[nitwit005]

> because it no longer makes economic sense to do so. The value of the oil and other resources would be less than the cost of maintaining control of the country

That's always been the case. People used to just murder or enslave the populations they conquered.

While you can get away with mass genocide and slavery internally, it has gotten far riskier to attempt such a thing against a neighboring state. It'll also destroy your status as a leader, when previously a violent conquest was often viewed as "glorious".

[pdonis]

> That's always been the case. People used to just murder or enslave the populations they conquered.

I don't understand. Murdering or enslaving the population of the conquered country is a lot cheaper as a way to maintain control of it. So the fact that it's a lot harder politically to do those things now, than it was in the past, greatly increases the cost of maintaining control of a country. As the article says.

[nitwit005]

What's changed isn't the economics, it's what other leaders will do if you attempt it.

[pdonis]

I would say both have changed. The economics has changed because, even leaving out political factors, the benefit of invading a country has greatly decreased, because the kind of war you need to wage to invade a country now will destroy whatever wealth in that country you were hoping to gain by invading it. And the political factors have changed because previous ways of trying to reduce the cost of controlling a country will now trigger consequences (in the form of actions by other countries) that they didn't before.

[inglor_cz]

"Murdering or enslaving the population of the conquered country is a lot cheaper as a way to maintain control of it."

Depends on what you need the country for.

Nazis crushed the Czechoslovak state and executed any guerrillas caught fighting them, but they didn't mess with ordinary Czech workers, who were needed to keep the factories running. Mistreating qualified workers would decrease total industrial output and harm the German war effort.