I know you're not German or a German nationalist, but you tend to root for Germany in their conflicts with Poland, and that's what I was referring to here.
This is mostly caused by my rooting for plausible candidates for becoming healthy and sizable blobs, and only slightly enhanced by the obnoxious quality I perceive in Polish nationalism, which among other things, makes me have the least amount of sympathy for Poland (and Czechia) among all victims of Nazism (Jews and homosexuals get the greatest). Two feelings of mine get mixed here, my sentiments about blobs and the judgement that Germany got a rather unfair (and harmful to Europe and the world) deal out of the World Wars in general and in comparison to say Russia.
This is true of all states, not just empires. Europe has proven that the sort of unity you like can in some circumstances be achieved by supra-state organizations--the EU has not conquered anyone.
True, but sincerely, I very much prefer an EU-like integration to arise with rather more initial military cohercion and the tragedies of WWII, Nazism, and Communism, be avoided or contained in the long term.
Our EU is still an half-baked open question in my book: I'll define it a clear success when quasi-federal strong supranationalism with fiscal, foreign policy, and security integration is achieved, too. For now, I'm biting my nails for the outcome of the Treaty of Lisbon, which makes the pie only mildly better backed, hoping that no yet more loony populist demagogue clown or bloody electorate of tiny country in nationalist moral panic or willing to vent frustrations for their own national government on innocent EU gets in the way.
I'm from the U.S., but I'm absolutely ashamed of manifest destiny.
Genocide always sucks but sincerely I think that in the long term, if Native Americans had been assimilated instead of being killed or left alone in their Stone Age lifestyle, their lot and the overall outcome fro the world would have been better. I think pretty much the same for Mexicans or Caribbeans assimilated by a more successful Manifest Destiny, some years of cohercion buy centuries of prosperity and democracy. As for Canada, I deem that 1774-1815 events that left it politically separate from the other British colonies and fostered the development of separate national consciousness were an unfortunate wrong turn of history. The less nations history lets develop, the better.
It's virtually indistinguishable from, and heavily influenced, lebensraum.
Hitler got inspiration, true, but if a madman gets the wholly loony idea that his nation can do to 100 million modern Europeans in 10-20 years what European colonists did to 10 million Stone Age Native Americans in three centuries, it's very hard to cast blame on the colonists.
Arguably the biggest difference (aside from the peculiarities of the region) is that manifest destiny was largely fueled by the desire to expand and secure slavery indefinitely.
*shrug* In the end, results matter, not original motivation.
I love my country for what it is today and the good it's done in the world, but frankly I'd rather live in an America that didn't make it all the way to the Pacific.
As an European, I'll go and state that the world is a much better, prosperous and safer place, with an America that did it, and hence I very much prefer to live in such a TL. Again, it would have been better if the natives had been brought kicking and screaming into modernity instead of killed.
Rome was unstable and brutal throughout its history.
A PoD that makes Rome successful must perforce remove the instability. Rome was remarkably enlightened and tolerant and successful at productive integration without long-term cohercion and no more brutal than any other civilization of its age. If it had unified Europe and the Middle East for good, in due time it would have in all likelihood evolved to a more liberal socio-political framework, and Western Eurasia would have been spared a truckload of wars, and got much better and earlier economic and cultural development (sparing the Dark Ages in all evidence gives mankind some centuries of technological and cultural acceleration).
Napoleon resembles a 20th century dictator way too much for me to be comfortable with him ruling Europe.
No worse than the other rulers of Europe in his age. It is exceedingly unlikely that Napoleonic European Empire would have reamined authoritarian in the very long term.
The Kaiserreich could have done Europe a lot of good if it had liberalized and/or pursued a more pragmatic foreign policy. A big part of Europe's unifying peace is U.S./NATO military hegemony in the region, something that could have been achieved by Germany with only one world war and no holocaust. It also puts the iron curtain much farther east. Alas for the poor decisions made by Germany's leaders pre-WWI.
So very true.
I'm in favor of things that prevent cultures from being destroyed.
I want political fragmentation rooted out and America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and ultimately the world get as close as possible to unity. The means are irrelevant, as long as they don't give scumbags like Hitler, Himmler, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim, Lenin, or Stalin a free rein, and no more cohercion than a decade or two of military rule or so. As long as cultures are not an obstacle to that, let them be. IMO, however, globalization is showing that having a gazillion different cultures is largely overrated and mankind can thrive nicely with far less diversity.
Islam is probably the best candidate for world unification yet. A good Islamowank will do more for your ideology than a good Rome-wank.
Rome had better potential for tolerance than Islam even at its heyday and a Rome that remains united and strong and conquers Germania, Mesopotamia and Persia has practically everything Islam had in its golden age and much more besides. I find your statement untrue.
