Geopolitics

The idea that it is deeply immoral for larger countries to bully and invade smaller countries is not just a western value, it is a human value.

https://ctext.org/mozi/gong-shu

Doesn’t the history of ‘the west’ suggest differently? 

If anything there are many more examples of non-western cultures being non-expansionist.

Researcher at MIT Media Lab | Creating futures | https://cyrus.website/info

A missing dimension is power and security though. I feel like non-expansionism in some historical contexts, usually have to do with countries that have a fair balance of power and low security threats.

I also completely reject most of this historical examples because in many cases, their security concerns were overseas and they outsourced their expansionism. No, Europe is not a shining light of balanced power because it quite literally pushed it's security concerns and power into Africa and America. The only era I can probably think of as a good counter example was pre-rifle Japan, but if I'm not mistaken they actually had *more* smaller wars and that only lasted for a small time.

I love Vitalik and the realist in me agrees it's immoral, but it's required since the powers don't trust each others agreements anymore. Covid broke a lot of promises between them and that trust is gone, so they will exert power rather than diplomacy to meet security goals.