Peter Wiley wrote:
No, not these days :-) We're having an argument with East Timor ATM
over a sea bed boundary. Not the least worried about them attacking us
of course.


No, at least not officially. But then that doesn't seem to be in style
these days anyway. Plenty of whackos with the potential to become
suicide bombers in Nusutengarra though.



Seems to me it was the reparations that led to massive inflation and
economic chaos that led to the rise of Hitler more than the loss of
territory. Even the reparations were just playing by the same rules
Germany had used itself, previously.

Yep, that sound pretty close to right to me. Although the stolen land
was part of the Nazi's political sloganeering, as was the "stab in the
back" (their popular theory that Germany didn't really lose WW1).


Well they didn't lose militarily, it was a stalemate. They got starved
into submission which is evidence that sufficiently rigorous economic
sanctions backed by military force to enforce them can work.

I disagree somewhat. The German armies in the field had not been
decisively defeated, that is true. But they had been pushed back from
the Hindenburg line and only managed to prevent an Allied breakthrough
at high cost. Their manpower was waning dramatically (especially with
regard to bringing up trained reserves) and their supplies were running
out. Mostly they were being starved into submission. But an army that is
starving cannot fight.




As for wars, dunno. Basically the Western powers can economically ruin
a country without taking military action. Is this preferable?

Yes. An economy in ruins is better, by definition, than an economy in
ruins with 100,000+ dead and all infrastructure destroyed.


Yeah, my feeling as well. However we have the example of Hussein using
the 'food for oil' exemption from economic sanctions to bribe other
nation-state leaders while simultaneously starving his people of food &
medicine and using the resultant deaths et al to convince people like
Donal et al that it was all the fault of the Western powers. That's a
good example of what happens if you're ruthless enough.

yep... utter ruthlessness is hard to beat, and hard to believe for a lot
of people. IMHO Saddam Hussein's gov't is a classic example of a
revolution gone wrong... happens in history more often than ones that go
right, perhaps. The irony is that we (the US mainly, but also the
western powers) supported him against the obvious danger of Iran and now
we have toppled him which mostly helps Iran.

DSK