October 12, 1998
Cardinality to Success
There is an amazing link between all successful conquering nations in history. Can you identify it? Well, the Americans won in their westward movement? The Chinese started on the Pacific coast of Asia and successfully moved to the west. Both Napoleon and Hitler failed in their eastern invasions of Russia.
Yes, the secret to success is what direction you go in. West is good, east bad. The Americans moved west and thus conquered America. The Spanish, meanwhile, failed to expand eastward from California. The Chinese started a successful westward movement that was highly accelerated by the Mongols. Likewise, Napoleon and Hitler failed. Alexander the great did go east and conquered a lot, but never savored his conquest because of an early death. Hence, he failed, too.
And when you think about WWII some more, who was the first of the Allies to enter Berlin? It wasn't the U.S. and Britain who had to go east. It was Russia going west.
There is even a similar correlation for north and south. To attack south is successful, north stupid. The American Civil War is an accurate picture of this. The North swept to conquer south and won, while the South's attempt to go north failed. Our involvement in Vietnam was a failure because we tried to conquer the communist North.
We can even apply situations where you mix the two. Conquering to the southwest is the best way to attack, but to the northeast lies defeat and failure. Consider the Gulf War. Hussein attacked Kuwait, which meant he went southeast. South being good granted him the victory, but the east led to his ultimate defeat. Now, when we intervened, we had to go northwest. Th west was our victory, but the north hampered the long-term success of our efforts, which is why we have all the inspector problems nowadays.
Now, many of you can't believe that world conquest is so simple. Yet, I can't think of any counterexamples. Can you?
Oh, and of course, just think of the implications of this. The people of Europe will never fear Portugal again. Of course, though, if Liechtenstein ever rears its ugly head, the people of southern France will quake in their cheese.