[pjc50]

> Or does this question sound absurd to you?

It sounds like an extremely leading question, or at least a dozen separate questions. But the further you go back in history the more, larger, and nastier questions you find where one country gained an advantage at the expense of another, often including a huge number of human lives. Was it really right for France to insist on reparations from Haiti, for example?

[xwolfi]

It certainly wasn't right from a Haitian point of view, but sometimes, better put up with it and have a powerful ally during your start as an independent country, whatever the debt cost, than be fighting them forever at tremendous cost for every sides.

Debt between countries don't matter much, and I certainly hope one day we'll have the budget to repay Haiti, but I'm happy we solved it with this infamy rather than murdered each other for decades. It's not the most optimal way we could have behaved, but we've been more abject with former colonies.