cities into countryside will cause huge disruptions. But I never used those numbers. Merely pointed out that they stand apart from the order of 1 million as a result of EXECUTIONS. So between Rwanda and Cambodia we have 2 million EXECUTIONS. That is not counting any excess deaths and starvations etc. Just two "small poor" countries with "limited" reach.

So how many more indirect deaths than the 800 000 direct deaths has the Hutu genocide in Rwanda caused? You have a number? Besides, how is it even important, Kane? You see, if there is a singular event which can be thought of as the primary reason for X and Y excess deaths, regardless of whether they were "direct", "indirect" or both direct and indirect, then those events would be compared by the total number of victims, both direct and indirect. Now why is that? Quite simple. If the US never invaded Iraq, how many excess deaths of those 600 000 deaths would have occured? Zero. Perhaps some other excess deaths would have occured, but not those ones. If Rwandan genocide order was never given, how many excess deaths of the 800 000 genocide deaths would have occured? Zero. Perhaps other excess deaths (from war, disease, etc.) could have occured, but not these ones. If the British did not export and requisited grain out of India in 1943, how many excess deaths out of several million would have occured? Zero. So direct and indirect deaths only differ by the method of killing.

Are you contending that, because there is no reliable number of excess mortality following the Rwandan genocide, you are safe to assume it must have been small? Are you a peoples rights champion or a lawyer trying to weasel out? I already explained why you can't compare different categories of data and won't go over it again.

I never limited that genocide and mass murder to the last 50 years of history, Kane (specifically to exclude World Wars, imperialist conquests, most of the First World caused famines and genocides). You did that after my post. Now you're trying to shift goalposts. That is not going to work. If we take the last 150-200 years of history, the Rwanda Genocide and the Khmer Rouge would have to stand against dozens of millions of deaths caused by the First World.

Again you prove my point for me. You need to dig 200 years into the history and add deaths from all over the globe to exceed the DIRECT deaths caused by two small regimes within a few decades. Of course no one disputes that First World countries commited terrible crimes during their history. Germany went on a horrific killing spree just 70 years ago. The point is that those First World governments have reformed since and are not in the business of imperialistic exploitation any more. Hence your statement that First World governments have lost any right to do anything at all doesn't stand and you can't make an argument without going into the past.

Or bananas. Banana republics have only themselves to blame, and not the buyer who forces them to take that particular place in the world division of labour. Is that what you're trying to say? Remember the "US forced Haiti to keep minimum wage low" thread? The buyer is not a fault for maintaining this situation because he is merely catering to the needs of his own populace? Why, sure.

Can you actually defend your original point? That Central Asian countries would be better off without oil? That Eastern Europe is more advanced because it has no oil? Or will you keep throwing random examples that do not form a rule. After all most of the world trade is between rich countries.

So if I support Russia's right to protect South Ossetia, I automatically approve of any Russian imperialism? You realize how crazy this sounds?

The point is you don't consider Russian defense of South Ossetia to be imperialism even though Georgia considers South Ossetia to be rightfully a part of Georgia. That is the point. Any intervention needs to be judged on its own merit rather than simply declaring all are imperialist and First World has lost the right to do anything because of the Bengal Famine or whatever.

That should have read "the Russian population increased till 1989". Russians immigrated in greater numbers than Central Asians emigrated. How does this constitute racism or ethnic cleansing? You obviously understood that there were no legal barriers to Central Asians leaving their republics. The fact that the RSFSR government created incentives for Russians to move to Central Asia doesn't constitute anything of the sort. Unlike a law or a decree which bans travel by an ethnic group.

Central Asians, as in five titular ethnic groups, did not emigrate in any significant numbers. Situation is even worse in Ukraine where the total numbers don't exceed few tens of thousand. How is it possible that there is no significant emigration to the most fertile and industrially developed parts of the country if there are no barriers regardless of whether they were explicitly stated in a law?
How can you pretend not to understand what is wrong with taking state money (as in paid by all ethnic groups) and then giving that money to one ethnic group so it can move to other areas inhabited by other ethnic groups? What exactly happens to your anti-imperialist sensitivities when the topic switches from Britain to Russia?

Whoa. I thought affirmative action is about giving people equal rights to education and the like. Not giving economic incentives to move here or there. How is that "racist"? How does this injure or violate the rights, and not just legal rights but also human rights, of any nationality? Apartheid, separate schooling and travel bans clearly injure and violate the rights of races and ethnicities. School segregation persisted in the USA until the 1950s. That is real racism as it injures the rights of blacks. Migration with economic incentives does not injure anyone's rights.

See above. I continue to be amazed at your pretense of wide eyed incredulity that taking state money taxed from all ethnic groups, giving that money to the conquering ethnic group to incite it to spread from more fertile lands into lands that have scant arable land is racist. I mean if you can't see it the only conclusion is that you are in fact a hard core Russian nationalist.

Um... are you a supporter of abortion rights? If so, why does it matter how many million abortions the women carry out? Bad sex education might also be an issue, you know. And surely abortion was legalized in 1950s, how could the "communist government" not see the results by 1970s? They had access to the statistics. They had no desire to force people to bear children or procreate, like Stalinist or theocratic governments did and do.

It matters because abortion is a shitty method of population control. It's an invasive surgical procedure and can cause infertility and health problems. Therefore it should be a last resort and not used to such a massive degree. But that is neither here nor there. The point is that it is perfectly possible for a government to have a certain goal but then make moves that are contradictory to that goal because of either incompetence or because they have other goals that are not necessarily perfectly compatible.

You haven't proven there was any discouragement at all. A lack of encouragement is not discouragement. A lack of good is not evil. Oh, and "70 years"? So prior to 1917 the Russian government encouraged Central Asians to immigrate? Or should that read "200 years of non-encouragement"?

Sure I have. I have shown you the numbers that prove my point and all that you have offered is "you have no explicit legal document saying don't let Cental Asians emigrate" and "well maybe the Central Asians don't like cold climate". And yes it's more than 70 years but I was talking specifically about communist government.
A lack of good is not evil? Wow. I love this transformation you make when going from First World related topic and THEY MUST FEED THE PIRATES OR THEY ARE EVIL! mad prophet into a weasely apologist when it comes to Russia and communist rule.

Because a lack of incentives for migration does not constitute racism. Educational segregation? Yes, that is racism, a clear violation of rights. Now, I could understand that giving one ethnic group migration incentives is racist. Sure, you got me here. However, racial and eugenics policies usually pursue racial purity. The idea of Russians migrating and intermixing with Central Asians does not strike me as racist for that precise reason. If the US sent white men into Indian reservations to live together in the same conditions, have sex and intermix, would that be racist? I want to understand just what is racism for you - a violation of rights, including human rights, or something else? Besides, GDP per capita can be unrelated to wages, it includes investment. Wages can be low with a high GDP/capita. I think you were talking about income per capita, not product per capita.

The Russians moved EN MASSE into a region which had a far lower population and far lower amount of arable land. At the same time Central Asia had a lower economic development thus there should've been outmigration of ethnic Central Asians even WITHOUT INCENTIVES. It didn't happen and no amount of demanding legal proof will change it.
Racism is treating different people differently because of their race or in this case ethnic group. It can be arguably justifiable like the affirmative action when you try to undo a history of mistreatment. But when you give money to an ethnic group which counquered other ethnic groups we are talking about classic negative racism.
Your definition of racism appears to be limited to "things US was particularly guilty of".
GDP per capita can be higher if the wages are the same but prices are lower. This too would be an incentive to move.

So racial segregation is a more benigh racism than sending people to immigrate into Central Asia and mix with Asians. Tensions exist now in many parts of the world, and I bet Algerians were never communist to begin with, but it does not seem as if they terribly loved the French. My position is that by drawing a simplistic picture of "people hated each other, so nationalists cannot take the blame" is stupid and dangerous. You are excusing and whitewashing post-Soviet nationalists, crazy fascist tinpot dictators, mass murderers and fans of ethnic cleansing, simply because the "Soviet government did not give them freedom of expression". That elaborate defense of racism and nationalism is almost mind-boggling in doublespeak. By that logic, the Weimar Republic was guilty because the NSDAP came to power. And the NSDAP is not guilty at all - it just exploited "existing tensions" between Germans and Jews - after all, who are we to deny tensions existed, right? So Gotovina, Milosevic etc. aren't really guilty and nationalism is not really to blame. It's Tito and the SFRY who take all the blame. Yeah, sure. You might even like this cozy little picture of yours.

Tell me, are communists also to blame for Hungary's anti-abortion, homophobic constitution 20 years later? It was a clear displacement of more liberal laws of the 1991-2011 period - why did that happen? Were 20 years not enough for "free discussion" on the matter?

Or perhaps the problem is that "free discussion" was hijacked by crazy nationalists and religious fanatics? And a maturity of democracy does not actually prevent this, because in the USA "free discussion" also is often hijacked by religious fanatics and crazy nationalists? And they can even become presidents - like George Walker Bush?

I rest my case.

Russians weren't being sent there to "mix with Asians". They were sent there to overwhelm the Asians with numbers. However despite the initial success the higher birth rate and the increasing cost of paying people to emigrate to a much poorer and geographically harsher region became unbearable. So it failed.
Your accusation that I'm building a cozy picture of the world for myself is a clear case of projection seeing as you are claiming that people were all loving each other and just being fabulous during the glorious days of communism.
My argument is that hatreds existed but their scale was unknown due to suppression of free speech and that therefore no measures could've been taken to educate people or deal with the problem effectively. Eventually the problem boiled over.
I don't see what Bush has to do with the problem of interethnic violence within a country.

[K. A. Pital]

Conflict in Georgia is a direct result of unresolved ancient ethnic hatreds between Georgians, Abkhazians, South Ossetians and Russians not because of US. US military bases popped up in Central Asia after 3000 Americans were burned alive 10 years ago remember? And unlike former WARPAC if those countries decided to kick the Americans out they would simply have to leave. Also when did I say that the collapse of one imperial power excuses the other? I said that USSR's oppressive reign over Eastern Europe was not replaced by an oppressive US rule over Eastern Europe. Thus the situation is better now after the collapse of USSR, at least for Eastern Europe, then it was when USSR "balanced out" the US.

Conflict in Georgia is not just a result of ancient ethnic hatreds. America sponsored and nurtured the Saakashvili regime, giving it the impression of a benevolent and supportive hegemon overseas who would always come to Georgia's aid. This emboldened Saakashvili to commit to adventurism - kinda like Stalin's support of Kim Il Sung emboldened him on a "great attempt to unify Korea". Despite neither the USSR in Korea's case, or the US in Georgia's case directly fighting, Georgia bears most of the hallmarks of a proxy war. As for 3000 Americans who were burnt alive, I can't help but wonder if, using the same logic, Soviet military presence in Germany, Poland and all over Eastern Europe after WWII was excused by the fact that over 20 million Soviet citizens perished thanks to German invasion, and the USSR wasn't willing to take any chances of that repeating... kind of like America with Afghanistan, rite? Despite 3000 people being so insignificant a death toll, according to Kane's principles of justified damage. After all, 3000 Americans died in America, but hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East, both Iraq and Afghanistan, perished. So the situation might be better for Eastern Europe (unless, of course, you're not counting hundreds of thousands of victims of Balkanization and the Balkan Wars, you know), but is it at all better for Central Asia and the Middle East?

No global power is not a codeword for imperialism. Most of US trade is with Western Europe, Canada, Japan and China which are today aren't in any way subjugated by US. Most of US food is produced either domestically or comes from Canada, most of US oil comes from domestic sources Canada or Mexico. Imperialistic adventures were exceptions and not rule for the last 50 years as far as US is concerned.

Okay. So most of U.S. trade is with Western Europe, Canada, Japan and China, oil comes from Canada or Mexico. Clearly the enormous military machine of the US is not necessary to ensure safety of that trade - Western Europe doesn't need to be bombed, neither China, Canada or Mexico. So by your own logic, the global power of the US (by which you mean global trade) does not dictate a necessity for imperialism, enormous military machine and murderous invasions in Central Asia and the Middle East. The US economy would function perfectly well without invading the Middle East. Yes or no? If yes, then "global power" does not explain militarism and imperialism and does not demand it. If no, then clearly economic interests do not justify imperialism, something we've been over with.

Wait a minute you are saying that US giving the Native Americans many reservations spread all over the country instead of compressing them in one tiny mountainous enclave like Chechnya was more oppressive? I think we are using different definitions of what "oppressive" means. When travel bans were lifted Native Americans were then free to move to other reservations right? To organize themselves and initiate some kind of independence movement. But they didn't since they were treated better and were better integrated. This is a fact you can't escape from.

Chechnya never had a "travel ban" in the Russian Empire, to my knowledge. By the time travel bans were lifted in the USA (a good century after Indians were driven off the land), the Indians were thoroughly decimated and outnumbered by the other ethnicites which took over most of the territory. What could the Indians achieved? And they lacked a philosophy like that of a Wahhabist jihad. If they had, they could stage a rebellion. Are you saying the Russian Empire "compressed" the Chechens in a "tiny enclave" and prior to that they inhabited some greater area? If you know of any century-spanning travel bans for the Chechens imposed after they were forcibly relocated or before that, feel free to inform me about them.

How exactly does sterilizing certain parts of a minority group betray a greater desire to destroy a population than forcibly relocating them en masse to a remote harsh location? Neither US nor USSR never wanted (or dared) to employ the outright direct extermination like the Nazis did but they clearly did target certain minorities. In the end 60,000 or so sterilized people in US over a period of several decades could not actually make a significant dent in a population size and sterilizations in the end were not killings. On the other hand transporting an entire ethnic group consisting of hundreds of thousands to a harsher location did in fact result in thousands of deaths and did affect the long term future and well being of an entire ethnic group. Naturally what happened to Japanese wasn't exactly Americans finest moment. But they were put into concentration camps as a temporary measure while the war lasts. For all its racism, brutality and unfairness this is not equivalent to rounding up Japanese Americans and then transplanting them wholesale to some unfriendly location in Nevada desert to remain there as a nation indefinitely after the war is already over.

*shrugs* The Chechens were repatriated after the war was over, too. I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here - that the US and USSR actually both wanted to exterminate their minorities for the sake of racial purity, but didn't dare to go as far as the Nazis? So basically they were as evil as the Nazis, but more cowardly? Sterilizations in the US didn't cause a long-term decline or a complete destruction of a minority, but neither did the USSR relocations wipe out any minorities or cause their population to experience a demographic decline to my knowledge. On the other hand, the Indian and Irish famines were demographic blows that caused a population collapse for decades.

The reason I'm getting boring and repetitive is your dishonesty. Not every single death from famines is a direct result of British uncaring or incompetency. Some would die either way. Getting killed because your government doesn't care is not the same as getting killed because your government is going door to door looking for you. Britain held an empire for a century, if Rwandan regime held control over its own country for a century they would exterminate every last Tutsi. And this is one country. There were plenty of other "small poor" countries that killed their own populations by the hundreds of thousands and invaded other even smaller and poorer countries.

Like I said, I'm doing a calculator of excess deaths for the XIX and XX century to see which nations killed most. Call it morbid curiousity. As for "not every single death from famines is a direct result of British incompetency", most of these deaths are, because you know, famine deaths in surplus areas and wage-to-food-price ratio declines are pretty much certain to bring about mass starvation. Mass malnourishment has happened in India, but mass starvation - after the British left - did not happen, despite the Green Revolution beginning only in the 1960s, not straight after 1946. Rwanda could exterminate all Tutsis and that would still be limited by the number of Tutsis and Rwanda's ability to project its military power to kill all Tutsis abroad who would flee to other nations. France or Britain or Japan could kill dozens of millions, but when there were hundreds of millions to work with, obviously the capacity of victim nations for damage absorption was much greater.

By the way, France has yet to come to terms with its role in supporting the Hutu regime in Rwanda. France was a First World nation and yet the genocide bothered it far less than the loss of neocolonialist influence in Africa to new hegemons, the Anglo-Saxons.

So not only has the First World been absolutely hypocritical and full of shit when it comes to their own genocides, it also has ignored massive genocides in former colonies (e.g. Rwanda) or provided legitimate recognition and support to genocidal regimes (USAID going to Khmer Rouge, French continued recognition of the Hutu government and them saving some of the Hutus implicated in the genocide).

On the other hand, the murder of 8000 Bosnians in Srebrenica has been judged a genocide worthy of stopping, despite this toll looking like a minor war crime compared to 800 000 direct deaths in Rwanda or over a million in Cambodia, which only Vietnam cared about stopping at all.

It is not hard for me to discern the true "motives" - the First World would care to stop genocide only by accident if it fits their goals. Therefore, considering the two biggest Third World genocides went ignored by the First World, while far smaller atrocities and wars led to First World invasions into other nations and hundreds of thousands of deaths, I can't say I'm terribly impressed by your point, Kane.

Except India's population grew from 110 million in 1500 to 135 million in 1600 for a growth of 0.2% per year. It grew to 165 million in 1700 for a yearly growth of, again, 0.2%. In 1820 population was 209 million, yearly growth 0.19%. By 1900 population was 284 million meaning 1820-1900 annual growth was 0.38%. By 1946 population was 415 million thus 1900-1946 growth was over 0.8%. It is clear that population growth of India largely follows the standard pattern of long period of low growth and then a rapid rise with introduction of medicine and technology. Growth rate does not decrease after the British conquest of India which starts in 1750s and later. Growth rate starts noticeably increasing beginning in 1900 and later and not only after Indian independence. Therefore it is not strictly British oppression that holds Indian growth rate down but low technology and high mortality that was to be expected for any nation at that development level.

You missed the bit where mass famines in the latter part of the XIX century, which were largely brought about by British policies - impoverishment of the Indians and hoarding and exports - caused tens of millions of deaths, which lowered the Indian population growth rate and even reduced it in 1870-1910. The rapid rise was also related to a major change of famine policy and wage policies of the British Raj, which prior to the early XX century was simply destructive for India's population.

If they don't have less victims then who cares how "limited" their victims are? You cite research that was disputed by other researches on the very wikipedia article you cite. The reliability of harvest size is in dispute. Not to mention that the total yearly harvest is not the end of the problem. Was there an exceptionally good spring and winter harvest but a bad summer harvest? Were there certain parts of India which had an exceptionally good harvest but other parts had bad harvest? How easy or difficult was it to transport harvest to place that needed it? Your math is simplistic not to mention disputed as to what exactly were the causes.

Reliability of harvest size is disputed? Oh my god, so what? The reliability of Soviet harvest in the 1930s is also disputed. However, undeniably the exports and requisitions at the height of famine are an example of callousness and death by callous neglience at the very least. Continuing exports when millions are starving and there are clear reports that millions are starving betrays the lack of care. It is not as if Stalin or Churchill actively wanted for people to die in the famine, they just didn't care if they died or not.

It seems you don't understand why you can't compare different categories so let me try to explain it a little more closely. Let's use a simplistic example. Say 10,000 doctors are killed in a country. Those are direct deaths, that is they were killed by some oppressive force directly. Now those doctors had certain amount of patients depending on them. Say that each doctor had 4 patients in critical conditions that couldn't survive without their help. So 40,000 people died because doctors were killed but those people weren't killed directly. Those are excess deaths. No let's say country A is invaded and 5000 doctors are killed resulting in 20,000 excess deaths. Then country B is invaded and 15,000 doctors are killed resulting in 45,000 excess deaths. If you compare direct deaths from country B with excess deaths from country A you'd come to the conclusion that invasion into A was more bloody which was not the case. The same goes for Rwanda and Iraq examples. Rwandas 800,000 are DIRECT deaths. Those deaths inevitably caused further deaths since those 800,000 had elderly, children, patients etc. they needed to take care of.

So what is the total number of excess deaths for Rwanda? I said that you should simply count the entirety of excess deaths (direct + indirect) to determine the total loss of life due to an event, not much more. If you so desire, I can hop on another million excess deaths for Rwanda, but that would mean that each excess death leads to another death, i.e. one dead person causes another death with a 100% probability. This is highly unlikely. You have a calculation at hand? I just read that there were X excess deaths, so I presumed that was the total loss of life in the case.

This has nothing to do with which death is "better" or "worse". There are simply different categories of data. Like for example counting how many women of child bearing age were killed. You can't compare that to total number of casualties in some other invasion again not because they are less dead but simply because they are a different category of data. Furthermore those 600,000 excess deaths were not all caused by direct killings by US troops. Many were caused by sectarian violence between Iraq's various religious and ethnic groups. Therefore to compare those two numbers directly is simply not valid your rhetoric about death being death being death notwithstanding.

Actually, it is not valid only if the number of total loss of life in Rwanda is greater than 800 000. Otherwise it is valid. The sectarian violence would never come about if the US invasion would never have happened - ergo, the primary cause of death is the US invasion, no matter if someone else did the killing. Just like the Germans didn't kill every single East European out of the 30+ million of them who kicked the bucket, but it is clear as hell that all those 30+ millions are dead because of the German invasion. This is the first event and the primary reason, so almost all consequences which are related to this war fall as their fault.

In this case clearly yes starvation was caused by the regime. Moving around population from the cities into countryside will cause huge disruptions. But I never used those numbers. Merely pointed out that they stand apart from the order of 1 million as a result of EXECUTIONS. So between Rwanda and Cambodia we have 2 million EXECUTIONS. That is not counting any excess deaths and starvations etc. Just two "small poor" countries with "limited" reach.

So how many did other poor small countries murder, outside those two, anyway? So moving population from cities to countryside will cause "huge disruptions" and thus starvation, but raising land taxes fivefold, hoarding food so as to cause famine even in surplus regions, impoverishing agricultural workers so that their wage-to-food ratio falls when they've been barely getting enough to buy food is not "starvation caused by the regime". I see. What is the total number of excess deaths in Rwanda and Cambodia, anyway? The entire scope of demographic loss, you know?

And you know, between Germany and Japan we have 50 or more million deaths outside of the First World caused by their imperialism in a single decade. They're both First World nations. Just two First World nations.

And they represent a greater percent of the entire First World, too.

Are you contending that, because there is no reliable number of excess mortality following the Rwandan genocide, you are safe to assume it must have been small? Are you a peoples rights champion or a lawyer trying to weasel out? I already explained why you can't compare different categories of data and won't go over it again.

I said you have to compare the entire number of people dead. If there is no reliable number, you have to extrapolate like demographers do. There are methods to do it. I will assume that the total loss of life is twice higher and each dead person in Rwanda and Cambodia also caused another person to die on the average, thereby bringing the death toll to 4 million dead. I'm still not seeing how this helps your point when more people died as a result of colonial wars of the US, France and Britain in 1950-2010?

Again you prove my point for me. You need to dig 200 years into the history and add deaths from all over the globe to exceed the DIRECT deaths caused by two small regimes within a few decades. Of course no one disputes that First World countries commited terrible crimes during their history. Germany went on a horrific killing spree just 70 years ago. The point is that those First World governments have reformed since and are not in the business of imperialistic exploitation any more. Hence your statement that First World governments have lost any right to do anything at all doesn't stand and you can't make an argument without going into the past.

"First World governments have reformed" - I saw Germany, Italy and Japan reforming after WWII. The US and Britain are continous governments and are fully accepting of their historical legacy.

Can you actually defend your original point? That Central Asian countries would be better off without oil? That Eastern Europe is more advanced because it has no oil? Or will you keep throwing random examples that do not form a rule. After all most of the world trade is between rich countries.

Eastern Europe (like, Ukraine and Belarus, and Poland too) had to keep industry working. Central Asian nations' industry collapsed at a far greater rate and with far more disastrous consequences, but they did not care because they had oil, which was enough to keep the oligarchy on top well-fed.

The point is you don't consider Russian defense of South Ossetia to be imperialism even though Georgia considers South Ossetia to be rightfully a part of Georgia. That is the point. Any intervention needs to be judged on its own merit rather than simply declaring all are imperialist and First World has lost the right to do anything because of the Bengal Famine or whatever.

Yeah. I already said that interventions can have a merit (wasn't I just saying it a while ago when discussing Vietnams occupation of Cambodia as being justified because it ended the Khmer Rouge, or infringement on Germany's and Japan's sovereignity in WWII justified to stop Nazi mass murder?). However, I do not think there is a "right" to interventions. There is a moral justification and moral validity. Legal justification and legal rights are irrelevant. Italy's invasion of Ethiopia where 7% of that nation perished as a result was soon post-facto legalized by the "world community" and it was decided as if Italy had a "right" to that war of agression.

Central Asians, as in five titular ethnic groups, did not emigrate in any significant numbers. Situation is even worse in Ukraine where the total numbers don't exceed few tens of thousand. How is it possible that there is no significant emigration to the most fertile and industrially developed parts of the country if there are no barriers regardless of whether they were explicitly stated in a law? How can you pretend not to understand what is wrong with taking state money (as in paid by all ethnic groups) and then giving that money to one ethnic group so it can move to other areas inhabited by other ethnic groups? What exactly happens to your anti-imperialist sensitivities when the topic switches from Britain to Russia?

I understand it is wrong and I understand it is racist to specifically fund one nation, but not others. I already said so below.

A lack of good is not evil? Wow. I love this transformation you make when going from First World related topic and THEY MUST FEED THE PIRATES OR THEY ARE EVIL! mad prophet into a weasely apologist when it comes to Russia and communist rule.

If the communists invaded some part and didn't feed people, they're evil. End of story. You try to equate a policy of starvation with a lack of immigration from Central Asia? Good luck.

Russians weren't being sent there to "mix with Asians". They were sent there to overwhelm the Asians with numbers. However despite the initial success the higher birth rate and the increasing cost of paying people to emigrate to a much poorer and geographically harsher region became unbearable. So it failed. Your accusation that I'm building a cozy picture of the world for myself is a clear case of projection seeing as you are claiming that people were all loving each other and just being fabulous during the glorious days of communism. My argument is that hatreds existed but their scale was unknown due to suppression of free speech and that therefore no measures could've been taken to educate people or deal with the problem effectively. Eventually the problem boiled over. I don't see what Bush has to do with the problem of interethnic violence within a country.

How could millions of Russians overwhelm many more Central Asians, who had a higher birth rate? Especially with no barrier to intermixing? *shrugs* But sure, you're right - treating someone different, even if it doesn't injure his rights, is still racism. Even my polemic fervor can't be enough to ignore this thing. So I concede this point - but not the rest. Incidentally, I said a while ago that the racist failings of Soviet or post-Soviet governments are absolutely irrelevant for my convictions as an internationalist.

[Thanas]

Your insisting they are does not make them nation states. Also, if you go by common law and common currency, then nearly every ancient state was a nation state, even at times when the concept of "nationality" was utterly foreign to them.

So multinational empires weren't nation-states? The Mongol Empire was multinational and ruled over a variety of nationalities. Just as the British Empire, which was composed by lots of ethnicies, which included Chinese and Hindus, for example. Is the British Empire a nation-state because it had common law (as I gather, it didn't even have common currency with the British Raj and other colonial territories)? If it is, then why is the Golden Horde not one? Why is the Roman Empire a nation-state, but not the Horde? Can you consistently argue your point and explain just what you understand as a "nation-state", why Rome is one and the Mongols aren't?

I do not see the continuity required. It is present in several successor states - like the dynasty in China - but not in the Mongol Empire itself which never seemed to be about the empire as such, but rather about which bloodline should rule. Meanwhile, in the Roman Empire we have far less civil wars and the essential organization of the empire, the bureaucracy, the administration etc. remained intact over centuries.

Whoa. "Deny rights" to others, nothing less. So it does not matter if someone is infringing on the rights of another constantly, he still deserves to have the same rights as the victim of his infringement. Which "rights" am I depriving "others" of? Do explain.

The right to not be victims of civl wars, for example. Do explain how your model justifies the death, of, say, the underclass which suffers most in wars?

Of course it freaking is integral for international business. Otherwise you would have no way to conduct international business and agreements would only be kept if there would be force of arms to back them up. I think we have grown beyond those barbaric times. That however does in no way legalize any abuses and I cannot understand how you consistently fail to get that point.

Iraq could not have kept his sovereignity without force of arms. That was less than 10 years ago. Iraq was simply crushed using brute military force and no amount of legalistic blabbering helped it. End of story. The consistent infringement on the sovereignity of other nations continued in the latter half of the XX century and doesn't stop even now. Sometimes it is excused for moral reasons, at other times it is just blatant militarism and war of agression. International law has failed to prevent war. International law can legalize a war post-facto, too.

Nice dodge. This does not answer my point in any way.

So Nazism clearly warranted destruction even if it was bought with millions of German lives, but Japanese, French or British imperialism did not? *shrugs* I'm not flaming you. I want to understand just what sort of a position you're holding. If I kill hundreds of thousands to rescue 10, clearly that is disproportionate. However, the Japanese, French and British Empires destroyed millions of people and opressed dozens of millions. How is my idea of a beneficial de-colonizing coup or civil conflict "disproportionate"? To be disproportionate, tens of millions of Japanese, French or British would have to die to even compare with the damage their empires wrought.

My problem is that I do not see this scenario being justified by anything in history. If an empire is going through a civil war, the first thing it usually does after it is finished is external expansion. Why? Because war creates energies and soldiers which have to be used somewhere to get rid of them. See for example Cromwell - a very destructive civil war. According to your idea it should have prevented colonization. Wrong. It enhanced the speed of Imperialism, did not diminish it. Likewise, Nazism was not destroyed by a civil war, but by an external one. So all I see in your argument is a potential for the killing of innocent people and harm being done, which does nothing to prevent imperialism. Even the thirty year's war did not end Imperialism - it enabled the rise of Prussia, the Netherlands, Bavaria (yes, they too were imperialists), Sweden and France. So you exchanged one benign empire which more resembled a loose confederation for several very strong empires, who also held far more overseas territory than Austria ever did. This is my problem - civil war has never in modern history of all civil wars caused an empire to stop expanding.

Meanwhile, the destruction of empires was caused by wars that were fought between several sovereign nations. France lost her colonies after the seven year's war, Spain hers after the Napoleonic war etc. But once again, was that beneficial? The first caused the British Empire to become unchallenged in its supremacy (excepting for a brief period after the revolutionary war), the second allowed the USA to rise, brought utter ruin to Spain and pretty much destroyed the economy of the colonies that were "liberated" due to England grabbing dominant marketing positions. Would it have been more beneficial for the colonies of Spain to remain under Spanish protection? We certainly would not have companies like United Fruit etc. dominating entire countries in that part then etc. I am not advocating it, but it certainly does not seem like such an easy choice as you make it out to be. Moreover, wars are seldom won by idealists, so that too is another argument against that theory. And if the idealists win, they are almost immediately displaced by pragmatists (see the USSR, France in the 1790s etc).

Can you name one incident where a civil war in a country provided freedom for its colonies?

So yeah, I don't find that argument especially convincing. All I see is an argument for death.

You mean the Raj? It obviously applies. The Raj was a government. People committed terrorist acts against it to overthrow said government. Was it worth it?

How does that applies to your theory of "civil wars in Imperialist countries are beneficial", is what I am asking?

So then you think the civil war is not justified?

When there is no legal or moral cause for it. Which again depends on the circumstances.

By genocide you mean the mass murder in Srebrenica? Because during most of the Balkan wars, the ICTY has not found any other incidents that would fall under the definition of genocide.

Iirc there were other mass graves found.

On the other hand, there are instances where genocide has been found to apply (retroactively) to events that occured before the legal creation of the genocide concept. Would a civil war in Britain be justified if it would prevent the genocide of natives in Australia?

No, because no civil war has ever done so. Even if it theoretically would prevent the genocide, I would have to hear an argument on how the rest of the world would turn out in such a scenario. For example, what if the French move right in after Britain is ruined?

You said mass honour killings justify bad things happening to Qaddafi. Do mass honour killings in Turkey justify a Tomahawk flying into the window of Erdogan, killing him and only him?

I was unaware that Erdogan is ordering mass rapes in Turkey. Hence, me calling you an idiot.

I said there is a high probability, not any "absolute" as you're trying to strawman. The civil war in Britain happened before they conquered and took direct control over most of their colonies.

Ireland....to be honest, the civil war in Britain is not exactly your best argument because it caused direct Imperialism to result. If your claim of a high possibility is correct, you must find some examples of a civil war in the heartland of a colonial empire causing its colonies to be liberated.

Once again, do "some positives" justify megadeaths? If yes, then I could find some positives in the Thirty Years War, too. You know, like that whole concept of "sovereign nation-state" you're so drooling about coming into existence with the peace of Westphalia.

From a utilitarian standpoint, which you seem to champion so much, then yes, some positives justify megadeaths. For example, the Roman empire and its immense advancement to civilization would clearly justify the conquest of Gaul. From my standpoint, deaths in wars cannot be justified except in the case of a bellum iustum. But then again, I am not advocating for civil wars.

"Smallest colony"? You got to be crazy or you unlearned reading, I advocated civil war and coups on the great European powers like France and Britain, under whose colonial yoke were hundreds of millions of people. Was India, which I brought as an example, a "smallest colony"? I never said they were worth less. Although, if you're willing to push me to the extremes of my argument, I will go to these extremes. And here's this extreme: the life of the opressor is worth less than the life of the opressed. The life of an SS-man is worth less than the life of a person in the concentration camp. Therefore, it is morally valid to call for the death of as many SS-men as the number of people who die in concentration camps, and possibly even more, because clearly posturing the moral equivalence between the murderer and the murdered is not acceptable. There, I hope I concisely explained my position. Just FYI, I consider lives neutral for that reason. I even once said that the destruction of the Third Reich wouldn't be justified if it caused 80 million deaths (more than the actions of the Reich itself caused). You can't fault me here.

But I have to question on what grounds you make this judgement. "Oppressed" and "Oppressor" seems utterly simplistic except in those cases where you can name a direct oppressor. However, what moral concept can lead you to call for the deaths of innocents (say, a newborn or a farm worker in England)? That is what I do not get.

There were other states than the Habsburg Empire, and their opression summarily resulted in many times the number of dead in the Thirty Years War. I never said misdirected violence is justified. If the Habsburg Empire wasn't slaughtering people in the millions, the war was not justified. End of story.

So you admit that Oppressive Empires can be a net positive if they do not kill people? How does that gel with your position of valuing freedom?

Europeans have commited a lot of evil. It does not mean they are evil, but their technical progess and military power, combined with nationalism and militarism, gave them the capacity to commit lots of evil. The Thirty Years War is a clear example of misdirected violence. But then, of course, you can prove with numbers that the "unchecked" expansion of France and Russia was less beneficial than the continued existence of the Habsburg Empire?

Look at a map of Europe in 1612. Then look at a map of all European possessions in the 17XXs and then tell me again who oprressed more people.

Heh. Maybe I should. Every sin should be paid for. And yes, the destruction of the USSR in many ways was brought about because of Stalin's agressive policy in Eastern Europe, the inclusion of nation-states into the USSR and Soviet sphere of influence by force. I already said that attempts at such empire-building always blow into the face of their creators. Abstract "freedom" doesn't justify mass violence, but, say, if the USSR was going to massacre thousands and starve millions of people in the Baltics - like Britain did in India and Pubjab - in the 1990s, clearly their freedom was justified, even if it would be brought about by the collapse of the USSR.

But why is freedom such an abstract concept? Is it all just a matter of lives for you?

So why did you rail against me at all? I said "sometimes" - you know, SOMETIMES - coups and civil wars can be good. You chose to talk about it, despite me putting a clear fucking clarification in front of the whole sentence. You know what, that's fucking boring. I said "sometimes", but you heard "always" and "everywhere".

Because I cannot think of one example where a civil war resulted in less Imperialism and freedom. Maybe Imperial Russia, but I hardly would call that massive civil war beneficial for the people, nor would I call the rise of Imperialist Poland beneficial etc.

Maybe your post should have been "in some narrow circumstances, which have never presented itself and are an idealistic concept, civil wars may lead to beneficial freedom for colonies".

You know, despite my near-universal hatred of empires, I put that "sometimes" word right fucking there, in the very first post. You admitted that sometimes coup or civil war can be beneficial and justified. My point stands, while you have not had a point in the first place. You wanted to find me a hypocrite, but instead you only displayed the fact that you don't want to pay attention to my posts.

Neither do you want to pay attention to mine, it seems. But I disgress - your "sometimes" is pretty much an idealistic concept which has no basis in reality or history.

[K. A. Pital]

I do not see the continuity required. It is present in several successor states - like the dynasty in China - but not in the Mongol Empire itself which never seemed to be about the empire as such, but rather about which bloodline should rule. Meanwhile, in the Roman Empire we have far less civil wars and the essential organization of the empire, the bureaucracy, the administration etc. remained intact over centuries.

The imperial bureaucracy in the Mongol Empire and the Horde remained the same while the Ghengisides struggled for power. The fact that their power required the approval of a kurultai doesn't make the Mongol Empire powerless or lawless.

The right to not be victims of civl wars, for example. Do explain how your model justifies the death, of, say, the underclass which suffers most in wars?

My model doesn't "justify" anything. If the civil war is justified via consequences, then it is only the simple balance of loss of life which makes it so, nothing more.

Nice dodge. This does not answer my point in any way.

Your point was that without law, agreements would be only kept if there's force of arms to back them up. However, even with international law, since the 1600s agreements were only kept if there was a force of arms to back them up (and even then they were regularly broken).

Can you name one incident where a civil war in a country provided freedom for its colonies? So yeah, I don't find that argument especially convincing. All I see is an argument for death.

First of all, I argued that coups and civil wars can be good at times, and of these, I obviously preferred coups. I already mentioned the anti-Salazar coup which brought an end to Portugal's colonial wars. The Russian civil war allowed Finland and Poland to exist as sovereign states and the return of Manchuria to China.

How does that applies to your theory of "civil wars in Imperialist countries are beneficial", is what I am asking?

It is not my theory that they are universally beneficial. However, civil war, killing and anti-government terrorism (by which I mean attacks on legitimate targets such as government officials, soldiers and government buildings) can be justified both inside the metropole and outside, in the colonies.

When there is no legal or moral cause for it. Which again depends on the circumstances.

Which is the same as my position.

Iirc there were other mass graves found.

Mass graves and mass murder are not always related to the charge of genocide. Indeed, it is interesting that some of the more massive genocides like Rwanda, East Timor and Cambodia feature hundreds of thousands of directly murdered victims, but in former Yugoslavia, the genocide case centers around just one massacre of several thousand people. Not to say that in such a small ethnic group as Bosnians you can't make a case of genocide because thousands were killed, but clearly the Serbian war crimes and massacres were not comparable neither in scale nor in severity to any of the larger Third World genocides. Which were often facilitated by the First World (e.g. the French involvement in Rwanda which included legal support and recognition, arms shipments and training of the Hutu forces, America's support, arms shipments and political pressure in the UN in case of the Sukharto genocide in East Timor).

No, because no civil war has ever done so. Even if it theoretically would prevent the genocide, I would have to hear an argument on how the rest of the world would turn out in such a scenario. For example, what if the French move right in after Britain is ruined?

I never said it is apriori justified, Thanas. It can be justified in retrospect if we would see that it prevented an event of extermination from happening or something kile that. I never said civil wars carry a 100% probability of decolonization, too. Considering the evidence, there are processes which speak in favor of decolonization occuring (problems of maintaining colonial rule overseas when the metropole is ravaged), and there are processes which can prevent it from occuring (militarism, revanchism, desire to reconquer or maintain the colonies).

I was unaware that Erdogan is ordering mass rapes in Turkey. Hence, me calling you an idiot.

I was unaware there's any solid evidence outside Al-Jazeera, that rupor of truthiness, that Qaddafi was ordering rapes. But of course, since there can't be any clear papers ordering rapes, why don't we look at what low-level officials are doing Turkey's long-lasting conflict with the Kurds, right? I haven't heard Turkey paid for any of its crimes against the Kurds, which include tortures, extrajudicial killings and rapes.

Ireland....to be honest, the civil war in Britain is not exactly your best argument because it caused direct Imperialism to result. If your claim of a high possibility is correct, you must find some examples of a civil war in the heartland of a colonial empire causing its colonies to be liberated.

I gave a few above. Once again, I never said that a civil war automatically results in decolonization. And yes, revanchism is a likewise probable outcome, so quite certainly civil wars can also be counterbeneficial from a decolonization viewpoint.

From a utilitarian standpoint, which you seem to champion so much, then yes, some positives justify megadeaths. For example, the Roman empire and its immense advancement to civilization would clearly justify the conquest of Gaul. From my standpoint, deaths in wars cannot be justified except in the case of a bellum iustum. But then again, I am not advocating for civil wars.

Neither am I. I said they can be beneficial, but that can only be determined post-facto. Not sure how this translates into "advocating civil war".

But I have to question on what grounds you make this judgement. "Oppressed" and "Oppressor" seems utterly simplistic except in those cases where you can name a direct oppressor. However, what moral concept can lead you to call for the deaths of innocents (say, a newborn or a farm worker in England)? That is what I do not get.

Opressed and opressor are not that simplistic even if a direct opressor cannot be named. Once again, large bureaucracies and intergenerational entities can exist as opressors for a very long time. This includes governments and corporations, obviously. If a government is massively slaughtering other people (e.g. the Reich, Italy, Japan, Britain, France, etc.), it is natural that the deaths of their own citizens - be it by civil war or external war - would be justified, so as long as they happen to destroy the government in question and stop its actions, and until the death toll of such an operation, war or civil war would massively exceed the number of people who would otherwise die due to actions of the opressing entity. That's all.

So you admit that Oppressive Empires can be a net positive if they do not kill people? How does that gel with your position of valuing freedom?

Death is the ultimate negative utility. If one opressive empire is slaughtering people while the other is not, or if, say, a "non-opressive" republic is slaughtering people while the empire is not, the opressive empire can be a net positive. For example, the Khmer Rouge was not an empire, but invading it and stopping the slaughter was a net positive. IRL it was done by Vietnam, which was not an empire or a major imperialistic power at all, but even if it was done by someone else (e.g. USSR, China, or the USA) - hypothetically - it would still be beneficial.

Look at a map of Europe in 1612. Then look at a map of all European possessions in the 17XXs and then tell me again who oprressed more people.

Uh... Britain? Seriously though, how is the German empire more benevolent than the French or Russian empire, especially if the question relates to 1600s and 1700s, when all of the discussed empires were pre-industrial states mostly determined by titular nationality and the dynasty than by anything else?

But why is freedom such an abstract concept? Is it all just a matter of lives for you?

Death is a huge negative utility. How do you justify causing death in the first place? Obviously by preventing greater deaths in the future. Otherwise you are causing death for something which has a lesser negative utility. Yes, for me it is mostly a matter of lives.

Because I cannot think of one example where a civil war resulted in less Imperialism and freedom. Maybe Imperial Russia, but I hardly would call that massive civil war beneficial for the people, nor would I call the rise of Imperialist Poland beneficial etc. Maybe your post should have been "in some narrow circumstances, which have never presented itself and are an idealistic concept, civil wars may lead to beneficial freedom for colonies".

Depends on which people you're talking about. Russia leaving Manchuria and Finland was, to an extent, beneficial for the populations thereof. The fact that Poland and Finland also behaved imperialistically at some point is lamentable, but Russia was no longer responsible for that. Yeah, the circumstances are narrow and the probability of revanchism usually removes the beneficial consequences.

Neither do you want to pay attention to mine, it seems. But I disgress - your "sometimes" is pretty much an idealistic concept which has no basis in reality or history.

So the anti-Salazar coup didn't end Portugal's colonial wars and thereby brought an end to its colonial empire? See, perhaps my examples are few and far between. On the other hand, the examples to the contrary are mostly related to the pre-industrial period (I haven't heard about major industrial empires having civil wars in the latter part of the XIX or early XX century)

[iborg]

I think that even if you count all the mass murder that occured in the Third World in the XX century or the XX and XIX century combined, that would not be on par with the mass murder commited by First World nations in the same timeframe.

In fact, just two First World nations like Germany and Japan by their actions in the mid-XX century have been the reason for the death of such an enormous number of people that DPRK, Khmer Rouge, Rwanda, Congo Civil War, Mozambique and all other nations' wars and famines combined would barely (!) scratch that plank of... how many million again? Fifty? Sixty? Even excluding soldiers and civilians of their own respective nations, there'll be still well over 40 million non-First World victims of World War II. This only proves my point - two or three First World nations (Germany, Japan, Italy) in just a few decades killed more people than ALL OTHER NATIONS OF THE WORLD COMBINED killed in a whole century.

Well duh, industrial scale European massacring technology beats artisanal backward African methods. What do you think would have happened if African Ethny X had access to gas chambers and SS-like organization and germanic discipline (or Bolshevik versions, whatever) to deal with their hated neighbors of Ethny Y ?

[K. A. Pital]

What do you think would have happened if African Ethny X had access to gas chambers and SS-like organization

He could kill a bunch of people and maybe invade a few nations. But with economic and industrial weakness, he couldn't have invaded three, four, or more nations and genocided the bloody hell out of them.

This is why I made this point repeatedly - imperialism deals damage on a global scale. Large imperialist powers are not limited by the size of their own population, they can conquer other nations and kill people there, they can control hundreds of millions in colonial or neocolonial dependencies and brutalize and massacre them.

Even if Rwanda had the SS (and it sort of had the SS - the Hutu murder squads were trained by the French and as we saw, were quite efficient), it could only kill the population of Rwanda and not much more. The Axis, on the other hand, killed lots of people in Libya, Ethiopia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Russia, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Korea. That's a hell lot of nations and a hell lot of people dead.

This is why industrialized nations are more dangerous when they go on a mass murder spree - the damage is almost unlimited if we're talking about them massacring people in less developed territories.

[Zinegata]

Even if Rwanda had the SS (and it sort of had the SS - the Hutu murder squads were trained by the French and as we saw, were quite efficient), it could only kill the population of Rwanda and not much more. The Axis, on the other hand, killed lots of people in Libya, Ethiopia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Russia, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Korea. That's a hell lot of nations and a hell lot of people dead.

The Rwandan Genocide was an extremely focused and deliberate annihilation of an entire people. Those who perpetrated this genocide were deliberately trying to kill off as many Tutsis as possible.

By contrast, there was no similar program of systematic extermination practiced by the Japanese in either the Philippines or Indonesia. Indeed, the Japanese tried to recruit the population in both countries to their cause, though with little success. Japanese attitudes towards the Chinese were totally different however (much more in line with Rwanda), as is Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews and Slavs.

However, despite this lack of systematic extermination (and a direct order by General Yamashita to spare Filipino civilians), the Japanese were still able to cause the deaths of over 100,000 Filipino civilians during the Battle of Manila in 1945.

The lesson really is that even without deep-rooted hatred and mass ideological brainwashing, simply having enough firepower is enough to cause mass death and destruction. It's not a matter of just having the technology - but also of having an industrious base capable of sustaining modern war.

[K. A. Pital]

The lesson really is that even without deep-rooted hatred and mass ideological brainwashing, simply having enough firepower is enough to cause mass death and destruction. It's not a matter of just having the technology - but also of having an industrious base capable of sustaining modern war.

So my point is supported - imperialism of a technologically advanced nation ("Great Power"), simply by virtue of being capable of sustaining intensive, advanced modern war can cause a great number of excess deaths, even without a clear genocidal campaign. A genocidal imperialism of an advanced nation like the Japanese Empire, Germany or Italy is even more dangerous. Genocidal campaigns by small and poor nations are usually limited by the population size of that nation and territorially limited by their borders; a genocidal poor regime usually fails military campaigns (as evidenced by Cambodia's failure to defeat Vietnam which led to the destruction of the Khmer Rouge). On the other hand, the imperialist regimes of Germany, Italy and Japan took a major and protracted war to destroy them and the deaths in a war with just three industrialized nations were enormous - most of them weren't First World deaths, they were deaths of the undeveloped nations' citizens. What if an advanced nation was powerful enough and willing to commit a genocidal campaign against a smaller nation? There would be absolutely no way of stopping them, unless it got into a fight with someone more powerful or as powerful as itself. And so as long as it did not involve itself in such wars - like Italy in the 1930s before it joined the Axis war in Europe - it could commit as much genocide as it wanted without any opposition from major powers. The support of a major imperialist nation for a certain genocidal action makes it impossible to stop and prevent it (e.g. USA's action in the UN during East Timor genocide made it absolutely impossible to prevent or stop it).

Imperialism has an enormous, virtually unlimited damage capability when applied to undeveloped nations and it is enormously hard to stop it.

[Zinegata]

The lesson really is that even without deep-rooted hatred and mass ideological brainwashing, simply having enough firepower is enough to cause mass death and destruction. It's not a matter of just having the technology - but also of having an industrious base capable of sustaining modern war.

So my point is supported

Yes, and that the sheer firepower of an industrial nation could inflict so much damage that it may as well be genocide regardless of the said nation's intent.