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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   24765 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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To get bigger to better compete with China.

I still don’t understand what Alberta offers that other places don’t. Given that we haven’t vacuumed up our various resource-rich territories or capital-rich allies, Alberta would have to be awfully special to change the calculus.

It doesn't need to offer anything that the US doesn't already have. We should be trying to get other rich English speaking places to join the US for reasons of economies of scale in defense.

Join us, say, in mutual defense organizations?

We’re already on excellent terms with occupied north Montana, as far as I know. I don’t see what you expect to get from adding states rather than mere allies. One of these things is much more expensive, economically and politically, than the other.

Or, to put it another way. If this is such a good idea, why didn’t we do it through most of the Cold War? Instead, we used proxy wars, supplied our allies, and provided the backbone to any strategic moves by the rival superpower. It worked out pretty well for us.

"Or, to put it another way. If this is such a good idea, why didn’t we do it through most of the Cold War?" We lacked the capacity. A huge reason the North didn't let the South leave and fought a civil war to keep them in the union is because everyone knew the US was much militarily stronger as one nation

So in the 1860s we had the capacity to fight half the country, presumably because "everyone knew" that it was for military solidarity. We clearly maintained said capacity up until WWI, since we were playing Manifest Destiny, closing the frontier, and forming new states. After a nice little break in which we snowballed to superpower status, we closed out the set with two final territories.

At which point did we lose the capacity to annex another state or five?

To get a rich and English speaking state, we would have had to attack the British Empire, which would not have been easy until after WW II, at which point doing so would have devastated the US brand name.

There really is a lot of oil up there -- if it comes to resource-wars this would be a logical target. (mind you the oil in Alberta is not much closer to Montana than Texas is)

Coal too! It's really a Mad-Max paradise. (although if you want water you probably should go to BC)

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