Superpower of the Human Race: Could America losing its Western identity give it a strategic edge?

[Emperor of Wurttemburg 43]

Pls expand on your comment....

In particular if you have examples of successful long term empires built on ethnic diversity, please provide.... In other threads we have a poster from Africa arguing that the issue of most african states is that they have ethnic diversity which creates massive governance issues with the results we know. He has a goood point

The United States of America. Persia, Rome, basically all the early Muslim ones. Empires in the Classical world didn't start getting large until they started getting diverse.

 

[Emperor of Wurttemburg 43]

Are you seriously going to use South Africa as an example of successful diversity ? The country has had massive discrimination longer than it has had equality.

Gabon has barely 2 million people (a medium size city) and is only "prosperous" thanks to Oil... and Singapore IS a city ....

I am still not seeing any examples of long term succesful diverse empires here... Since you are currently in China you know that China was built by trying to erase diversity wherever possible (which it still does, with Tibet and the Ouighours)... On a smaller scale, so was France....

It's funny how France spent the late 19th century and 20th century having anxiety attacks about it's declining population now is anxious about it's increasing immigrant population that fixed the problem.

There's a pretty good modern example, France was going to lose it's status as a great power if it remained a nation state.

 

[tomar]

The United States of America. Persia, Rome, basically all the early Muslim ones. Empires in the Classical world didn't start getting large until they started getting diverse.

And where are the Persian empire and the Roman empire now ? Gone for much longer than they existed..... And gone are the early muslim ones ...... And its the other way round, as empires grow geographically they become more diverse (necessarily)... until they eventually can no longer manage that diversity.....

As for the US , its still quite young....

 

[tomar]

It's funny how France spent the late 19th century and 20th century having anxiety attacks about it's declining population now is anxious about it's increasing immigrant population that fixed the problem.

There's a pretty good modern example, France was going to lose it's status as a great power if it remained a nation state.

France is still a nation state..... and the relatively recent diversity has created so many problems that people are seriously talking about a looming civil war...

 

[Emperor of Wurttemburg 43]

Pls expand on your comment....

In particular if you have examples of successful long term empires built on ethnic diversity, please provide.... In other threads we have a poster from Africa arguing that the issue of most african states is that they have ethnic diversity which creates massive governance issues with the results we know. He has a goood point

People say the Austro-Hungarian Empire was going to inevitably collapse due to diversity and different ethnic groups.Just not true. It was not a "powder keg". It was the last state where identity was determined by ruler not ethnicity or nationality, a hard concept for people to generally understand today though it was the norm for much of European history.


The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was caused in relation to Bosnia which was acquired a few years earlier. Bohemia had hated their Hapsburg masters since the Reformation and had started the Thirty Years War by tossing Hapsburg reps out the window. 300 years had passed since then. Hungary had issues but were appeased with the dual monarchy and the Hapsburgs were so popular they remained a monarch without a monarch for political reasons(bizzare setup they had). Croatia and Slovakia had been part of Hungary for 1000 years, Slovenia part of Austria for centuries with the ones given the choice to vote mostly voting to remain in Austria. Poland greatly preferred the Catholic Austrians to the Orthodox Russians and Protestant Germans. Sure they preferred a nation of their own to all three but they weren't angry before that became an option after WWI.

Transylvania was a mess because of the weird way the religious demographics were geographically distributed. It was basically nation states within a diverse larger area. Looked like poka dots on a map.

 

[Emperor of Wurttemburg 43]

And where are the Persian empire and the Roman empire now ? Gone for much longer than they existed..... And gone are the early muslim ones ...... And its the other way round, as empires grow geographically they become more diverse (necessarily)... until they eventually can no longer manage that diversity.....

As for the US , its still quite young....

If the standard is immortality everyone fails. Nationalism has been a thing for less than 250 years.

Before diversity they didn't expand at all as they had to rely on brutality suppression or in the Assyrian case transporting groups from their homeland and seperating them. Classical Empires had a cap in size until Persia came along and started encompassing different groups and trying to make them accept life in an empire through tolerance and a larger identity .

US has the most secure geographic and political setting in human history. If we fall it will most likely be by our own hands.

Another example is the Ottomans btw. Once nationalism was brought to the region it became hell on earth.

 

[tomar]

People say the Austro-Hungarian Empire was going to inevitably collapse due to diversity and different ethnic groups.Just not true. It was not a "powder keg". It was the last state where identity was determined by ruler not ethnicity or nationality, a hard concept for people to generally understand today though it was the norm for much of European history.


The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was caused in relation to Bosnia which was acquired a few years earlier. Bohemia had hated their Hapsburg masters since the Reformation and had started the Thirty Years War by tossing Hapsburg reps out the window. 300 years had passed since then. Hungary had issues but were appeased with the dual monarchy and the Hapsburgs were so popular they remained a monarch without a monarch for political reasons(bizzare setup they had). Croatia and Slovakia had been part of Hungary for 1000 years, Slovenia part of Austria for centuries with the ones given the choice to vote mostly voting to remain in Austria. Poland greatly preferred the Catholic Austrians to the Orthodox Russians and Protestant Germans.

Translvania was a mess because of the weird way the religious demographics were geographically distributed.

Well, on the other hand look at what happened in (now defunct) Yugoslavia.... Even the czechs and the slovaks could not live as one state for long...

 

[tomar]

If the standard is immortality everyone fails. Nationalism has been a thing for less than 250 years.

Before diversity they didn't expand at all as they had to rely on brutality suppression or in the Assyrian case transporting groups from their homeland and seperating them. Classical Empires had a cap in size until Persia came along and started encompassing different groups and trying to make them accept life in an empire through tolerance and a larger identity .

US has the most secure geographic and political setting in human history. If we fall it will most likely be by our own hands.

Another example is the Ottomans btw. Once nationalism was brought to the region it became hell on earth.

Well, it was not really paradise under the ottomans....

As for the US, in its short history, diversity has been a major issue already... First the US genocided the locals, then it enslaved africans, and in parallel it basically ethnically cleansed mexicans....Asians (particularly chinese) had untermensch status.... The love for diversity has only been "a thing" for the past 40 years or so....

 

[Emperor of Wurttemburg 43]

France is still a nation state..... and the relatively recent diversity has created so many problems that people are seriously talking about a looming civil war...

90% is debatable and that only makes the people upset about it seem more bigoted(had a similar discussion about Egypt where about 10-15% of the population was sub-Saharan and people disagreed about what that meant). In college I learned the definition was basically 100% and seeing the uproar the extremist minority of French are having over 10% it's clear they seem to agree with that definition. Don't want to comment on modern French politics but the modern equivalent of a Nazi party that used to universally be condemned is quite popular there and it being unstable does not speak to the merit of that instability. If there is going to be a Civil War because 10% of the country looks different than the other 90% boo-hoo. In the US majorities are going to swap and it's nowhere close to starting a civil war, divided as the US is.

 

[Millennium 7]

The United States of America. Persia, Rome, basically all the early Muslim ones. Empires in the Classical world didn't start getting large until they started getting diverse.

Hmmm... I actually believe it is the other way round: they become diverse when they got large. In diversity, though, there are advantages and disadvantages.