In some ways the nations of the world have never had it so good. With a few exceptions, sovereignty is more secure than at any other time in world history. In other respects, however, most nations are rapidly losing sovereignty, a trend I expect to accelerate over time.
For most of human history, the normal state of affairs was for countries to attack their neighbors, often annexing territory of the weaker foe. For various reasons, this state of affairs changed after 1945. In the past 50 years we’ve seen a few successful forcible annexations (Goa, Crimea) and a few failed attempts at annexation (the Falklands, Kuwait, East Timor). But for the most part countries have refrained from an activity that was the norm throughout all of recorded history. We should celebrate that fact!
This may be partly due to the hegemonic influence of what I’ll call “the blob”, a huge group of countries with defense treaties with the US. NATO is the most important part of the blob, but the US also has important links with Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as more informal links with places like Israel and Saudi Arabia.
[As an aside, I don’t entirely agree with claims that the US spends a lot of money defending our allies. The relevant counterfactual is how much we would spend if we were on our own, without all of these alliances. In that case, the world would be a far more dangerous place. It’s true that we spend a lot on defense (and other countries free ride), and it’s also true that we intervene heavily in many different wars all over the world. But (AFAIK) over the past 65 years we’ve spent essentially zero dollars defending members of the blob against actual attacks. The deterrent effect of the blob has been sufficient to prevent wars of annexation against our formal allies. If the troops weren’t stationed in Korea and Germany, they’d probably be stationed in the US. We do spend too much. But that’s another issue, for which we cannot blame NATO free-riders.]
People are so used to this state of affairs that I think they tend to overlook the overwhelming power of the blob. The US alone spends more on defense than the next 9 countries combined. The blob also includes most of the other top ten industrial powers, including two (or three) other nuclear powers. The only other geopolitically important entities are China and Russia, each of which has a pathetically small system of alliances (basically North Korea and Belarus, respectively.) We (rightly) worry about their power and intentions, but from their perspective the blob must seem like a very intimidating entity.
In my view, we are near the end of wars of annexation. Not at the end, as attacks on Taiwan and Ukraine are possible. But at some point the status of those two places will be resolved, borders will be locked in place, and geopolitical competition will almost entirely switch to an alternative track. Indeed the shift is already occurring. Sovereignty is eroding rapidly, due the increasing ability of four great powers to shape affairs in other nations. Those four powers are the US, the EU, China and Russia. Each of those four entities are “bullies”, but they are not at all equal in other respects, with China and Russia being essentially illiberal and the US and EU being much more liberal (albeit far from perfect.)
Here’s Tyler Cowen:
I still largely agree with most of the hawk worldview: America can be a great force for good in the world, the notion of evil in global affairs as very real, America’s main rivals on the global stage are up to no good, and there is an immense amount of naivete and wishful thinking in most of those who do not consider themselves hawks.
This is certainly a defensible claim, but I worry that the (hawkish) foreign policy establishment is too complacent about our moral virtue, just as they are usually too optimistic about what US military intervention can accomplish. Consider the following:
A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.
Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.
Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.
American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.
When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.
The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.
Just to be clear, I have no problem with the US voting against this resolution. But I do have a problem with the US threatening trade sanctions again Ecuador just because they have a different point of view on a (mostly symbolic) UN resolution.
It hard for me to see much difference between this threat to Ecuador and some of China’s recent bullying, such as their trade sanctions against Australia in reaction to that country’s call for an investigation of the lab leak hypothesis.
This is not at all to suggest that the US and China are morally equivalent. With all our flaws, we are usually promoting a more liberal world order, whereas China favors a less liberal world. That’s a fundamental difference, and that’s presumably what Tyler is referring to in the quote above. On the other hand, power is easily abused and the US has far more ability to bully other nations than does China.
China wields essentially one powerful tool—trade. Russia has essentially one tool—its military. The EU has essentially one tool—trade. The US has three extremely powerful tools, all of which are used quite aggressively: trade, banking and military force. And we do not just use these tools against our foes. We threaten Canada and Mexico on trade, we threaten sanctions against Germany over the Russia pipeline, we threaten countries like Switzerland over bank secrecy, we threaten Latin American countries over their drug policies, and there are innumerable similar examples. In some cases, I agree with our ultimate objectives while in others I do not. But there is no doubt that the US is by far the most aggressive country in the world in terms of forcing outside countries to bend to our will. (Of course the EU is very interventionist regarding countries within Europe, but much less so outside the organization.)
In my view, the EU represents the future of the world. Large and powerful hegemons will increasingly demand that smaller countries adopt policies that conform to the wishes of great powers. Sovereignty will steadily decline. With a tiny number of exceptions, countries no longer need fear military invasion. Instead there will be economic pressure to conform to the wishes of the four great powers. The recent move toward an international agreement on minimum corporate tax rates is a sign of where things are going. Global warming policies may be next.
PS. There’s been a lot of recent nonsense written on the supposed loss of US “credibility” due to the pullout from Afghanistan. I’ve even seen comments comparing our troop presence there to South Korea and Germany. But in the latter two cases we have commitments to protect the countries from outside invasion, not internal revolution. AFAIK, the US broke no significant commitments to the Afghan government.
PPS. Some might question my claim that Chinese bullying is mostly economic, citing their recent actions in the South China Sea and the mountain border with India. But those examples are of trivial importance relative to the US military interventions in dozens of countries all over the world. After all, Taiwan is also a bully in the South China Sea and no one cares. We only pay attention to China’s actions there because we have a geopolitical rivalry with China due to other factors. In contrast, Taiwan is not a threat outside the South China Sea. Even a mid-level power like France is more likely to militarily intervene in foreign countries than is China (at least since 1980.) That would change if China were to invade Taiwan, which is probably my biggest single foreign policy worry other than accidental nuclear war. But as of today, China mostly relies on its economic power to bully other nations.
PPPS. While Russia and China share an interest in promoting illiberal values, they differ in certain important respects. Because Russia has a disappointing record in terms of economic development, they are less interested in the stability of the global economy. Putin is basically what people on the internet call a “troll”, and sees Russia benefiting from global chaos. China benefits from a well functioning global economy, albeit with much less liberalism than the West would prefer. Xi Jinping is confident that China’s power will grow over time as its economy expands and its market becomes increasingly important. China knows that it will have increasing ability to intimidate other nations. Putin knows that Russia’s influence is almost entirely due to its military power. “Bangladesh with nukes”.
READER COMMENTS
mbka
Aug 17 2021 at 9:44pm
Nice geopolitical wrap-up, Scott. I’d add something I’ve said many times before – the ability to shape and bully geopolitically (beyond one’s immediate neighbors) depend on how many positive geopolitical externalities a country provides. I’d define a geopolitical externality in analogy to economics, as a positive effect on third parties that wasn’t the immediate intention. In other words, how useful is the existence of a country and what it does, to other countries?
This point is actually quite close to some theories on international relations, and the powers differ quite widely on this. So for example, Russia in defending its power militarily, provides no particular advantage to anyone else. So it can’t bully very much, except by direct threat. It won’t have followers in its bullying, nor can it bully its friends, because it doesn’t have any. If Russia ceased to exist tomorrow, hardly anyone would notice in their daily affairs. The US by contrast has large military alliances that were built to defend US interests – but they are just as useful to many other countries. So the US can bully its foes, plus its friends, and even bystanders, by playing around with military support or absence thereof.
Similarly, the US and EU are much larger importers of consumer goods than China, therefore they can bully pretty much anyone by modifying access to their markets. China is an economic giant, but not a great consumer goods importer. No positive externalities for other countries. So it really can only bully Australia on the basis of restricting access to the Chinese consumer market.
The silver lining is this: if I am right on the importance of this dynamic, then the most useful bloc, for everyone, for “the world”, is bound to become the most powerful one. That is because a country’s power ultimately derives from how useful its existence is to others. I suppose this is analogous to Adam Smith’s central argument in relation to trade – you can only sell if you produce goods useful to others. So let’s hope we get over the rough patch of the past 15 years or so and back on track to a better world.
Justin
Aug 18 2021 at 9:01am
–“Similarly, the US and EU are much larger importers of consumer goods than China, therefore they can bully pretty much anyone by modifying access to their markets. China is an economic giant, but not a great consumer goods importer. No positive externalities for other countries. So it really can only bully Australia on the basis of restricting access to the Chinese consumer market.”–
I’d argue that production is more important than consumption when it comes to power.
If your country can’t sell to America, that’s a bummer, but you can just use economic stimulus to help the fortunes of struggling companies for a while as you change trading partners.
There’s no band-aid, however, if you depend on foreign countries for products and they stop selling to you. Imagine if China not only ceased exporting to the US, but also through its power prohibited most of its neighbors from doing so. Long term, the US would become more self reliant, and that’s a good thing, but the loss of access to various goods and the destruction of supply chains would cause a severe decline in US living standards for several years, a decline which the government would be powerless to stop. No amount of stimulus can immediately conjure up factories that builds millions of iPhones or computers, or reestablish the local American market for rare Earths.
mbka
Aug 18 2021 at 10:00am
I agree in that trade is a two way street. I disagree in that, if you’ve ever been in business, funding buyers tends to be a lot harder than finding sellers. An export boycott by China can be circumvented by a host of willing sellers. Not to mention that I can’t even recall such a kind of thing, “we won’t sell to you” is a really difficult proposition. See arms export controls – very hard to enforce. Preventing access to the largest consumer market of the planet however can be done, and would really hurt the supplier.
Scott Sumner
Aug 18 2021 at 4:12pm
Very good points. My only small quibble is that in absolute terms China’s a pretty big importer of both consumer and capital goods, so that gives it quite a bit of leverage. Even the NBA basketball league kowtowed to China.
Phil H
Aug 18 2021 at 3:54am
Yeah, this all seems right, and a good thing. But it’s not going to be simple.
I think the concept of sovereignty is pretty horrible – it literally means that all possible rights are concentrated in one particular set of institutions, and sometimes in one man.
The modern trend is for various powers to be devolved away from the level of the state. In the smaller-unit direction, we have human rights for individuals, which limit the power of the state. In the larger-unit direction we have supranational organizations.
But the result is going to be a complex interlocking web of authority that should serve to prevent horrible abuses like war and states killing their own citizens. But it’s going to require constant institutional jockeying and adjustment. The future will only be more political, on this viewpoint.
Mark Z
Aug 18 2021 at 12:38pm
I don’t think it’s an unalloyed good. I like the idea of states having to compete with each other for citizens or businesses, which globalization has greatly enabled. What Scott describes is a sort of cartelization of nation-states to undercut competition. Efforts to impose global minimum taxes are a good example. It’s akin to Walmart bullying all its would-be competitors into raising their prices so they can’t take Walmart’s customers.
The good things also seem circumstantial – due to the current ‘blob’ being comparatively humane. But I could easily see it happening that the dominant nations end up forcing other countries to harm their own citizens. In fact we’ve already seen this in the Warsaw Pact.
Jens
Aug 18 2021 at 4:54am
Good text. I just want to say briefly that I read Sumner’s down-to-earth analysis of the Afghanistan mission (and its end) with interest and consent.
MarkW
Aug 18 2021 at 7:42am
But in the latter two cases we have commitments to protect the countries from outside invasion, not internal revolution. AFAIK, the US broke no significant commitments to the Afghan government.
Breaking treaties is on thing, breaking faith is another. Despite the 20 year relationship, did Afghans never manage to enter our sphere of moral concern? At the point of the withdrawal, the U.S. was no longer engaging in ground combat and there hadn’t been any combat deaths for a long time (U.S. forces were there basically to provide air support). So what motivation for the pullout was there other than a financial one? How much was being spent on an ongoing basis, and was that really unsustainable? It seems to me that it wasn’t the case that the U.S. couldn’t have stayed indefinitely — we just didn’t feel like it anymore. And is there really a bright line between Korea and Afghanistan? In both cases, weren’t we protecting our local allies not against ‘outside forces’ but against their own countrymen? And then the withdrawal — done in such an abrupt, chaotic, callous way that seemed almost designed to make a smooth transition to Afghan control impossible and undermine faith in the government and its armed forces.
Scott Sumner
Aug 18 2021 at 4:20pm
You said:
“Despite the 20 year relationship, did Afghans never manage to enter our sphere of moral concern?”
Without 9/11, there is no chance we would have invaded Afghanistan. That’s not to say a neocolonial policy is a bad idea, there are good arguments both ways. But what you propose is not something the US typically does.
For instance, the Haitian people might be far better off if we invaded Haiti and turned it into another Puerto Rico, but we aren’t going to do that.
Right now, the best way to help Afghans would be to allow more immigration to the US.
I also doubt that the policy was sustainable in the way you suggest. Look how easily the Afghan government forces folded. At some point we would have had to start fighting again.
And the pullout was always going to be messy, regardless of how it was done. Vietnam was no different.
Brian
Aug 18 2021 at 6:05pm
On an individual level there is chaos because some people are desperate to leave Afghanistan and perhaps some of them were promised a way out if they were informants and collaborators. Those promises should be fulfilled.
In the big picture there was the release from prison of a co-founder of the Taliban named Abdul Ghani Baradar and a subsequent photo op with him and a G.W. Bush and Mike Pompeo appointee named Zalmay Khalilzad. In the photo op 2 people are shown signing the Doha Agreement of 2020 which plans a a full withdrawal
a few months into the next U.S. presidential term that started in 2021. The agreement is with “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban” and the U.S. is the other party. So the troop withdrawal is not an agreement with the government of Afghanistan so the government was already very diminished in authority before the exit of troops. If government troops were to fight the Taliban, what would be disruptive because the government was already supposed to be out of the picture. Perhaps this is a smooth transition to formal control by the Taliban.
Justin
Aug 18 2021 at 9:17am
–“People are so used to this state of affairs that I think they tend to overlook the overwhelming power of the blob. The US alone spends more on defense than the next 9 countries combined.”–
The blob, militarily speaking, is just America. The next most powerful countries, Britain and France, have minimal expeditionary capabilities, and it’s beyond doubt that, even together, that they could prevail militarily against a country like Iran. They have no capacity to invade Iran, and while the IAF is weak, the RAF and FAF don’t have a sufficient inventory of aircraft to withstand the attrition that would be caused by Iranian air defenses.
Measures of military spending are misleading. Defense dollars go a lot farther in other countries than they do in the U.S. The U.S. spends more than Russia and China combined, but it could not successfully conquer either country alone. Indeed, it’s not even clear that the U.S. could successfully defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion in a conventional war. It seems highly unlikely that America could perfectly defend its carriers against strikes from Chinese missiles and stealth aircraft, and it only takes a couple sunk to more or less eliminate America’s ability to defend to Taiwan.
It’s important to note that, after spending $2T and two decades worth of effort, the blob was shown unable to enforce its will in Afghanistan. A small group of fanatics equipped with small arms was able to outlast the blob and deal it a black eye on the international stage. The blob’s neoliberal ideology is tired and can no longer inspire people to fight for its vision.
mbka
Aug 18 2021 at 9:56am
That’s a strange comment. Quite the contrary, the US should have left a long time ago. It should have stuck to defending its own interests, which was, rooting out Al-Qaeda. Not, changing the culture and propping up various governments. And to call the withdrawal a “defeat” is absurd. The US long had no interests left in Afghanistan but what amounts to a half-hearted vanity project. That said, I am deeply sorry for the now unvcertain fates of many decent Afghans who deserve better. But see, so do the people of Myanmar, the Uighurs, heck, the Russians. No country on its own can fix the planet.
Tom Chambers
Aug 18 2021 at 11:54am
In my mind, it is clear that the US could not successfully defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion in a conventional war–and most likely would not even try. The bright side, I suppose, is that it is unlikely such invasion plans could be kept secret. China could attack on an hour’s notice, but an actual invasion would take weeks of preparation, and that gives time for some face-saving diplomacy to arrive at some ‘peaceful’ resolution leaving China in charge.
Scott Sumner
Aug 18 2021 at 4:23pm
This is a very strange comment, which has nothing to do with my post. I was discussing the ability of the blob to defend itself from attacks from outside, not to attack other countries. How to you think Iran would do attacking nuclear powers like France and the UK. And ask the North Africans if France is able to project power. Ask Argentina about the UK’s ability to project power to the other side of the planet.
Floccina
Aug 18 2021 at 12:07pm
That drives me crazy. USA drug policy is bad enough domestically but that it is pushed on the drug producing countries is worse.
Floccina
Aug 18 2021 at 12:29pm
I also think Afghanistan, Iraq etc. (maybe even Puerto Rico) show that in the modern world annexation a country is a net negative. We do not tax them and make sure that it is a net benefit.
Therefore, IMHO, if the Chinese Government took Taiwan they’d not gain. They’d have people in Hong Kong, the Uyghurs and Taiwanese, all working from within to undermine the CCP.
Evan Sherman
Aug 18 2021 at 1:00pm
Acknowledging that the US, in pursuing a liberal world order, often threatens the national sovereignty of weaker countries (which would otherwise choose less liberal rules and norms), raises the question: Which is more important? How valuable is sovereignty – and by extension, the right to self-government – as an end unto itself vs. as a means to the ends of a liberal political environment? If you had to choose, which would you choose? etc.
Now, of course, the above reflects some elements of a false choice. Self-government in general goes hand in hand with liberalism, and self-government, especially democratic self-government, is generally an essential procedural checking mechanism against tyranny.
But if, for example, the US can successfully bully countries that would otherwise illiberalism into liberalism, should it? (“can successfuly” being key words in the previous sentence of course)
Evan Sherman
Aug 18 2021 at 1:29pm
*choose illiberalism
Scott Sumner
Aug 18 2021 at 4:08pm
Just to be clear, at times the US bullies other countries into more illiberal policies, as with trade. But on average the US is more liberal than China or Russia.
Evan Sherman
Aug 18 2021 at 5:19pm
Well right. But is that relevant to the question I asked? In short: ‘When national soveriegnty concerns clash with the US coercing other countries into liberalism (and away from illiberalism), how much does that matter?’
Scott Sumner
Aug 18 2021 at 8:06pm
If you are asking whether I favor bullying other countries, the answer is no.
Evan Sherman
Aug 18 2021 at 8:29pm
Fair enough. And I tend to agree (bad-cases-make-bad-rules caveats aside).
The question is not merely about US geopolitical strategy preferences, though. The question is also: “What is a good, and how to we rank different goods?’. And/or: “What is valuable because it faciliates a good, and what is valuable on it’s own merits because it actually is the end good?” Within that context, is “sovereignty” a good unto itself, or a means to an end? Is is subordinate to liberalism? etc.
There’s a non-crazy argument for a commitment to liberalism that would supercede any procedural mechanisms of self-government, whether in terms of democracy (within a given state) or national sovereignty (across states). I tend to see self-government as both a means to an end (if the end is liberalism) and a good unto itself. But lots of intellectuals for a long time have seen one of the two as primarily a means to acheiving the other – e.g. self-government as merely a means to an end, a useful procedural tool for fairly settling succession questions but not really an ultimate good.
Think of it this way: If you could make a SkyNet style AI that would fulfill all government functions, and if you could somehow magically be certain that it would be a perfectly benign governor protecting a liberal economy and civil society (and not, ya’ know, turn murderous), would you want that?
It’s kind of an absurd hypothetical, I think, because real-world policies that abrogate self-government tend to undermine liberalism, whereas, conversely, consent of the governed tends to cultivate liberalism. But it is worth thinking about in order to better understand what one’s real value system is.
Scott Sumner
Aug 19 2021 at 12:46pm
In my view, everything is subordinate to utilitarianism.
David Seltzer
Aug 18 2021 at 1:36pm
Scott: Clear analysis. You said, “For various reasons, this state of affairs changed after 1945.” My conjecture, 1945 ushered the in the nuclear age in real, devastating time. As post war membership in the nuclear club increased, the disincentive to acquire wealth through conquest became apparent. Instead, proxy wars were fought. Instead of conquest, incentives to trade became the better trade-off.
Scott Sumner
Aug 18 2021 at 3:27pm
That was one reason, but even the conventional warfare damage during WWII was pretty devastating, and also played a role in the change in attitudes.
Evan Sherman
Aug 18 2021 at 8:32pm
Yes, this. We killed way more Japanese civilians with firebombing than with the a-bombs, for instance. Even if we were not on the receiving end of that kind of truly massive killing (for the most part – 400k over 4 years is not nothing), it was still easy to see how we wanted to avoid that kind of war in the future.
E. Harding
Aug 18 2021 at 1:46pm
“Putin knows that Russia’s influence is almost entirely due to its military power.”
Silly claim, Scott. Russia has the only independent tech sector outside the U.S. and China. It can also produce its own COVID vaccine (though not in very large quantities). Does Bangladesh have Yandex (which has better image search capability than Google and Microsoft)? Does Bangladesh have its own COVID vaccine? Russia also has the world’s sixth largest economy by PPP, Bangladesh is below Malaysia. Russia is also one of the world’s major oil and gas producers; Bangladesh isn’t. You also weirdly exclude India from the list of powers, even though, despite its numerous failures, it is clearly a rising power, and will likely become more powerful than Russia over the 21st century, if it hasn’t already.
“But (AFAIK) over the past 65 years we’ve spent essentially zero dollars defending members of the blob against actual attacks.”
Ever heard of the Vietnam War?
“Putin is basically what people on the internet call a “troll”, and sees Russia benefiting from global chaos.”
Nonsense. Russia did not benefit from the American destabilization of Libya, Iraq, and Syria.
Scott Sumner
Aug 18 2021 at 3:26pm
Vietnam was a civil war.
TGGP
Aug 18 2021 at 4:41pm
Saigon fell to the NVA, not the Viet Cong (who never recovered from the Tet Offensive). North & South Vietnam were separate states.
Scott Sumner
Aug 18 2021 at 8:15pm
That was always the subject of dispute. The UN never accepted South Vietnam as an independent state. In contrast, even Russia accepted Ukraine’s independence. Again, it was a civil war.
You can claim the Confederacy was an independent state from 1861-65, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have a civil war.
TGGP
Aug 18 2021 at 4:43pm
How do our troops there prevent an invasion of the US? We were rather safe in our hemisphere before we stationed those troops abroad.
Scott Sumner
Aug 18 2021 at 8:17pm
“We were rather safe in our hemisphere before we stationed those troops abroad.”
Tell that to the soldiers who died in Pearl Harbor. We lost 400,000 soldiers in WWII. The “blob” was created to prevent a repeat of that war.
TGGP
Aug 19 2021 at 10:33am
Hawaii is far from the continental US and was not even a state at the time. Thus, it was American imperialism causing us to run up against and be in conflict with Japanese imperialism. Japan had decided to seize British, Dutch & French colonies to their south for their resources. The US had military bases in the Phillipines (seized from Spain in our war with them) and Hawaii. Japan attacked those bases to prevent nearby forces from intervening in those conquests. Their hope was that we would then treat their new conquests as fait accompli and agree to a peace deal rather than spending lots of money to build new ships and destroy their navy that had established dominance in the Pacific. Actually invading the continental US would not have been feasible for them.
We can contrast the expansionist US with Sweden & Switzerland. Both have avoided wars for more than a century, without military bases abroad.
Scott Sumner
Aug 19 2021 at 12:50pm
I don’t think we are far apart. I view our wars with Japan and Afghanistan as being roughly equally defensible. Most intellectuals disagree with me, viewing the Afghan war as far less defensible than WWII.
But Hawaii and the Philippines is not a good comparison. Hawaii was a part of the US in 1941 while the Philippines were not.
TGGP
Aug 20 2021 at 2:41am
Regardless of whether or not you think the US should have been an imperialist power butting up against Japan and trying to impede their foreign policy, there was a clear objective in going to war with them: destroy the ability of their military to go up against ours. We succeeded in less than a decade. Afghanistan did not have a conventional military capable of doing much against ours, nor was there important infrastructure there for waging war. There’s not much anything of value at all. The Russian & British empires fought in Afghanistan because they controlled neighboring areas, but we didn’t even have such imperial interests (even our client state in Pakistan was supporting the Taliban rather than relying on the government we sponsored).
Hawaii was annexed in 1898, the same year the Spanish-American War broke out, and support for annexation in the US was connected to that. Both places had governors appointed by the US federal government rather than directly elected in the decades following, although the Philippines were permitted to directly elect their executive starting in the 1930s. Caucasians (which most American settlers would have been) were not only a minority in Hawaii in 1940, but outnumbered by Japanese alone, making it more like an imperial colony than a typical US state. It had no border with any actual U.S state, being thousands of miles from California. California was not in danger during the time prior to Hawaii’s annexation because the two are far away. It was a means of projecting force outward, like so many overseas military bases, not something necessary for defensive borders (which giant oceans already helped to provide us).
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