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Re:The lessons from America’s astonishing economic record by chrisco255 on Monday April 17, 2023 @07:06AM (#35599123)
What are the 20 mineral commodities?

FWIW, the U.S. would be incredibly hard to invade. It does have a number of geographic advantages that no other country can match (not least of which is the Mississippi River system).

Even Pearl Harbor was a hit and run attack. No Japanese troops ever touched shore.

Re:The lessons from America’s astonishing economic record by db48x on Monday April 17, 2023 @07:57AM (#35599457)
Technically Japanese troops did land in the Aleutians, but it accomplished essentially nothing useful. The US got some extra practice doing amphibious landings though.
Re:The lessons from America’s astonishing economic record by tim333 on Monday April 17, 2023 @09:49AM (#35600671)
A lot of the hard to invade stuff comes from having a bunch of guns and the world's strongest military. When it was inhabited by Native Americans the Brits, French etc. managed to invade ok.
Re:The lessons from America’s astonishing economic record by chrisco255 on Monday April 17, 2023 @10:11AM (#35600944)
We didn't have the world's strongest military until WWII, and even then, we had to ramp up to that.

The Brits, Spaniards and French didn't invade, they established colonies. These colonies actively engaged in trade and defense agreements with various native American tribes. At various times different tribes were aligned with one European nation or another, with the most famous example being the French and Indian War, with the Iroquois and Cherokee allying with the British and the Wabanaki, Abenaki, Shawnee, etc allying with the French.

Native American tribes and nations had deep seated rivalries and disputes going back centuries (just as the Europeans did), so there never was any kind of single unified America until the U.S. expanded across the continent.

Notably the British did not succeed in the War of Independence or the War of 1812, despite having a superior military and navy.