On the playground, we know what big guys do to little guys. The same applies in international geopolitics. From Karen Kwiatkowski at lewrockwell.com:
Many years ago, a budding decentralist and anarcho-capitalist suggested to a pair of highly paid Pentagon area specialist contractors that instead of what we were doing in the horn of Africa, we might gain credibility by recognizing Somaliland, which at the time was peaceful, free trading, and a rare example of an organic government, not at war, nor seeking war.
The sincere suggestion was greeted by at least one dropped jaw, and two blank stares. Later, I had not changed my mind, and in the three intervening decades, Somaliland has endured. I wrote in 2003, at LRC:
The Miracle-Gro for tender young countries is culture-driven self-government, absent outside military interference and manipulation from great powers and entangling alliances. It’s kind of like what the founding fathers envisioned for this country.
Born on a Cold War battlefield, what is today Somaliland suffered a genocide conducted by the US-backed government in Mogadishu of Said Barre, from which independence sprang. 35 years later, US genocidal capability seems to have scaled up, as the massive reduction of Ukraine’s prewar population in four years and the literal decimation of Gaza in two years illustrates.
Does it have a Rothschild bank or oil?