Yesterday, Russian forces invaded Ukraine from the north, east and south. Russian President Vladimir Putin justified the invasion as a response to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) coming too close to Russia’s borders. According to the U.S. State Department, NATO “was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.” After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has taken the mantle of the former Soviet Union and maintains a very large military force and nuclear weapons. Former Soviet States to the west of Russia became members of NATO with the exception of Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia.
Russia views the encroachment of NATO to its western border as a security threat. In a speech after meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on February 7, 2022, Putin stated “Of course NATO and Russia potentials are incompatible” and warns of nuclear war if Ukraine joins NATO.
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is reminiscent of the United States aggression against the Hawaiian Kingdom during the Spanish-American War. As Russia claims NATO is a national security threat to its existence, the United States claimed Japan was an immediate threat of invasion of the United States west coast.
After the United States admitted unlawful overthrow of the Hawaiian Government, Mahan wrote a letter to the Editor of the New York Times where he advocated seizing the Hawaiian Islands. On January 31, 1893, he wrote that the Hawaiian Islands, “with their geographical and military importance, [is] unrivalled by that of any other position in the North Pacific.” Mahan used the Hawaiian situation to bolster his argument of building a large naval fleet. He warned that a maritime power could well seize the Hawaiian Islands, and that the United States should take that first step. He stated that to hold the Hawaiian Islands, “whether in the supposed case or in war with a European state, implies a great extension of our naval power. Are we ready to undertake this?” Mahan would have to wait four years to find an ally in President William McKinley’s Department of the Navy, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt sent a private and confidential letter, on May 3, 1897, to Mahan. He wrote, “I need not tell you that as regards Hawaii I take your views absolutely, as indeed I do on foreign policy generally. If I had my way we would annex those islands tomorrow.” Moreover, Roosevelt told Mahan that Cleveland’s handling of the Hawaiian situation was “a colossal crime, and we should be guilty of aiding him after the fact if we do not reverse what he did.” Roosevelt also assured Mahan “that Secretary [of the Navy] Long shares [their] views. He believes we should take the islands, and I have just been preparing some memoranda for him to use at the Cabinet meeting tomorrow.”
In a follow up letter to Mahan, on June 9, 1897, Roosevelt wrote that he “urged immediate action by the President as regards Hawaii. Entirely between ourselves, I believe he will act very shortly. If we take Hawaii now, we shall avoid trouble with Japan.” Eight days later, on June 16, 1897, the McKinley administration signed a treaty of “incorporation” with its American puppet—the Republic of Hawai‘i, in Washington, D.C. On the following day, Queen Lili‘uokalani submitted a formal protest to the U.S. State Department stating, “I declare such a treaty to be an act of wrong toward the native and part-native people of Hawaii, an invasion of the rights of the ruling chiefs, in violation of international rights both toward my people and toward friendly nations with whom they have made treaties, the perpetuation of the fraud whereby the constitutional government was overthrown, and, finally, an act of gross injustice to me.”
While the so-called treaty failed to get the required 2/3’s vote from the Senate for ratification, a joint resolution of annexation, being an internal law of the United States, was submitted to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on May 4, 1897, in its place, and pushed through both Houses of the Congress. President McKinley signed it into law on July 7, 1898. In a secret session of the Senate on May 31, 1898, whose transcripts were not opened to the public until 1969, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge acknowledged that the McKinley “Administration was compelled to violate the neutrality of those islands, that protests from foreign representatives had already been received, and complications with other powers were threatened, that the annexation or some action in regard to those islands had become a military necessity.”
The United States aggression against the Hawaiian Kingdom, a sovereign and independent State like Ukraine, gives rise to the proverbial idiom, “who’s calling the kettle black.”
Putin’s warning draws the Hawaiian Kingdom, being a neutral State, into a theater of war should the United States enter the Russia-Ukrainian conflict. According to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Base Structure Report for 2012, the U.S. military has 118 military sites that span 230,929 acres of the Hawaiian Islands, which is 6% of the total acreage of Hawaiian territory. As the headquarters for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, being the largest unified combatant command in the world, the Hawaiian Islands are targeted for nuclear strikes by Russia, China and North Korea.
The United States prolonged and illegal occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom is a direct violation of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s neutrality, which is specifically stated in its treaties with Germany, Spain and Sweden and Norway. Article XV of its treaty with Spain provides “Her Majesty the Queen of Spain engages to respect, in time of war the neutrality of the Hawaiian Islands, and to use her good offices with all the other powers having treaties with the same, to induce them to adopt the same policy toward the said Islands.”
Article 1 of the 1907 Hague Convention, V, provides “The territory of neutral Powers is inviolable,” and Article 2 provides “Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or convoys of either munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral Power.” The United States’ violation of these Articles have placed the residents of the Hawaiian Islands into harms way when Japan attacked U.S. military installations on O‘ahu on December 7, 1941, and continue to place Hawai‘i’s residents in harms way in the event of a nuclear attack.
In 1990, the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) published Risks and Hazards: A State by State Guide. One of the subjects included nuclear targets and identified 6 nuclear targets on the island of O‘ahu that coincided with the locations of military posts of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Also included as a target is the Headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith that lies in the back of a residential area in Halawa. According to FEMA, the entire Island of O‘ahu would be obliterated if a nuclear attack were to take place with few survivors and total destruction of buildings.
Americanization has desensitized Hawai‘i’s population and has made the presence of the U.S. military in the islands normal. Americanization has also erased the memory of the U.S. invasion in 1893 and portrayed the military presence as protecting the islands from an aggressor country intent on invasion, when in fact the Hawaiian Islands were seized in 1898 to serve as a defense to protect the United States west coast from invasion.
After the defeat of the Spanish Pacific Squadron in the Philippines, U.S. Congressman Francis Newlands (D-Nevada), submitted House Resolution 259 annexing the Hawaiian Islands (also known as the Newlands Resolution), to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on May 4, 1898.
Six days later, hearings were held on the Newlands Resolution, and U.S. Naval Captain Alfred Mahan’s testimony explained the military significance of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States:
“It is obvious that if we do not hold the islands ourselves we cannot expect the neutrals in the war to prevent the other belligerent from occupying them; nor can the inhabitants themselves prevent such occupation. The commercial value is not great enough to provoke neutral interposition. In short, in war we should need a larger Navy to defend the Pacific coast, because we should have not only to defend our own coast, but to prevent, by naval force, an enemy from occupying the islands; whereas, if we preoccupied them, fortifications could preserve them to us. In my opinion it is not practicable for any trans-Pacific country to invade our Pacific coast without occupying Hawai‘i as a base.”
The Hawaiian Islands was and continues to be the outpost to protect the United States and their presence in the Hawaiian Islands is in violation of international law and the laws of occupation.
Russia invading Ukraine is exactly what America did to the Hawaiian Kingdom. The parallels are unmistakable. What America is willing to prevent in Ukraine; America did to the Hawaiian Kingdom. It was only the manaʻo and diplomacy of our Queen that prevented bloodshed of our Hawaiian people.
Russia is not bombing Ukraine to occupy it and annex it. It’s bombing Ukraine’s military because Ukraine’s military is bombing the Donbass. Russia is not to blame for this mess. The U.S. and the EU started this whole mess when they facilitated a coupe against the legitimate President of Ukraine. The bought off politicians voted to impeach that President but did not give him due process of a Trial as required under the Ukraine Constitution. They drove him out of the country shooting at him. Then conveniently the U.S. and EU recognized a new guy as President that was a puppet for the U.S. and E.U. The people of the Donetsk and Luhansk fought back against the new illegal gov’t and overthrew the gov’t officials in their respective regions and voted to secede from Ukraine. Ukraine through the Normandy format signed an International Minsk Agreement to recognize the breakaway Donesk and Luhansk Republics and settle the territory with those gov’ts in those regions. The Ukrainians never fulfilled that agreement and the U.S. and EU allowed them to break that agreement. All that had to be done to avoid all this drama was to have Ukraine fulfill what they agreed to in writing. Ukraine is being played a fool by the U.S. and EU. They can never join NATO with the unsettled Minsk Agreement hanging over their heads. The U.S. and NATO said explicitly they will not send a single soldier to help Ukraine fight Russia. Why the hell would you want to fight a war you can’t win and the ones pushing you into a war will not help you fight that war. They deserve what’s coming. You play with the devil (U.S./EU) and you’ll get burnt every time. Get a grip people, the U.S. don’t give a rip about Ukraine. The U.S. and NATO could not get Germany to voluntarily stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, so this is the end around move to stop it. Hype up a war. Have Ukraine start increasing the bombing of the Donbass and let Russia step in to save the Donbass and make Russia the bad guy so now Germany has to shut down Nord Stream 2. Obviously, they are so stupid they don’t realize in the end it’s going to bite them in the ass. The U.S. will mess this up a thousand times worse than Afghanistan. Prepare for very high inflation and through the roof gas prices people. You go Brandon!
Mark this day 02-24-22 as the end of the unipolar world order.
Truly the take over of Hawaii was illegal and immoral,. Such incidents have been very common in the history of the world. While I have true compassion for the Hawaiian Kingdom’s cause, now that Hawaii has been “Americanized” as the article says, for so long, how could local Hawaiians ever go back to Hawaiian style living? Would they be willing to give up the benefits of statehood that they voted for? Would they give up Social Security benefits? Would they reject modern businesses setting up shop in the state that offer such things as medical benefits & retirement plans? It was only the love of the queen for her people that saved the local citizens from widespread bloodshed & annihilation..Would the Hawaiian Kingdom be able to defend itself against other invaders? Japan in WWII? China now would impose an autocratic form of communism, obliterating freedoms, individual rights & democratic voting. Msny would see Hawaii as a strategic position in the Pacific.. The communist “state” reigns above any individual importance. Does anyone consider how many Hawaiians were murdered by King Kamehameha’s forces in order to.strategically “unite” the Hawaiian Kingdom? Warring islands & tribes murdered each other prior to that. The eventual collaboration & cooperation of Island powers with each other was an improvement. If you look at the history of the world, border wars & who is sovereign over who, even who’s the favored brother & who gets the inheritance, has been constantly battled since the beginning of time. Man, no matter what race, is a fallen, imperfect being. 225 years ago, many of us Caucasians probably ignorantly thought we were more civilized & smarter than people of color. Native American Indians also had much taken from them & were even forbidden to speak their languages. Those tribes warred on each other over hunting grounds, etc way back.. During my early childhood in racially segregated Wash. D.C., upon observing our largely black population, I quickly realized they were just families like us, working to survive & celebrating good times, too. We have advanced since then. Some have not. Considering that I made that early decision, I have trouble accepting blame or the ever lingering hatred of some Hawaiians for we “Haoles”. My ancestors came from Ireland during/after the Potato Famine & were not big businessmen or military strategists involved in takeover of Hawaii. My husband & I moved here in early 1980”s, learned about the Hawaiian & local lifestyle during the Hawaiian Rennaissance, & from our full & overtime work in health & human service jobs, serving the local residents. Others came earlier, from other countries for adventure & the opportunity to make $ from plantation work contracts. I’m sorry for the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, & sorry that monarchs gave big tracts of land to haole missionary families. Many other desirable places to live across the U.S. & world have the same problem of the locals not being able to afford living there anymore due to investors, developers & wealthy buyers inflating mortgages & property taxes. We’re hearing food shortages are coming & those with local expertise in growing food on our rich volcanic soil with our year round growing season,, should be revered by other countries, not wiped out by nukes. Yes, I say “our” after contributing here for many yrs. I am kama’aina. I beleve Putin, rather than using innovation & creativity to improve the lot of his citizens, seeks glory in re-expanding the Russian empire & is seizing the goods & grains of it’s neighbor sovereign country. We csn say “yes it happened before”, but If we allow that to happen again, barbarism is approved & international law & order will not prevail. A few months ago, I was walking downtown, & a guy who frequents the druggie areas & clientele looked @ me & said loudly to his associate “haole bitch”.This haole wiped doodoo, suctioned gulla gulla, changed dressings, did diagnostic testing, etc., on every race here. I only replied under the above comment, because I couldn’t open the comment box.
Michele you appear to be a selfless individual with all you have done for others with care and compassion. Irregardless of that fact when one is raised with a false narrative then learns the truth that truth becomes a beacon of light and hope that totally annihilates that false narrative. If you are kidnapped and treated as if you were adopted, learning the ultimate truth of being kidnapped completely changes your perspective. Not everyone wants to be American or is proud to be American. You pose many questions and what ifs that are addressed in the Hawaiian Kingdom’s blog. I am a Hawaiian who was raised American. The truth set me free…made me believe in myself as a Hawaiian. Coming from the American perspective is coming from a place of fear. Coming from the Hawaiian perspective is coming from place of growth and unlimited possibilities.
Not all Americans come from a place of fear. Some are believing & practicing Christians. or of other sincere faiths that transcend fear. I do respect that Hawaiisns & other wronged groups have found light, freedom, & awe in learning their native beliefs & lifestyle. Life is short & the expanded knowledge of the universal truth which we’ll receive upon transitioning from this life will show us all the unity of all peoples.. That said, it must be shocking to learn the truth-rather than the picture of America that we are fed or wanted to believe, as the perfect shining beacon of democracy’s light on a hill, there were the horrible injustices against native American Indian tribes, the takeover of the Hawaiian Kingdom & the horrors of the slave trade. We lib “haoles” searched hard for truth & understanding. Some others were brought up so entrenched in generations of belief of white superiority, it was impossible for them to see through it. Regarding talk of “white privilege”, I condidet my main privilege was to have grown up right outside of D. C. with international embassies & international news, so, though most news reports have their bias, I did see there was more than one culture, or subcultures, or set of beliefs. I’ve had several best friends of other races that had to deal with racism back in the 1960’S & ’70’s- two Filipinos, one second generation (which was much more conflicting than being first generation), & 1 best friend black college buddy that I sang with that eventually found he was gay. Xcuse, please- these ramblings stem from reaching my present age of 71 & looking back on our journeys.
Hawaii were not annexed to the US by force of arms, and its elites were not deported to Alaska in cattle trucks. Unlike Russia, the American government did not arrange an artificial famine in Hawaii in the 1930s, which killed 10 million people. Millions of Ukrainians fled from Russian imperialism to Europe and the USA, seeking freedom and security in the conditions of the political repression of Ukrainians in USSR.
After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Ukraine gained independence. From 1991 to 1994, Ukraine had the third largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world, after the United States and Russia. On December 5, 1994, at the summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Ukraine voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees (Budapest Memorandum). The USA, Great Britain and Russia guaranteed the independence and sovereignty of the existing borders of Ukraine.
Twenty years after Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from Russia and the West, the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was annexed by the Russians in 2014.
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale bloody war that deliberately bombed civilians across Ukraine and left more than 20 million refugees abroad or internally displaced. More than 150,000 Ukrainians were killed and wounded. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused not only devastation in Ukraine, but also disaster in other parts of the world, such as the world’s largest food crisis. Before the war, food exports from Ukraine fed four hundred million people around the world. The war also disrupted the production and export of fertilizers needed to grow food.
Ukraine could keep nuclear weapons and guarantee its security. It is clear that not only the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine have been violated, but also the disruptions of the Russian invasion reverberated around the world, sending shockwaves through energy and food supplies, causing humanitarian, social and economic crises and threatening to fundamentally change the international order.
I agree that the takeover of Hawaii was illegal and immoral, but this is a much different situation than Russia’s brutal war against the Ukrainians. An analogy with the Hawaiians would be inappropriate.
Maharaj, I would have to disagree. The analogy has to do with the effects of U.S. imperialism and regime change wars and occupations. Because of it, Hawaii is placed in harm’s way for nuclear strikes by Russia and China. Russia is also in danger of nuclear strikes from NATO and more so if Ukraine was allowed to be a NATO member. The US would never allow China to place nuclear missiles in Mexico so why would you think it would be alright for NATO to put nuclear missiles in Ukraine. That is a no brainer.
You have failed to mention that the Nuclear arms that were in Ukraine were that of the USSR. The Ukrainians did not voluntarily give them up just for guarantees of protection, they were also paid a lot of money. They refused the first offer and settled for the second offer with a much larger price tag. In other words, the Ukrainian politician(s) that negotiated that deal sold out the Ukrainian state and its people. You also forgot to mention that the US in the recent past called Ukraine the most corrupt country in the world. I am sure those Ukrainian politicians pocketed a pretty penny for selling their country out. You forgot to mention that the US and EU sponsored a violent regime change coup in Ukraine that illegally out stead the constitutionally elected President of Ukraine. Then they recognized their puppet oligarch Porochenko as the new President. Totally in violation of Ukraine’s constitution. Then comes his successor puppet Zelensky. You also forgot to mention that this regime follows the ideology of Stepan Bendara, a nazi collaborator that is their hero. He was on the side of Hitler and killed 10’s of thousands of Jews, Russians and Polish people. When Hitler lost the war he fled to Northern Ukraine. This regime hates Russians and killed at least 10,000 in the Eastern and Souther parts of Ukraine until Russia came to there aid. The US and EU wanted this war. Ukraine’s President Porochenko and Germany’s Angela Merkel already confessed that the Minsk Peace agreements that were approved by the UN Security Council was a sham. They negotiated it and Ukraine signed it but was but it was never going to be implemented. They were tricking Russia so that Ukraine could build a bigger army, increase weapon supply and be trained by NATO in order to retake Crimea and the breakaway Eastern and Southern territories. They were preparing to attack but Putin stopped that attack by using a preemptive strike on Ukraine. Totally legal under international law pursuant to Article 51. What is happening to Ukraine is their own regime’s fault. They should not have planned this war with the US and EU. Another Peace Treaty was negotiated 3 times in Turkey and Zelensky and Putin were going to sign it in Istanbul last April but Borris Johnston of the UK flew to Ukraine and convinced Zelensky not to sign it and offered him more money and weapons to continue the war. Zelensky probably getting billions to sacrifice the Ukrainian people for the US and EU. Ukraine rejected to Peace deals on behalf of the US and EU and now the people paying the price. Now tell me who’s the bad guys here?
The Hawaiian Kingdom and our Hawaiian people, Now and Forever, be ‘ONIPA’A-Stand Firm, Ho’omanawanui-Have Patience, be ‘Eleu-Be Alert with our kupuna, Queen Lili’uokalani and ‘AKUA……for What Is To Come! E PULE KAKOU! The KUPAU OHANA, (Stand til the End). from Pukuilua- Hana, Maui.
Ae CC, you are correct. We need to pray. Sometimes I forget but reminders such as yours blesses me back to realize who is our defender; Jesus Christ. Our hope and our Lord of Hosts. Amen
This parallel presentation of the Russian-Ukraine crisis and the continued illegal military occupation of our beloved Hawai’i by the US military is an outstanding example of demonstrating what harm the US military’s presence on our Kō Hawai‘i Pae ‘Āina means for the lāhui Hawaiʻi and for our ʻāina. We should get rid of them occupiers and their military bases and Hawaiʻi will be safe and peaceful again.
I see the similarities of this invasion and feel the pain of our belligerent occupation. Is there still hope? How much longer can we survive these violations.
WE, the Hawaiian People since 1843, 1893, 2022 and F-O-R-E-V-E-R, was born with FAITH, HOPE and ALOHA-LOVE! AKUA is Hawaii’s Leader and ALWAYS been our GUIDING STRENTH and WE MUST RUST IN HIM, FOREVER!. The KUPAU ‘OHANA-from Pukuilua, Hana, Maui
I’m totaly with the Hawaiian s on this one and I’m totally against this bullshit
I see a lot of upset Hawaiian’s who feel like America has taken advantage of them and their native blood. All of the fake Hawaiians from the Philippines needs to stop stirring up trouble and pretending they are Hawaiian. You’re a settler, not a native. Just because you share a distance genetic similarity to the real native Hawaiians does not mean you are. You came here to pick coffee and now you’re acting like you owned this place all along. You aren’t helping and you aren’t taking anything back. 95% of you are fake Hawaiian’s and that isn’t me saying it, its what the actual genetic testing of the locals indicates.
WE must PRAY and place our TRUST IN JESUS, OUR LORD and SAVIOR, and ask HIM for HIS GUIDANCE and PROTECTION…..forever! ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA!
I’m a regular American citizen…. I think what happened to Hawaii was terrible, and our government doesn’t ever disclose the full truth to us, nor do they truly care about what we desire as a democracy. We’re full of hypocrites. And I’ll never stop owning up to it. But I ask EVERYONE to PRAY for EVERYONE. No nuclear war, no more civilian injuries. I think about where I’m going to go if this situation gets even worse for us heavily United people of planet earth. We are all in this world together man!! I have no hate for Russians or anybody!! I don’t want their women, children or elderly hurt just as much as my own family. I know this is fairytale stuff I’m saying but I can’t help but think this is what we need. It’s money over morals in this world, America most certainly included. Seem of these gurus and monks of the world I wish could lead us….. discarding our egos and drive for greed and just loving ourselves, not bringing harm to others. We don’t have to love everybody l, just don’t hurt them 🙁
How did I leave out the men of this world… men, we need to unite and stop all hateful, disrespectful rhetoric. Women are a little better usually at watching their tongues, I think respectful conversation is where peace will start and hopefully end. Sorry everyone I’m kinda just ranting, just praying we all have peace prosperity love and can have our doubts out to rest as well as the negativity in this world. We’re all guilty, let’s all take a step together.
All mankind is either the beneficiary or victim of geography and human aggression. There is no culture or religion that has ever existed in history that does not have laws against murder and rape and theft, and all sorts of evil, because mankind at his heart is depraved, and willing to do evil, even if the veneer look posh and appealing as a beast underneath. If nations are violent aggressive, it is because families are. And families because of the individual. We know to do right and as a general course do right when we find it to be in our own interest but when there’s giant money, sex or power at play, we treat each other like shit. We need to learn from this, and strive not to treat each other like shit. There is nothing wrong with restitution being made for past wrongs wanted involves individuals that were hurt by other individual actors. But constant talk of reparations that involves parties who did not hurt anyone being forced to make payments to parties that themselves were not hurt, is a recipe to stir up more strife in a world, where that is already rampant. We are all the victims of history and away, and we are all its beneficiaries. If you want to fight for the week and the poor, you can do it locally on a daily level they are people that have it far worse than we do, and we often have it in the power of our hands to help them. 7 billion people engaged in this will do more than any demagogue,politician, ideologue, solution bearer, whose solution ever predates whatever current crisis it was made to fix. just wanted to point out that Hitler came to power because of real wrongs perpetrated against the German people. They were riled up by the demagogue over actual torts, namely, the nasty effects of the treaty of Versailles‘s, and the extraction from the German people of massive amounts of money for war damages over which they living under a monarch had no control. When you see kings doing battle, and they put names like Washington or Moscow in front of their names it doesn’t mean that their countries and the people that live in them support what they are doing. It never has. I personally do not think we should be involved in the Ukraine at all and I think I setting up, Zelenskyy and his predecessors starting in 2014 was a provocation the same expansion that Mahan pushed for regarding Hawaii is what NATO is pushing for today. NATO was formed to block Soviet aggression and the Soviet union has not existed for 20 years. Why does NATO still exist? It is because organizations always outlast their usefulness, and the people employed and empowered in them. Don’t want to give up that power, the Russians, like the Germans and Italians in Chinese and Koreans, and many other people all over the world are sliding into massive population, declines and in a few decades, will not have the bodies to commit to warfare as they have in the past. This makes now a dangerous time, because they are running to seal up their borders, and perhaps expand them, as in the case of China, I feel bad for the Ukrainian people, but they are at the end of the day victims of geography. Hawaiians have it better today than they did under the king and queen the British have it better today than they did under their king and queen 100 years ago. We have so much wealth technology And goods in the modern world, including the ability to talk to each other, over thousands of miles while sitting in our cars, eating lunch that we begin to take for granted all that we have and the order that brought about stability. I am not saying that the United States does not have imperial Ambitions, and by the United States, I mean, the people currently running the country and not the people who clearly do not, I am just saying that the post World War II order has led to an end of a lot of fighting, and as population declines worldwide and the economic realities of the world, such as a hollowing out of the American middle-class begin to take on a life of their own, and they push for equity that things in that system will change and probably go back to the way they were before. And we’re not going to like that when we see it, the United States dominated everyone (again. Everyone does not mean the people of Germany or the people of China, but their governments who tend to have expansionist ambitions)and force them to play well and trade. thus they became rich, instead of leaving the world littered with more of the kind of broken cities that we saw after World War II. At the end of the day, we have all sorts of problems, the greatest of which is that we do not view ourselves as being as little as we are at times and not viewing ourselves as big as we are at others. cultural pride over achievements and nationalism are not necessarily bad things. in small doses as they create unity between larger groups than the nuclear family, but when those ideologies descend into straight up pride and privilege and the desire to dominate other peoples, then we have a problem. Geography makes it so Hawaii can never really be anything other than a satellite of other nations or a poor independent isle in the middle of the sea, at least this is true with current technology, and I do think this will change over time, or at least has the potential too. If we seek to treat our neighbors as ourselves, and try not to screw up the lives of other working steps in a way that we would not like our life screwed up, and we push politically for more and more decentralization, and the spreading of money and power and less political power, we do well 3-D printing, and farm bots and cryptocurrency, perhaps(not central bank, digital currencies, which are centralized control systems meant to enslave humanity, which should be resisted by all but will be tempting when the government wants to give money away, and the only way you can access it is through these in the same way that the only way the mouse can access the cheese is very going to the trap.) might bring about a decentralized, less aggressive future full of abundance, for all were a technology, causing deflation, and the collapse of capitalist or centralized economic systems, may do more to fight poverty, and any quality and everything yet attempted, if so, we all stand to inherit a blessing, and I hope this is the case. The modern age is less about geography, and more about control over technology and that is the path where tyrants are treading. Today, you might be distracted by the Ukraine, or Russia is trying to shore up its borders because of its swindling population in the coming years. But right here on the Internet, the government is running around trying to get everyone’s information, create digital IDs and biometric tracking devices and download every possible bit of information that they can swindle or that you freely give on social media and put it in a giant database in Utah to be dredged up in the event you ever do anything resembling “wrong think”. These are the people we need to watch out for Russia can get away with a lot because it’s a one trick pony and what it sells the world needs, but Russia is also not going beyond its own sphere of influence, and no matter what that means for the Ukraine? It is a fact of history that Russian culture begin with Keiv- Rus. That’s white Russia, the Ukraine, and Russia are connected in a way that the Usbeks are not. And since Russia knows that invasion and disintegration are being pushed by NATO and the history of border problems that they have had with the Chinese, which today is their ally, and with the church at peoples of the caucuses, and the fact that the Eurasian steppe goes from Hungary to Korea on almost flat easily traversable land whereby over 50 invasions have already come to Russia throughout history it is not insane to do with the Russians are doing. Sparsely populated and not populate a bowl especially without modern technology. it is the size of Pluto, but you would rather live in Hawaii because despite all the wealth and resources it holds it is a shitty bitter frigid land. It is the icy steps of the Scythians, and the frozen tundra of the Arctic a place barely fit for animal occupation. . if you were to look at a map and see the actual usable and defensible parts of Russia, you would understand that it is not as big as it looks on a map. In any event, the Hawaiians of today have it pretty good and those who don’t I think have a better opportunity of a better future with us as individuals pushing to help them, I’m not saying that light forms of Socialism are wrong, but that whatever the government gets involved in, they do not do for free they want power over you, and it is better for all that they do not have power over us. The best way to protect general freedom is to spread wealth and political power as far as possible, so the display disparities between one man and another are limited, and that no man has the power to forcefully bugger his neighbor. . Decentralized, and speak up for the rights of the downtrodden and for workers, and for all the weak being oppressed by the powerful in here by we will look after ourselves as well..