EDIT: Okay, fine, I may have "over-indexed" (to use a term I learned here) on a few loudmouths who are like "you're not the boss of me, I'll speed whenever I damn well please and also I hate immigrants." I am now thoroughly convinced that SB is the rule-abidingest place on the internet for everything from license plates up to "don't invade other countries for no reason."
I think my overall point still stands, though, which is that the majority of people just have a visceral reaction against the idea of an alien gaining unauthorized access to their homeland and that they believe that the reason for this is self-evident and doesn't really need explanation. Which is fine! This is not a value judgement - I just think it's interesting.
The gist is that a Tory MP floated the proposal of retroactively revoking Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR; the UK term for permanent residency). I will admit I am a little fuzzy on the details - the Bulwark article makes it seem like she wanted to just basically take it away from everyone who holds it. Then Kemi Badenoch got involved and issued a "clarification," which is more like, no no, just from people who receive benefits, who commit a crime (NB: not clear if this includes misdemeanors) or whose income falls below £38,700 for six months or longer (i.e. more than what I made when I arrived as the equivalent of a tenure-track college professor).
I have lived in the UK for four years, and although I'm temporarily away this year in France, the plan was to return, probably indefinitely. Needless to say, hearing about the proposal - even though it's far from being policy - made me very, very, very angry and very, very very scared. This is the Tories we're talking about - if Reform wins the next election, which seems likely, I see no reason to believe they won't just leapfrog past that and do something even more drastic (I am pretty scared the current rhetoric around "high value" immigrants, which I already find gross, will just collapse into "let's do an Idi Amin and be done with it"). Labour is just basically a xenophobic party now. The only party holding the line are the LibDems, and well, yeah. My feeling is that I need to flee ASAP.
SB is a place where I largely agree with people on most things, but admittedly simply do not identify on any level with the median feeling on immigration. A couple of responses below make the analogy of "family / guest," and while I understand that this is meaningful to most people, for me it doesn't register. So in an effort to understand a phenomenon that is manifesting in a form that is very frightening to me where I live, I treated the commentariat as an anthropological study population with the deck stacked towards a loaded framing of the issue. Hopefully you'll excuse that.
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I'm going to hijack this alternative history thread (which, no disrespect, love me some good alternative history), to pose what I swear is a sincere question and not a gotcha:
I was just re-reading the latest SB article on immigration (as part of the ongoing series) and it, like many SB articles on immigration, emphasizes the need to have a rules-based order for immigration management and enforcement. No argument here.
But what I always find fascinating is how in the SB comments, immigration is often *uniquely* cast as one of the few areas where it is extremely important to have and maintain rules; people will scoff at MY's focus on expired plates or loudly extoll their god-given right to drive 100 mph regardless of who it puts at risk*, but immigration activates a different nerve where *here*, there can be no exceptions (note that I'm not accusing individuals of hypocrisy; I'm not necessarily saying it's the same people expressing these opinions, just noting the general mood).
Why is this? Why does the notion of rules and enforcing rules uniquely activate a deeply felt nerve when it comes to enforcing immigration? I would say something about people's deep-seated belief in territorial integrity, but I don't think so - there was a lot of shrugging at summarily executing people who happen to be in boats off the coast of Venezuela, which is as clear violation of territorial integrity as they come.
Again, not an accusation of hypocrisy or bad faith - I'm just trying to understand why immigration excites - in some cases uniquely - a defense of "rules" where in other domains it's more like, eh, if it's convenient.
No, I think you have a pretty fundamentally flawed model of what people excuse. Driving 5mph over the limit, yes, driving 100mph absolutely not. Not reporting the $50 your buddy gave you after you helped them move as taxable income, yes, making up $500k in fake expenses, absolutely not.
So what's the immigration equivalent of driving 5 mph over the limit? Doing a little remote work for your non-US employer while here as a tourist? Reporting that you lived in a place for 185 days when it was actually 175? I don't see people demanding hard punishment for either of these things. But actually illegally immigrating is very, very different! The vast majority of illegal immigrants didn't fudge around with some technical requirements, they openly and willfully ignored the fundamental purpose of the system.
It's also a matter of punishment. Seizing your car and banning you from driving for life for going 10 mph over the speed limit would be seen as unfair; a fine and points seem more fair.
Similarly, if you arrive here illegally but embed yourself in the community for several decades, are law-abiding and a productive member of that community, but then are picked up and deported, and possibly being separated from your family is (or should be seen) as unfair. Contrariwise, if you're grabbed trying to sneak into the country or have been here just a month and sent back, that's entirely fair.
Hitting 100 on I-40 in New Mexico (where the speed limit is 80) when there’s no other cars on the vast straight line desert highway is much more forgivable than hitting 100 on an urban freeway with other cars on the road, too
"people will scoff at MY's focus on expired plates or loudly extoll their god-given right to drive 100 mph regardless of who it puts at risk"
Where do you get the people of SB saying these kinds of thing? Maybe a few have, but the median opinion here agrees with MY on expired plates and thinks speeding is bad. The entire Democratic party, especially its white-collar, professional middle class branch, is the party of rule-following nowadays.
The premise is very flawed.
But even taking that as a starting point the average view here is probably "be like Obama" which is closer to "let's make some reasonable effort to enforce the rules" than to "let's get every single illegal at all costs". I'm not sure why that would be very different from other viewpoints on rules-following.
See above - I may have allowed a few vocal commenters to give me a skewed impression.
But I think it's also the case that immigration articles tend to bring some, let's say, passionate voices out, and the center of gravity seems to arc towards them.
I'm here because I liked the theme and core arguments of "One Billion Americans", so I am likewise perplexed by much of the reflexive anti-immigration rhetoric in the comments. I accept the need for compromise on the issue only because arguing for dramatically increased legal immigration and generous application of amnesty and a short path to citizenship for undocumented residents who have not committed any felonies is currently politically unpopular, and therefore electorally inefficient.
Because most Americans think speeding is either good or a trivial issue (ditto for the other listed offences) but that illegal immigration is bad and serious.
Notably people feel strongly about rules like fare evasion, theft etc. so I don’t think immigration is unique in that regard.
I think all people, even the speeders, realize that lack of speeding enforcement has created a meta where everyone speeds.
And this has drawbacks, that most people (even most of the speeders) will acknowledge, while saying that the benefits are worth the drawbacks.
If everyone speeds a little, we're okay. If everyone skips paying the fares, everything falls apart, and rapidly.
There's also a feeling that just going a little over is okay -- maybe even required to be safe, depending on what the rest of traffic is doing -- but people going extra fast are very dangerous and need controlled.
I'd like to get to a place where we up the speed limits and then enforce them strictly, but this is about as believable [1] as giving amnesty to everyone and then starting strict enforcement.
[1] I always feel bad when I see a sign saying "speed limit strictly enforced." No it isn't. Whoever put that up may have even meant it, but it just screams impotence. You can't stop it, so threaten that you'll stop it, but only very naive people believe the threats.
You are getting at a key insight, which is that "following the rules" doesn't really matter that much to anyone. What matters is the degree to which one dislikes the underlying substantive thing (which in this case isn't necessarily immigration writ large - different people have different views about what types of immigration are good or bad).
I actually don't agree. There are substantial population zones (hi from the upper midwest!) where rule following is generally agreed and respected for its own sake.
Nobody wants to be Cold Florida. Well, maybe Ohio.
Are you saying people care about the rules they like and don't care about the rules they don't like? It's almost like they don't care about rules at all
"Because most Americans think speeding is either good or a trivial issue (ditto for the other listed offences) but that illegal immigration is bad and serious"
Yes, you are restating my question. So, again, why?
This seems extremely obvious. Immigration is clearly more impactful (positive or negative depending on your view) than any of the other things you mention.
Additionally breaking immigration law involves jumping the queue which makes those who went through the legitimate process feel like suckers. Just like fare evasion makes fare payers feel like suckers.
Just throwing it out there, illegal immigration alters the permanent socioeconomic ecosystem in a way that momentarily speeding, or whatever, does not (unless you hit and kill someone, but Americans are not so sympathetic to the accidental killer driver).
I know what you're getting at, but I don't think this statement is strictly accurate. When a few people speed, it does affect the entire roadway "ecosystem". There is a "culture of the roads" - anyone who's driven in many different states or cities (or countries) can attest that different local driving cultures are very different personality-wise. The more people drive fast, the more others drive fast to keep up. The more jerks there are on the road, the more aggressive other drivers feel like they have to be to not get cut off or taken advantage of. And a single accident affects many many drivers who get stuck in the resulting traffic.
>Why is this? Why does the notion of rules and enforcing rules uniquely activate a deeply felt nerve when it comes to enforcing immigration?<
I think rules should be enforced in all or most areas: taxes, paying your subway fare, littering, polluting, spending what Congress allocated, the speed you drive at, voting, consumer charges, etc. Either enforce rules or change/remove them.
But perhaps the reason the enforcement of immigration rules gets so much attention (and very broad support nearly everywhere these days, except for the hard left) is the realization that immigration has an extremely potent effect on *electoral politics*.
Anway, I believe we're hardwired by evolution to fear/loathe/avoid resource competition, and so yes, the specter of "excessive" numbers of newcomes touches something deeply primal in our species.
I think he means it affects electoral politics by bringing out strong right-aligned feelings from people who might not otherwise vote with the right. Which is true - it does do that. Whether that's why it gets so much attention here or not, I don't know.
I strongly dispute that this is the case, and I think that a belief that rules should be followed and an aesthetic appreciation of orderliness have more explanatory power than anything else when considering how the comments are going to come down on any particular issue.
I'm sure someone on here has disagreed with Matt about the license plates but I think most people agree with him, and I'm not sure who is pro-extreme speeding but I don't think it's most people or that this is a much-discussed idea.
Other widely held lawful-aligned views are that governments should do what it takes to prevent people from creating a disorderly environment in public spaces, and that traditional vices like gambling should be discouraged.
Because there's a big difference between someone in your family Breaking a rule.
And an uninvited person coming into your home.
Besides that large numbers of immigrants take time to assimilate and settle. People don't do good with too much change too fast.
Not to mention like we see in europe.Sometimes those immigrants don't really seem to be interested in assimilating, and don't share the same western liberal values that we do
It's a failure to walk in another man's shoes. Virtually all Slow Borers will never be involved in illegal immigration in any way. As much or maybe more importantly, no one in their family or social circle will be involved in illegal immigration. It's easy to be in favor of strict enforcement when you know that there is no consequence at all for yourself or anyone you know.
Darkly, it's generally unseemly to be against immigration broadly, especially when you're sophisticated to know that you and your immigrant ancestors are not like these immigrants. So being in favor of a strict enforcement of the rules for their own sake sidesteps any grappling with that.
They're also unlikely to interact with the issues exacerbated by illegal immigration. It's easy to be in favor of lax enforcement when there are no visible consequences for anyone you know.
Changes in crime depend a lot on both the immigrants and the locals. Almost any immigrant will lower the crime rate (and maybe even the absolute numbers) in a very high-crime neighborhood.
But lower skill, undocumented immigrants might raise crime in areas that are already very safe and orderly.
I stand by the idea that depressing wages in the agricultural and meatpacking sectors is a good thing. And construction, too, to the extent we have a crisis of being underbuilt
The single largest issue is use of public services and resources. Schools, hospitals (especially the emergency department), police, fire, EMS, CPS, city and state level social services, etc., all cost more in people, time, and or money when engaging someone with limited English proficiency, limited education, and different norms than middle class Americans.
The more direct your involvement in a lot of these matters, the more you will notice. In particular, if you either use or supply those services, you see where the system gets tested.
When your kids behave badly it's part of the normal scenario. If a guest in your house behaves badly it's considered rude. In addition to ingrained animal territorialism maybe we expect immigrants to behave better. On my many trips to Mexico I tried to not act like a complete dope whereas here I was more susceptible, lol.
The response to this is the ‘have you ever run through a red light’ scene from Dave. Americans don’t view traffic laws as ‘real’ laws. Like when you are asked if you have been convicted of a crime traffic violations are excepted.
Not by accident? I confess to having accidentally run a red light before, but never on purpose, unless it was such a long light that it seemed like a glitch, with no other cars in the intersection
But what if your mother was in the car and you had to get her to the hospital? Or if you were on an empty road where you know it's safe and nobody's around. Good movie.
I've asked this as a quick-and-dirty test of rule-followingness before: how long would a light have to stay red (empty roads, clear visibility) before you decide it's glitching and run it?
I'm definitely on the long side (possibly 5+ minutes) but I think my mom even said she'd just turn right and figure out how to come back through the intersection in the green direction. (I do wonder what she'd do in a jurisdiction without legal right-on-red...)
That's why some of us "IDGAF about illegals" types feel the analogy is apt. A lot of immigration law doesn't feel particularly real. Do I have problems with illegals voting in statewide or national elections or receiving any sort of welfare assistance? Yes, but come pick crops or chop up meat to keep it cheap while not causing and I don't care at all. Depressing farm wages isn't something anyone in their right mind should care about.
When people say "illegals are criminals because they've broken the law" they don't actually mean that; what they actually mean is that they're criminals because they've broken specific laws that they actually care about enforcing. People feel how they feel.
Edit: To be clear, we don't have Europe's assimilation problem in the United States and we have a very different agricultural economy; under similar circumstances I'd take a very different view (though I'd still be inclined to chuck the Tommy Robinson types into the Channel).
Rules are good. Those who disobey should be made to suffer a consequence for disobedience, such as being taken to the town square at high noon, there in the sight of G-d and the public to be caned.
Because the strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must. The US has never had the slightest respect for borders when it comes to doing things like bombing boats, so is not taken seriously when talking up the sanctity of borders. The only anti-immigration position I really respect is the isolationist paleocon position that US authority also ends at the border. Otherwise talk of borders just feels like the old saying.
>The US has never had the slightest respect for borders when it comes to doing things like bombing boats
What are you referencing here? The Trump administration's recent attacks on claimed Venezuelan drug smugglers? Those appear to be illegal, but they took place in international waters. I don't know how respect for international borders or foreign sovereignty plays into it
I'm glad to see the edit because I was really incredulous when I first read your post earlier this morning. Like, I'm willing to agree that there are some immigration hardliners around here, but the SB commentariat (in contrast to replies to Matt on Twitter re those subjects!) is definitely pro-vehicle registration and anti-speeding by a decent margin too.
In re, "there was a lot of shrugging at summarily executing people who happen to be in boats off the coast of Venezuela," that's because such conduct: (1) has been fairly routine by US presidents for 200+ years at this point (the novelty is the video footage, not the US military killing random foreigners on flimsy pretexts) and (2) will not be punished in any way, shape, or form, even if the Democrats win the presidency and two-thirds majorities of both houses of Congress in 2028, so there's not a lot of reason to get worked up about it. To be extremely blunt, literally the sole remedy anyone has for that kind of thing is direct action, which is potentially illegal to advocate in any particularly concrete way, so people aren't going to be publicly pushing for it.
While I bow to no man in my contempt for and exceedingly low expectations of the elected representatives of the Democratic Party, what you're saying is probably more cynical that the most hard-core leftists. I believe (as a serving soldier) that under a future (unlikely) Dem trifecta, what is being done in the Caribbean should be investigated, tried, and punished as murder. IANAL, but apparently reliance on (secret) OLC memos is considered a get out of jail free card; that needs to end. If/when this OLC issues a memo saying that anyone tenuous associated with "antifa" is also a legitimate target for a drone strike, will you shrug that off as well?
If such an "anti-antifa" memo is issued and drone strikes take place against anyone on US soil or in US waters at the time of the strike, I will be hair-on-fire freaking out. That said, if you told me that I would die instantly if I was incorrect, I would still bet against anyone ever being criminally prosecuted for the strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific (and that's generously assuming there's not a blanket pardon from Trump of some sort that covers any plausible defendants before he leaves office).
I agree with what *should* happen, but srynerson's point seems fairly accurate. It seems unlikely that Democrats are going to set up Obama, Clinton, Biden and their administration's officials to be prosecuted given they all were involved in the bombing of foreigners...
One point I think Matt is overlooking - Italian neutrality helped indirectly bring the Ottoman Empire into the war on the side of the Central Powers, which ultimately proved much more distracting to the Allies (especially the British).
Long story short, the Germans had a modern battlecruiser - the Goeben - in the Mediterranean on the outbreak of war. Since the neutral Italians were unwilling to allow it to dock more than 48 hours and any Austrian port could be easily blockaded, the Goeben fled into the Dardanelles and forced the Ottomans to choose between the Germans and the British. The Ottoman Pasha allowed the ship to pass by the Turkish minefields. Once the Goeben (and its escort the light cruiser Breslau) were in the straits it could not be easily ejected or controlled by the Turks, and in fact precipitated actual war with Russia and the Ottomans by sailing in to the Black Sea on its Admiral's own initiative and bombarding Russian ports. Had the Goeben been allowed to dock in an Italian port such as Taranto, the Ottomans may well have stayed neutral.
There was no price for entry. Russia was the first major power to declare war after Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia's goal was to remain the dominant power in the Balkans and keep Austria out. Arguably Russia's aggressiveness turned what could have remained a local Balkan issue between Austria and Serbia into a global conflagration. Had Russia remained on the sidelines, Germany would have been unable to justify moving forward with war against Russia. (Ironically, Austrian performance against Serbia turned out to be so poor that Russia would certainly have been far better off letting the Austrians embarass themselves.)
I think you’re giving too little credit to pan-slavism, which had more to do with Russia siding with Serbia than the desire to have a sphere of influence in the Balkans
That's debatable. In intellectual circles pan-slavism was sincere, in the Russian Imperial bureaucracy it was more a useful tool to spread Russian influence. In any case the Balkans are mostly Slavic, so it didn't make a lot of practical difference. And Greece and Romania are Orthodox so by the Russian logic of the time also natural protectorates of the Tsar. Ergo, the entire Balkans was from the Russian point of view their natural sphere of influence (Slavic and/or Orthodox) and the Catholic German Habsburgs needed to go away.
I think there was a fair amount of Russia trying to save face after its embarrassing loss in the Russo-Japanese War, too. And there was also public opinion on the side of the Serbs after a backlash to other Austrian actions in the Balkans (in Bosnia, I think), which led to a rise in pan-slavism. I think you’re overestimating how strategic the Russian autocracy was capable of being. It was more emotion than realpolitik, I think.
But the Russians as always were pretty pathetic, they could not even make it to the actual end of the war and had to settle for having lots of territory lost!
Didn’t Russia enter the war before it was clear that the Ottomans would? Obviously they want Constantinople, but it is not clear that the Turks enter the war based on that alone (though it is certainly possible)
Yeah if it was just the Russians and French the Ottoman Empire might have been attacked by Russia, but the British wanted a neutral Ottoman Empire and would have supported the OE against Russian encroachment during the war.
There is a big miss here: with all that seacoast, there is no way that Mr. Winston “We can invade Constantinople by sea” Churchill won’t try *something*. He had a lot of British boats, the intense need to knock Italy out of the war, and quite a few options.
So take your pick: Roman Gallipolli? The Sicilian Republic? Whatever it is, it’s getting called “Operation Hauteville”.
I would add #5: a LOT of underestimating the Turks, which the Brits would 100% also do in Italy.
Really, this just lends itself to the real “what if” we should be talking about: an Antonio Gramsci led Italian Republic in the wake of Italy’s defeat in WW1.
Ehh, WW1 era technology (artillery, machine guns, barbed wire, naval mines) made amphibious invasions very difficult, and the whole selling point was an easy way to put British naval power to use against the Central Powers. If you're going to do a hard amphibious invasion, why wouldn't you do Jackie Fisher's utterly insane plan to land on the Baltic coast north of Berlin instead?
+1 re good idea at the start, but then it turned into one giant sunk cost fallacy within a couple of weeks. (It was arguably the easiest place for the Ottomans to defend from a logistics standpoint in the entire empire, so it should have been obvious that it was only going to get worse and worse for the Allied forces the longer it took to make headway.)
With how close the forcing of the Dardanelles and the landings came to victory in the opening moves I could see a British landing in Italy actually succeeding. The initial poor execution of the attempted forcing and force allocation isn't an issue if the RN is just confining the Regia Marina to port (which from Jutland we know it had the capability to do, the Hochseeflotte which was far superior to the Italians was confined to port after Jutland where everything that could go wrong for the Grand Fleet did go wrong and they still forced the Germans to retreat minutes into the main engagement, the technological advantage was just so massive for the RN) and supporting landings with shore bombardment. Even with the kind of poor proto-combined arms co-ordination you would expect you still have a far better environment for the Royal Navy to be operating in compared to the tight confines of the Dardanelles. With that support alone even if you assume the landing forces blunder as they did in Gallipoli they are not getting trapped on the beaches. Perhaps it would stall further on but it would require a rather large amount of Italian resources to be relocated to cause it to stall out and keep it stalled.
And thats assuming that it goes down near identically just with the confines of the Dardanelles removed. The Admiralty may be far more generous with what it allocates to the force if its in the central Mediterranean and is keeping the Italians confined to port or even forcing them out into a battle they likely couldn't win. The differing geology of the landing sites may have made the initial containment much more difficult and so on. You tweak a few things and the major British amphibious invasion of the First World War succeeds.
I think this is what Italy thought through, and why they decided to fight the alliance that could only get at them through narrow alpine passes vs the one that could land troops at will anywhere on an enormous coastline.
I'm also highly skeptical Austria would've stood any chance against a (albeit weakened) Russia even leading up to the Revolution but this is what makes these alt histories so fun.
But why would this scenario be different? In this case the Germans have the same amount of resources to spend on Russia, maybe more (depending on what happens with France) and Austria has more resources to spend on Russia, so you would expect at a minimum the same outcome.
The other counterfactual is what would have happened had Wilson kept the US out of the war? By 1917, the Allies & the Central Powers were broke. Only US money kept the Allies afloat; the Central Powers starved, even with Ukraine's grain. Would all the European powers have collapsed? Would they have been forced to make peace? Either way, what would the consequences have been?
A lot of these "the Entente allies were close to collapse without American support" always seem weird to me in that it normally works out as Britain and France would have been in the position Imperial Germany was in in 1916 in 1918 ignoring the Imperial Germany kept fighting through several years of Turnip Winter. Assuming American neutrality the worst case is Russia gets knocked out slightly earlier but by the time it would really start to bite (shortage of trade, money and ships) Germany had already lost the war and was just taking a while to starve to death.
Good point. Much of my question is based on the fact that by 1916 Britain had exhausted its ability to borrow from Wall Street & from the US entry into the war could borrow from the US govt.
"Liked," but it's hard for me to see how scrupulous US neutrality doesn't lead to at least a "Marginal Victory" (in wargaming terms) for the Central Powers, because without US financial assistance to the Allies in the 2+ years preceding actual American entry into the war, Russia is surely knocked out of the conflict at least several months earlier.
One of the things that really stands out in military history is how lopsided conflicts usually are—the side with better organization and technology usually completely trounces the other side even though by the numbers it might seem like a more even fight. The most extreme examples being things like the Spanish conquest of the New World where for example a couple hundred Spaniards defeated the entire Incan Empire at Cajamarca. World War I was less extreme but the main takeaway is also that the smaller countries made little difference in the face of the war machines of the major advanced powers Germany, Britain, France, and even the US later. I would count Austria-Hungary as a less-advanced power here because they also lost pretty consistently, and Germany had to bail out Austria-Hungary’s losses against Russia in the early stages of the war by shifting troops from France to East Prussia where they quickly romped the Russians. Romania joining the Allies made no difference at all when Germany overran it quickly. So I think Italy switching sides would not have mattered—even if it freed up Austrian units, they were probably the worst-performing large country and also required German bailouts.
The broader lesson about politics is that power and competence really matter, if Austria-Hungary had performed better militarily and held off Russia in the initial stages of the war, that would’ve freed up way more German troops to attack France than Italy would have. The Entente won ultimately because they controlled more resources including a vast colonial empire they could use to starve the Central Powers, not because they gave up bits of their empire to minor powers to induce them to join the war.
Austria was a major asset to Germany on the technology side. Bohemia was a leading industrial region, and one of the best weapons producers in Europe. Because of Czech know-how Austrian artillery was generally superior to everyone else's. This is one reason why Hitler was so anxious to incorporate Bohemia and Moravia into his own Reich.
It didn't win them the war though. The problem Germany had was that the Entente was capable of starving them out. Better artillery didn't overcome the fact that once trench warfare set in they didn't have the technology to return to manoeuvre warfare.
All true. I am just trying to defend Austria’s honor. The country had its strong points, it wasn’t just the liability for Germany it is often portrayed as.
"The problem Germany had was that the Entente was capable of starving them out." After Russia sued for peace, the primary issue was one of manpower. They had enormous amounts of their most productive workers serving in the army or in producing for the army as opposed to producing food stocks. This impacted both Germany and Austria severely. While they would have tried to import foodstocks as a replacement, the blockade stopped this. If Italy hadn't joined the war, but had sold food to the Central powers, its likely sufficient for them to not lose the war.
Good points, although one might argue that Cajamarca wasn't really a battle between two forces. More that Pizarro fooled the Inca into delivering their leader into his hands and once he was captured, the vast Incan forces were demoralized and fled.
Fair point, but the "capture the leader despite being enormously outnumbered" gambit wouldn't have worked nearly as well (or at all) if the Spaniards didn't have an overwhelming technological advantage due to [paging Jared Diamond] "guns, germs, and steel." (And horses. Even a small number of horses would have been enough to terrify the Inca, who had never seen such creatures before.)
If Matt (and anyone else) is having a Hapsburg nostalgia moment, this NY Times article about the long lost Florentine Diamond is fascinating. Back in 1919 some of the Hapsburg jewelry, including this gem, were deemed to be personal Hapsburg property, not 'crown jewels'. The matriarch manage to keep them hidden in Switzerland, then Canada, for a century.
Random thought on the impending end of the shutdown: Like a lot of Democrats I'd prefer to see this thing continue, until Senate Republicans are forced to gut the filibuster. HOWEVER, one political silver lining (albeit a horrible one for millions of people) is the specter of big increases in health insurance premiums. Had Republicans buckled on this, they'd be doing themselves a political favor.
This is a gift-wrapped issue for Democrats. And yes, there are a lot of pissed off members of my political tribe right now. But as we saw last week, the REAL way to stick it to MAGA is to beat them in elections. A blowout in next year's midterms will be more satisfying on that score than forcing Republicans to back down on Obamacare subsidies in the here and now.
Yes, for all the sturm und drang, the shutdown wound up being a nothingburger and we're left with where we were at the beginning: terrible Republican policies, like exploding healthcare premiums, that Democrats can take to the polls next November.
I have never understood why Italian revanchists were so anxious to reclaim the old Venetian territories of Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia as opposed to the much more attractive Nice, which of course had belonged (with small interruptions) to the ruling Savoy dynasty for centuries before being traded to France in 1860, i.e. within the living memory of older Italians, and Corsica, where the local Italian dialect was still the primary spoken language in 1914.
Trieste, predictably, suffered quite badly economically under Italian rule. It went from being the primary port of the Habsburg Empire to an afterthought in an Italy already blessed with numerous Adriatic ports. It is really only since the EU brought greater integration that Trieste has started to revive. Dalmatia and Istria were both lost to the Southern Slavs within 30 years, and given the demographic imbalances that was probably predictable as well in 1915.
The Italian determination to grab the fairly impoverished South Tyrol also seems a little odd in a world where ski tourism had not yet become a big business. That seems more like people in Rome looking at a map and getting angry that Italy seems to have bite taken out of it. Even the strategic rationale of creating a solid mountain wall between Italy and the Germanic lands seems a little silly.
In an alternative scenario where Italy is on the winning side, they probably would still hold Nice to this day (it had never been "core" French territory, the way Alsace was viewed).
In re Italian territory, there's also the oddity of San Marino, which somehow survived Italian unification, World War I, and Mussolini. (I know from some light reading that the Marinese government in each of these instances made efforts to avoid antagonizing the Italian government, but, still, it's weird given (i) the wild imbalance of power, (ii) San Marino literally being entirely surrounded by Italy with no foreign power other than the Vatican City within a couple hundred miles of San Marino's borders, and (iii) the overall fervor of Italian nationalism/imperialism 1860-1943.)
It's a good question. It does seem to be a weird historical accident. San Marino doesn't even provide any real tax or diplomatic advantages to Italians as far as I can tell (or didn't in the 19th century, the critical time to avoid being absorbed). I suppose it is simply too small to bother with. It is also not really independent in ways that matter. For example, San Marino had its own fascist party ruling it in the 1930s.
The only time I can think of when San Marino advantaged Italy is that for a long time from the 1980s to around 2000, three countries in Europe each had two Formula One circuits (Monza and Imola in Italy, Hockenheim and Nürburgring in Germany, and Silverstone and Brands Hatch in Britain) - but the two Italian circuits were the Italian Grand Prix (Monza) and the San Marino Grand Prix (Imola), while Britain and Germany only got 1.5 Grand Prix per year each (British Grand Prix, a German Grand Prix and a European Grand Prix that generally alternated between the two).
The F1 circuit is much less European-dominated now - rather than five Grands Prix across Italy, Britain and Germany, there are just two: Monza and Silverstone.
Even to a rabid nationalist circa 1900, there's a difference between "Our People, suffering under the Hated Foreigner" and "Our People, but doing their own thing in a silly microstate." Like, did even the Nazis care about annexing Liechtenstein?
They had the good fortune and/or foresight to stay out of both world wars and avoid a lot of destruction and death. Though they did manage to do a number to themselves in the civil war.
I'm going to repost my top-level comment on the original copy of this post with a couple of typographical corrections:
A+ work, Matt! I love this kind of content and I agree with a lot of what you said. *However,* there are two specific things I disagree with in your conclusion, which I'm very surprised no one else seems to have mentioned in the first 89 comments that are showing as of me refreshing the page after typing this reply:
(1) You explicitly contemplate that Russia is knocked out of the war earlier in your scenario, but then reference the Bolsheviks being in charge of Russia post-war. My understanding is that most historians who look at this issue -- including Marxist ones! -- think that, if Russia was knocked out of WW I earlier, then the Bolsheviks would NOT succeed in gaining control of Russia for the foreseeable future. (They might still eventually succeed in doing so, but it would be a longer process and a lot more fraught.) A Menshevik-dominated Russia is probably more plausible in your scenario or even an unstable liberal Russia vulnerable to a reactionary counter-revolution, depending on the specifics of when and how Russia is knocked out.
(2) Even where Germany decisively wins the war in Europe, I do not believe that Germany plausibly gets to keep any of its overseas colonies unless you're also contemplating some spectacular annihilation of the Royal Navy. No matter how badly the BEF bled out in Flanders, etc., the British had such a colossal advantage in manpower and resources *outside* of Europe, and which would have still been largely uninterceptable by the Central Powers even with the benefit of the Italian navy, that the Germans could not realistically resupply and defend their colonies if the British made a determined attempt to take them. For Germany to not just get to keep its colonies, but gain the Belgian ones, I think you need to imagine an otherwise victorious Germany agreeing to a whole bunch of concessions in Europe, which I have a very hard time picturing the Germans doing.
On the subject of Italy in WWI, I can't resist posting this link to Bret Devereaux's excellent ACOUP blog, wherein he names Luigi Cadorna the worst commander of WWI (worst as in most incompetent, not necessarily most evil).
Cadorna fought a series of battles in the Isonzo River basin, which, as Bret points out bluntly, is "a stupid place to have a battle." He elaborates: "There was nothing beyond the Isonzo except mountains. Taking the first set of mountains merely awarded one the privilege of attempting to assault the next set of yet higher mountains."
Moreover, Cadorna made a metric ton of tactical errors, and, what's worse he repeated his mistakes again and again. A highly recommended read with lots of facepalm moments.
Another random thought: am I the only person who's not jumping all over Trump for the 50 year mortgage idea? Yes, of course, it's better to avoid this if you can. That's a lot of interest! But for some people, it may well beat renting...
Mind you I'm happy to see him take political heat for this suggestion.
I'm not jumping on him. I'm more amused by all the cryptobros and goldbugs who, until about 30 seconds ago were also overwhelming pro-renting, falling over themselves to declare the glory of life-long mortgage debt.
If you're financially capable, having access to what's basically a perpetual interest-only loan at a fixed rate is actually quite a useful thing. If I could have taken out a 100 year mortgage at the rates we had in 2021, it would have been all but free money.
It does totally fly in the face of the 'logic' of using mortgages as a tool for middle-class wealth building, though.
I don't think there was ever a realistic prospect of getting Italy to fight France and Britain, there just wasn't enough popular support for the idea in Italy ca. 1914-15. The Habsburgs had been the traditional enemy of Northern Italians and House Savoy for several centuries. It was much easier to whip up enthusiasm to fight Austria and fight for territory that every Italian schoolboy knew was supposed to be part of greater Italy. The best the Central Powers could realistically hope for was keeping Italy neutral and they probably should have made more compromises for that outcome.
Minor correction. South Tyrol had two parts. What we call South Tyrol now was dominated by German speakers and even as part of Italy is still 70% German speaking. The region of Trento had more Italian speakers and is more what Italy wanted. They wanted South Tyrol as well since that would extend their control to the Alpine passes.
Two caveats on Matt’s Italian job: First, the German “sweep” to Paris failed for basic military reasons - the logistics were impossible. This was an army that had to walk and carry most everything in horse-drawn wagons. They were exhausted early on, which the General Staff knew.
Second, the empire of Austria-Hungary was flimsy in almost every way possible, not just military strength. Their fighting capacity was deficient from the beginning. The Serbs kicked their butts the first time they invaded and they had to have the Germans do the job. Their political system was both fragmented and languorous. Their economy not much better. The Austrians disparaged the Hungarians and the Hungarians hated everybody. They were no longer a legitimate power, let alone a great power.
I'm definitely bringing this up on a future date.
Maybe the best response to "what's your Roman Empire??"
EDIT: Okay, fine, I may have "over-indexed" (to use a term I learned here) on a few loudmouths who are like "you're not the boss of me, I'll speed whenever I damn well please and also I hate immigrants." I am now thoroughly convinced that SB is the rule-abidingest place on the internet for everything from license plates up to "don't invade other countries for no reason."
I think my overall point still stands, though, which is that the majority of people just have a visceral reaction against the idea of an alien gaining unauthorized access to their homeland and that they believe that the reason for this is self-evident and doesn't really need explanation. Which is fine! This is not a value judgement - I just think it's interesting.
ALSO AN EDIT: So I am a big proponent of people being open about the affective and emotional components of their value systems and beliefs and so on, so here's what motivated the question: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/tories-conservatives-dangerous-drift-katie-lam-immigrants-fascism.
The gist is that a Tory MP floated the proposal of retroactively revoking Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR; the UK term for permanent residency). I will admit I am a little fuzzy on the details - the Bulwark article makes it seem like she wanted to just basically take it away from everyone who holds it. Then Kemi Badenoch got involved and issued a "clarification," which is more like, no no, just from people who receive benefits, who commit a crime (NB: not clear if this includes misdemeanors) or whose income falls below £38,700 for six months or longer (i.e. more than what I made when I arrived as the equivalent of a tenure-track college professor).
I have lived in the UK for four years, and although I'm temporarily away this year in France, the plan was to return, probably indefinitely. Needless to say, hearing about the proposal - even though it's far from being policy - made me very, very, very angry and very, very very scared. This is the Tories we're talking about - if Reform wins the next election, which seems likely, I see no reason to believe they won't just leapfrog past that and do something even more drastic (I am pretty scared the current rhetoric around "high value" immigrants, which I already find gross, will just collapse into "let's do an Idi Amin and be done with it"). Labour is just basically a xenophobic party now. The only party holding the line are the LibDems, and well, yeah. My feeling is that I need to flee ASAP.
SB is a place where I largely agree with people on most things, but admittedly simply do not identify on any level with the median feeling on immigration. A couple of responses below make the analogy of "family / guest," and while I understand that this is meaningful to most people, for me it doesn't register. So in an effort to understand a phenomenon that is manifesting in a form that is very frightening to me where I live, I treated the commentariat as an anthropological study population with the deck stacked towards a loaded framing of the issue. Hopefully you'll excuse that.
---
I'm going to hijack this alternative history thread (which, no disrespect, love me some good alternative history), to pose what I swear is a sincere question and not a gotcha:
I was just re-reading the latest SB article on immigration (as part of the ongoing series) and it, like many SB articles on immigration, emphasizes the need to have a rules-based order for immigration management and enforcement. No argument here.
But what I always find fascinating is how in the SB comments, immigration is often *uniquely* cast as one of the few areas where it is extremely important to have and maintain rules; people will scoff at MY's focus on expired plates or loudly extoll their god-given right to drive 100 mph regardless of who it puts at risk*, but immigration activates a different nerve where *here*, there can be no exceptions (note that I'm not accusing individuals of hypocrisy; I'm not necessarily saying it's the same people expressing these opinions, just noting the general mood).
Why is this? Why does the notion of rules and enforcing rules uniquely activate a deeply felt nerve when it comes to enforcing immigration? I would say something about people's deep-seated belief in territorial integrity, but I don't think so - there was a lot of shrugging at summarily executing people who happen to be in boats off the coast of Venezuela, which is as clear violation of territorial integrity as they come.
Again, not an accusation of hypocrisy or bad faith - I'm just trying to understand why immigration excites - in some cases uniquely - a defense of "rules" where in other domains it's more like, eh, if it's convenient.
* But that shit is sociopathic, what the hell.
No, I think you have a pretty fundamentally flawed model of what people excuse. Driving 5mph over the limit, yes, driving 100mph absolutely not. Not reporting the $50 your buddy gave you after you helped them move as taxable income, yes, making up $500k in fake expenses, absolutely not.
So what's the immigration equivalent of driving 5 mph over the limit? Doing a little remote work for your non-US employer while here as a tourist? Reporting that you lived in a place for 185 days when it was actually 175? I don't see people demanding hard punishment for either of these things. But actually illegally immigrating is very, very different! The vast majority of illegal immigrants didn't fudge around with some technical requirements, they openly and willfully ignored the fundamental purpose of the system.
It's also a matter of punishment. Seizing your car and banning you from driving for life for going 10 mph over the speed limit would be seen as unfair; a fine and points seem more fair.
Similarly, if you arrive here illegally but embed yourself in the community for several decades, are law-abiding and a productive member of that community, but then are picked up and deported, and possibly being separated from your family is (or should be seen) as unfair. Contrariwise, if you're grabbed trying to sneak into the country or have been here just a month and sent back, that's entirely fair.
Hitting 100 on I-40 in New Mexico (where the speed limit is 80) when there’s no other cars on the vast straight line desert highway is much more forgivable than hitting 100 on an urban freeway with other cars on the road, too
Agreed
"people will scoff at MY's focus on expired plates or loudly extoll their god-given right to drive 100 mph regardless of who it puts at risk"
Where do you get the people of SB saying these kinds of thing? Maybe a few have, but the median opinion here agrees with MY on expired plates and thinks speeding is bad. The entire Democratic party, especially its white-collar, professional middle class branch, is the party of rule-following nowadays.
The premise is very flawed.
But even taking that as a starting point the average view here is probably "be like Obama" which is closer to "let's make some reasonable effort to enforce the rules" than to "let's get every single illegal at all costs". I'm not sure why that would be very different from other viewpoints on rules-following.
See above - I may have allowed a few vocal commenters to give me a skewed impression.
But I think it's also the case that immigration articles tend to bring some, let's say, passionate voices out, and the center of gravity seems to arc towards them.
I'm here because I liked the theme and core arguments of "One Billion Americans", so I am likewise perplexed by much of the reflexive anti-immigration rhetoric in the comments. I accept the need for compromise on the issue only because arguing for dramatically increased legal immigration and generous application of amnesty and a short path to citizenship for undocumented residents who have not committed any felonies is currently politically unpopular, and therefore electorally inefficient.
It's almost unfair to compare anything to driving. Americans have a unique obsession with driving like a maniac.
Can't argue with this.
Huh? I just returned from Naples (the Italian one) an hour ago.
Because most Americans think speeding is either good or a trivial issue (ditto for the other listed offences) but that illegal immigration is bad and serious.
Notably people feel strongly about rules like fare evasion, theft etc. so I don’t think immigration is unique in that regard.
I think all people, even the speeders, realize that lack of speeding enforcement has created a meta where everyone speeds.
And this has drawbacks, that most people (even most of the speeders) will acknowledge, while saying that the benefits are worth the drawbacks.
If everyone speeds a little, we're okay. If everyone skips paying the fares, everything falls apart, and rapidly.
There's also a feeling that just going a little over is okay -- maybe even required to be safe, depending on what the rest of traffic is doing -- but people going extra fast are very dangerous and need controlled.
I'd like to get to a place where we up the speed limits and then enforce them strictly, but this is about as believable [1] as giving amnesty to everyone and then starting strict enforcement.
[1] I always feel bad when I see a sign saying "speed limit strictly enforced." No it isn't. Whoever put that up may have even meant it, but it just screams impotence. You can't stop it, so threaten that you'll stop it, but only very naive people believe the threats.
You are getting at a key insight, which is that "following the rules" doesn't really matter that much to anyone. What matters is the degree to which one dislikes the underlying substantive thing (which in this case isn't necessarily immigration writ large - different people have different views about what types of immigration are good or bad).
I actually don't agree. There are substantial population zones (hi from the upper midwest!) where rule following is generally agreed and respected for its own sake.
Nobody wants to be Cold Florida. Well, maybe Ohio.
Are you saying people care about the rules they like and don't care about the rules they don't like? It's almost like they don't care about rules at all
"Because most Americans think speeding is either good or a trivial issue (ditto for the other listed offences) but that illegal immigration is bad and serious"
Yes, you are restating my question. So, again, why?
This seems extremely obvious. Immigration is clearly more impactful (positive or negative depending on your view) than any of the other things you mention.
Additionally breaking immigration law involves jumping the queue which makes those who went through the legitimate process feel like suckers. Just like fare evasion makes fare payers feel like suckers.
Just throwing it out there, illegal immigration alters the permanent socioeconomic ecosystem in a way that momentarily speeding, or whatever, does not (unless you hit and kill someone, but Americans are not so sympathetic to the accidental killer driver).
I know what you're getting at, but I don't think this statement is strictly accurate. When a few people speed, it does affect the entire roadway "ecosystem". There is a "culture of the roads" - anyone who's driven in many different states or cities (or countries) can attest that different local driving cultures are very different personality-wise. The more people drive fast, the more others drive fast to keep up. The more jerks there are on the road, the more aggressive other drivers feel like they have to be to not get cut off or taken advantage of. And a single accident affects many many drivers who get stuck in the resulting traffic.
Certainly true. However, anyone who abridges my personally-understood road code of behavior should be pulled over and summarily shot.
95% kidding, but not 100%.
I don’t mind a culture of aggressive driving if people are aware and predictable
>Why is this? Why does the notion of rules and enforcing rules uniquely activate a deeply felt nerve when it comes to enforcing immigration?<
I think rules should be enforced in all or most areas: taxes, paying your subway fare, littering, polluting, spending what Congress allocated, the speed you drive at, voting, consumer charges, etc. Either enforce rules or change/remove them.
But perhaps the reason the enforcement of immigration rules gets so much attention (and very broad support nearly everywhere these days, except for the hard left) is the realization that immigration has an extremely potent effect on *electoral politics*.
Anway, I believe we're hardwired by evolution to fear/loathe/avoid resource competition, and so yes, the specter of "excessive" numbers of newcomes touches something deeply primal in our species.
Illegal immigrants can’t vote though. They might impact electoral politics through Census and districting but it’s unclear which party this helps.
I think he means it affects electoral politics by bringing out strong right-aligned feelings from people who might not otherwise vote with the right. Which is true - it does do that. Whether that's why it gets so much attention here or not, I don't know.
It gets so much attention here because it’s such a salient national issue, basically only due to Trump and Fox News yellow journalism
I can't speak for whatever commenters you may have read, but most of us are strongly in favor of enforcing rules and maintaining order as a part of a broad public liberalism https://www.slowboring.com/p/liberalism-and-public-order/comments
I strongly dispute that this is the case, and I think that a belief that rules should be followed and an aesthetic appreciation of orderliness have more explanatory power than anything else when considering how the comments are going to come down on any particular issue.
I'm sure someone on here has disagreed with Matt about the license plates but I think most people agree with him, and I'm not sure who is pro-extreme speeding but I don't think it's most people or that this is a much-discussed idea.
Other widely held lawful-aligned views are that governments should do what it takes to prevent people from creating a disorderly environment in public spaces, and that traditional vices like gambling should be discouraged.
Because there's a big difference between someone in your family Breaking a rule.
And an uninvited person coming into your home.
Besides that large numbers of immigrants take time to assimilate and settle. People don't do good with too much change too fast.
Not to mention like we see in europe.Sometimes those immigrants don't really seem to be interested in assimilating, and don't share the same western liberal values that we do
"Everyone who moves to America becomes an American [or maybe their kids do]" is infinitely important.
It's a failure to walk in another man's shoes. Virtually all Slow Borers will never be involved in illegal immigration in any way. As much or maybe more importantly, no one in their family or social circle will be involved in illegal immigration. It's easy to be in favor of strict enforcement when you know that there is no consequence at all for yourself or anyone you know.
Darkly, it's generally unseemly to be against immigration broadly, especially when you're sophisticated to know that you and your immigrant ancestors are not like these immigrants. So being in favor of a strict enforcement of the rules for their own sake sidesteps any grappling with that.
They're also unlikely to interact with the issues exacerbated by illegal immigration. It's easy to be in favor of lax enforcement when there are no visible consequences for anyone you know.
What are the issues exacerbated by illegal immigrants, and who interacts with them?
Changes in culture
Strains on local services such as schools and hospitals
Lack of language cohesion
Depression of wages
Increases in crime ( even if immigrants do less crime per capita.Still, the total amount of crime increases)
Etc
Changes in crime depend a lot on both the immigrants and the locals. Almost any immigrant will lower the crime rate (and maybe even the absolute numbers) in a very high-crime neighborhood.
But lower skill, undocumented immigrants might raise crime in areas that are already very safe and orderly.
Note I didn't say crime rate, I said, total amount of crime
I stand by the idea that depressing wages in the agricultural and meatpacking sectors is a good thing. And construction, too, to the extent we have a crisis of being underbuilt
That really depends on your point of view
It's nice if you are the one buying those goods and service
It's less nice if you are the person working there and want a higher paycheck
The single largest issue is use of public services and resources. Schools, hospitals (especially the emergency department), police, fire, EMS, CPS, city and state level social services, etc., all cost more in people, time, and or money when engaging someone with limited English proficiency, limited education, and different norms than middle class Americans.
The more direct your involvement in a lot of these matters, the more you will notice. In particular, if you either use or supply those services, you see where the system gets tested.
When your kids behave badly it's part of the normal scenario. If a guest in your house behaves badly it's considered rude. In addition to ingrained animal territorialism maybe we expect immigrants to behave better. On my many trips to Mexico I tried to not act like a complete dope whereas here I was more susceptible, lol.
The response to this is the ‘have you ever run through a red light’ scene from Dave. Americans don’t view traffic laws as ‘real’ laws. Like when you are asked if you have been convicted of a crime traffic violations are excepted.
I have never run through a red light. Ever. I see it MAYBE monthly, and I wish every ill and pest on those shit people.
Not by accident? I confess to having accidentally run a red light before, but never on purpose, unless it was such a long light that it seemed like a glitch, with no other cars in the intersection
But what if your mother was in the car and you had to get her to the hospital? Or if you were on an empty road where you know it's safe and nobody's around. Good movie.
I've asked this as a quick-and-dirty test of rule-followingness before: how long would a light have to stay red (empty roads, clear visibility) before you decide it's glitching and run it?
I'm definitely on the long side (possibly 5+ minutes) but I think my mom even said she'd just turn right and figure out how to come back through the intersection in the green direction. (I do wonder what she'd do in a jurisdiction without legal right-on-red...)
Nobody does that here, because we are a land of laws and behavior.
That's why some of us "IDGAF about illegals" types feel the analogy is apt. A lot of immigration law doesn't feel particularly real. Do I have problems with illegals voting in statewide or national elections or receiving any sort of welfare assistance? Yes, but come pick crops or chop up meat to keep it cheap while not causing and I don't care at all. Depressing farm wages isn't something anyone in their right mind should care about.
When people say "illegals are criminals because they've broken the law" they don't actually mean that; what they actually mean is that they're criminals because they've broken specific laws that they actually care about enforcing. People feel how they feel.
Edit: To be clear, we don't have Europe's assimilation problem in the United States and we have a very different agricultural economy; under similar circumstances I'd take a very different view (though I'd still be inclined to chuck the Tommy Robinson types into the Channel).
I already "liked" your original, so here is another "like" for your edited version.
Rules are good. Those who disobey should be made to suffer a consequence for disobedience, such as being taken to the town square at high noon, there in the sight of G-d and the public to be caned.
My most out-there authoritarian impulse is that I would support minor public corporal punishment for public disorder.
I also think there are a lot of unintended consequences I probably haven't thought through.
I'm informed by various works of literature and media that public corporal punishment leads to large-scale pickpocketing by plucky urchins.
Because the strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must. The US has never had the slightest respect for borders when it comes to doing things like bombing boats, so is not taken seriously when talking up the sanctity of borders. The only anti-immigration position I really respect is the isolationist paleocon position that US authority also ends at the border. Otherwise talk of borders just feels like the old saying.
>The US has never had the slightest respect for borders when it comes to doing things like bombing boats
What are you referencing here? The Trump administration's recent attacks on claimed Venezuelan drug smugglers? Those appear to be illegal, but they took place in international waters. I don't know how respect for international borders or foreign sovereignty plays into it
Do you have any evidence that Americans are more anti-immigrant than citizens of other countries?
We’re an empire, we get to do these things
I'm glad to see the edit because I was really incredulous when I first read your post earlier this morning. Like, I'm willing to agree that there are some immigration hardliners around here, but the SB commentariat (in contrast to replies to Matt on Twitter re those subjects!) is definitely pro-vehicle registration and anti-speeding by a decent margin too.
In re, "there was a lot of shrugging at summarily executing people who happen to be in boats off the coast of Venezuela," that's because such conduct: (1) has been fairly routine by US presidents for 200+ years at this point (the novelty is the video footage, not the US military killing random foreigners on flimsy pretexts) and (2) will not be punished in any way, shape, or form, even if the Democrats win the presidency and two-thirds majorities of both houses of Congress in 2028, so there's not a lot of reason to get worked up about it. To be extremely blunt, literally the sole remedy anyone has for that kind of thing is direct action, which is potentially illegal to advocate in any particularly concrete way, so people aren't going to be publicly pushing for it.
While I bow to no man in my contempt for and exceedingly low expectations of the elected representatives of the Democratic Party, what you're saying is probably more cynical that the most hard-core leftists. I believe (as a serving soldier) that under a future (unlikely) Dem trifecta, what is being done in the Caribbean should be investigated, tried, and punished as murder. IANAL, but apparently reliance on (secret) OLC memos is considered a get out of jail free card; that needs to end. If/when this OLC issues a memo saying that anyone tenuous associated with "antifa" is also a legitimate target for a drone strike, will you shrug that off as well?
If such an "anti-antifa" memo is issued and drone strikes take place against anyone on US soil or in US waters at the time of the strike, I will be hair-on-fire freaking out. That said, if you told me that I would die instantly if I was incorrect, I would still bet against anyone ever being criminally prosecuted for the strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific (and that's generously assuming there's not a blanket pardon from Trump of some sort that covers any plausible defendants before he leaves office).
I agree with what *should* happen, but srynerson's point seems fairly accurate. It seems unlikely that Democrats are going to set up Obama, Clinton, Biden and their administration's officials to be prosecuted given they all were involved in the bombing of foreigners...
One point I think Matt is overlooking - Italian neutrality helped indirectly bring the Ottoman Empire into the war on the side of the Central Powers, which ultimately proved much more distracting to the Allies (especially the British).
Long story short, the Germans had a modern battlecruiser - the Goeben - in the Mediterranean on the outbreak of war. Since the neutral Italians were unwilling to allow it to dock more than 48 hours and any Austrian port could be easily blockaded, the Goeben fled into the Dardanelles and forced the Ottomans to choose between the Germans and the British. The Ottoman Pasha allowed the ship to pass by the Turkish minefields. Once the Goeben (and its escort the light cruiser Breslau) were in the straits it could not be easily ejected or controlled by the Turks, and in fact precipitated actual war with Russia and the Ottomans by sailing in to the Black Sea on its Admiral's own initiative and bombarding Russian ports. Had the Goeben been allowed to dock in an Italian port such as Taranto, the Ottomans may well have stayed neutral.
Good point, but Russia’s price for entry was always Constantinople. So the clash was coming.
There was no price for entry. Russia was the first major power to declare war after Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia's goal was to remain the dominant power in the Balkans and keep Austria out. Arguably Russia's aggressiveness turned what could have remained a local Balkan issue between Austria and Serbia into a global conflagration. Had Russia remained on the sidelines, Germany would have been unable to justify moving forward with war against Russia. (Ironically, Austrian performance against Serbia turned out to be so poor that Russia would certainly have been far better off letting the Austrians embarass themselves.)
I think you’re giving too little credit to pan-slavism, which had more to do with Russia siding with Serbia than the desire to have a sphere of influence in the Balkans
That's debatable. In intellectual circles pan-slavism was sincere, in the Russian Imperial bureaucracy it was more a useful tool to spread Russian influence. In any case the Balkans are mostly Slavic, so it didn't make a lot of practical difference. And Greece and Romania are Orthodox so by the Russian logic of the time also natural protectorates of the Tsar. Ergo, the entire Balkans was from the Russian point of view their natural sphere of influence (Slavic and/or Orthodox) and the Catholic German Habsburgs needed to go away.
I think there was a fair amount of Russia trying to save face after its embarrassing loss in the Russo-Japanese War, too. And there was also public opinion on the side of the Serbs after a backlash to other Austrian actions in the Balkans (in Bosnia, I think), which led to a rise in pan-slavism. I think you’re overestimating how strategic the Russian autocracy was capable of being. It was more emotion than realpolitik, I think.
But the Russians as always were pretty pathetic, they could not even make it to the actual end of the war and had to settle for having lots of territory lost!
Didn’t Russia enter the war before it was clear that the Ottomans would? Obviously they want Constantinople, but it is not clear that the Turks enter the war based on that alone (though it is certainly possible)
Yeah if it was just the Russians and French the Ottoman Empire might have been attacked by Russia, but the British wanted a neutral Ottoman Empire and would have supported the OE against Russian encroachment during the war.
There is a big miss here: with all that seacoast, there is no way that Mr. Winston “We can invade Constantinople by sea” Churchill won’t try *something*. He had a lot of British boats, the intense need to knock Italy out of the war, and quite a few options.
So take your pick: Roman Gallipolli? The Sicilian Republic? Whatever it is, it’s getting called “Operation Hauteville”.
I will maintain the Gallipoli campaign was a good idea but failed due to:
1) Poor execution
2) Lack of Army-Navy cooperation
3) Complete lack of understanding of modern minefields
4) Slowness in taking seriously the need for professionally manned minesweeping vessels
Once it failed, there was the interminable throwing good money after bad, but the idea was reasonable.
I would add #5: a LOT of underestimating the Turks, which the Brits would 100% also do in Italy.
Really, this just lends itself to the real “what if” we should be talking about: an Antonio Gramsci led Italian Republic in the wake of Italy’s defeat in WW1.
Ehh, WW1 era technology (artillery, machine guns, barbed wire, naval mines) made amphibious invasions very difficult, and the whole selling point was an easy way to put British naval power to use against the Central Powers. If you're going to do a hard amphibious invasion, why wouldn't you do Jackie Fisher's utterly insane plan to land on the Baltic coast north of Berlin instead?
+1 re good idea at the start, but then it turned into one giant sunk cost fallacy within a couple of weeks. (It was arguably the easiest place for the Ottomans to defend from a logistics standpoint in the entire empire, so it should have been obvious that it was only going to get worse and worse for the Allied forces the longer it took to make headway.)
Probably all failed military campaigns had a good idea behind them.
No some of them are just terrible.
See for example - Italian invasion of neutral Greece in 1940. No redeeming qualities whatsoever in the decision to attack, the plan or the execution.
Well, I thought we all understand the General Italian Exclusion when discussing rational military strategy.
:-)
With how close the forcing of the Dardanelles and the landings came to victory in the opening moves I could see a British landing in Italy actually succeeding. The initial poor execution of the attempted forcing and force allocation isn't an issue if the RN is just confining the Regia Marina to port (which from Jutland we know it had the capability to do, the Hochseeflotte which was far superior to the Italians was confined to port after Jutland where everything that could go wrong for the Grand Fleet did go wrong and they still forced the Germans to retreat minutes into the main engagement, the technological advantage was just so massive for the RN) and supporting landings with shore bombardment. Even with the kind of poor proto-combined arms co-ordination you would expect you still have a far better environment for the Royal Navy to be operating in compared to the tight confines of the Dardanelles. With that support alone even if you assume the landing forces blunder as they did in Gallipoli they are not getting trapped on the beaches. Perhaps it would stall further on but it would require a rather large amount of Italian resources to be relocated to cause it to stall out and keep it stalled.
And thats assuming that it goes down near identically just with the confines of the Dardanelles removed. The Admiralty may be far more generous with what it allocates to the force if its in the central Mediterranean and is keeping the Italians confined to port or even forcing them out into a battle they likely couldn't win. The differing geology of the landing sites may have made the initial containment much more difficult and so on. You tweak a few things and the major British amphibious invasion of the First World War succeeds.
I think this is what Italy thought through, and why they decided to fight the alliance that could only get at them through narrow alpine passes vs the one that could land troops at will anywhere on an enormous coastline.
I'm also highly skeptical Austria would've stood any chance against a (albeit weakened) Russia even leading up to the Revolution but this is what makes these alt histories so fun.
I don’t get it. Austria won against the actual Russia and was a signatory to Brest-Litovsk.
No, Germany won against Russia, and Austria tagged along. Every Russia vs. Austria battle where the Germans weren't involved went badly for Austria.
But why would this scenario be different? In this case the Germans have the same amount of resources to spend on Russia, maybe more (depending on what happens with France) and Austria has more resources to spend on Russia, so you would expect at a minimum the same outcome.
The other counterfactual is what would have happened had Wilson kept the US out of the war? By 1917, the Allies & the Central Powers were broke. Only US money kept the Allies afloat; the Central Powers starved, even with Ukraine's grain. Would all the European powers have collapsed? Would they have been forced to make peace? Either way, what would the consequences have been?
A lot of these "the Entente allies were close to collapse without American support" always seem weird to me in that it normally works out as Britain and France would have been in the position Imperial Germany was in in 1916 in 1918 ignoring the Imperial Germany kept fighting through several years of Turnip Winter. Assuming American neutrality the worst case is Russia gets knocked out slightly earlier but by the time it would really start to bite (shortage of trade, money and ships) Germany had already lost the war and was just taking a while to starve to death.
Good point. Much of my question is based on the fact that by 1916 Britain had exhausted its ability to borrow from Wall Street & from the US entry into the war could borrow from the US govt.
"Liked," but it's hard for me to see how scrupulous US neutrality doesn't lead to at least a "Marginal Victory" (in wargaming terms) for the Central Powers, because without US financial assistance to the Allies in the 2+ years preceding actual American entry into the war, Russia is surely knocked out of the conflict at least several months earlier.
One of the things that really stands out in military history is how lopsided conflicts usually are—the side with better organization and technology usually completely trounces the other side even though by the numbers it might seem like a more even fight. The most extreme examples being things like the Spanish conquest of the New World where for example a couple hundred Spaniards defeated the entire Incan Empire at Cajamarca. World War I was less extreme but the main takeaway is also that the smaller countries made little difference in the face of the war machines of the major advanced powers Germany, Britain, France, and even the US later. I would count Austria-Hungary as a less-advanced power here because they also lost pretty consistently, and Germany had to bail out Austria-Hungary’s losses against Russia in the early stages of the war by shifting troops from France to East Prussia where they quickly romped the Russians. Romania joining the Allies made no difference at all when Germany overran it quickly. So I think Italy switching sides would not have mattered—even if it freed up Austrian units, they were probably the worst-performing large country and also required German bailouts.
The broader lesson about politics is that power and competence really matter, if Austria-Hungary had performed better militarily and held off Russia in the initial stages of the war, that would’ve freed up way more German troops to attack France than Italy would have. The Entente won ultimately because they controlled more resources including a vast colonial empire they could use to starve the Central Powers, not because they gave up bits of their empire to minor powers to induce them to join the war.
Austria was a major asset to Germany on the technology side. Bohemia was a leading industrial region, and one of the best weapons producers in Europe. Because of Czech know-how Austrian artillery was generally superior to everyone else's. This is one reason why Hitler was so anxious to incorporate Bohemia and Moravia into his own Reich.
It didn't win them the war though. The problem Germany had was that the Entente was capable of starving them out. Better artillery didn't overcome the fact that once trench warfare set in they didn't have the technology to return to manoeuvre warfare.
All true. I am just trying to defend Austria’s honor. The country had its strong points, it wasn’t just the liability for Germany it is often portrayed as.
"The problem Germany had was that the Entente was capable of starving them out." After Russia sued for peace, the primary issue was one of manpower. They had enormous amounts of their most productive workers serving in the army or in producing for the army as opposed to producing food stocks. This impacted both Germany and Austria severely. While they would have tried to import foodstocks as a replacement, the blockade stopped this. If Italy hadn't joined the war, but had sold food to the Central powers, its likely sufficient for them to not lose the war.
Good points, although one might argue that Cajamarca wasn't really a battle between two forces. More that Pizarro fooled the Inca into delivering their leader into his hands and once he was captured, the vast Incan forces were demoralized and fled.
Fair point, but the "capture the leader despite being enormously outnumbered" gambit wouldn't have worked nearly as well (or at all) if the Spaniards didn't have an overwhelming technological advantage due to [paging Jared Diamond] "guns, germs, and steel." (And horses. Even a small number of horses would have been enough to terrify the Inca, who had never seen such creatures before.)
If Matt (and anyone else) is having a Hapsburg nostalgia moment, this NY Times article about the long lost Florentine Diamond is fascinating. Back in 1919 some of the Hapsburg jewelry, including this gem, were deemed to be personal Hapsburg property, not 'crown jewels'. The matriarch manage to keep them hidden in Switzerland, then Canada, for a century.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/arts/design/florentine-diamond-resurfaces-hapsburg.html
Random thought on the impending end of the shutdown: Like a lot of Democrats I'd prefer to see this thing continue, until Senate Republicans are forced to gut the filibuster. HOWEVER, one political silver lining (albeit a horrible one for millions of people) is the specter of big increases in health insurance premiums. Had Republicans buckled on this, they'd be doing themselves a political favor.
This is a gift-wrapped issue for Democrats. And yes, there are a lot of pissed off members of my political tribe right now. But as we saw last week, the REAL way to stick it to MAGA is to beat them in elections. A blowout in next year's midterms will be more satisfying on that score than forcing Republicans to back down on Obamacare subsidies in the here and now.
Yes, for all the sturm und drang, the shutdown wound up being a nothingburger and we're left with where we were at the beginning: terrible Republican policies, like exploding healthcare premiums, that Democrats can take to the polls next November.
yeah we would NOT want to do them a favor.... they are showing their true colors and I think voters will show their true colors: blue!!😄
I have never understood why Italian revanchists were so anxious to reclaim the old Venetian territories of Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia as opposed to the much more attractive Nice, which of course had belonged (with small interruptions) to the ruling Savoy dynasty for centuries before being traded to France in 1860, i.e. within the living memory of older Italians, and Corsica, where the local Italian dialect was still the primary spoken language in 1914.
Trieste, predictably, suffered quite badly economically under Italian rule. It went from being the primary port of the Habsburg Empire to an afterthought in an Italy already blessed with numerous Adriatic ports. It is really only since the EU brought greater integration that Trieste has started to revive. Dalmatia and Istria were both lost to the Southern Slavs within 30 years, and given the demographic imbalances that was probably predictable as well in 1915.
The Italian determination to grab the fairly impoverished South Tyrol also seems a little odd in a world where ski tourism had not yet become a big business. That seems more like people in Rome looking at a map and getting angry that Italy seems to have bite taken out of it. Even the strategic rationale of creating a solid mountain wall between Italy and the Germanic lands seems a little silly.
In an alternative scenario where Italy is on the winning side, they probably would still hold Nice to this day (it had never been "core" French territory, the way Alsace was viewed).
In re Italian territory, there's also the oddity of San Marino, which somehow survived Italian unification, World War I, and Mussolini. (I know from some light reading that the Marinese government in each of these instances made efforts to avoid antagonizing the Italian government, but, still, it's weird given (i) the wild imbalance of power, (ii) San Marino literally being entirely surrounded by Italy with no foreign power other than the Vatican City within a couple hundred miles of San Marino's borders, and (iii) the overall fervor of Italian nationalism/imperialism 1860-1943.)
It's a good question. It does seem to be a weird historical accident. San Marino doesn't even provide any real tax or diplomatic advantages to Italians as far as I can tell (or didn't in the 19th century, the critical time to avoid being absorbed). I suppose it is simply too small to bother with. It is also not really independent in ways that matter. For example, San Marino had its own fascist party ruling it in the 1930s.
The only time I can think of when San Marino advantaged Italy is that for a long time from the 1980s to around 2000, three countries in Europe each had two Formula One circuits (Monza and Imola in Italy, Hockenheim and Nürburgring in Germany, and Silverstone and Brands Hatch in Britain) - but the two Italian circuits were the Italian Grand Prix (Monza) and the San Marino Grand Prix (Imola), while Britain and Germany only got 1.5 Grand Prix per year each (British Grand Prix, a German Grand Prix and a European Grand Prix that generally alternated between the two).
The F1 circuit is much less European-dominated now - rather than five Grands Prix across Italy, Britain and Germany, there are just two: Monza and Silverstone.
Even to a rabid nationalist circa 1900, there's a difference between "Our People, suffering under the Hated Foreigner" and "Our People, but doing their own thing in a silly microstate." Like, did even the Nazis care about annexing Liechtenstein?
At least per Wikipedia, the Nazis planned on annexing Liechtenstein as part of their eventual invasion of Switzerland and only refrained from occupying it earlier because of wanting to avoid harming relations with Switzerland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum#Nazi_attitudes_toward_Liechtenstein
Spain often feels like the odd man out in 20th century Europe.
They had the good fortune and/or foresight to stay out of both world wars and avoid a lot of destruction and death. Though they did manage to do a number to themselves in the civil war.
I'm going to repost my top-level comment on the original copy of this post with a couple of typographical corrections:
A+ work, Matt! I love this kind of content and I agree with a lot of what you said. *However,* there are two specific things I disagree with in your conclusion, which I'm very surprised no one else seems to have mentioned in the first 89 comments that are showing as of me refreshing the page after typing this reply:
(1) You explicitly contemplate that Russia is knocked out of the war earlier in your scenario, but then reference the Bolsheviks being in charge of Russia post-war. My understanding is that most historians who look at this issue -- including Marxist ones! -- think that, if Russia was knocked out of WW I earlier, then the Bolsheviks would NOT succeed in gaining control of Russia for the foreseeable future. (They might still eventually succeed in doing so, but it would be a longer process and a lot more fraught.) A Menshevik-dominated Russia is probably more plausible in your scenario or even an unstable liberal Russia vulnerable to a reactionary counter-revolution, depending on the specifics of when and how Russia is knocked out.
(2) Even where Germany decisively wins the war in Europe, I do not believe that Germany plausibly gets to keep any of its overseas colonies unless you're also contemplating some spectacular annihilation of the Royal Navy. No matter how badly the BEF bled out in Flanders, etc., the British had such a colossal advantage in manpower and resources *outside* of Europe, and which would have still been largely uninterceptable by the Central Powers even with the benefit of the Italian navy, that the Germans could not realistically resupply and defend their colonies if the British made a determined attempt to take them. For Germany to not just get to keep its colonies, but gain the Belgian ones, I think you need to imagine an otherwise victorious Germany agreeing to a whole bunch of concessions in Europe, which I have a very hard time picturing the Germans doing.
On the subject of Italy in WWI, I can't resist posting this link to Bret Devereaux's excellent ACOUP blog, wherein he names Luigi Cadorna the worst commander of WWI (worst as in most incompetent, not necessarily most evil).
Cadorna fought a series of battles in the Isonzo River basin, which, as Bret points out bluntly, is "a stupid place to have a battle." He elaborates: "There was nothing beyond the Isonzo except mountains. Taking the first set of mountains merely awarded one the privilege of attempting to assault the next set of yet higher mountains."
Moreover, Cadorna made a metric ton of tactical errors, and, what's worse he repeated his mistakes again and again. A highly recommended read with lots of facepalm moments.
https://acoup.blog/2021/10/08/collections-luigi-cadorna-was-the-worst/
Another random thought: am I the only person who's not jumping all over Trump for the 50 year mortgage idea? Yes, of course, it's better to avoid this if you can. That's a lot of interest! But for some people, it may well beat renting...
Mind you I'm happy to see him take political heat for this suggestion.
I'm not jumping on him. I'm more amused by all the cryptobros and goldbugs who, until about 30 seconds ago were also overwhelming pro-renting, falling over themselves to declare the glory of life-long mortgage debt.
If you're financially capable, having access to what's basically a perpetual interest-only loan at a fixed rate is actually quite a useful thing. If I could have taken out a 100 year mortgage at the rates we had in 2021, it would have been all but free money.
It does totally fly in the face of the 'logic' of using mortgages as a tool for middle-class wealth building, though.
Yes....good point.
I don't think there was ever a realistic prospect of getting Italy to fight France and Britain, there just wasn't enough popular support for the idea in Italy ca. 1914-15. The Habsburgs had been the traditional enemy of Northern Italians and House Savoy for several centuries. It was much easier to whip up enthusiasm to fight Austria and fight for territory that every Italian schoolboy knew was supposed to be part of greater Italy. The best the Central Powers could realistically hope for was keeping Italy neutral and they probably should have made more compromises for that outcome.
Minor correction. South Tyrol had two parts. What we call South Tyrol now was dominated by German speakers and even as part of Italy is still 70% German speaking. The region of Trento had more Italian speakers and is more what Italy wanted. They wanted South Tyrol as well since that would extend their control to the Alpine passes.
Switzerland should have been declared the victor and taken North Italy, East France and Bavaria as a prize😂
Two caveats on Matt’s Italian job: First, the German “sweep” to Paris failed for basic military reasons - the logistics were impossible. This was an army that had to walk and carry most everything in horse-drawn wagons. They were exhausted early on, which the General Staff knew.
Second, the empire of Austria-Hungary was flimsy in almost every way possible, not just military strength. Their fighting capacity was deficient from the beginning. The Serbs kicked their butts the first time they invaded and they had to have the Germans do the job. Their political system was both fragmented and languorous. Their economy not much better. The Austrians disparaged the Hungarians and the Hungarians hated everybody. They were no longer a legitimate power, let alone a great power.