Power Politics Quotes
We generally associate expansionism in Africa with the European powers, but under Menelik, Ethiopia expanded its empire greatly while the Europeans were carving up other parts of Africa. When the Italians who didn’t take Ethiopia seriously, tried to grab the territory that Menelik had already grabbed, Menelik’s forces repulsed then in a humiliating defeat for Italy at Adowa in 1896. As a Christian Empire, Menelik thought Ethiopia had a right to African expansionism along with the Christian European powers as bringing Christianity to the pagans was one of the major moral justifications of African expansionism.
The term immediately grew very popular in Germany and soon made its way to the English-speaking countries as “realpolitic”.
It was true that the majority of the citizens of Crimea in 2014 preferred to be a part of Russia than the Ukraine. So the Russians sized the Crimea, had an election and when the vast majority of the Crimeans voted for Russian affiliation, they annexed the Crimea under the principle of self-determination. However, Russia has two of its states with Muslim majorities that prefer to affiliate with one of the majority Muslim nations in the area. But the hypocrisy of the Russians became clear when they would not allow those two states to have elections. The Russian policy seemed to be that whatever is part of Russia is non-negotiable and not subject to self-determination, but whatever borders on Russia that is not part of Russia is entitled to an expression of self-determination and independence of other affiliation if they want. The Crimea had the only warm water port in the Soviet Union; they had a deal with the Ukrainians that their navy could use the port. However, they felt that Western support for the new Ukrainian government was the first step in ousting Russia from that port.
At the beginning of the Battle of Britain, it appeared that England would not be able to hold out against Germany. King was asked by Roosevelt to try and persuade British officials that if they sued for peace that they would not turn over the British fleet to the Germans but would convey it to Canada. Such an act would have produced serious retribution by the Germans.
Later scholars have frequently used the “war of all against all” to describe international and free market economics, evolution, the UN and many other facets of society.
