Ranking Civilizations based on their military history

[Badtz Maru]

"Guns, Germs, & Steel" talks about why China is so racially homogenous for being such a large country. They went through their period of conquest and colonization thousands of years ago, then spent the rest of the time breaking up and re-uniting politically while retaining a fairly universal ethnic and cultural identity. Though the land that is considered China has been divided in hundreds of ways politically since their Bronze Age, the people have been the same descendents of one small group of Asians who got a head start on agriculture and city building in prehistoric times. Many countries in east Asia that are currently not part of China have the same ancestry and the original indigenous people are gone or small minorities (see southeast Asia). Compare this to Europe, which had more natural barriers to prevent one population from displacing the rest and is full of diverse populations with drastically different cultures. China and much of east Asia today is what would have happened if one ethnic group in Europe was able to outbreed and outcompete all the others 3000-4000 years ago. Europe would have gone through similar things that China has and been the home of hundreds of different nations, and maybe not all of it would be part of the same country today, but it would not be as diverse.

 

[xchen08]

@xchen: I am not displaying any Japanese fanboy-ism (I am Russian to the core), and I don't think anyone else is either. But it is stupid to say that the Japanese do not deserve any mention at all... Japan is a great nation. While China has existed for a long time, and has indeed done some terrific military conquests, it was backed by rich resources and an enormou population. Japan started out on a... well, not barren, but close... island with almost no resources to speak of. And this small nation is now one of the leading nations of the world? IMHO that is far more impressive that what China has done.

I am most annoyed at the belief that Samurai were somehow special or better than the professional soldiers of other nations, and I had assumed you held this view from your endorsement of Volbound. (Only thing more annoying is thinking Katanas are just better) Since the beginning availability of semi-reliable historical records, Japan has won exactly one war against nonJapanese where Japan both determined the outcome, and the outcome wasn't absolutely obvious long before the war began, and that was the Russo-Japanese War. While Russian incompetence was a large part of it, Japan truly did perform superbly and above anyone's expectations. Japan is a leading nation now, but it is already beginning to slip. Its various economic problems and disastrously low birthrate will reduce it to a still wealthy, but definitely second tier nation within a few decades. In long historical view, this means that Japan's time as a Great Power will be no more than a century or so, compared to well over a millenia by China.

And yes, Macedonia was part of the Hellenes, but there is a difference between Sparta, Mycenae, Corinth... and Macedonia. All of the city states in what is today Greece, including Athens, were at the mercy of Macedonia for a while, and the interests of Macedonia at the time of Alexander were far different that that of the rest of the Ellade. Thus, I consider Macedonia separate from Greece.

The main problem is that Greece is a modern invention. Athens and Sparta felt no more and no less afinity for each other than either felt for the cities in Asia Minor, or the Crimea, or Magna Graecia, or Macedonia. Athens may have disliked the Macedonian Monarchy and their non-polis organization, but no more so than it disliked the Spartan oligarchy, and Sparta was hardly a traditional polis either. The city states have no greater claim to Hellas than Macedonia. Macedonia may be separate from the southern Poleis, but the Southern Poleis were not Greece.

 

[Badtz Maru]

The main problem is that Greece is a modern invention.

Agreed. If there was never an Ottoman Empire, there wouldn't be a Greece today.

A lot of modern European nations are relatively recent creations. Germany is made up of a lot of small countries that were pretty different culturally (and today people in one part of Germany can have serious problems understanding another German from less than 100 miles away). Italy is a pretty recent creation too, in the long-term way of looking at things.

 

[The Snug]

When the objectives aren't met, it's a loss. Our objective was to get rid of their weapons of mass destruction and to eliminate the Al Qaeda members that were taking refuge in Iraq. They had no WMDs and there were no Al Qaeda members. Therefore, we lose.

Wow, if you think this is true, than you were completely deceived by the Bush propaganda machine. In truth, Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism or Iraq's potential for upsetting any apple carts, these were simply the deceptions of propaganda used to both galvanize the American population for a needless war and to pull the wool over the world's eyes so that they would stand by and merely watch.

The real reason for the war was that Bush and his Saudi allies simply wanted to monopolize the world oil market, and to insert a puppet regime that would protect this oil hegemony. And boy, did they ever hit us with gas prices for a few years.

To such an end, America's military excursion in Iraq and Afghanistan has achieved precisely what Bush intended it to. All the rest regarding the elimination of certain targets or occupation are simple pretense resulting from the guise of propaganda.

As to military effectiveness, this might seem overly simplistic, but America was the first to Atomic weapons, and was the only one to use them. Atomic weapons make all other discussions regarding potential military strength moot. No military force of antiquity possessed the capability of completely incinerating their opponents without so much as lifting a single finger to press a button. This fact alone makes the Romans and Mongols seem rather impotent by comparison. Hence, the conclusive answer to the original question is that both America and Russia tie for the top spot, with China following a short ways behind.

Now, if you wish, we may confine our future discussions to conventional military prowess.

 

[The Snug]

Quote:
Various Indian Wars - Shameful for two reasons. One, that we attempted ethnic cleansing like this and broke practically all our treaties with the original inhabitants of the land. Two, that it took so much time and effort for us to subjugate a bunch of stone age hunter gatherers.

Stone Age? They were armed with rifles too, you know. And yet again, you seem to not have a clue as to how massively outnumbered the U.S. military was. Sure, we would have crushed them in a year if we had committed the kind of troops we did to the Civil War, but we didn't.

It's good thing we didn't commit all of our resources on wiping out the natives or we would have entirely removed the Native tribes from the face of the earth and have been truly guilty of genocide on a scale much larger and worse than Hitler. Even as it is, we have enough massacres and enough displacement and warehousing of the Natives in concentrated areas that we still might be more guilty than Hitler.

 

[The Snug]

In this case, I was referring to the Korean War, the Sino-Soviet border war, and the Sino-Indian war of 1962.

The Sino-Indian war was an incontestable Chinese victory, with China gaining its objectives in Kashmir and the border territories, and utterly defeating the Indian military, despite conducting operations over the Himalayas.

The Sino-Soviet War is more difficult to argue, since both sides claimed victory, both sides claimed few losses while the other side suffered massive losses, and both sides are well known to lie about things like this. However, no territory changed hands immediately, and negotiations afterwards eventually ceded most of the contested territory to China, so calling it a draw seems accurate.
.

These two hardly constitute wars; I don't think it's reasonable to include them in any serious discussion. It's more accurate to compare them to the posturing and grimacing of angry monkeys trying to impress a female rather than to comparing them to a war.

If we want to examine recent Chinese military effectiveness, it'd be more scholarly to look at their embarrassingly inept invasion of Vietnam in the late 70s. This conflict exposed the lack of a command structure and the resulting poor communication and between units and therefore the entire lack of military cohesion.

In the past century, Vietnam has had much more military success to laud them for than China. China really has only 1 good showing on their resume, that being the Korean War, and even their, their casualty rate doesn't speak well of their effectiveness--their total number of casualties actually outnumbering the total number of US soldiers. In that war, the Chinese were simply the modern version of the Persian Immortal.

WW2, in addition, has nothing glorious for China to uphold.

Just as a quick aside, it is interesting to note that VN was one of only two (Japan being the other) nations to defeat Mongol invasions.

 

[The Snug]

Your point seems a bit odd. Demographic significance is something that is easily demonstrated statistically, not a matter of personal opinion, and has no moral weight. And no-one has made any claims about the ethics of the matter. The fact is, that if you plot the population of Iraq from pre-war numbers and growth rates and compare them to the actual numbers since, you get no significant deviations. That demonstrates that however many people died, it was not demographically significant. And using the word estimate as if all estimates are created equal is like those people who argue that gravity or evolution is just a theory. Iraqi journalists and crazy right-wingers don't even have a methodology besides their own biases. Little outfits with obvious axes to grind use questionable methodologies. The IMF and the UN on the other hand, produce solid numbers, because their methodologies and raw data are published and gone over by independent analysts, and they have reputations to maintain. It certainly doesn't matter if the IMF tried calculating deaths from radioactive dust or collapsing health services when they are actually just counting the people alive.

I never thought I'd see the day where 250,000 to 1 million civilian deaths would be considered "insignificant" by any standard. That's some really sick $h!+.

If this is now the case, than I mourn the future of humanity.

At what point do the accumulation of bodies become significant? Sadly, it was indeed this very question that Secretary of State Madeline Albright kept alluding to during the Rwandan conflicts in '94 when people began asking about whether genocide was really taking place.

I suppose the answer is thus: well, because we're uncertain, we'll just wait around until the death toll surpasses something that is clearly significant. Even after the numbers become significant we'll just say, "darn, I guess we missed the boat on that one; too bad, that's a real shame."

As to Iraq, I suppose that a 10 fold increase in the incidence of child birth defects resulting from lingering radiation from DUP weaponry shouldn't be taken into account too? And that's simply from the first gulf war. Not to mention the 1 million other civilian casualties that resulted from starvation and exposure following that conflict.

 

[xchen08]

-snip-

My god, enough conspiracy theories and moral equivalence to choke an Anaconda. That and some spurious history plus missing the point leads me to add my support to moving this thread to history. It clearly no longer has any relevance to Civilization 4, and will likely continue attracting such posts in the future.

 

[zenspiderz]

I never thought I'd see the day where 250,000 to 1 million civilian deaths would be considered "insignificant" by any standard. That's some really sick $h!+.

If this is now the case, than I mourn the future of humanity.

At what point do the accumulation of bodies become significant? Sadly, it was indeed this very question that Secretary of State Madeline Albright kept alluding to during the Rwandan conflicts in '94 when people began asking about whether genocide was really taking place.

I suppose the answer is thus: well, because we're uncertain, we'll just wait around until the death toll surpasses something that is clearly significant. Even after the numbers become significant we'll just say, "darn, I guess we missed the boat on that one; too bad, that's a real shame."

As to Iraq, I suppose that a 10 fold increase in the incidence of child birth defects resulting from lingering radiation from DUP weaponry shouldn't be taken into account too? And that's simply from the first gulf war. Not to mention the 1 million other civilian casualties that resulted from starvation and exposure following that conflict.

Amen brother. There are some cold characters out there no doubt. I bet the iraqis don't consider the 'collateral damage' (how's that phrase for cold-blooded?) as insignificant.

 

[StormD]

If I was going to rank the civilizations in Civ by military history, it's a close race between Mongolia and China for #1. Mongolia conquered 22% of the Earth's landmass in a single generation, which is the most impressive military feat in all of history, but all of that gain was dispersed nearly as rapidly, so it's hard to give them credit for doing anything of lasting import. They were the wildfire that raged and blew itself out.

The Chinese people, on the other hand, have conquered one of the largest empires on earth, by land-mass, and THE largest, in terms of population, not once, or even twice, but FIVE times (Qin, Sui, Song, and Ming Dynasties, plus the PRC) over the past 2 and a half thousand years, holding it for hundreds of years each time, and have enticed 3 foreign invaders who conquered them to go native within a generation or three before eventually overthrowing the alien governments and replacing them with properly ethnic Chinese-run administrations (Jin, Yuan and Qing Dynasties). To discount these achievements because the Chinese have not historically fought wars beyond the borders of modern-day China is ludicrously naive, because for the vast majority of history it has not been possible to wage war over land distances larger than are covered by the historical Imperium of China.

Even still, China has had periods of Global power-projection, such as during the early Ming dynasty, when it controlled nearly all Indian Ocean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Arabian, and South Asian trade through a combination of the Silk Road and Naval Supremacy on the Indian and Pacific Oceans. (look up info regarding the Ming Navy, and admiral Zheng He)

Similarly, Iron-Age China was a fearsome military juggernaut of terrifying potency. 40 years before the Battle of Cannae, where the Romans fielded (and lost) nearly 90,000 men against Hannibal's 56,000, The State of Qin faced the State of Zhao in the Battle of Changping. The numbers of men in Chinese war during this period were staggering compared to European wars at the time. Qin reportedly fielded 650,000 men against Zhao's 450,000. After a horrific battle, the army of Zhao surrendered, and in fear of a subsequent revolt, the Qin general, Bai Qi, ordered the execution of all of the prisoners of war. Zhao never recovered from that battle and was conquered by Qin 30 years later.

I have my doubts that Rome could have conquered a State like Chu, the way Qin did, and Rome certainly had difficulty with the Huns, although in fairness, so did the Chinese, although it is largely due to the Chinese driving them off that the Huns decided to go west and bother the Romans to begin with.

Yes, the Mongols conquered the Chinese, but the Yuan dynasty went native right from the beginning, with Kublai himself adopting many Chinese habits and customs. Once that government began to fall apart, it was ousted and the Mings took over.

At any point in history where China was at the height of its military power (Warring States/Qin unification/early Han Dynasty, Three Kingdoms, Sui/Tang Dynasty, Ming Dynasty), most of the other contemporary world powers were weak in comparison, so naturally there are few wars of significance between China and other "Great" Civilizations (Chinas wars of significance have been won overwhelmingly in China's favor, which can be easily observed by looking at a map of modern China, or examining the ethnic diversity of modern China). When other world powers were strong, China has been on the decline, and it so happens that China was the decline during the period of European global expansion and colonialism, so modern history as taught in American schools makes China seem insignificant (it took a few college-level History classes to really drive the point home for me, after 12 years of Euro-centric primary and secondary education), but it is THE driving force in Asian history and to neglect its influence and historical postition(s) of power is just silly.

 

[The Snug]

Are you ranking them only based on wars they fought and battles they won, or does it also take into account strong but unused military power? The biggest sign of the current dominance of the US military is that no one since Japan has actually tried to start a war with us, because they know that they'd lose. Of course MAD is part of that, but even without nuclear weapons our military is simply far too strong to challenge, and no one wants to go around conquering like the Romans did.

Same with England- when they were at their height they never fought any major wars and didn't even need a real navy because they could crush any other power with their navy.

On the other hand, ancient powers like the Mongols and the Romans had very strong rivals nearby who they spent hundreds of years fighting. Is that helping or hurting their ranking?

It's also hard to compare the "relative power" of modern and ancient nations, since our powers are so different. I mean the current USA army is obviously more powerful in "absolute strength" than the Mongol hordes, but then, so is the army of Luxembourg, so that's not too meaningful. Looking at the relative power, the USA can transport its army anywhere in the world, and defeat smaller countries like Iraq without losing a single soldier (in the regular fighting), which the Mongols couldn't have done. But, the Mongols had the ability to pacify conquered territories by massacring any resistors, which the USA can't do (if our military ever tried this, there would be mass rioting everywhere).

Excellent post. Although I'm from America, I'm really not an america-phile--I rather detest America--but I think you do have to give them credit for their ability to wage total war on an intercontinental level.

In terms of warfare, the ocean has historically been a more difficult barrier to cross than the Russian winter.

The colonial powers sent relatively small forces to vastly technologically inferior parts of the world, but these weren't full scale wars. In civ4 terms, it's like sending 6 rifleman in two galleons to the New World inhabited by ppl still using longbows. Now compare that to sending 100 infantry across the ocean to another nation full whose favorite toy is a tank.

Whether or not America won the following wars--WW2, Korea, VN, Iraq-- is rather insignificant in comparison to the wow factor that they were actually able to even get their and often out-perform the indiginous cultures.

What makes WW2 so remarkable is that the US possessed the capacity to fight two massive fronts across two massive oceans against two technologically equal enemies. That's quite a staggering achievement when you compare that to the previous history of world warfare. It's unprecedented.

Even today, America could conceivably make a good show at invading anywhere else in the world. Could anyone else conceivably make a good show at invading America? For that matter, has any power other than America made a good show at invading another continent across an ocean?

Not even Rome or England were able to achieve this dual sea/land power, much less on multiple fronts. Some of you might be thinking to argue for England or Rome, but truly neither force fought total wars against technologically equal foes across oceans on multiple fronts.

The European colonial powers picked on "neolithic" entities overseas, while they were all unable to gain any domination over Europe. For all of the apparent size and power of the world empires of England, France, Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, these empires came at the expense of vastly technologically inferior non-entities. None of these European potentates were ever able to dominate Europe. Again, although they appeared to possess godlike power in the far-flung reaches of the world, back in Europe they were quite ordinary. In fact, along with the HRE, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, the various Italian states, and the Ottoman empire, no nation was permitted to gain dominance in Europe as a constantly shifting pattern of alliances worked to maintain balance. This situation never permitted any single nation to become overly powerful or dominant, which therefore effectively nullifies any arguments regarding them becoming the greatest military powers of the world, because as soon as one of them seemed to become that power, the others took them out.

Within Europe, none of the European powers were ever fully dominant, and this is a more telling indicator of their military strength than the size of their world possessions. Sure, the colonial powers could slaughter Indians (of both varieties), Africans and Asians, but they could never slaughter each other. England, while at one time maintaining the largest "world" empire, never possessed the sort of power within Europe itself that Prussia, France or Austria variously held. This must be considered as a mitigating factor while examining British military effectiveness.

Rome, at the height of its power, possessed far more power in comparison to its European contemporaries, than any of the later colonial powers did in relation to their other European contemporaries. In truth, Rome didn't have another European rival to compare with at all, you have to go all the way to Persia to find a nation that is nearly as powerful. That says something favorably for Rome and unfavorably for the later colonial powers.

To speak directly to England and France, England was more powerful overseas due to its focus on naval power, whereas France was more powerful within Europe proper due to its focus on land power. To whit, England never made any lasting territorial gain within continental Europe, and France kept losing its overseas possessions to England and the other European powers. French policy was to take Euro territory so that they'd have something to trade in exchange for their lost overseas possessions.

As to WW2. One could say of Germany that they were almost the greatest power that ever was. They would have crushed and removed Russia if they had simply done of the three following options:
1. Simply wait to knock off Russia after they completed their conquest of England
2. Simply wait to invade Russia until the next Spring.
3. Simply have invaded Russia 6 weeks earlier than they did.

Any one of these three options, and any talk of Russia being the nation that defeated Germany is moot.

Fortunately, Germany is the latest example of the shifting pattern of alliances that prevented any single European nation from taking over world domination. In this latter case, however, Europe needed a little bit of help from a non-European power to achieve this result. Any thoughts that Russia could have defeated Germany alone are simply hollow and dishonest.

In similar fashion to Nazi Germany, one could also say that France, on several occasions almost became the greatest power that ever was, but ultimately failed under combined European weight.

I'd have to rank the great powers this way.
The top five in no apparent order:
America, USSR, Rome/Byzantium, Mongolia/Derivatives, Vikings

The European colonial powers
Britain, France, Prussia

The almost Asian colonial power
Japan

The other colonialists
Spain, Portugal, Netherlands

Antiquities
Greece, Arabia,

The Home Powers
China, India, Ottomans, Egypt

Small scale conquerors
Persia, Babylon,

As to the Vikings, why hasn't there been discussion regarding all of the kingdoms they started?
They are the smallest group of any in the Civ franchise, but they started and altered more kingdoms than any other.




Contemplate the irony of the following statement: Gandhi unified more of India than any other Indian conqueror.

 

[zenspiderz]

If I was going to rank the civilizations in Civ by military history, it's a close race between Mongolia and China for #1. Mongolia conquered 22% of the Earth's landmass in a single generation, which is the most impressive military feat in all of history, but all of that gain was dispersed nearly as rapidly, so it's hard to give them credit for doing anything of lasting import. They were the wildfire that raged and blew itself out.

The Chinese people, on the other hand, have conquered one of the largest empires on earth, by land-mass, and THE largest, in terms of population, not once, or even twice, but FIVE times (Qin, Sui, Song, and Ming Dynasties, plus the PRC) over the past 2 and a half thousand years, holding it for hundreds of years each time, and have enticed 3 foreign invaders who conquered them to go native within a generation or three before eventually overthrowing the alien governments and replacing them with properly ethnic Chinese-run administrations (Jin, Yuan and Qing Dynasties). To discount these achievements because the Chinese have not historically fought wars beyond the borders of modern-day China is ludicrously naive, because for the vast majority of history it has not been possible to wage war over land distances larger than are covered by the historical Imperium of China.

Even still, China has had periods of Global power-projection, such as during the early Ming dynasty, when it controlled nearly all Indian Ocean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Arabian, and South Asian trade through a combination of the Silk Road and Naval Supremacy on the Indian and Pacific Oceans. (look up info regarding the Ming Navy, and admiral Zheng He)

Similarly, Iron-Age China was a fearsome military juggernaut of terrifying potency. 40 years before the Battle of Cannae, where the Romans fielded (and lost) nearly 90,000 men against Hannibal's 56,000, The State of Qin faced the State of Zhao in the Battle of Changping. The numbers of men in Chinese war during this period were staggering compared to European wars at the time. Qin reportedly fielded 650,000 men against Zhao's 450,000. After a horrific battle, the army of Zhao surrendered, and in fear of a subsequent revolt, the Qin general, Bai Qi, ordered the execution of all of the prisoners of war. Zhao never recovered from that battle and was conquered by Qin 30 years later.

I have my doubts that Rome could have conquered a State like Chu, the way Qin did, and Rome certainly had difficulty with the Huns, although in fairness, so did the Chinese, although it is largely due to the Chinese driving them off that the Huns decided to go west and bother the Romans to begin with.

Yes, the Mongols conquered the Chinese, but the Yuan dynasty went native right from the beginning, with Kublai himself adopting many Chinese habits and customs. Once that government began to fall apart, it was ousted and the Mings took over.

At any point in history where China was at the height of its military power (Warring States/Qin unification/early Han Dynasty, Three Kingdoms, Sui/Tang Dynasty, Ming Dynasty), most of the other contemporary world powers were weak in comparison, so naturally there are few wars of significance between China and other "Great" Civilizations (Chinas wars of significance have been won overwhelmingly in China's favor, which can be easily observed by looking at a map of modern China, or examining the ethnic diversity of modern China). When other world powers were strong, China has been on the decline, and it so happens that China was the decline during the period of European global expansion and colonialism, so modern history as taught in American schools makes China seem insignificant (it took a few college-level History classes to really drive the point home for me, after 12 years of Euro-centric primary and secondary education), but it is THE driving force in Asian history and to neglect its influence and historical postition(s) of power is just silly.

bravo. It is my suspicion that the romanophile gushing over imperial rome is thinly disguised white supremacism (not that the romans were exactly model aryans). I mean rome bested the disorganised rabble in other parts of europe but regularly had their asses handed to them when they went eastwards against the parthians for example. Even the shirtless euro-barbs (as the romans might have viewed them) trounced the romans in a number of battles. The roman empire at its height was only a fraction of the size of the earlier persian empire and as you say smaller than imperial china. The mongols piss all over rome.

I might add that the various turkic empires not least the ottoman period should rank higher than rome.

 

[The Snug]

My god, enough conspiracy theories and moral equivalence to choke an Anaconda. That and some spurious history plus missing the point leads me to add my support to moving this thread to history. It clearly no longer has any relevance to Civilization 4, and will likely continue attracting such posts in the future.

Could you be more specific?

Also, do you actually believe that the leaders of nations go to war because of the national interests of the common masses? Or isn't really that it enriches the pockets of the wealthy aristocracy that every nation still possesses?

Come on man, Communism isn't communism, it's simply a new aristocracy that instead of possessing fancy titles like duke, count or earl and so forth uses the more altruistic sounding title of "Communist Party member."

Even in America, who really controls the government? Come on man, the wealthy families in America control its policies and wars. When was the last time that filthy rich Americans actually paid taxes?

Do ppl really believe that Communism and Democracy really actually exist today? In truth, they appear to exist, but really both are controlled by a monied oligarchy who serve as a modern type of Aristocracy. They do enough just to keep us happy so that they can keep their financial expansion rolling.

Point of fact: America is not a democracy. It is a republic.
My assumption: The majority of our representatives are not controlled by the sentiment of the common masses, but rather by the monied interests that actually fund their campaigns and put them in power. For those who don't know, there is a high correlation between campaign funds and winning elections.

I would argue that all of history results from the conspiracies of whatever families control each nation.

Search your feelings, you know this to be true.

 

[DrewTate]

You are insane snug. I don't think I could stand in a room with you for five minutes if you legitimately believe some of the things you just posted.

 

[zenspiderz]

You are insane snug. I don't think I could stand in a room with you for five minutes if you legitimately believe some of the things you just posted.

funny i recognised what he said as a rare and refreshing truth. Isn't the ugliest truth better than the prettiest most self serving lie? i think so.

 

[xchen08]

funny i recognised what he said as a rare and refreshing truth. Isn't the ugliest truth better than the prettiest most self serving lie? i think so.

And that's what every conspiracy monger says. It's one of the classic signs of descent into irrational conspiracy theories, the belief that one and a select few others can see this dirty truth that the rest of the sheeple cannot.

That said, I can't really tell if Snug is just trolling us. His claims range from debateable to semi-crazy, to outright crazy and easily disproved, but yet he caps it off with a Star Wars quote.

 

[attackfighter]

Keep it civil... many threads have been closed because of arguments which started like this... and this is a nice thread, I'm learning lots, it would be a shame for it to end.

@xchen: I am not displaying any Japanese fanboy-ism (I am Russian to the core), and I don't think anyone else is either. But it is stupid to say that the Japanese do not deserve any mention at all... Japan is a great nation. While China has existed for a long time, and has indeed done some terrific military conquests, it was backed by rich resources and an enormou population. Japan started out on a... well, not barren, but close... island with almost no resources to speak of. And this small nation is now one of the leading nations of the world? IMHO that is far more impressive that what China has done.

And yes, Macedonia was part of the Hellenes, but there is a difference between Sparta, Mycenae, Corinth... and Macedonia. All of the city states in what is today Greece, including Athens, were at the mercy of Macedonia for a while, and the interests of Macedonia at the time of Alexander were far different that that of the rest of the Ellade. Thus, I consider Macedonia separate from Greece.

Japan didn't become a world power through military though (well, they kind of did but only through the pity of their defeat). They became a world power because USA gave them money after WW2, and later in Vietnam (they were like a supply base kinda). Also because they work hard and play hard, I think.

 

[Terrance888]

The Rich don't pay as much taxes is because... Oh? How did they get rich? Mostly by making businesses successful.

What do businessess do? They employ us americans.

If the Rich pay more taxes than the poor, no one wants to be rich, all the businessess would start to die, no one will dare to make new ones, and us americans will become unemployed.

If they do pay less taxes, they deserve it for making strong, employing corporations.

 

[attackfighter]

Btw, I'm pretty sure Snug is just trolling, cause his qoute 'search your feelings etc.' is not only a qoute from starwars, but a popular meme on . .. .. .. .. ., where users will post some kind of absurd claim (such as 'PS3 has no games' or 'Xbox sux') followed by that qoute.

 

[zenspiderz]

Btw, I'm pretty sure Snug is just trolling, cause his qoute 'search your feelings etc.' is not only a qoute from starwars, but a popular meme on . .. .. .. .. ., where users will post some kind of absurd claim (such as 'PS3 has no games' or 'Xbox sux') followed by that qoute.

Just because he offends your pretensions doesn't make him a troll.