Love the one you're with

A thought-provoking post on a blog about historical claims has prompted me to reply...

A few hundred years back, at Uni, I wrote a piece entitled 'My great, great, great... great Grandad was a Roman comfort boy', and how I was determined to claim compo from Italy for 'hurt' imposed in a convenient part of my history.

The Student Union didn't see the joke, or point, and banned me.

I guess it's tricky to assess a limit for 'modern' times, but reach back far enough and you can claim anything.

As a rule of thumb, I'd say if it's more or less working for the majority population now*, and has done for a fair while, the global community should really not tolerate any minority efforts to upset things* based on selective historical claims, especially when what exists is clearly not going to go back to what 'was'.

It would be interesting to see what exceptions might be suggested to mess up such a 'guide'. Despite distance and the frustration of the main country bodies nearby, I think such as Gibraltar and The Falklands bear this out.

The only one I can think of right now that was contrary to the will of the people was Hong Kong in 1997, but that was just honouring a deal. It also seemed/s to have worked better than most.

The tricky one is when a big country has 'stepped in' recently for less than obvious positive reasons to the locals, such as in Tibet.

*I'd exclude genocide as in large chunks of Africa, as anyway by definition the minority are not usually the ones stirring things up. Hence a vast complication to the naive simplicity of my notion (and an explanation for why the world suffers the turmoils it does) as hands get wrung over intervening or not, and letting nature take its course vs. intervening, with all that entails.

I, for one, am quite pleased the US decided to pop over to assist with the last bit of bother we had with some EU members.

As many of the posters are well-read and thoughtful, I hope to find some considered replies.

I left out Israel, as this can prove too contentious. And Afghanistan/Iraq. But by my definition I think they do meet the criteria. Though quite recent historically, the first is clearly now an established entity with a majority population that is not going anywhere, and in theory the latter two are not 'meant' to be anything more than 'temporary' to try and create 'stability' by 'preventing' unhealthy actions outside their borders.