Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
– from George Washington’s Farewell Address (emphasis mine)
When Ron Paul makes a statement like the bolded bit above, he gets called an isolationist, dangerous, etc. Anybody care to level that accusation against George Washington too?
I’ll be waiting. Don’t be shy.
I just love Washington’s farewell address. The whole last half of the speech sounds like a Ron Paul speech.
This idea was violated by the second president and has been expanded since. It would be nearly impossible to remove ourselves from the associations we have around the world now. Don’t get me wrong, I would love not to be involved with half, if not more, of the situations we have around the world but we have chosen a path, as a nation, to make freedom for all people of the world a priority, if they choose to pursue it. We are looked to to support all the nations that yearn to be free, but are choked by tyranny. It is the stand we have decided to make and we need to back up all those people who chose to keep this ideal alive.
I think Washington’s words are less of a hard-and-fast rule and more of a guideline. Still, we’ve gotten too far away from them, in my opinion. You’re right that the journey away from the ideal started early on in the game, though. And, as Washington said, we should try to fulfill our obligations now that we’ve entered into them.
Who looks to us to support all the nations that yearn to be free but are choked by tyranny? Why should we bother to help them if they aren’t willing to make a stand on their own?
When are you signing up to go help out the countries who are choked by tyranny who want to be free?
We can’t even pay for our own financial obligations as a nation as it is. Are you volunteering to pay more taxes to help our with this?
How should we go about deciding which peoples have done enough in choosing to pursue freedom for us to go in and help out? I don’t recall the people in Iraq doing much at all, and we invaded there (for several stated reasons). We didn’t seem to do much to help out those students in China who eventually were cut down by the Chinese military for demonstrating for freedom.
Like it or not, we can’t legislate away the law of supply and demand. There is a limited supply of money and lives we can spend to help out other countries. We’re about to start reaping the bitter harvest of over half a century of brain-dead economic policy, much of which drove equally brain-dead foreign policy. I hope we’ll sit back and think, and learn a lesson … but I doubt it. We didn’t learn from the Great Depression either.
Perhaps, though, some of us will re-evaluate those commitments and look back to at least this bit of wisdom from Washington. The man was hardly perfect, but this one is a gem.
By the way, Brian (bbaldowski), are you calling Washington a dangerous isolationist? Don’t be shy.
If he was around today, yes. About Iraq, they have rebelled in the past but got no help. Better late than never.
p.s I can’t remember if it was Catherine Coulter or Laura Ingram who made the comment that if she listened to Ron Paul talk long enough she is almost convinced by him.
OK, so I have you on record as saying that Washington (in our current context) is a dangerous isolationist. Excellent! At least you’re consistent there.
So I’m wrong about Iraq. That’s my one time for this year. At least you can know that all my statements from now on will be correct without having to bother to research them.
Still, if we’re sticking up for all the people who want freedom from tyranny, you have to admit we’re doing a pretty poor job. We promised to help the Cubans back in the sixties and left them holding the bag when it got down to the brass tacks. We haven’t helped the Chinese. We’ve not done much to help the Iranians. We let the Saudis continue to be tyrannical, and call them our bestest buddies. We let the Israelis push the Palestinians around. We could take a stronger stand on Taiwan. The list goes on.
And now that we’ve gotten Saddam out of the way, they are well on the way to setting up a quasi-Islamic state and are playing nice with Iran now, and rubbing shoulders with the disturbing but still quite fun-to-watch Ahmadinejad. Fat lot of good our intervention has done.
I’ve said it before and I shall say it again. If the people can’t cooperate enough on their own to overthrow the tyrant they don’t like, then if some outside power comes in and sweeps him into the dustbin of history, what follows isn’t going to be much of an improvement (if any) over what was there before. In other words, a waste of our resources.
I think that Mr. Clifton you left out one point on Iraq. Now besides having Egypt, Saudia Arabia, and Yemen on our side we now have Iraq as ally in the Middle East. God will surely bless that.
It is the strange dichtomy in me, I am able to see too many people’s point of view. I tend to agree with you it would have been better not to have gotten involved in world afairs to the extent we are, but since we are we should be consistant with our help. However, we also need to bestudious and not overextend ourselves.
I would dfend Washington when he spoke, there is no way he could envision a world which would allow messages to be delivered almost instantaniously, all people to travel from other countries to American in hours instead of months, and corporations that spand the globe the way they do today. If this was 1799, I would whole heartedly strive for Washington’s ideals, but the interconnectedness of the world prevents that.
I try to be good at grasping other people’s viewpoints as well. I hope I succeed. So … I understand the motivation behind wanting to help people in other nations become “free” (I’m leaving that definition vague for the time being).
I just think in real life we end up causing far more problems and don’t really help at all.
For instance, what percentage of a country’s population should want to be “free” before we intervene and help? What steps do they have to take to demonstrate that they are serious? What happens when the minority doesn’t like the results of our intervention and takes control of the country later? What if 80% of the population wants to be “free” but 55% wants a different definition of “free” than what we want to provide (and the other 25% wants something in line with what we want to help set up)? What if the large percentage of the population uses our resources and then turns against us? What if their definition of “free” includes both “democracy” and “socialism”? Do we want to support them?
These are hard questions and aren’t easy to answer. When our government acts in situations and intervenes, then the reputation of our government is at stake. People in other countries then like or dislike our government based on those actions. And, like it or not, we cannot stamp out “dislike of the United States” by military intervention or financial aid or anything of that nature.
When individual citizens act to help causes they support around the globe (or band together to form organizations to do that) then it is largely the reputation of the citizen or group that is enhanced or tarnished. This, I believe, is the more desirable course of action.
The notion that we can and should intervene to help other people who desire freedom (or that we should intervene when our interests are at stake outside of our national boundaries) is dangerous because it does not fit within the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” paradigm. Just try letting Muslim advocates of Sharia law intervene in our country to set up a government that fits into their worldview, in the interests of the Muslims in the US that want to live under such a system. You wouldn’t like that, would you?
I don’t know about you, but if I was engaged in fighting tyranny of the Josef Stalin variety in a post-republic US, I wouldn’t want the British to intervene on our behalf … they’d want to set up something like the British government rather than the small-government Libertarian setup I’d like to see. I’d rather they let us stand on our own and hash things out if we could succeed in overthrowing the totalitarian regime we opposed. I would rather fail to do so than have the aid of the British government (or any other government you might want to substitude). Why? Because they’d want a say in the way things looked post-overthrow, in a way that would benefit their interests … just as we do when we overthrow regimes. Iraq is a perfect case in point. The Iraqis seem to be on track to set up something similar to what Iran has, yet we don’t want that. We have a conflict of interest, and are trying to pressure them to do things our way. We came and helped overthrow the Ba’athists, but we aren’t willing to let things come to their logical conclusion given the power vacuum.
If that weren’t enough, we simply can’t afford to give aid (military and financial) to foreign nations even if we are very choosy about who we aid! We are running a budget deficit, and have been for years. Government spending is outstripping income. We cannot borrow to run our government forever. So, what do we do? Tax the citizens more? Are we going to impoverish our citizens in the interest of overthrowing tyranny and aiding other nations? We certainly can’t if we keep up the current welfare state we have … we’d put ever citizen of the US on the dole, and that would cost more as well. Our nation is operating in a manner that cannot be sustained long-term.
As I’ve said countless times before … if citizens of the US believe in a cause, whether it is inside our borders or outside, they should be the first in line to donate their time and money (and perhaps their lives) for that cause. For the government to try to make that determination for them is unworkable. There is no accountability in our government any more. When the government has taken on as many causes and introduced as many programs as ours has, the ability to simply vote for or against a politician becomes an impossibly complex task, and the favors doled out by said politicians influence the votes of their own constituents. Yes, I said it … government programs, subsidies, handouts, etc. are nothing more than a thinly veiled form of buying votes. There is no way that anyone can make a coherent and convincing argument that people in a given district are more likely to consider how their congressman has voted on foreign policy issues than whether he has kept the military base in their district open, or brought government projects to their district that benefit them financially.
So, I disagree with your assessment of Washington. While you are right that he could not have possibly forseen the world we live in today, I feel quite certain that he would believe just as strongly today that our involvement in foreign affairs compromises our life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and peace here at home.
Before commenting I want to say I just took a vicodin about 2 hours ago and its starting to kick in.
I believe that you both are making a terrible mistake in not giving the founders the insight to see the world that we are now in. Granted the technology has changed things greatly (and this factor alone greatly adds to the complexity of the world in which we live) but not so greatly that it effects or affects the careful isolation policies that the founders instituted for our protection. Technology has indeed improved tremendously. Yet in the day of founders they too sat in a world of relatively new and expedited communication and travel. Ships could travel from England/Europe in a fraction of the time to the Americas then a hundred years before.
They foresaw the problems that would occur when we left care for the sovereignty of our nation for the care of other nations. Take for example France, we offered no military aid during their countless rebellions. We stayed out of the political turmoil in the South Americas and Africa. Nor did we get involved in either World War until our interest were at stake. Nation building always leads to disaster for the nation doing the building. The only outcome that can come from nation building is to weaken the nation that is doing the building. We have no vested interest as a nation to be in Iraq. We should withdraw sooner than later. I personally believe we should with drawl in the middle of the night and have our troops home and let the Iraqi military take the lead in all operations. Let the Iraqi people forge their own destiny. If they are attacked by a nation such as Iran and request our aid then we give them aid only in so far to protect our interest. We most certainly could trade weapons for oil and oil rights but to invest soldiers to literally build schools and so forth is not a wise investment. The longer we ignore the founders and the wisdom of the government they created the longer we run the risk of loosing our sovereignty in the name of forming a brotherhood of nations that slowly erodes the distinction of each nation. In short nations can not be their brothers keepers and remain sovereign. Our forefathers knew this and that is why Washington was weary of having Americans get involved in other nations affairs. Our sovereignty is slowly being dissolved as we over extend ourselves.
By this I mean we are spread to thin as a nation, which I believe is what Washington is warning us against. Our people do not have the resolve to fight in a war that doesn’t directly effect them. Imagine if we had placed the troops in Afghanistan that are now in Iraq. We likely could have captured Bin Laden and destroyed Al Qaueda and the Taliban which did attack us. Our political landscape here would surely be much more united on a whole. Instead we have angered millions of people across the world driven by an ideology of hatred of America as occupiers (benign occupation is still occupation).
We are now indeed thanks to our military actions involved in a war that has isolated us from the world and removed much of our prestige and authority. We face the real prospect of being in total isolation not by our choice but by other nations acting against us. Mr. Clifton is quite right in that every move we make off our soil affects our nations life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and our chance for peace here. We may grant it to others and ironically loose it for ourselves.
We have enough problems to worry about on our own soil that should be our primary focus. The last time I checked here in America countless people die of needless abortion, hunger, and disease. Perhaps we as a nation should learn to quote the great prophet Jesus and say let us “worry about the log in our eye before worrying about the speck in our neighbors.”
Last God is still sovereign and can build nations much better than we mere mortals. He did it here in America after all.
Just as an FYI, (I already told Will this via IM but I’m going to record it here on them thar inter-tubes for posterity), I didn’t mean quite what you read into my words as far as the founders not being able to grasp the world we live in today. I meant in a very specific sense … ie, Washington could more than likely not forseen the internet, phones (landlines and wireless), traveling to Europe on a flying machine in a matter of hours, ships powered by nuclear reactors, sending men to the moon, etc. I feel quite confident they didn’t expect the world to stay in stasis … you’re quite right that being able to travel to the “New World” wasn’t conceivable a few hundred years prior to the authoring of the US Constitution … simply because nobody in Europe knew it was there!
I too meant the same thing, the technologies we have today were not conceivable in the 1780’s. As to only fighting when out interests are at stake, Isn’t in our interest to have as many nations we support freedom and equality as there can be. We have all seen what happens when nations are ruled by dictators and tyrants. They have little to no regard for their fellow nations. They would take it upon themselves to attack other nations on a whim. Those that have a government that supports freedom are less likely to follow those base desires because the balance of power is spread to enough people. A consensus must be made before an action can be taken. That safegaurds th United States more than any other action we can take in the world.
So, what are some examples of dictators that have attacked other nations on a whim?
Sadaam to Kuwait
Hitler to any of the countries he attacked
Napolean and his invasions.
You can come up with more.
I think I know where you are going with this. The U.S. and Mexico, Hawaii, and any number of the other examples of American colonialism.
Am I right?
No, you’re quite wrong … that wasn’t in view at all. But maybe I should go down that hallway now that you’ve opened the door? Actually I wanted to see if you would either bring up Saddam and Kuwait, or Hitler. I scored big because you did both.
I wouldn’t say that Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was “on a whim” … relations between Iraq and Kuwait had been on the rocks since the end of the Iran/Iraq war in the eighties, partially because Iraq wasn’t able to repay Kuwait for the massive amounts of cash they’d lent to Iraq during the war. Iraq tried to sell oil at a higher price (taking advantage of OPEC’s production cuts) to help repay the debt, and in response, Kuwait (defying OPEC) increased its production, preventing any substantial profit on Iraq’s part. I suspect that it would be difficult to come up with a “good” reason for Kuwait’s production increases.
That action was seen (understandably) as hostile by Iraq. So, in the end, the invasion of Iraq was hardly on a whim, nor was it an attack on a completely uninvolved and innocent country.
I’m hardly defending Saddam here. There ain’t much good to say about a fellow who fancied himself the Stalin of the Middle East. Obviously, if he’d not fought an expensive war with his neighbor Iran and financed it by borrowing an obscene amount of money from Kuwait, he wouldn’t have had the trouble in the first place. But, in the end, there were economic motives for the invasion, and perhaps had Kuwait not increased their oil production at the time that they did, the conflict would have been avoided. But, it’s hard to argue that in some way Hussein wasn’t acting to defend the interests of his country. Kuwait might have also considered the wisdom of lending an amount of money roughly equal to Iraq’s GDP to Iraq in the first place.
On a slightly different note, the history of Kuwait post-WWI is quite interesting, and shows that there is some basis for Hussein’s claim that Kuwait was actually part of Iraq (the way China claims Tawain is a part of China).
Hitler is another story entirely (again, I’m not defending this fellow … he was quite evil). In one sense his invasion of Poland and France are quite understandable in light of the vengeful Versailles Treaty. He made it abundantly clear from the start that he desired that the treaty be nullified or revised … thus you can’t really say that those invasions were on a whim. Now … as far as his invasion of the USSR goes, there might be a good case there (there’s an even better case to be made that it was amazingly stupid), although it would seem that he made it clear that was his eventual goal in Mein Kampf. And … it would not be responsible to assume that Stalin would have just left Germany alone (even in view of the Molotov-Ribbentrob pact), especially given the intense dislike that the Nazis and Communists had for each other. Conflict between Germany and the USSR was bound to happen … it was just a matter of who started it, and it was Hitler. Thus … though his invasions may or may not be indefensible, they definitely weren’t on a whim.
There’s also the matter of Hitler’s (apparent) increasing loss of connection to reality as WWII drug on. I once saw a special on the History Channel that made a good case that he was a meth addict … but you know how those things go.
Although I’m not prepared to address Napoleon and his military conquests, given the general atmosphere in Europe, I would wager that I could find evidence that they weren’t on a whim and without some modicum of cause either.
My point is that in pretty much every case, military conflict is not begun on a whim. I’m sure somewhere there’s an example, but by and large I’m willing to bet that it was carefully planned, justified by one or more wrongs in the distant or immediate past (perceived or not), and most certainly was not without some amount of warning. It wasn’t like Hussein up and invaded Kuwait one day after years and years of pristine relations. Nor did Hitler just up and decide to invade Poland, France, the USSR, Britain, etc. Even the American examples of colonialism you cite weren’t begun on a whim.
I may or may not have said it before … but as I grow more and more decrepit and old (just wait until you get to be my age
) I more and more firmly believe that all wars are economic in nature. The examples above, I think, bear this out. The Iraq/Kuwait conflict had its genesis in economics (namely Hussein’s inability to repay his irresponsible debts). All of Hitler’s initial conquests were predicated on the vindictive Versailles Treaty. His invasion of Poland was due to his desire for more resources, the reclaiming of the Polish corridor (which Germany had never even recognized post-WWI), and especially the re-annexation of Danzig/Gdasnk/Habloobabubblah/whatever you want to call it. His invasion of the USSR was due to his desire for more land and natural resources. His invasion of France was less economic in nature, but after all, France had already declared war on Germany after the invasion of Poland (interestingly enough, France and Britain, to a certain extent, wanted Poland to give up the corridor and possibly Danzig as well, and tried quite hard to convince the Polish to do so, yet declared war on Germany after its invasion anyway) … and after the declaration of war, tried to obtain peace with France and Britain (for … you guessed it … economic reasons, since Germany was short on supplies), though he’d always intended to eventually be at war with both. So … perhaps Hitler and Hussein had little regard for their fellow nations, but their fellow nations had little regard for Germany and Iraq either, so the feeling was quite mutual.
A few things I forgot to mention …
Europe and the aftermath of a European War (WWI) were responsible for the whole Iraq/Kuwait border dispute in the first place. Same with Hitler and the mess that followed his military conquests (I’ve heard it said that WWII is better understood as the second phase of WWI, and I’m quite inclined to agree that is the case). European conflicts were hardly new to the twentieth century, either … they were in full effect even in 1776. Is it any wonder that George Washington didn’t want us involved with their disputes?
See, now I’ve brought things full circle to the original topic.
I never said the whim was just because it’s there. I understand the justifications for the invasions. The question still remains, would these wars have happened if not for the ego of the man in charge. If Hussein had a strong leader or legislature that opposed his views, or at least could see the flaws in his thinking, or the impracticality of the plan, and spoke out against him, there is a good likelihood the invasion would not happen. Same for Hitler, Napolean, and other dictators you can name. There was no organized opposition to these people. Fear and greed and hatred drove their followers to do as they were bid. I contend though that a strong opposition group would have prevented these wars. The same goes for colonization around the world.
Here you can point to the post on page about invaders as being in conflict with what I am saying in this post.
What fun! Can I join in? Or is this man-talk only?
So Brian … what do you define as “a whim” then?
Three notes. The historical situation in France when Napoleon took charge was less than ideal but Napoleon (through trickery and military genius) seized power of France and led it at first into national renewal in world affairs, stability from democratic bottlenecks in their parliament, and at first kept France from falling back into anarchy. Several of his invasions where popularly backed. The people only turned on Napoleon when the Russian invasion went very bad. Some would say Napoleon had to invade and change the nations (lets call this nation building) around him (through a mixture of coercion and genuine modernizing reform) to secure the best interest of France. Look what happened to Napoleon and France.
Bush invaded Afghanistan and later Iraq (at first with broad popular support) because he believed that it was needed to secure American interest and then kept us there to rebuild the ruins (lets call this nation building too). The American people only turned on Bush when things started going really badly (regardless of how bad it may or may not be on the ground, the popular culture disdains the war). Look what happened to Bush and America. (Notice a pattern here?)
Third, no matter how you paint if you nation build (for good or for ill) and ignore Washington’s sound advice you end up in deep turmoil. No sovereign nation (be it composed of a thousand tyrants who vote or one tyrant who assumes power via whatever means) can sustain itself when it entangles itself in other nations affairs. Washington was right when he encouraged us to trade (which allows for the corridor of ideas to be exchanged) but not quickly get entangled in other nations affairs. Simply stated again,
“The longer we ignore the founders and the wisdom of the government they created the longer we run the risk of loosing our sovereignty in the name of forming a brotherhood of nations that slowly erodes the distinction of each nation. In short nations can not be their brothers keepers and remain sovereign.”
I would prefer my daughter and (all of her contemporaries) to live their lives in a America that worries about the proverbial logs in its own eyes before to readily being concerned of removing the speck in another nation’s eyes. Sadly, this is not the direction either political party is leading our nation. May God raise up a modern Washington who has read and will defend our constitution and its wise values.
come join the fun Maci!!!!
I whim doesn’t mean there is no reason. The point I am trying to make is the dictator acts without the regard of his citizens, no matter the reasons. I ask, did the German people want to go to Poland. Did they want to start another war. Only twenty or so years before they had been devastated. How many truly wanted to start again and run the risk of a repeat? I know many were swayed by the persuasion of Hitler (Read the book I Am Adolf Hitler, it is journal entries he recorded, and were later transcribed. It is hypnotizing and I can’t even hear his voice, which was supposed to be his most persuasive tool.) Many also rallied around the idea of killing Jews. The Jews were not seen as people but symbols of an idea. The Anti-semitism of Europe has been well documented. Another book to read on that topic is Hitler’s Willing Executioners. It is a little dry but it documents a whole host of atrocities done by regular German people. (That is for another topic. I did write about that on my blog under one of the Durden-Smith topics.) I digress greatly. But, if Hitler had not desired the destruction and conquering of Europe, WWII probably would not have happened.
“I cannot stand still, a king, however stupid, who comes of royal blood, may fail and still be king - but I, whom they call a usurper, I must pile one success upon another if I am to last!”
Napoleon Bonaparte
Ah….the agony of a dictator. It really IS all about THEM.
The circumstances of the world that surround are but fuel…
Maci
“A wolf is still a wolf, even if you say it is a chicken.” Eugen Weber
A dictator’s ultimate hunger is for power. He will use any means necessary to gain thwe power he desires. He will murder, steal, cajole, etc… If it gains him power it is not out of bounds. A good dictator is the one that taps into the disillusionment of his people and inspires them to follow his desires. They are a tool for his whims. No matter how legitimate the reasons may seem, the ultimate goal is expansion of his power.
As stated earlier, Hitler tapped into the longstanding hatred for Jewish people and the resentment the Treaty of Versailles engendered in the German people. Those were his means, the people were the tools. His ultimate desire was the conquering of Europe and eventually the world. If he were able to consolidate his power and Japen consolidate their power, then they would have begun fighting each other.
Hussein used a religious rift that was hundreds of years old to gain his power and then try to take over Iran. Then used a long standing complaint about borders to invade Kuwait. The religious hatred and border dispute were the means, the Sunnis under his control were the tools. His ultimate desire was to gain power and control the Middle East. The reason he never attacked Saudi Arabia is because Mecca and Medina, two of the holiest sites for Muslems are there. He was smart enough to know the backlash he would have received if he tried to fight the government that was housing these two holy sites.
Any number of historical figures can be broken down in these terms. Hannibal, Alexander, Napolean, Caeser, the list goes on. They had what seemed legitimate reasons for their conquests, but, ultimately, their desire was power.
Is there any primary evidence that Hitler intended to try and rule the world? That is the WORLD and not just Europe?
“It is eastwards, only and always eastwards, that the veins of our race must expand. It is the direction which Nature herself has decreed for the expansion of the German peoples.” (7th February 1945)
That is what I thought. Hitler really wanted Russia. At the least the European part of it for sure. I wonder if anyone has unearthed any kind of Nazi plan to “utilize” North America. I know that Trotsky was trying to spread the good news about his politics of choice to the USA. Then he had a date with an ice pick. Yuck!
Hitler had very little time to develop a complete strategy. I beleive his first goal was to take Europe and solidify his power there. There are enough of his writings that suggest he did not like the Asian or American people, from all countries. It would be only a matter of time before he would impliment a strategy for Asia. After that it would be the Americas. I can’t say that he would have wanted Germany to control it all. I could see it being much like the Soviet Bloc nations. They were ruled by individuals but they answered to Moscow.
Had very little time to develop a complete strategy? The second volume of Mein Kampf was published in 1926, a full twelve years before annexation of Austria in 1938. The first volume was published in 1925. The things contained in those two volumes had obviously been on his mind for some time before that. If he didn’t have enough time to develop his strategy from the general ideas of expanding Germany eastward and the eventual conflict he foresaw between Germany and USA and Britain (which he put around 1980 … and by that point he would have more than likely have exited the scene as a result of natural causes in the best case) in that time period … then he wasn’t going to get it developed, period.
Whether or not he had time to create a strategy for Asia is hardly relevant, though, considering that the feared Nazi war machine couldn’t even manage to make it across the English Channel and take British soil … and that was before Hitler stupidly decided he’d take on Stalin and the endless supply of citizens that got fed into the Nazi meat grinder on the eastern front. I seriously doubt Hitler would have fared much better even if there hadn’t been a western front and he could have concentrated all his efforts on the USSR. And this guy was going to take over the world? Please. Even if he had managed to roll over the entirety of the USSR, if he’d started on China, he probably would have been undone by popular uprisings and resistance in the territories he’d already conquered.
I find it unrealistic to believe that Hitler could have even ruled an empire the size of what the British had by WWII even if he’d had from 1938 to 1978 to develop it. America would have been quite out of the question. The idea is not significantly less ludicrous than the headline I saw in the Weekly World News some years back that announced “Iraqi Sub Spotted in Lake Michigan.”
I will admit I have never fully read Hitler’s writings. I don’t know what he planned or how he planned to impliment them. My arguement has never been his ability to obtain his goals. No dictator has been able to fully control their conquests and I would never expect Hitler to be able to do any better. My arguement is he was planning on trying to take over the world. Just because he Pinky and the Brained it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
OK, so let’s back up again then. Why do you think Hitler intended to take over the world, vs. just part of Europe and the USSR?
As early as the summer of 1928 he [Hitler] asserted in his second book (not published until I [Gerhard Weinberg] did it for him in 1961) that strengthening and preparing Germany for war with the United States was one of the tasks of the National Socialist movement. Both because his aims for Germany’s future entailed an unlimited expansionism of global proportions and because he thought of the United States as a country which with its population and size might at some time constitute a challenge to German domination of the globe, a war with the United States had long been part of the future he envisioned for Germany either during his own rule of it or thereafter.
From an article Gerhard Weinberg wrote about Hitler concerning the research Weinberg had on Hitler.
http://hnn.us/articles/32084.html
I’m going to try to have to find more information abut Weinburg’s research … it’s hard to tell from that brief article whether he’s accurate or not in assessing whether Hitler intended to attack the US during his lifetime or not.
It’s well established that Hitler envisioned German dominating the world at some point in the future, but whether he intended to accomplish that domination or not is another matter.
Oddly enough, the editor asks at the beginning of the article
It’s no big surprise that Germany declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor. After all, by late 1940 Germany was involved in a pact (with Italy as well, as if they really counted) with Japan that promised that both nations would protect the other if the US (or some other nation not involved in war at that point) failed to stay neutral in WWII. FDR made it obvious early on he didn’t really want neutrality by harassing both the German and Japanese navies. So … why wouldn’t Hitler be making plans for US involvement in the war? He would have been stupid to not be doing so.
I think we have somehow got off topic.
I have to question whether or not it matters when Hitler’s plans to dominate the world were designed to be implimented. He obviously wanted Germany to be the one dominate power around the globe. He would have prefered it happen while he was alive but he saw that as only a minor detail. If the German people were not able to take the lead and control while he was alive, I think he would have been happy to let it be his legacy to be the man who laid the foundation for it to happen. Maybe he hoped to be the Lenin of Germany. The revolutionary leader who brought his people to a better place.
The irony of the situation, one he could not foresee, was when his plans for global domination failed it led to America, his arch-rival, to take the role he hoped Germany would obtain. Having faced the crisis, America most then begin to find a role that would provent similiar situations. Thus leading us back to part of our topic, to truly protect American intrests we must face dictators head on throughout the world. If they are allowed to grow in strength, they will threaten not only America militarily, but economically, socially, and politically. With the size of the world “shrinking” everyday it becomes even more important for America to play a larger role in the world. We just need smart leaders to impliment the neccassary steps to protect us from foriegn threats.
This may lead to a discussion of the Iraq war. I will go ahead and state my opinion that it was needed. We had to eliminate the threat Iraq posed to the Middle East and the alliances and monatary intrests we held there. I just don’t agree with the execution of the plan. It could have been handled better.
Point Brian 1, All the others 0. :0
What do you think you scored a point on? Me wanting to read the Weinburg research? The fact that I haven’t responded to your last post yet? I didn’t know I had a chess tournament and I needed to respond within a certain amount of time. If you have to try to claim you’ve scored just because of the time, you must be in sorry shape.
I have been way to busy to keep up with this.
But … if we’re talking about foreign intervention, whether or not a foreign dictator intended to implement his plans (or even if they were capable of implementing their plans) is of great import. After all, spending money, time, and even lives to combat a threat that really isn’t a threat is a waste.
I will write more later (hopefully after I get a chance to read some on Weinburg). But, it will probably be next week because I am completely slammed with work.
I am sorry your slammed at work. I hope things calm down for you. I have been trying to do more reading on Weinberg also.
About it being a waste to spend, money, time and lives to combat a threat, wouldn’t you rather face a person before they have had a chance to build up their strength and so cost even more money, lives, and time to combat them when they impliment their schemes? Did that make sense?
Yes, it makes sense. No, I would rather wait until the United States is directly attacked (in a real unprovoked manner) before taking action. There is no excuse for pre-emptive strikes against any nation, regardless of the consequences on our end. If it costs more money, lives, and time, then so be it. That is the cost of acting in an honorable manner. Nor is there any excuse for goading a potential enemy into attacking us so that we can act like we are then in the right in fighting back.
In the mean time, there’s nothing wrong with building up defenses against a nation that is making threats that may or may not be serious in their threats. That is responsible. Attacking preemptively … that is irresponsible, and inexcusable. Period. If we are really a example and a beacon of liberty for the world, then we should behave that way. “Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t cut it.
Words are just that, words. We should respond to actions, not words.
OK, I now have a better idea of who Weinburg is and the conclusions he’s drawn from his research. I still disagree with his conclusions. While a critical question (and we will probably never know the answer) is whether Hitler’s talk of war with the United States was rhetoric or something he seriously intended to pursue, I still maintain that Germany lacked the ability to achieve anything remotely resembling global domination within his lifetime, even had he not lost WWII. It would have required forcefully occupying too many countries. At some point, there would be too many of them too fast, and Germany would have been unable to manage the inevitable resistance movements in all of them, and their momentum would have been compromised. I believe that Germany had already reached this point by 1942-1943, and Britain would have been able to turn the tide of the war on (on the western front) on their own without intervention by the US (which of course is to a certain extent a moot point since Germany did declare war on the US and thus bring them into the European conflict). But again … even if they had not reached the tipping point as far as managing occupied territories goes … as I’ve said before, Germany lacked the momentum to even cross the channel and occupy parts of Britain.
I suppose at some point we should bring this conversation back to Washington’s era.
On the other hand, I find the conversation about Germany quite fascinating. If only I had more time to read on the subject …
A question I was reading in a book called Judgement on Nuremburg, a look at American attiudes about the Nazi war crime trails, would the nazi’s have refrained from invading if they had known Nuremburg was a possibility?
Oooh … that makes for a good discussion. I could go either way.
On one hand, I think those in power in Nazi Germany were all too aware that they wouldn’t get a slap on the wrist and be told to behave in the future … after all, WWI showed them that they could get the shaft pretty badly if they were on the losing end.
On the other hand, it would appear that Hitler and his cronies were of the opinion that at least the British and maybe the Americans were sympathetic to the situation Germany was in as a result of the Versailles treaty, and might be attempt to be a little less punitive the next time around.
Rhetoric aside, it seems obvious (at least to me) that Hitler didn’t want war with Britain or the US at least in the near term. I think he realized that if his near-term goal was expansion to the east, having a front on both sides would compromise his ability to implement whatever bizarre plan he’d cooked up in his mind. I suspect that his attack on the USSR was out of necessity rather than simply being a harebrained scheme on his part. He had to have the resources from the USSR to maintain the western front and push Britain to the point of giving up or either taking the Isle.
In the end, because of the above … I tend to think that the Nazis would have waged war regardless of whether they thought they’d end up on “trial” for “war crimes” (and I lean in this direction probably 55% vs 45% ‘Germany wouldn’t have waged war’). I don’t think Hitler anticipated any real opposition from Britain when he rolled through Poland, France, etc. and didn’t expect that FDR would be so bent on harassing the Japanese to the point of bringing the US into the Pacific war (thus indirectly bringing the US into the European war).
If he’d known that that Britain and the US would be involved so soon, he might have reconsidered … but probably not any more than delaying things, or modifying his plans. But … he would have waged war one way or the other. If he hadn’t done so, at best he would have been the Kim Jong Il or Hugo Chavez of his era in Europe. At worst, without the war he wouldn’t have been able to maintain the economy, unify the minority of Germany that fell under his spell and supported him outright, and would have been out of power by the fifties.
Of course, thinking about this as Austin’s history class began studying World War II and some of the recent documentaries I have seen recently on Hitler, we can’t assume what he would do because his logic was completely different than any we can consider. Our standard logic doesn’t fit because, at least I am not, an egomanic or cult of personality like Hitler.
I’m not so sure Hitler’s logic was that much different from ours, at least in the early years. My view of humanity and dictators is that there is a little bit of Stalin, Hitler, Mugabe, etc. in all of us … we have the capacity to be like them given the right set of circumstances. It’s not a nice thought to think that we all could be as evil as Hitler, but I think it’s important to keep that in mind.
In the early years, I think he was just a cold, calculating individual willing to do whatever was necessary to grasp power. From my reading of him, he had a good idea of how to get people to follow him. Now … in the later years, I do suspect that he was under the influence of drugs of some variety. I saw a good special on the History Channel once that hypothesized that he was taking meth (or something like it) regularly to counteract Parkinsons or something of that nature. I think that fits pretty well because he seems to have gotten increasingly irrational after 1941 or so.
But, even if you take what you are saying … I think it makes an even stronger argument that he would have pressed ahead with the war even knowing the consequences.