tlb wrote: If Haven were convinced that the conquest of Toulon might be a big loss, but the effects of doing so would be an increase in people getting off the Dole to get in the navy (which is what happened after taking on Manticore) and an easier conquest of other worlds due to the example set, then Haven might well proceed against Toulon despite the economic cost.
Considering that cost of such war might be devastative, it would be simply cheaper to just abolish the Dole at all. Again: the whole reason of Haven war was because it was considered cheaper by the ruling classes to maintain system by conquests, than to abolish the Dole. But if the result might be the devastation of Haven itself - even the
Legislaturists would prefer to deal with unhappy Dolists.
so would be an increase in people getting off the Dole to get in the navy
Seriously... Haven have literally billions of Dolists, and how many they could possibly squeeze into Navy? A dozen millions? This is a teardrop in swimming pool.
Try to remember that this line of discourse was set by you and cat claiming that the Eridani Edict made conquest easy, so the Edict was not a good thing.
Yes.
You are now saying that pure economics can make imperialism unlikely. I am saying that unlikely is not impossible,
Please give me example of imperialistic war of conquest against nuclear nation.
Finally the biggest colonial empire did end after WWII due to economics, but not in the way you meant: the British lost their empire because they impoverished themselves fighting the Germans. The US gave up the Panama Canal and the Philippines, but not for an economic reason. Only the French gave up colonies because of the economic cost of military action (perhaps I should include the USSR's actions in Afghanistan also, but then giving up Eastern Europe is a counterexample).
Nah. The general reason of colonialism collapse was exactly because the colonies stopped to be profitable. World War 2 left too many trained personnel even among colonials, and advent of automatic weapons gave guerilla's the edge in the war of attrition against regular troops in colonies. And most importantly - both USA and USSR wanted colonial system destroyed, albeit for different reasons (USA wanted to open colonial markets to American trade, USSR wanted to put the former colonies on the socialist way).