*cough*EastTimor*cough*

East Timor. A new nation which had been invaded by Indonesia and was screaming for liberation. Australia, along with other UN forces entered the country and halted the civil war and Indonesia's influence was removed from the country.

Australia still has a military presence there after the recent elections. In fact, my cousin will be heading there very shortly with his unit.

Australia has no sovereignty there.

What's your point UT? There are many other points around our borders where Indonesia and the rest of Asia is closer.

Go back and read for comprehension, you've got it exactly ass backwards. :crazy:

I was refering to China

"I wonder where the planters came from? I'm sure they would have benefited from an army coming in to protect them from the 'restless natives' huh?"

China?

"Who benefits from the US entering these areas? What does the US do with these islands it 'anexes'?"

Go back and read for comprehension.


"Put lots of big guns on them mostly. Why? To protect themselves from the 'yellow hoard'!"

The biggest gun in the world, mounted on Hawaii, would hit Hawaii. :eyebrow:

Bruce, if you choose to ignore the reasons the US was happy to go sort out the squabbles of these pacific islanders then enjoy your ignorance.

You'd be better off acknowledging the fact that the US has been and still is empire building, which is the point of this thread and the point I was demonstrating.

Oh, and as to the big guns. They're airborne. I would have thought that would go without saying.

Sounds like Mission Accomplished to me.

What's in East Timor that makes it in Australia's interests to endanger her sons and daughters?

Now the key question: did East Timor ask you to get out?

America has left every country that asked it to.

It's not too hard to know what Australia is getting out of it. Our government is no more altruistic than yours.

There's natural gas under their ocean which they don't have the resources to exploit. Australia does, so for providing an army, Australia has a lease on the rights.

I imagine once the gas is gone, so will Australia be gone although I believe it's a fairly large resource, so it might take a while.

Shameful. No War For Natgas!

I agree

It would have been more humane to set them up and take a debt or tax so that they could build their own economy. There are many things that could have been done differently, and the government is under pressure to address them, so things may change if things in the region settle down.

So are you going to clean up your own house, or are you going to fling around accusations of empire at everyone else, under any ridiculous flimsy pretense you can find, feeling smug and self-satisfied about it?

Aussies are descended from a bunch of criminals and losers that were run out of England on a rail that didn't manage to throw off the Imperial yoke like we did.

It's jealousy, pure and simple.

I never said I was feeling smug or self satisfied UT. I'm simply responding to the thread, and the fact is, to all intents and purposes, the US is the new empire - roman or any other kind. You could just as easily suggest the US is the new British Empire.

The fact is, there will always be one more powerful nation which builds it empire on that strength, and just as all the others have done before, the glory days will end. I don't believe any empire in history has been an empire for the good of the countries they absorb or anex or settle. There's always been something in it for them. That's what empire building is for.

Of course there are often benefits for the 'new' members of that empire, but history suggests that the benefits are usually outweighed by the losses of culture suffered due to the nature of empire building.

Then again, that depends whose perspective you're viewing it from. Some do not value culture as highly as others.

Careful wolf, you're sounding a bit like buddug. lol

I can guarantee you that 99% of Australians are very happy to be Australians and not Americans btw.

There's nothing to be jealous of.

Nobody says they feel smug or self-satisfied, they just act like... you.

Whatever you say UT.

Come now: how many countries and islands do we get imperial tribute from, eh? How many of these do we colonize these days? I'm listening for the tramping of hordes of settlers and it's so nice and quiet I'm about to go to sleep...:p

How many countries do we lock up their economies into a mercantilist "sell your raw materials only to us, buy manufactured goods of these materials only from us" deal?

Imperialism in large measure springs from a mercantilist economic paradigm. Mercantilism is something we've never really practiced, having gotten too much of a taste of it in the Colonial era, which led directly to the American Revolution -- which in its turn had a great influence on the form and behavior of the British Empire -- rather better, I think, than the behavior of other empires of the last two centuries. Parliament and nation learned something about what not to do by the American example, and it worked rather well -- see Canada, the "pine" part of the "Dominion of palm and pine."

Full-on capitalism in our manner (okay, it's how most humans do capitalism if they at all can) does not encourage imperialism, and is why we're the one non-imperialist great power and superpower.

I don't mind; laughter is a good gift to give -- get a good start on your 2007.

We Americans regard a state of war as an abnormal and unfortunate state of affairs. Which does not make us peaceniks, merely sensible. Not, I think, uniquely so, but sensible nonetheless. Bear in mind wars invariably devour wealth; it's a war-college tenet that the execution, prosecution, and evolution of a war is at bottom economic. The winner, as a rule, is that economy that can endure the greater damage, or suffers the less damage.

Yielding to a temptation:

R. Lee Rman, centurion. :D

You actually believe that Australia would LIKE to be like America?! :eek:
to use the "theyre all descended from criminals" cliche displays a snobbery and unjustified attitude of superiority the world has come to expect from certain people in the US.

Australian culture, and the experience that made it, are indeed similar to the American -- which is why Australians and Americans get on very well together. Consider that both are a fundamentally English society, with English expectations, transported to a very wide, hotter and drier land, with agrarian national beginnings and industrial development later -- both even have less than completely creditable relations with the indigenes. These leave similar stamps upon their peoples. Where American culture diverges from this is that it's more polyglot, each nation having taken respectively different paths there.

And it happens to be about as true in the US case as in the Australian -- see how the state of Georgia was founded. Nor, in either, did the influx end with the end of the penal colony -- what sustained both these nations was the continued seeking of improved opportunity.

Aussies are cooler than Americans, any day.

If there's jealousy, its the OTHER way around.

I can't believe I just read a post by UG without rolling my eyes!

It's a miracle. (sorry UG, but I'm sure you see the humour ;) )

Ibram, I think most Aussies are pretty daggy (self included) actually, but if you think that's cool then that's ok. lol

Miracles provided free of charge, roughly on a monthly to bimonthly basis.

(I mulled over the smilies. I can't pick one.)

Every one's a winner!

Now you see my difficulty!

There's some justice in regarding Americans and Australians (alpha. order, nothing more!) as funny-talking versions of each other.

And both parties have been known to wear broadbrimmed hats -- with good reason!

There's no doubt that American's and Australian's have a lot of similarities in their cultural heritage both as settled countries and also as new nations (in so far as the history of the world goes). Australia doesn't have the climate or resources to support such a population as the US does though. Most of the country is inhospitable and not very pleasant to live in (for white fellas).

Our outlook is a bit different than a lot of other countries though. Maybe that's because of our youth. Still a bit carefree perhaps, but certainly worth knowing.

I'm certainly glad I've gotten to know the Aussies from the cellar. I'd love to go there at some point in my life and see it for myself. From all I hear and read it is beautiful.

Please remove the stick from your anal cavity.

A careful reading of my statement makes it clear that I was also refering to America's rather similar origins ... however, as nations we dealt with this different, America choosing to fight for independence, Australia remaining part of the British Empire.

I don't know if I ever said this, but when I was pretty young, JR HI, I think, I had a dream about Australia. Nothing spectacular, it was just that i was living there with my grandmother for some reason or another. I remember waking up and feeling really good, peaceful. From that point on I swore I would go one day. I even wrote a poem about it (a silly trite young girl poem, but a poem nonetheless.) I hope to do some traveling a bit later in life and Australia will be one of my visits.

*hands you stick covered in shit*

you said they were jealous .... end of argument.

That happens to me about three times a week.

Hope it isn't the pointy end too!

They are jealous. They've always wanted to drive on the right side of the road. :p

The right side of the road is the left:P

If you go left, you'll be right.
If you go right, you'll be left. :p

I drive on the right hand side of the road when I overtake. I don't always feel like overtaking though.

which side did the Romans drive on?

I haven't read much of the thread but I'll pitch in my two cents on the type of nations that will be world dominating forces in the future.

Here are some criteria (be kind, this is off-the-cuff):
1. Nations with a very high level of urbanization and population density (i.e., usually, smaller island nations)
2. Access to large amount of, not necessarily native, man-power (the more skilled the better).
3. Deep integration of high-tech, communications, and information services on a national level
4. Strong leadership (I was going to say "good leadership" but most likely these leaders will be barely distinguishable from villains in our lifetimes and for several subsequent generations)
5. World financial centers

I think Singapore and Hong Kong are probably the best bets. They have China and other resources to draw on, are rich enough to build world-class armies, and have technological penetration outdoing all but perhaps South Korea and Taiwan (maybe Finland, too?).

Taiwan gets some bonus points for having very strong ties to certain areas of mainland China (the province name doesn't pop immediately to mind).

South Korea is another decent bet. They have to maintain military vigilance because of their friends to the north, Seoul is a world city (one of the most well connected in the world), and they have a reasonable agricultural base.

I thought money and education would be more important?

The reason why America is a superpower is because they have all the money. The reason why America will fall is because of education. The other nations are stressing education more so all the jobs that need workers with a higher education will go there resulting in that country getting the money.

There's the oft-quoted (by me) Ralph Peters' Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States:

Traditional indicators of noncompetitive performance still apply: corruption (the most seductive activity humans can consummate while clothed); the absence of sound, equitably enforced laws; civil strife; or government attempts to overmanage a national economy. As change has internationalized and accelerated, however, new predictive tools have emerged. They are as simple as they are fundamental, and they are rooted in culture. The greater the degree to which a state--or an entire civilization--succumbs to these "seven deadly sins" of collective behavior, the more likely that entity is to fail to progress or even to maintain its position in the struggle for a share of the world's wealth and power. Whether analyzing military capabilities, cultural viability, or economic potential, these seven factors offer a quick study of the likely performance of a state, region, or population group in the coming century.

These key failure factors are:
* Restrictions on the free flow of information.
* The subjugation of women.
* Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
* The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
* Domination by a restrictive religion.
* A low valuation of education.
* Low prestige assigned to work.

Several of these factors are applicable in China, which, as we all know, is a non-competitive state. Or issit?

They have massively increased in the last decade, according to this competitiveness scorecard which seems to be pretty prominent. They spent 1997-2001 ranked in the 30s, but in 2006 they ranked 19th in the world in 2006 (after rising from 31st in 2005).

Maybe it's a fluke, I don't know how the rankings are set. Based on the past years and this year, China would be roughly considered in the same "bracket" as Belgium, Scotland, Thailand, Korea, Chile.

Luxembourg is in 4th place. Which parameters are they using?? Clean air, use of toiletpaper?

Luxembourg is in 9th place, Iceland is 4th.

They are ranking the economies from the most to the least competitive, which rate a country on how efficient and sucessful the country is in business. How well their citizens should be able to maintain a good standard of living. That doesn't mean they could become a world power. That requires more than this rating covers. :cool:

China may have its... shortcomings, but it sure as hell has a competitive economy, for all their bluster about the CCP.

Let's give UT's Ralph Peters link a bit of testing -- I not only got a "Firefox couldn't find" but no URL shown in the browser window at all. Will it (the link and the site) come up later?

fixed

Thanx, tanx, cranx... Manx. ;)