Re: Siberia/Russian Far East
It is a matter of geopolitics, like M.R. said. And I don't think that the colonisation of Siberia can be compared to the colonisation of America. Siberia is a natural land of expansion for Europe. As it is for Asia. So we are only left to decide which side we are on. And that cannot be Asia's.
However, at present there is also the question of ethnopolitics for Russia. If Siberia has to be maintaned Russian, it is clear that Western Russia must first be able to survive.
Asia Minor and Northern Africa should have also been natural areas of expansion for Europe. And they were so with Rome. Spain would have set to expand through Northern Africa, if she had not been robbed of her destiny to fight foreign dinastic quarrels from the XVIth century onwards.
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'Dardanidae duri, quae uos a stirpe parentum
prima tulit tellus, eadem uos ubere laeto
accipiet reduces. Antiquam exquirite matrem:
hic domus Aeneae cunctis dominabitur oris,
et nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis.'
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
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