Imperialism. y/n?

So 2 crazy tribes are at war constantly, then one empire bashes their armies, unites the lands and brings them better technology. The efforts of the empire to unite everything results in the basis of a strong future nation state when they finally leave.

Compare India to Africa, India's only major political troubles were border disputes with China, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

All of these countries maintained a semblance of democracy despite being as poor as Africa for many years, while China went through Totalitarianism and Africa suffered from a patchwork of military dictatorships (except in South Africa).

Empires have problems though when they have to compete with other empires, as we have seen in Africa, or when they cannot maintain security.

I'm going with "yes". Where empires failed, if the empire never interfered I do not believe countries would always end up like Thailand or Japan, I believe the same factors that led to the fail of empire would also lead to their failure as traditional societies trying to advance to modernity. They would end up like Ethiopia during the 70s and 80s or China after ww2.

Captcha niggers are nigger, easily to bypass like a nigger

>>2
As easy as it is to shackle a nigger?

>>2
Sorry, I meant to handcuff an African American, that is the proper term nowadays.

>>1
On that reasoning why stop at two tribes? The moment you justify toppling two warring countries "for their own good" your natural end game must be global domination.

Better that two warring tribes be isolated and kill each other indefinitely until their populace gets sick of it and chooses reform while the non-warring countries demonstrate the result of peace through economic and technological success.

>>5
If global domination is bad then well researched logical ethical reasoning will likely not justify global domination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

If the cost of waiting for the warring tribes to reach a stalemate is less than the cost of an empire conquering them, then waiting it out is justified.

As it stands, global domination would not be a good thing, though global domination by capitalism, rather than a political entity, would be a good thing. Whether it is justified for an empire to intervene depends on the differences in technology, which affects both how quickly and painlessly the war ends and how quickly the land is developed afterwards.

If you're worried that this line of thought might justify the propaganda efforts of imperialists, you should equally be worried about the propaganda efforts of smaller tyrannical regimes trying to maintain their own power. Both would seek global domination if they had the opportunity. Logical ethical reasoning is separate from this propaganda and does not allow prejudices like this to interfere.

>>6
The cost of waiting will always be less than that of intervening because any conquered nation cannot be a free society. Every single time an empire has conquered a country they have had to maintain their grip on power through decades long subjugation of the populace who naturally turn on their invaders. Such a society is not only morally repugnant but is a breeding ground for militarized resistance groups who will cause the invader trouble long after they have given up and left.

You simply cannot walk into two countries, bang some heads together and say "You're free now!" Reform must come from popular consensus if any real, long term change is to occur.

>>1
What the hell am I reading?

>>7
There is not much difference between the prevailing view of imperialism and a more objective view of imperialism, both would judge it to be immoral. The difference is in how they compare imperialism to the alternatives, the emotionally charged conformist view is that imperialism is evil so the natives must be good, the objective view is that both the imperialists and natives are under tyrannical regimes and we have to look at them both in more detail to find answers, so this is the only disagreement here.

The cost of waiting will always be less than that of intervening because any conquered nation cannot be a free society.

Becoming a free society is a gradual change, it can be argued that a society is never "truly free" until it is independent but certainly Hong Kong was more free than its neighbors in China for much of its history. India underwent rapid economic and technological development during the 20s, 30s and 40s, a significant middle class had been around since the 1860s and expanded even further during this time and exercised political power long before India was officially independent and democratic.

Thus, India did not need to become independent through outright civil war and when India became independent it could secure itself and maintain democratic institutions. Which is more than could be said for many African countries which became independent prematurely and were open to attack by marxist rebels, resulting in decades of civil war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambique#Conflict_and_civil_war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia#Mengistu_era
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angola#Independence_and_civil_war

>>8
When I say "compare india to Africa" you might want to look up the history of colonialism in those regions on wikipedia for some background info.

>>9
Being a free society is much more than having the vote. India still operates on an extremely oppressive caste system, you might have noticed that women get raped there quite a lot and India has a massive child prostitution and trafficking problem.

I agree that becoming free is a gradual change but it must come from within.

Would have to aggre to a curtain extent sure (yes). Although that is not to say that i support their actions of doing this, because i don't.

Dangerous time's, in a every changing world.

>>11
I would have to agree to a certain extent, although this is not to say I support their actions.

Dangerous times in an ever changing world.*
fix'd