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Originally Posted by Newt
Thats with all the evidence researched in hindsight - would you have supported an action like that at the time? Or even 5yrs later. Probably not.
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That's with everything that was known by Western governments at that time period. Obviously I'm trying not to include events that only happened after that point.
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Germany weren't going to invade England either... they were hostile towards the countries around them though, we still had to step in. Similarly, one can assume a madman like Hussain would have been hostile to someone (eg Kuwait? grrr I'm a bit too busy to be arsed googling to make up for the huge gaps in my knowledge).
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Nazi Germany was a far more aggressively expansionistic regime and a far more capable one realistically. Bear in mind I don't think unilateral action would have been a good idea, it rarely is really. If the UK invades Germany what happens next in 1935? Brutal war, best case scenario won by the UK and Hitler removed from power. What then? You've just invaded a country which wasn't threatening you and created generations worth of resentment. Are you going to occupy the country for the next thousand years and suppress any moves towards political independence? What's your exit strategy, forcibly implement the same sort of liberal democracy that just got tossed aside? Pretty much any history textbook will tell you that two of the main factors in the rise of Nazism were anger over Versailles and reparations etc and the economic problems affecting the country at the time. Do you think people won't be angry about getting invaded and occupied? Do you think an occupied country which has just been through a brutal war which will probably have destroyed most of its infrastructure and killed millions of its people is going to be economically successful without enormous outside investment?
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I wouldn't say we're politically 'close' to Japan & the others you were thinking of. Maybe I'm wrong and its my own personal racism which makes me think that though. Or rather, the lack of news stories about our closeness.
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I dunno where to begin here. Japan's in the OECD, there are US troops stationed in the country, the US is probably Japan's closest ally, they deployed troops to Iraq originally, it's in the G8 etc etc. For obvious historical and geographical reasons the UK is politically closer to a number of other countries but it's hardly like there's a political closeness ranking system which is determined by race heh.