The viability of conquest and/or colonialism in the modern world -

[Iwasamwillbe]

Assuming that a nation-state or country in this day and age just up and pulled up their pants and said "fuck international law and the international community", and started conquering and colonizing in a wild frenzy, what would be the consequence(s) of that? How would such an event affect the world?

Presumably, the outcome(s) depends on circumstance and the nation in question.

 

[millais]

As long as it doesn't disrupt the global network of commerce and freedom of navigation, nobody will do shit. Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention in Donbas are testament to that.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

You haven't been keeping up with China's activities in Africa, have you. Basically that.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

As long as it doesn't disrupt the global network of commerce and freedom of navigation, nobody will do shit. Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention in Donbas are testament to that.

I wouldn't describe Russia taking a few territories it owned recently as a "conquering and colonizing frenzy."

This question is dumb and the answer is obvious. The US would go and invade them, as long as it's not a country in Africa that's doing it.

 

[I Love Beef]

Something, something nukes and immediate naval/army deployment with orders to shoot on site. Potential world war and society going a lot more unstable.

Things like colonialism if I can analyze usually had occurred because of massive gaps of technological advancement and stable economic middle ground allowing said nations to expand and capitalize further compared to targeted and seized nations. Nowadays, since nearly any nation major has Gross Domestic Product, they'd have to target third world and ass end second world nations, and even then, their invasion would require either decades of espionage and government collapse to allow for the subterfuge of "making this nation under our jurisdiction for civil order", or strongarming it at the cost of getting the attention of the UN and the global community with very weary eyes. And even then, would you want to risk your forces for some shitty country that would require massive investitures if you invaded and had to rebuild after a war, or just exploit their natural resources with currency advantage and monopolization of the region?

tl;dr War was never profitable, but as a means of dominance and political takeover, it only works these days if both sides are willing to kill each other.

 

[mr.moon1488]

Depends. Is the conquest just a justified advancement of a superior society, or is it (((justified))).

 

[OB 946]

Colonies aren't profitable. For almost every single year of the British Empire they spent FAR more money on maintaining colonies than the revenue the colonies generated. You will never again see countries sailing halfway around the world to a place they have no ties to and just stealing a chunk of land. There's no reason to and it would be extremely unpopular and very, very expensive.

However neo-colonialism is already a thing and the US is in the lead. Make no mistake, the US is the head of an Empire. The American Empire is very, very real, but like Athens and their empire, we use soft power and the carrot over the gun and stick like the empires of old. Russia doesn't understand this concept so they're fucked. Germany is trying to do it in the EU but there's simply not enough military might there to unlatch from Uncle Sam's teet, so they're going to be a part of the American Empire for the foreseeable future, especially the UK and Eastern Europe. China is the only one that really gets it. The Belt and Road system is literally a form of colonialism and they are rapidly expanding into Africa. The meme here is that the Belt and Road program is about to collapse on itself because what the Chinese project the member nation to pay and what they actually pay are completely different. Some members of the program have nearly crashed their economy trying to pay for these new roads. Not only that, but the roads themselves leave a lot to be desired. The roads are, well, Chinese and that means behind schedule and prone to failure.

 

[Immortal Technique]

Conquering and colonizing a nation is no longer a thing on any scale that is significant like you mean. You can now conquer a nation without a need to colonize it to reinforce it. Just control their money and control the majority of their jobs. Control their money and then you control "their" government.

If conquering and colonizing was a mutual instance, Iraq and Kuwait would be declared US territory (many other examples across the world). I'm curious where in the timeline of going to war>winning the war>giving land back to the nation happened?

 

[Franjevina]

" nation-state or country in this day and age just up and pulled up their pants and said "fuck international law and the international community",

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[duff101]

The problem with a nation based on conquest is that you have to keep conquesting to placate everyone. Humans are pretty mercenary, and will go along with anything as long as it results in cash or other benefits. But the second that you run out of things to conquest, start losing battles, or run out of cash to fund conquests, society and the economy will collapse. Often as well conquesting nations rely on a conqueror with a strong cult of personality. A lot of giant empires are founded on conquest and either follow the conqueror with an extremely competent civil ruler, or balkanize starting with the frontier. Stuff like that happened in China for centuries.

 

[Autocrat]

Have you ever heard of Saint William Walker?

He was the American President of Nicaragua. He went down there with 100 or so men, and worked with rebels to overthrow the government. At one point he was extradited to the US, and then acquitted because Americans liked what he was doing. Then he went right back down there.

Imagine doing that today. You get American soldiers (to be both active and advisory), you get investors, then you go down there and first join, and then co-opt an uprising. (They're barely getting over one currently lol)
Countries like that are constantly on the brink of revolution because its people are so poor. Clearly whatever system they're in isn't working out.

There are apparently less than 10k active soldiers For comparison, apparently 50k people fled the country this past year due to the government's activities. What if a quarter of them fought instead? And how many of that 10k military would turn coat for a working revolution? I'm sure quite a few.

Walker died because of the militaries of other countries in the area (under the influence western businessmen like Cornelius Vanderbilt). In 2019 those countries seem to be preoccupied with problems of their own. Nicaragua is ripe for the picking.

 

[ES 148]

It's wrong.

 

[Smug Chuckler]

I will build my house right over there...

 

[verissimus]

It's wrong.

It's also patently unnecessary in the modern age. Really the only thing a major power really needs from a particular country are a dock or airstrip and the means to pressure either the current or future government (i.e. regime change). Anything else is a bonus unless that major power has to fight for it which I'm assuming in the above two points that that won't be the case. Consider after all how many bases/military we have or have had with countries which we haven't fought at all, fought awhile ago (i.e. Britain), fought with, or haven't fought at all and yet they've allowed us military access if not basing rights.

 

[Lemmingwise]

Have you ever heard of Saint William Walker?
View attachment 934266

He was the American President of Nicaragua. He went down there with 100 or so men, and worked with rebels to overthrow the government. At one point he was extradited to the US, and then acquitted because Americans liked what he was doing. Then he went right back down there.

Imagine doing that today. You get American soldiers (to be both active and advisory), you get investors, then you go down there and first join, and then co-opt an uprising. (They're barely getting over one currently lol)
Countries like that are constantly on the brink of revolution because its people are so poor. Clearly whatever system they're in isn't working out.

There are apparently less than 10k active soldiers For comparison, apparently 50k people fled the country this past year due to the government's activities. What if a quarter of them fought instead? And how many of that 10k military would turn coat for a working revolution? I'm sure quite a few.

Walker died because of the militaries of other countries in the area (under the influence western businessmen like Cornelius Vanderbilt). In 2019 those countries seem to be preoccupied with problems of their own. Nicaragua is ripe for the picking.

I mean, that's not too far off what US+EU were doing with Ukraine and it's what caused Russia to have to make the overt move for Crimea in the first place.

I mean, how can you look at the world and see that what happened in Lybia, what happened in Iraq, isn't exactly like what is being suggested in OP? And what was attempted in Syria, but less succesful.

Or all the artificial islands that China is building so that they can claim more and more international water areas.

 

[Diesel Boogaloo]

Colonies aren't profitable. For almost every single year of the British Empire they spent FAR more money on maintaining colonies than the revenue the colonies generated. You will never again see countries sailing halfway around the world to a place they have no ties to and just stealing a chunk of land. There's no reason to and it would be extremely unpopular and very, very expensive.

Colonies may have been not profitable for the colonizing states, but for the entrepreneurs from those states, yes they were, and a lot.
If colonies were unprofitable for everybody, then even the early capitalists would manage to figure it out and the colonial era wouldn't last a single century.
Similarly, current wars are mostly profitable to weapon manufacturers and oil companies. The state is just to do the dirty work for them and ends up in red after the dust settles.

 

[heathercho]

@Iwasamwillbe, What do you think of what China is doing?

I think that's sorta the new colonialism. What they're doing in Africa is no different than what Europeans did, it's just not getting news coverage. They're pillaging the Philippines via their fishing waters atm, enforcing their might on HK and Taiwan. They have deep fingers in both Australia and Canada.

 

[roxitp0w3rwuzdabest420]

It would have to be through the guise of helping people, like China in Africa. One of the major reasons why Europe was able to conquer the new world was because of disease technology and natives lack of unification.

Here's a fun little story for you. The Inca had bronze weaponry when the Spanish arrived not great but 200000 Inca war could easily overwhelm and bash Spaniards brain in if they wanted too. So what happened? The Inca king brought his entire army with him to meet the Spanish, but he told his warriors to leave there weapons behind as a show of force. A priest handed the king a Bible flipped through it and said Idk Dafuq this means and threw it on the ground. Then the Spanish started killing the Inca.

 

[DidYouJustSayThat]

It's wrong.

Colonization is a non-starter for the Western countries, because the adversary has largely suceeded in demoralizing and brainwashing the populace, so exceptional take, that savages in some shithole have "rights" and taking over their lands is "wrong", is not dismissed as ravings of a lunatick.

 

[Kaiser Wilhelm's Ghost]

The thing is it's not necessary in this day and age.

Corporatism over took any of the original facets of capital gains or resource gathering that the original colonialist had started to accrue over a period of time.

The simple fact that you have proxy wars or lend lease style systems where countries and corrupt governments stay in control and corporate entities buy sell and trade without the messy business of having to actually be in control of the area, administer laws, oversee infrastructure, or genuinely try to improve the lives of the local population outside of any agreements made with the government, which in itself is usually self serving, such as creating roads to expedite mining or resource collection or railways for the same reason, they have no hand in anything.

They have all of the exploitative benefits of being in the position of colonial style exploitation without any of the costs that the actual colonialist accrued during that period.

America and China are excellent examples of this, and I'm including the UK in the American sphere of influence when it comes to exploiting natural resources in Africa. I've met a few of these corporate types and they are more than willing to admit that it's a perfect market. The local government gets a cut of the money being produced, they have full access to mineral rights, oil, or other natural resources and a guarantee of no extra judicial issues when it comes to exploiting them in the form of actual environmental law enforcement or other going concerns like labor laws. That with a cheap and easily replaceable labor force and it's win win.

The only catch is, it's dangerous. Nothing has changed since the 1600's in terms of the locals being aggressive and willing to kill anyone who is different to them. Places like the Sudan, like Northern Nigeria, parts of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, they are armed and they have mercenaries and they live in defensive encampments.
Whites going outside their encampments without protection were taking their own lives into their hands.

I knew someone who lived in the Sudan part time as an oil field consultant, even when the civil war was going on, his company was still operating their oil wells peacefully, and trying to turn back the local Sudanise who sought protection from the civil war, because they knew the government and opposition wouldn't attack the oil wells, because however won that would be their main source of revenue.

That said I think Colonialism is maligned because Colonialism wasn't a case of some of the world powers greedily eyeing up the undeveloped world and invading. It was a myriad of mixed issues that drove colonialism forward and people tend to forget this. The settling of the New World by Europeans was prompted mainly as a way of getting rid of excess population, opening up new markets, exploration and Christian concerns.

James Town was the first exclusively British attempt to set up a colony in the new world and that was 1610, the Americans didn't finally win the Indian Wars and settle the west to establish the current America until around 1900.

The British in India was prompted by the East India Company taking over administrative control of tracts of land in India for trading purposes and having reached such a point of power and influence, that it became apparent that if Britain did not annex India, than it ran the risk of having it's French and Dutch competitors doing it first.

Africa up until the 1800's and the explosion of railway technology was resistant to most foreign intervention, even the earlier adventurers and slave traders who were only able to do so by the will and grace of the local Kings and Rulers were able to map out parts of the coast and not actually do any major exploration of the interior until that time.

The Boers the defacto largest White settler community in Africa settled most of the modern parts of South Africa as an attempt to escape religious persecution and internal wars at home, the same reason that the Huegenots and the Puritans settled in America. The land at the time of the great treks to escape the increasing pressure from the British who wanted the cape because of it's relevance to Indian sea trade, was empty because of the great dying that had been precipitated by the Zulu's, and signed treaties to the effect. The same with the gift of the Port of Natal to the British. The British merely capitalized on the work that the Boers had done in settling the land by taking over the Boer colonies when mineral deposits were found in the Orange State and the Transvaal.

Realistically exploration, and some financial considerations/experimentation aside the only other group of colonialist involved in Africa were the great missionaries who effectively braved an unknown continent with a myriad of deadly diseases and a hostile populations in order to spread Christianity to the dark continent.

There are loads of other considerations to think of as well, but that's just a few as an outline of colonization not just being in financial interests.

Now to answer your question, it depends.

The issue with larger influential world powers and smaller weak nations usually falls into a question of spheres of influence.

So for instance the Great Game between Russia and Britain almost exclusively game about because of the value of India and Russian expansion into the Steppe nations that now make up the Stan's on the map. The lynch pin in the center was Afghanistan, which is why the British conquered it, and then reconquered it.

The country had no intrinsic value to the Empire, except that it was the land gateway to British India, and with an ever increasing pressure from the Tsar and Russian expansion into Afghans neighboring nations, as well as diplomatically friendly ties being established between the ruling Shah and the Russian crown Britain saw it as pertinent to their sphere of influence to hold that country.

In America the classical stance of the Monroe doctrine still stands, which is why America almost exclusively is the sole influential power in South American politics. The Cuban Missile crisis was essentially one of the first times, since the overthrow of the Spanish rule and the establishment of the doctrine that a massive foreign national power had any hand of influence in South America.

So any potential conquering and establishment of new colonies would have to essentially follow these rules in order not to cause any international upsets or conflagrations.

1. Not a strategically important ally or geographical location to a super powers sphere of influence.
2. Not a nuclear power, and therefore capable of high impact high death toll retaliation or mutually assured self destruction.
3. Not likely to be of any major strategic importance in the future.