I think it is interesting that hockey is popular in Russia, Belarus, Latvia and Kazakhstan but no so much in other former Soviet republics. I don't know enough about the history of sports in the USSR but I wonder if it would be possible to make it more popular also in other countries there.
China and the US were semi-allies during the late-1970's and 1980's because of the Soviet threat. The term used was a friend more than an ally though, as "ally" has specific policy implications. There was cooperation in some foreign policy questions as the US and China both had interest in...
It would be interesting to see some statistics what sort of real estate Japanese bought and where they were located. One interesting aspect of this were Japanese purchases of American golf courses, of which they bought dozens using huge sums of money, and many of these purchases also made...
Just to note that if this very unlikely scenario somehow happened, it would happen only in the context where the US government would have okayed it. The Japanese government was aware of domestic discussions happening in the US. There is not reason to stir up that pot needlessly, considering how...
I have personally concluded that it's perfectly possible for a very intelligent person to be very stupid. There are things like personality and general beliefs (which aren't necessarily tied to intelligence) which also affect a person's actions, so concentrating at intelligence doesn't often...
In the context of Japan bashing of the period, many Americans thought that any product bought from Japanese companies was away from American ones. There were many people who felt that Japan was pushing American firms out of the business, and this feeling reached its peak in the late 1980's...
Yeah, that one was quite commonly used in American reporting at the time, sometimes to the extent that the company in question might have been only barely mentioned in articles, "the Japanese" being main actors.
Never heard of this. It is that kind of story which would be probably mentioned in all histories discussing the Bubble as an example of its excesses (too a good story not to tell), so I am pretty sure it didn't happen.
Although there were all sorts of non-sensical projects during the Bubble...
The war in China did influence the IJN's thinking on the usage of air power and led to quite few changes in their carrier doctrine. On a very fundamental level, the number of people in the IJN who recognised the importance of air power increased quite significantly and there developed a greater...
In practice, by the time the Tokyo War Crime Tribunals started Americans just wanted to get them over with as quickly as possible. Pretty much everyone involved in the process thought the Tribunals pretty much as a joke because there were so many issues in how they were organized.
That was the official casus belli (or at least one of them) but it's unlikely that it was Deng's main motivation behidn the attack. Previous posts have already mentioned these put just put everything together, some of the aims of the war were:
- The consolidate Deng's grip on power and take the...
Depending when the war happens, there might be also some sort of promise by Italians not to interfere in the Balkans (I am particularly thinking Albania) and accepting it as Austria's sphere of influence.
I don't think the US went that far but they certainly put heavy pressure on Japan.It could go other way too though. IIRC, there was some meeting where PM Yoshida said to Americans, who had asked how Japan was going to defend itself, something along the line how Japan puts its trust on the UN and...
It should be noted though that agriculture has been one of the success stories of post-Soviet Russia, even if the country probably still has much potential for futher growth. For many years it has been one of the fastest growing sector of the economy. Just few years ago it became the world's...