[orijing]

Are you sure about that? I live in California, which was previously Mexican territory.

I also have friends from Texas, which was also Mexican territory.

Perhaps your point is that the US became less imperialistic since then, but that's easy to say once it's taken what it wants.

China sees Taiwan as an integral part of the "Greater China", a still unresolved problem from the past century's wars. It sees the South China sea as its own backyard. Can you imagine the US response if China were sailing military vessels provocatively close to the cost of continental US?

I'm not saying either is right. I'm pointing out that the US is not without its hypocrisies either, and that each country has its own flaws.

[eloff]

That was hundreds of years ago when the world was a very different place. In a post WWII, post UN world, the standards for behavior for nation states are very, very different.

The point I'm trying to make is the world has largely moved beyond that, but China still thinks it's ok to steal territory from it's neighbors.

If the situation were reversed and Chinese vessels were patrolling in international waters in the Caribbean to dissuade the US from taking territory from it's neighbors there, I'd be cheering them on.

That's not to say the USA doesn't do their fair share of despicable or hypocritical things, but by and large they have been a much better steward of power than China. I think the world will come to miss those days of American leadership in this century.

[khuey]

> Can you imagine the US response if China were sailing military vessels provocatively close to the cost of continental US?

Thankfully we don't have to imagine.

https://thediplomat.com/2014/07/china-is-spying-on-rimpac/

"“It has not entered the territorial seas of the U.S. and it is in accordance with international law regarding freedom of navigation,” Capt. James said in a statement released to the Wall Street Journal. He explained that the ship was in Hawaii’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The U.S. maintains that freedom of navigation for all international ships extend to countries’ EEZs, and it has long maintained ships inside China’s EEZ."

[TheCoelacanth]

170 years ago. Hardly relevant now. At the time conquest was considered a legitimate way to acquire territory. That changed with the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928 and the UN Charter in 1945.