OT:US don't qualify for EU membership, don't spank children, WW2 history.

[Cyrien]

That is possible though even if the Proclomation hadn't held and expansion was later allowed there would have still been conflict over the Lousiana territories which where in French control who at that time and for a great deal of time afterward until the rise of Germany as a power were not close friends at all and far closer to being enemies than anything else in regards to the UK. Also the French could not really afford the Lousiana areas, neither could the Spanish and even if the English had been inclined there is no way that the French would sell to them. So the Lousiana purchase area remains rather underdeveloped, in keeping with Spanish/Mexican ideas and culture most of the west remains mostly subsistence farming and wild indian lands.

Thus expansion of the US is cutoff by the French territories, which would also block any access to Spanish and later Mexican Territorial claims. This at the very least cuts off the western coast from US claims. Assuming US production capacity for the rest of it is still developed you lack the developed Western field of operations against the Japanese. This frees them from worries there and allows them to focus on aiding there German ally against the USSR.

In the case best case scenario... Hitler betrays the Japanese as he did the Soviets. Worst case... most of the world would then speak German or Japanese, or I would hope you have many many years of occupations and eventual overthrows of occupying forces. Either way nothing is the same.

Also worth noting is that if the US remained a colony then there is no reason for it to have its own large navy that is just under the total strength of the British navy. At best you probably have a British navy only a little larger than it would otherwise have been. It is worth noting that combined British and US naval might were barely enough to defeat Germany and Japan naval might in the first place. British and US Naval might being the first and second best but spread thinly and Japan and Germany being third and fourth largest but concentrated in small areas.

As for population. Most of the US population was gained through imigration through the promise of endless lands to expand to in the West (no longer the case) the land of Freedom and Religious Choice (most likely, no longer the case as many colonies before hand had their own religions established as did England) and lets not forget the several gold rushes in the west and the massive influx of people that those caused, no longer in the US.

No doubt the US would have been industrialized and had some impact.

My arguement isn't that it wouldn't. My arguement is that looking at the most probably things it probably wouldn't have been enough to stop what they were up against.

You make a case for it being better off in the outset with all of them working together, but it is unlikely that they could have coordinated fast enough to make a difference in the initial stages and with Japan now an unchecked power in the Pacific everything is different.

Quite simply the possibilities are staggering and I get a slight headache just thinking about them. Suffice to say it could possibly work out either way. No way to know without going through it.

But knowing what I know and seeing the way things worked out I tend to think that the changes would not have been for the better in terms of cost of life and outcome.

Imagine having to fight two seperate wars first against the Germans then against the Japanese after the Japanese had time to solidify their pacific position unopposed without need for naval surprise attacks or major fleet actions or losses and cementing their control over the oil and steel supplies they wanted to gain. With the added possibility of putting the Soviets on a two front war that they likely could not have won.

Another question? Who then finances the Panama canal? Is there even one? Does that make easy transit between the Atlantic and Pacific impossible?

Endless questions and no way to answer them.

Ah well... Time for sleep.

[Atrocities]

I think it would have been very interesting to live during those times. Think about it, the whole mass of the great unexplored territories. What a wonderment that must have been. I know what I would have been doing. I often wonder what it must have been like to have all of what is now the U.S. to roam, no borders, no taxes, no cops, just you, your people, and the great unknown. Of course there are those who believed this qoute, forget who said it or where it came from; "How dare the indians be on our land before we ever even knew it exsisted!"

In time all that is a national treasure, IE parks, will be comericallized and you will have to pay big bucks to go to them. They will become a business run by corperation and only SUV
driving, cell phone additic, therapy going, spoiled rotten, self absorb, ultra yuppies will be allowed in.

[Phoenix-D]

More likely they'll be paved over, unfortunatly. It doesn't help that the various legislatures are too often run by idiots.

Want a good example? I'm in school in Arizona. If I graduated and moved to Oklahoma right now, I could be classified as a terrorist almost immediately. Why? Because in their 'wisdom', they've decided to pass a law that states anyone who causes more than $500 worth of economic damage for political reasons is a terrorist..even if the political reasons are just, say, pointing out that a factory is polluting far more than the law allows.

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
Want a good example? I'm in school in Arizona. If I graduated and moved to Oklahoma right now, I could be classified as a terrorist almost immediately. Why? Because in their 'wisdom', they've decided to pass a law that states anyone who causes more than $500 worth of economic damage for political reasons is a terrorist..even if the political reasons are just, say, pointing out that a factory is polluting far more than the law allows.

Labelling environmentalist laywers as terrorists...

... I like it.

[jimbob]

Okay, I hadn't realized that the Louisiana purchase was so formitive/foundational to the maturation of the United State's industrial complex, though it definitely makes sense. I concede that you have some excellent arguments, and I stand enlightened by this debate!

cheers,
jimbob

[Unknown_Enemy]

is the Great Game restarting ? Indeed we live in interesting times.

THE STRATFOR WEEKLY
02 September 2003

by Dr. George Friedman

An Unlikely Alliance

Summary

Though the recent death of SCIRI leader Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim would appear to be raising the level of turmoil within Iraq, it might in fact help to push the United States and Iran toward a powerful -- if seemingly unlikely -- alignment.

Analysis

The death of Shiite Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), appears to have exacerbated the turmoil in Iraq. In fact, it opens the door to some dramatic shifts that might help stabilize the U.S. position in Iran. Indeed, it might even lead to a fundamental redrawing of the geopolitical maps of the region -- as dramatic as the U.S.-Chinese alignment against the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

To understand what is happening, we must note two important aspects of the al-Hakim affair. First, though far from being pro-American, al-Hakim was engaged in limited cooperation with the United States, including -- through SCIRI -- participating in the U.S.-sponsored Iraq Governing Council. Second, upon his death, Iran announced a three-day mourning period in his honor. Al-Hakim, who had lived in exile in Iran during much of Saddam Hussein's rule in Baghdad, was an integral part of the Shiite governing apparatus -- admired and loved in Iran.

We therefore have two facts. First, al-Hakim was engaged in limited but meaningful collaboration with the United States, which appears to be why he was killed. Second, he was intimately connected to Iranian ruling circles, and not just to those circles that Americans like to call "reformers." If we stop and think about it, these two facts would appear incompatible, but in reality they reveal a growing movement toward alignment between the United States and Iran.

The United States has realized that it cannot pacify Iraq on its own. One proposal, floated by the State Department, calls for a United Nations force -- under U.S. command -- to take control of Iraq. This raises three questions. First, why would any sane country put its forces at risk -- under U.S. command, no less -- to solve America's problems if it doesn't have to? Second, what would additional outside forces, as unfamiliar with Iraq as U.S. forces are, add to the mix, save more confusion? Finally, what price would the United States have to pay for U.N. cooperation; for instance, would the U.N. presence place restrictions on U.S. operations against al Qaeda?

Another proposal, floated by Defense Advisory Board Chairman Richard Perle, suggests that the way out is to turn Iraq over to Iraqis as quickly as possible rather than prolonging a U.S. occupation. The problem with Perle's proposal is that it assumes a generic Iraq, unattached to any subgrouping -- religious, ethnic or ideological -- that not only is ready to take the reins, but is capable of governing. In other words, Perle's proposal would turn Iraq over to whom?

Putting the Kurdish issue aside, the fundamental fault line running through Iraqi society is the division between Sunni and Shiite. The Shiite majority dominates the area south of Baghdad. The Sunni minority, which very much includes Hussein and most of the Baath Party's national apparatus, spent the past generation brutalizing the Shiites, and Hussein's group also spent that time making certain that Sunnis who were not part of their tribe were marginalized. Today, Iraq is a fragmented entity where the center of gravity, the Baath Party, has been shattered and there is no substitute for it.

However, embedded in Perle's proposal is a simple fact. If there is a cohesive group in Iraq -- indeed a majority group -- it is the Shiites. Although ideologically and tribally fragmented, the Shiites of Iraq are far better organized than U.S. intelligence reports estimated before the war. This is due to the creation of a clandestine infrastructure, sponsored by Iranian intelligence,
following the failure of U.S.-encouraged Shiite uprisings in the 1990s. While Washington was worried about the disintegration of Iraq and the growth of Iranian power, Tehran was preparing for the day that Hussein's regime would either collapse or be destroyed by the United States.

As a result, and somewhat to the surprise of U.S. intelligence, organizations were in place in Iraq's Shiite regions that were able to maintain order and exercise control after the war. British authorities realized this early on and tried to transfer power from British forces in Basra to local control, much to U.S. displeasure.

Initially, Washington viewed the Iranian-sponsored organization of the Shiite regions as a threat to its control of Iraq. The initial U.S. perception was that the Shiites, being bitterly anti-Hussein, would respond enthusiastically to their liberation by U.S. forces. In fact, the response was cautious and sullen. Officials in Washington also assumed that the collapse of the Iraqi army would mean the collapse of Sunni resistance. Under this theory, the United States would have an easy time in the Sunni regions -- it already had excellent relations in the Kurdish regions -- but would face a challenge from Iran in the south.

The game actually played out very differently. The United States did not have an easy time in the Sunni triangle. To the contrary: A clearly planned guerrilla war kicked off weeks after the conquest of Baghdad and has continued since. Had the rising spread to the Sunni regions, or had the Sunnis launched an intifada with massed demonstrations, the U.S. position in Iraq would have become enormously more difficult, if not untenable.

The Sunnis staged some protests to demonstrate their capabilities to the United States, but they did not rise en masse. In general, they have contented themselves with playing a waiting game -- intensifying their organization in the region, carrying out some internal factional struggles, but watching and waiting. Most interesting, rather than simply rejecting the U.S. occupation, they simultaneously called for its end while participating in it.

The key goes back to Iran and to the Sunni-Shiite split within the Islamic world. Iran has a geopolitical problem, one it has had for centuries: It faces a threat from the north, through the Caucasus, and a threat from the west, from whatever entity occupies the Tigris and Euphrates basin. When both threats are active, as they were for much of the Cold War, Iran must have outside support, and that support frequently turns into domination. Iran's dream is that it might be secure on both fronts. That rarely happens.

The end of the Cold War has created an unstable area in the Caucasus that actually helps secure Iran's interests. The Caucasus might be in chaos, but there is no great imperial power about to push down into Iran. Moreover, at about the same time,
the threat posed by Iraq abated after the United States defeated it and neutralized its armed forces during Desert Storm. This created a period of unprecedented security for Iran that Tehran exploited by working to reconstruct its military and moving forward on nuclear weapons.

However, Iran's real interest is not simply Iraq's neutralization; that could easily change. Its real interest is in dominating Iraq. An Iranian-dominated Iraq would mean two things: First, the only threat to Iran would come from the north and Iran could concentrate on blocking that threat; second, it would make Iran the major native regional power in the Persian Gulf. Therefore, were Iranian-sponsored and sympathetic Shiite Groups to come to power in Iraq, it would represent a massive geopolitical coup for the United States.

Initially, this was the opposite of anything the United States wanted. One of the reasons for invading Iraq was to be able to control Iran and its nuclear capability. But the guerrilla war in the north has created a new strategic reality for Washington. The issue at the moment is not how to project power throughout the region, but how to simply pacify Iraq. The ambitions of April have given way to the realities of September.

The United States needs a native force in Iraq to carry the brunt of the pacification program. The Shiites, unlike the United Nations, already would deliver a fairly pacified south and probably would enjoy giving some payback to the Sunnis in the
north. Certainly, they are both more likely to achieve success and more willing to bear the burden of pacification than is the United States, let alone any U.N. member willing to send troops. It is not, at the moment, a question of what the United States wants; it is a question of what it can have.

The initial idea was that the United States would sponsor a massive rising of disaffected youth in Iran. In fact, U.S. intelligence supported dissident university students in a plan to do just that. However, Iranian security forces crushed the rebellion effortlessly -- and with it any U.S. hopes of forcing regime change in Iran through internal means. If this were to happen, it would not happen in a time frame relative to Washington's problems in Iraq or problems with al Qaeda. Therefore, the Iranian regime, such as it is, is the regime the United States must deal with. And that regime holds the key to the Iraqi Shiites.

The United States has been negotiating both overtly and covertly with Iran on a range of issues. There has been enough progress to keep southern Iraq quiet, but not enough to reach a definitive breakthrough. The issue has not been Iranian nuclear power. Certainly, the Iranians have been producing a nuclear weapon. They made certain that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency saw weapons-grade uranium during an inspection in recent days. It is an important bargaining chip.

But as with North Korea, Iranian leaders know that nuclear weapons are more valuable as a bargaining chip than as a reality. Asymmetry leads to eradication of nuclear threats. Put less pretentiously, Tehran must assume that the United States -- or Israel -- will destroy any nuclear capability before it becomes a threat. Moreover, if it has nuclear capability, what would it do with it? Even as a deterrent, retaliation would lead to national annihilation. The value of nuclear weapons in this context is less real than apparent -- and therefore more valuable in negotiations than deployment.

Tehran has hinted several times that its nuclear program is negotiable regarding weapons. Officials also have indicated by word and deed to the United States that they are prepared to encourage Iraqi Shiites to cooperate with the U.S. occupation. The issue on the table now is whether the Shiites will raise the level of cooperation from passive to active -- whether they will move from not doing harm to actively helping to suppress the Sunni rising.

This is the line that they are considering crossing -- and the issue is not only whether they cross, but whether the United States wants them to cross. Obviously, the United States needs help. On the other hand, the Iranian price is enormous. Domination of Iraq means enormous power in the Gulf region. In the past, Saudi Arabia's sensibilities would have mattered; today, the Saudis matter less.

U.S. leaders understand that making such an agreement means problems down the road. On the other hand, the United States has some pretty major problems right now anyway. Moreover -- and this is critical -- the Sunni-Shiite fault line defines the Islamic world. Splitting Islam along those lines, fomenting conflict within that world, certainly would divert attention from the United States: Iran working against al Qaeda would have more than marginal value, but not, however, as much as Saudi Arabia pulling out the stops.

Against the background of the U.S.-Iranian negotiation is the idea that the Saudis, terrified of a triumphant Iran, will panic and begin crushing the extreme Wahhabis in the kingdom. This has delayed a U.S. decision, as has the legitimate fear that a deal with Iran would unleash the genie. But of course, the other fear is that if Iran loses patience, it will call the Shiite masses into the streets and there will be hell to pay in Iraq.

The death of SCIRI leader al-Hakim, therefore, represents a break point. Whether it was Shiite dissidents or Sunnis that killed him, his death costs the Iranians a key ally and drives home the risks they are running with delay. They are vulnerable in Iraq. This opens the door for Tehran to move forward in a deal with the United States. Washington needs to make something happen soon.

This deal might never be formalized. Neither Iranian nor American politics would easily swallow an overt alliance. On the other hand, there is plenty of precedent for U.S.-Iranian cooperation on a covert level. Of course, this would be fairly open and obvious cooperation -- a major mobilization of Shiite strength in Iraq on behalf of the United States -- regardless of the rhetoric.

Currently, this seems to be the most likely evolution of events: Washington gets Tehran's help in putting down the Sunnis. The United States gets a civil war in the Muslim world. The United States gets Iran to dial back its nuclear program. Iran gets to dominate Iraq. The United States gets all the benefits in the near term. Iran gets its historical dream. If Roosevelt could side with Stalin against Hitler, and Nixon with Mao against Brezhnev, this collaboration certainly is not without precedence in U.S. history. But boy, would it be a campaign issue -- in both countries.

[tesco samoa]

http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/03/09/10.html

A good read about the Last few years.

[Fyron]

It could be noted at this time that, had the USA not rebelled against the British yoke, slavery would have been banished at an earlier date. This may have reduced the construction of the American industrial giant, but that too is another arguement...

Slavery had nothing to do with the construction of the American industrial giant. ALL of the slave states had very poor industrial facilities, as they were primarily agricultural. The colonies/states that became heavy industrial centers made very little use of slavery, and abolished it early on in their statehoods. This is what allowed the North to win the US Civil War; they had a powerful industrial base, whereas the South had almost none. The Confederacy only Lasted as long as it did due to their excellent military leadership compared to the poor leadership of the Union armies up until Grant.

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
More likely they'll be paved over, unfortunatly. It doesn't help that the various legislatures are too often run by idiots.

Problem is that national parks are run by the Federal government and not state governments, so idiots in state legislatures can't pave them over. Of course, the idiots in the Federal legislature could, but that is far less likely because of the need to get legislators from at least half of the states to agree to paving over any particular national park.

[ September 09, 2003, 19:21: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Loser]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
The Confederacy only Lasted as long as it did due to their excellent military leadership compared to the poor leadership of the Union armies up until Grant.

Minor note: The Confederacy not only had superior generals, the men of their military were better suited to war right down to the average grunt. Men from the south had better 'wilderness' and 'survival' skills, more experience with firearms, better morale, and were more resiliant in hardship. Northern solders were unlikely to have ever fired a gun, didn't know anything about conserving food or water, were frequently disheartened conscripts, and generally couldn't find North with a compass on a clear night.

There is something to be said to the effect of the Industirla Revolution, and even the socialogical changes that directly proceded it, on agricultural peoples.

Men and skill may win battles, but economy wins wars.

[ September 09, 2003, 19:36: Message edited by: Loser ]

[rextorres]

Originally posted by tesco samoa:
http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/03/09/10.html

A good read about the Last few years.

Good read.

Another reason that Cheney doesn't want the UN involved is that Haliburton et. al. wouldn't get some of that $87 billion dollars that the administration requested.

It's funny how there is no money to deal with issues like the U.S. power grid - but plenty of money to pay Haliburton to fix Iraq's infrastructure.