I find it amusing that you hold a blanket thought that the theft of Native American land was the result of war games and not a mixture of deception, racism, genocide, breach of trust, and thievery.
I'm amused that you possibly think war is just two sides in distinct colors simply lining up and shooting volleys at each other until one side surrenders from the field with a white flag in the air. That may be more civil and gentlemanly, but it's far from how wars are mostly fought.
Deception, killing, accepting/breaking agreements, and taking things is basically war in a nutshell. It is an extension of diplomacy. How you execute these parts is a matter of your goals, and your morals and ethics.
But it's not THEFT. There is no such thing as theft when it comes between two nation states, it's either yours or it's not yours, and how well you can defend it basically is the rule of the game.
If you deceive yourself enough to assume you aren't at war, while the other side sends you all the signals that they are at war with you, whose fault is it when you eventually fall?
You may hate it, but don't redefine something basic to the politics of humanity.
How do you think warring tribes treated each other? You are aware that some proportion of native tribes kept both native and black (and probably white to a lesser extent) slaves, right?
It's also interesting that you choose the word "theft" as though the natives even had a concept for land ownership. Seems people are too eager to view history through a modern moral lense these days.
> It's also interesting that you choose the word "theft" as though the natives even had a concept for land ownership
There were many tribes living without telecommunications across the Americas with all their varying climates causing different socioeconomic structures to emerge
>all their varying climates causing different socioeconomic structures to emerge
Which supports my point, that trying to view native practices through modern concepts is a bit like forcing a square peg through a round hole.
>One of the reasons that many continue to think that aboriginal Americans had no concept of private property, however, is because many tribes did regard land as being communally owned. Carl Watner explores the topic in The Journal of Libertarian Studies
The article seems to conflate "private property" with land ownership. Even this particular paragraph speaks of "communal ownership" which isn't quite the same as the concept of ownership in modern US law, though there are certainly provisions for group ownership.
Point is that article only supports what I'm saying, that it's borderline slanderous to assign morality to the behavior of cultures from 300+ years ago according to modern laws and ideas. Regarding this discussion, "theft" certainly becomes a strong word when you consider how different (and heterogeneous) concepts and practices were back then.
Deception, killing, accepting/breaking agreements, and taking things is basically war in a nutshell. It is an extension of diplomacy. How you execute these parts is a matter of your goals, and your morals and ethics.
But it's not THEFT. There is no such thing as theft when it comes between two nation states, it's either yours or it's not yours, and how well you can defend it basically is the rule of the game.
If you deceive yourself enough to assume you aren't at war, while the other side sends you all the signals that they are at war with you, whose fault is it when you eventually fall?
You may hate it, but don't redefine something basic to the politics of humanity.