Americans Do Not Understand or Expect War for Territory Anymore

File this under, "Usually, Not a Bad Thing", but Americans no longer expect war for territory. This is perfectly understandably for us, but perhaps not true for others.

Let's start with our (American) thoughts on this. Throughout  our time in school, we view history (and discovery) as a distinct time period with a beginning, middle and end.

We may argue about when the beginning actually began; usually we assume Columbus' Voyage to be the "real" beginning, although sometimes we allow that maybe the Vikings got things started - albeit without the follow through.  Then (to American students) not much happened until the 13 colonies got together to start the Revolutionary War. This was the "prelude" to history. And, like the prelude to books, can be easily skipped over. Aside: Want to blow an American's mind? Tell him there was more history between when Colombus "discovered" America through 1776 than there is from 1776 until now.

The "middle" (of all history) is the time from the Revolutionary War through the end of World War II (for older Americans) or through the collapse of the Soviet Union (for younger Americans). 

Non-Americans probably can't image this to be true, but it is. Our history books have the United States expanding into blank sections of the map during this time. It doesn't show us beating the Native Tribes or forcing them out. Our history books really do show the United States abutting, and finally expanding into, unclaimed lands. Even when we won a war with Mexico, we might speak of gaining Texas or California as. result, but not that that is the REASON for the war.

And, now that we are no longer expanding, "history" is over. Ta da!

So we cannot fully wrap out heads around the fact that China or Russia and some other countries don't feel this way. Russia has sellers remorse that Ukraine left? American think, "tough". China wants Taiwan back? Some of us wanted to keep the Philippines or the Panama Canal Zone, "get over it. We did."

Americans, perhaps all people worldwide but I can't speak for them, believe the everyone thinks like we do. If we think the maps are done because all the "blank space" is used up, we assume everyone thinks like this.

It is said that the first Gulf War happened because Saddam Hussein thought we gave him the green light to invade Kuwait. We probably didn't even know that is what Saddam was asking. We would no more think he would invade another country than we would think about invading Cancun or Vancouver.

Here's the thing. Other countries don't think like that. For many of them, the maps' blank spaces have been gone more than hundreds or thousands of years. Russians, Chinese and others don't see a progression from beginning to end. They either see expansion and contraction in cycles, or see the current map has unfair to them. And they may go to war to change the maps. 

And, when they do, either over Ukraine or Taiwan or "Spanish Sahara" or Palestine or the Korean Peninsula, we will again be surprised. And probably unprepared.