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Admiral Snackbar posted:
The Confucian factor was important in Ming naval decline but the continued Mongol threat on Ming China's northern borders should not be neglected. The Yongle Emperor constructed a true blue-water fleet for China. It was huge and sailed far and wide as a mighty symbol of Chinese power. It was also extremely expensive to build and maintain. The treasure fleet, along with Yongle's massively costly expeditions against the Mongols (that these were required was some testament to the continued strength of the Mongols even after they were driven out of China), placed an enormous burden on China's treasury. Yongle's successors knew that the Ming, powerful as they were, could not afford both a large navy and a vast military to check the still-potent Mongol threat. The strength of the northern threat was to be proven a mere two decades after Yongle's death with the crushing defeat of a Ming army at Tumu Fort and the capture of the Zhengtong Emperor. Beijing itself came under threat in the aftermath of the defeat, and was saved only by a heroic defence. So, certainly, the ascendancy of the Confucian clique at the imperial court played a large role in ending China's naval supremacy, but there were practical concerns as well.
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May 27, 2010 18:07
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Alchenar posted:It wasn't immediately known that The US removed it's missiles from Turkey, so the original narrative was a win for Kennedy. The fact that both sides negotiated rather than adopting continuous brinkmanship was a win for everyone. In retrospect, Khrushchev got US missiles withdrawn from Turkey for nothing more than a return to the status quo ante in Cuba. He won. It can be argued that the US lost little by removing its missiles in Turkey. The missiles were obsolete and the Polaris SLMBs were entering service by then. Polaris, being submarine-based, was an invincible nuclear deterrent due to the difficulty of locating and destroying submarines before they could launch their missiles in the event of wartime. So it can be argued that Kennedy actually sacrificed something of marginal use in exchange for negating the Soviet ability to hit the continental United States with nuclear missiles. I don't see it that way though. I tend to think that the USSR still came up on top because they gained an ally that would be a constant thorn in the American side for several decades, and that also helped spread Communism in the Third World over that same period of time. But as has already been expressed, the winner was humanity, because the superpowers stepped back from the brink and instituted procedures that made nuclear war less of a risk at least until the renewed hostile relationship of the 1980s.
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Aug 15, 2011 11:44
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Throatwarbler posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pw-2yMC5BE He also runs a small museum in Siem Reap (better known for its proximity to the Angkor ruins) that displays many kinds of landmines, most of which he defused and collected himself over the years. The museum staff are mostly landmine victims or orphans, and aside from admission, they also sell merchandise to make ends meet. He's a good man, doing his bit both for his country and for his community.  The information board about himself at the museum, from when I visited in 2008. Wastrel_ fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Dec 21, 2011 |
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Dec 21, 2011 12:44
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Not actually that strange. In fact, in order to re-establish European control over the colonies in Southeast Asia, returning Allied forces in 1945-1946 rearmed thousands of surrendered Japanese soldiers to fight indigenous nationalist armies.
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Aug 23, 2012 14:32
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Throatwarbler posted:Singapore also has a huge army and F15s. They could probably run roughshod over half of SE Asia if they wanted to. Not likely, the only reason our military is so big is because it's based on conscription. Any war that lasts longer than a couple of weeks is going to gently caress up our economy very seriously.
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Jul 14, 2013 05:17
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Fangz posted:It doesn't? Seems the standard model for non-democratic countries. You need at least the elite force loyal directly to the leadership, or else they start getting ideas about setting straight the direction of the nation or stuff like that. Communist states usually organize their militaries this way. This is because the military is considered the armed wing of the party. This was in fact the case with the PLA, as it started out in 1927 as the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party, responsible for handling the military aspects of its struggle to gain control of the country at that time. This is the general way that the militaries of the other Communist states - Vietnam, the USSR, North Korea - started as well. The party comes into being first, then it establishes an armed wing which later turns into the de facto armed forces of the new Communist state. This also helps explain why Communist states don't tend to fall into praetorianism.
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Sep 3, 2013 12:14
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