Do States Have A Right of Succession?

[logroller]

I think you are somewhat confused about a number of war issues. You are right that fundamental reasons for war are often control of territory and control of resources (there are some others, like imminent danger of attack). But then you cite issues that were NOT about either territory or resources.

i.e. loss of territory and resources.

Japan did not attack Pearl Harbor because we had imposed an oil embargo!! How would that help their need for oil? We weren't likely to sell them oil again because they had punished us! Their idea, apparently based on a grossly mistaken idea of the American character, was that if they sunk all our warships, we would leave them to own the Pacific and every country in it (Australia, Philippines, all the European colonies, China, etc.) and all the oil they could conquer locally, from the Dutch colonies they did take, and so on.

You just answered your own question... If they were to sink all our warships.

There were two problems with this. 1) they didn't ...

Noted.

2) American policy was moving toward not allowing regional hegemons to develop ANYwhere (we had formally not allowed any regional hegemons in our hemisphere except us since about 1880-- like France trying to take over Mexico, which they did try.) ((logroller:during our perceived weakness during our civil war))
Then you are saying slavery was a resource and therefore a cause of war.....but the North didn't want the South's slaves!

No they didn't; nor did they want the South using the slave labor in the expanding US territory. AGAIN, I note, territory.

The North wanted the United States to be as big as it used to be, before the Confederacy left. It is true that the South seceded in order to protect the resource of slavery on which their economy was based -- and when they lost that, they were poor for generations, as we all know -- but secession isn't a war. Secession is just secession. Lots of secessions are peaceful, such as when the Soviet Union broke up. It's only a war if armed troops firing weapons cross a border, burning and killing. And that was what the North did, not the South.

Fort Sumpter was the first military action of the civil war; commenced by the Confederate South.

The North invaded Virginia because they wanted territory(BACK). As soon as McClellan's army crossed the Potomac, slavery ceased to be the issue anywhere. Nobody white had another thought about slavery until Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation three years later.

Well, war is war-- once waged, victory ~ unconditional surrender of your opponent becomes the objective. The emancipation proclamation was invoked for military purposes IMO-- the Union needed soldiers, freemen served. I'd mentioned this earlier, but newly freed blacks of the confederate south were the only slaves freed. Union states' slaves would have to wait until after the war to become free.

Interesting point about Japan, though. Are you saying Japan was justified in strafing Pearl Harbor because we refused to sell them oil for their Rape of Nanking and such in Manchuria? Right now we are refusing to sell or buy or do banking with a LOT of stuff Iran has --- so would you think they would be entitled to bomb New York to force us to stop putting sanctions on them against their nuclear bomb program?

Entitled-- as in, they have the right? NO. Besides, it'd be a suicide mission. But they've a history of instigating bloodshed over trivial matters, so I wouldn't put it past them.

There are a number of strong actions states can take that are not war: sanctions are one, secession is another. If those are always to be treated as war, I don't know, it doesn't leave much scope for actions short of war.

Well the SCOTUS case after the war left state political action and war as the means of leaving the Union, not unilateral diplomatic secession. It all hinges on what makes a more perfect union IMHO. Is it more perfect to have a state unilaterally secede, or require them to have the remaining states endorse/capitulate upon the disenfranchised states' demands?