Quote (Hamsterbaby @ 2 Aug 2023 21:09)
For a nation or a country to be powerful Population and Natural resources is just part of the equation and there are other deciding factors that are more significant than those.
Oh, trust me, I'm well aware of this fact. I'm from Germany, a nation which is rich without noteworthy amounts of natural resources. And the size of our population and economy are exactly such that we can't quite dominate Europe, but also too big for us to not play an elevated role. Being at this awkward size, relative to our neighbors, has been one of the defining predicaments of Germany's and Europe's politics for the past 150 years.
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A homogeneous, orderly and extremely discipline culture and society
I agree that these traits are extremely important and underrated these days - but they can't make up for a 12:1 disparity in size. No matter how disciplined, hard-working and well-run Japan is, 120m Japanese will never outproduce or outfight 330m Americans or 1.4bn Chinese.
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The Japanese pretty much conquered most of Asia and South East Asia in an astonishingly short period of time.
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Britain doesn't exactly have resources and population either but at their peak they controlled 1/3 of the world.
Both the British and the Japanese colonialization were based on a gigantic technological and logistical advantage which simply doesn't exist anymore in the 21st century.