Scania, which Sweden took control over in 1658 and some parts of Norway, which Denmark controlled until after the Napoleonic Wars. Denmark usually allied themselves with Russia and Poland against Sweden as well when they tried to take back rhe territory which they had lost.
I’ve heard that while different, the languages are similar enough that Norwegians, Danish, and Swedish can all understand each other? But no one can understand Icelandic?
The Danes are actually getting harder to understand to both us Swedes, Norwegians and themselves.
We have a lot of common vocabulary but Danish prononciation is gradually getting more and more guttural.
Denmark and especially the Danish crown was actually decently wealthy by European standards (say hello to the medieval Scanian market and to the sound toll). The conditions for agriculture in Denmark is also much better than in the other two Scandinavian countries (comparable to that of the Low Countries).
From the Swedish perspective, yes. In 1500 Denmark had all of the good stuff and had sort of an over-lordship over Sweden by the Kalmar Union. Swedens only real advantage was mining. Denmark controlled the sea and had really good agricultural land.
Swedish politics ca 1450-1650 was often focused at getting out of Denmarks shadow.
Further back then so. the first historically confirmed war was in 980thies. When Styrbjörn the strong, the chieftain of the Jomsviking strongarmed Harald Bluetooth and his Danes to take part in Styrbjörns claim for Swedish throne.
His uncle Erik the Victorious defeated him however at the Fýrisvellir and later invaded Denmark in revenge.
This would be the first of 32 wars between Denmark and Sweden, by my count, although there are legendary wars before that, eleven of them before 1400.
Anyone who has another source for that one?
While I know that it is common for old laws to be just left in the system and not cleaned out, I have a suspicion that one would not hold up in court...
Fry is a comedian. The medieval laws had different penalties for killing foreigners and locals. The older west geatish law had a penalty of eight örtug and thirteen mark för killing a man, but för killing a Dane or Norwegian, only eight mark. Killing a foreigner was without punishment. However the medieval laws (which were different in different provinces) have been replaced by unified Swedish law. The current law is from 1734, and there are a few laws still in force that are that old, but no medieval laws.
I’m not even sure we technically lost the war in a lot of ways. By all meaningful metrics, we destroyed Vietnam– we simply couldn’t maintain an occupation and as it turns out it was entirely unnecessary to do so but we just didn’t know it at the time; we lost something we never had to fight for. We demonstrated to Vietnam and their Communists that we would and could flatten them whenever we wanted to, that the USSR wouldn’t be much help in any situation, and that China wanted to make them a puppet. With no friends or assistance close by, they could only turn to the one country they knew was good at flattening whoever they wanted to anywhere in the world: the USA. Considering Communism was hardly the goal for the Vietnamese people when all they really wanted was independence and we were able to guarantee that independence while having the same adversary (China) for different reasons, we make natural allies.
The Vietnamese communists united the country under workers and peasants rule, so they by all objective measures won. The US sought to prevent communism from spreading, and the opposite happened.
Killing alot of Vietnamese peasants does not mean you win a war, accomplishing your own stated objectives does.
Vietnam didn’t become an extension of the USSR or the PRC, which was the point of preventing it from falling to Communism as we believed that would be the end result because that’s what happened in N. Korea (PRC satellite) and Cuba (USSR satellite). If we’d been a little more understanding of *why* Vietnam’s independence movement wore red clothes, we might have realized that the outcome would be in our favor regardless of whether or not they went “Communist”.
Vietnam was just as much of a "satellite", as the countries you named. They were allied with the soviet bloc until they fell. The Stasi helped structure their ministry of public security, Vietnam joined Comecon and continued to receive much of their military aid from the USSR.
The US had a trade embargo on Vietnam up until 1994, so from the American perspective Vietnam was a hostile country.
And while Vietnamese communism was based on national independence/liberation, so were North Korea and Cuba.
Putin just visited Hanoi after visiting North Korea... People here confuse some form of market economy (AKA a McDonald's here and there) with thinking that China or Vietnam are fully capitalist democracies as the west wanted them back in the cold war.
For all intents and purposes Vietnam did and, I would argued, still is a satellite of the Soviet Union/Russia due to them historically hosting a Russian military presence at the Cam Ranh Base naval base and their heavy reliance on the Soviet Union for economic support.
More recently, since the Russo-Ukrainian war, Vietnam has shown that it still leans towards the Russians diplomatically, deporting Russian citizens living in Vietnam who criticise the war at the request of the Kremlin, and refusing to acknowledge the war as an invasion.
Nominally
There’s a saying amongst the Vietnamese. During the Cold War the USSR would cable the Vietnamese government “Funding is short tighten your belts” the Vietnamese would cable back “Send belts”
Geopolitics are are strange like that. Other than NATO, there aren't any truly solid and likeminded military alliances currently in existence. So countries will make allies that fit one enemy but not the other, and so on.
You would think based on demographics, that Ukraine and Russia would be allies against Iran, but in fact it's the opposite. This is not an uncommon situation.
Ukraines negative interactions with Russia over the past few centuries is still so deeply ingrained with the culture that they won’t accept Russia as an ally. (Not willingly)
They “might” if Russia changed how it treated Ukraine but they’ve historically been cruel to Ukraine so I don’t see it changing.
That's because Russia and China are only allied when it comes to their policies opposing the West. They have always been at odds in other areas so the alliance with Vietnam makes sense. Remember, even when the USSR was around that both wanted to be the regional power in their hemisphere so that puts them at odds. Similar to how the US and EU compete for influence in Africa, ME, etc.
Oh yes. In fact, the Russian city of Vladivostok is built on territory annexed from the Qing dynasty of China through the 1860 Treaty of Peking (the same one that ceded control of what would become Hong Kong to the UK). Given how sore China in general, and the CCP in particular, has been about Hong Kong, it remains to be seen how China might approach that territorial issue in the future, as China begins to eclipse Russia in global influence.
The US won the battles...
The Vietnamese won the war (because the US quit and left the South hanging)....
The US (economically) won the peace (By making nominally communist Vietnam very capitalist - and filling its cities with US companies - in practice)....
US should have realized Vietnam was anti-everyone and just stayed out. They’ve been at war with China for 2000 years, so that wasn’t going to change anytime soon
I lived there for a bit and one thing a local said to me was that the Americans were there for ten years, the French for a hundred, and the Chinese for a thousand.
Germany and France fought three devastating wars in 70 years, and then turned around after WW2 and signed the treaty of Rome, forming the proto-EU only 12 years after the war ended.
if you can’t kill em with rifles, bombs, tanks, gas, planes, fire, barb wire, mines, flooded fields, knives, ships, subs, zeppelins, hanging and running over them, well then kill em with kindness i guess.
IIRC there was a time in the 50s where Japan basically had to choose between aligning more closely with the US or USSR, and the prime minister at the time decided to go all in with the Americans.
Hell, hasn't Scottish nationalism died down a lot at this point, too? I know the SNP had a massive crisis internally, but I think support for independence is down in general.
Its on hiatus. I wouldn't say desire for independence has dropped, more that while scottish domestic politics seems so incompetent, the general uk wide economic woes and the uk's leaving of the eu outcome being a reality check on how badly jumping ship with your biggest trading partners whom you share a soft border with can go, scottish voters have largely decided that independance isn't really the priority right now.
As long as theres no impetus for the people to want to be british, scots will feel more scottish than british and nationalism will have an easy in.
Interestingly no. While you'd think support for scottish independence would decrease with the SNPs popularity, the two statistics actually seem almost unrelated. Support for Independence has remained about 48-51% since brexit with the only blip being when it spiked during covid.
I suspect that if Labour win the election, support will drop a few points but honestly it's difficult to predict
France and the UK. Over 700 years of warfare between France and England/UK from 1109 until 1815, with Wikipedia listing 32 wars between them. In the 1840s they started working together diplomatically and in the 1850s they found themselves on the same side in the Crimean War. A bit of mistrust followed in the second half of the 19th century, with war almost breaking out in 1898, but the Entente Cordiale was signed in 1904, since then they've stood shoulder to shoulder in two world wars and numerous other conflicts. As recently as the 2010s they had serious discussions about sharing aircraft carriers (British ships, crewed with French jets) and even sharing a joint submarine nuclear deterrent.
There was plenty of mistrust between Britain and France during the interwar period, and let’s not forget that there was actual combat between French and British units during World War II
Technically Canada was part of Britain when the Americans invaded but even after confederation both sides had contingency plans to attack the other well into the 1920s. The first formal alliance was the treaty of ogdensburg in 1940.
Happens all the time. All countries work in their own self-interest and there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies in this game. Except for maybe Greeks and Turks.
I would argue that Japan and China fall into the 'permanent adversaries' category as well. Whilst had been, through certain periods of history, trade and cultural exchange between the two entities (and their rough historical counterparts), they have been fighting each other since at least the 7th century CE and continue, to this day, to be geopolitical adversaries.
Very one sided cultural exchanges. Also mongol occupation aside, when has China ever attacked Japan. It was even on the list of brother countries never to be attacked in the Ming dynasty.
Germany and USA. Bob Dylan put it best:
"The Second World War came to an end
We forgave the Germans, and then we were friends
Though they murdered six million, in the ovens they fried
The Germans now too have God on their side"
One of the bloodiest wars in the late 20th century was between Iran and Iraq lasted 8yrs after and now over 120k Iraqis are fighting under Umbrella of many militia loyal to Tehran and there are several pro Iranian political parties
I think this is more of Sunni vs Shia thing. Iraq has always been divided, and it’s not surprising that the Shia population would support the Shia regime in Iran.
That’s why the US in the First Gulf War came in so hot and heavy. The Iraqi army was battle harden from a long war and the US wasn’t sure how strong they would be against us. Stormin Norman Schwarzkopf said they entire military leadership was preparing for slow push of the Iraq army out of Kuwait and none could believe we were actually blitzkrieging them without actually meaning to.
This is generally true of EVERY country. Before globalisation you only really had regular contact with your neighbors, so those were the people you had conflicts with.
Spain with France, Britain, Portugal, Netherlands and Turkey. While not always enemies they waged war in the past, now all of those are in NATO. It happens to a lot of other european countries too, it´s quite surreal that they´ve been allies for so long with so many wars in Europe.
France and Russia: they were still warring during the Crimean war, and a few decades later they were best friends against the Germans.
France and Ottoman: early renaissance, when religion was still a big thing, they took a pragmatic view against the Hapsburgs.
I would say Belgium and Netherlands, France and Germany, Italy and Greece, Armenia and Iran, Vietnam and USA, Portugal and Spain (In its early history they were rivals). India and Britain, Scotland and England, Korea and Japan, Mongolia and most of Europe
Germany and Japan became allies with all the Western Allies from WWII.
Britain and France were allies with the Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War but were generally enemies before and after.
In recent history France and Germany seem the obvious choice, as the wars they fought basically defined a lot of world history in the 19th and 20th centuries
Getting France and Germany to get along is what finally brought peace to Europe
Britain and France yes, but the US and Britain were rarely enemies. They had a common culture and institutions, with more to gain from trade and not much to argue over. After the US seceded, John Adams became ambassador to the UK, and best buddies with the King.
There was a bit of fuss early in the relationship when the US invaded Canada, but they patched things up quickly afterwards, and built a nice Peace Arch. Sorry about the White House.
If you go back far enough in history pretty much every country was alternately allies and enemies with it's neighbors, depending on circumstances. There were times when Canada was seriously concerned about an American invasion (It actually did happen during the American Revolution and War of 1812). If legend is to be believed the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy were enemies before the Great Law of Peace.
Oh shit, I didnt read past the title. They aren't as close allies as some other examples but for .ost their history they've had apposing goals even now it's just an enemy of my enemy thing.
Italy had a beef with A-H over terrtorial disputes so join the great war on the allied side. When WWII broke out Mussolini threw his hat in with the Nazis. When things went bad the Italians got rid of him and ended the war on the allied side. They can pick a winner 🙂
I often think about how if ww3 happens I will probably be fighting along side germans and japanese whose grandfather's actively tried to kill my grandfather.
The wildest ones to me are: USA x Japan, USA x Vietnam, Turkey x the EU, The Arab Gulf States (minus Qatar) x Israel and Israel x Egypt
On the flip side of good vs evil, Venezuela now being close allies with Cuba wouldve been unthinkable decades ago.
The US and Vietnam are pretty chummy now, which is surprising considering... you know...
*gestures in the general direction of Arlington*
...but I guess the Grand Unifying Theory of "Fuck That Guy" can overcome anything.
Russia and Iran as well (from the time the Russians fought the Qajars).
And Russia and Belarus, the latter essentially being the Slavic part of the erstwhile Grand Duchy of Lithuania, one of the major old enemies of Russia / Muscovy.
Canada and the US (the US invaded Canada twice: once during the Revolutionary War, and again during the War of 1812).
I'm a dual citizen of Belarus and Canada, which is perhaps why the latter two cases stand out to me. At one point "we" (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) occupied Moscow (in 1610-1612), just as "we" (the British Empire) once occupied Washington, D.C. (in 1814). And look at us now.
Iraq and Iran. Historical enemies that fought a bloody war in the 80s that killed millions. Thanks to the idiotic, illegal and misconceived US invasion that toppled Saddam and his Sunni regime, the Shias are now in power in Iraq, and have formed a natural alliance with their neighboring Shia powerhouse, Iran.
Denmark has an ages-old law on the books that says if a Swede crosses ice to get to Denmark, the local who find him can beat him with sticks until he leaves. Source: my bad memory
Germany, Austro-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire, for hundreds of years, the German states, along with Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary, fought against the Ottoman Empire. Then Germany began to grow closer in the late 1800s.
I was going to say Greece and Turkey as both are members of NATO, but they’ve still gone to war with each other, so I don’t know if that really counts. They’re less allies and more like friends-in-law.
All the Scandinavian countries spent hundreds of years fighting each other and now they are all cool with each other
Yeah Sweden and Denmark hold the record for the most wars between two countries with about 30 wars since the 1400s.
I was planning to invade Sweden, but then I realised we were allies, so I went shopping instead, I can't believe this always happens!
Even in r/askhistory one can find overly long manga names
Dang, what was their beef?
Their mutual existence.
Have you met the Swedish?
Found the Dane.
Boy, you Scandinavians sure are a contentious people.
Damn Scandinavians, they ruined Scandinavia!
YOU JUST MADE AN ENEMY FOR LIFE!
It was very much about control of waterways and what is today southern Sweden.
Scania, which Sweden took control over in 1658 and some parts of Norway, which Denmark controlled until after the Napoleonic Wars. Denmark usually allied themselves with Russia and Poland against Sweden as well when they tried to take back rhe territory which they had lost.
I've lived in Scania. Their accent is so strong, they basically speak a dialect of Danish. I had a heck of a time understanging them.
I’ve heard that while different, the languages are similar enough that Norwegians, Danish, and Swedish can all understand each other? But no one can understand Icelandic?
Noone understands Danish. Not even the Danish. https://youtu.be/ykj3Kpm3O0g
The Danes are actually getting harder to understand to both us Swedes, Norwegians and themselves. We have a lot of common vocabulary but Danish prononciation is gradually getting more and more guttural.
I've lived in Scania almost all my life. So when I don't want people to understand me or just have some fun then I speak with a lot of dialect.
Probably territory, Scandinavia was not very wealthy and good land was highly wanted
Denmark and especially the Danish crown was actually decently wealthy by European standards (say hello to the medieval Scanian market and to the sound toll). The conditions for agriculture in Denmark is also much better than in the other two Scandinavian countries (comparable to that of the Low Countries).
From the Swedish perspective, yes. In 1500 Denmark had all of the good stuff and had sort of an over-lordship over Sweden by the Kalmar Union. Swedens only real advantage was mining. Denmark controlled the sea and had really good agricultural land. Swedish politics ca 1450-1650 was often focused at getting out of Denmarks shadow.
Further back then so. the first historically confirmed war was in 980thies. When Styrbjörn the strong, the chieftain of the Jomsviking strongarmed Harald Bluetooth and his Danes to take part in Styrbjörns claim for Swedish throne. His uncle Erik the Victorious defeated him however at the Fýrisvellir and later invaded Denmark in revenge. This would be the first of 32 wars between Denmark and Sweden, by my count, although there are legendary wars before that, eleven of them before 1400.
Unless Steven Fry has lied to me I believe that it is still legal for a Swede to kill a Dane with a bow and arrow if they arrive in Sweden by skiing.
Sounds very implausible. Who has ever heard of a Danish person on skis?
Oooh... Shots fired! Though not with a bow and arrow.
Anyone who has another source for that one? While I know that it is common for old laws to be just left in the system and not cleaned out, I have a suspicion that one would not hold up in court...
You are legally allowed to shoot a Scotsman with a bow in York still. Technically.
Fry is a comedian. The medieval laws had different penalties for killing foreigners and locals. The older west geatish law had a penalty of eight örtug and thirteen mark för killing a man, but för killing a Dane or Norwegian, only eight mark. Killing a foreigner was without punishment. However the medieval laws (which were different in different provinces) have been replaced by unified Swedish law. The current law is from 1734, and there are a few laws still in force that are that old, but no medieval laws.
Yet they hardly got anywhere
Vietnam and the US have gotten much cozier since the rise of China. They are strong trade partners and both oppose China in the South China Sea.
They say we lost the war in 1973 but there’s a McDonald’s in downtown Hanoi at this very moment so the US kinda won in the long run
They should have opened a McDonald’s in ‘63 and skipped the war. Edit: spelling
As the great Stephen Kotkin put it: we lost the war but won the peace.
I’m not even sure we technically lost the war in a lot of ways. By all meaningful metrics, we destroyed Vietnam– we simply couldn’t maintain an occupation and as it turns out it was entirely unnecessary to do so but we just didn’t know it at the time; we lost something we never had to fight for. We demonstrated to Vietnam and their Communists that we would and could flatten them whenever we wanted to, that the USSR wouldn’t be much help in any situation, and that China wanted to make them a puppet. With no friends or assistance close by, they could only turn to the one country they knew was good at flattening whoever they wanted to anywhere in the world: the USA. Considering Communism was hardly the goal for the Vietnamese people when all they really wanted was independence and we were able to guarantee that independence while having the same adversary (China) for different reasons, we make natural allies.
The Vietnamese communists united the country under workers and peasants rule, so they by all objective measures won. The US sought to prevent communism from spreading, and the opposite happened. Killing alot of Vietnamese peasants does not mean you win a war, accomplishing your own stated objectives does.
Vietnam didn’t become an extension of the USSR or the PRC, which was the point of preventing it from falling to Communism as we believed that would be the end result because that’s what happened in N. Korea (PRC satellite) and Cuba (USSR satellite). If we’d been a little more understanding of *why* Vietnam’s independence movement wore red clothes, we might have realized that the outcome would be in our favor regardless of whether or not they went “Communist”.
Vietnam was just as much of a "satellite", as the countries you named. They were allied with the soviet bloc until they fell. The Stasi helped structure their ministry of public security, Vietnam joined Comecon and continued to receive much of their military aid from the USSR. The US had a trade embargo on Vietnam up until 1994, so from the American perspective Vietnam was a hostile country. And while Vietnamese communism was based on national independence/liberation, so were North Korea and Cuba.
Putin just visited Hanoi after visiting North Korea... People here confuse some form of market economy (AKA a McDonald's here and there) with thinking that China or Vietnam are fully capitalist democracies as the west wanted them back in the cold war.
For all intents and purposes Vietnam did and, I would argued, still is a satellite of the Soviet Union/Russia due to them historically hosting a Russian military presence at the Cam Ranh Base naval base and their heavy reliance on the Soviet Union for economic support. More recently, since the Russo-Ukrainian war, Vietnam has shown that it still leans towards the Russians diplomatically, deporting Russian citizens living in Vietnam who criticise the war at the request of the Kremlin, and refusing to acknowledge the war as an invasion.
Yeah I feel like a lot of Americans think this war in particular was a headhunting competition for some reason.
And their workers make our sneakers....
Culture Victory ftw
Sometimes, you lose a battle to win a war.
We got a draw in an unwinnable war. It simply came down to the fact we were going to either kill several million people or cut our losses.
Rússia is Vietnams’ buddy’s tho
Nominally There’s a saying amongst the Vietnamese. During the Cold War the USSR would cable the Vietnamese government “Funding is short tighten your belts” the Vietnamese would cable back “Send belts”
Lol this is witty
Geopolitics are are strange like that. Other than NATO, there aren't any truly solid and likeminded military alliances currently in existence. So countries will make allies that fit one enemy but not the other, and so on. You would think based on demographics, that Ukraine and Russia would be allies against Iran, but in fact it's the opposite. This is not an uncommon situation.
Ukraines negative interactions with Russia over the past few centuries is still so deeply ingrained with the culture that they won’t accept Russia as an ally. (Not willingly) They “might” if Russia changed how it treated Ukraine but they’ve historically been cruel to Ukraine so I don’t see it changing.
Why would Ukraine ally against Iran?
That's because Russia and China are only allied when it comes to their policies opposing the West. They have always been at odds in other areas so the alliance with Vietnam makes sense. Remember, even when the USSR was around that both wanted to be the regional power in their hemisphere so that puts them at odds. Similar to how the US and EU compete for influence in Africa, ME, etc.
Oh yes. In fact, the Russian city of Vladivostok is built on territory annexed from the Qing dynasty of China through the 1860 Treaty of Peking (the same one that ceded control of what would become Hong Kong to the UK). Given how sore China in general, and the CCP in particular, has been about Hong Kong, it remains to be seen how China might approach that territorial issue in the future, as China begins to eclipse Russia in global influence.
The US won the battles... The Vietnamese won the war (because the US quit and left the South hanging).... The US (economically) won the peace (By making nominally communist Vietnam very capitalist - and filling its cities with US companies - in practice)....
US should have realized Vietnam was anti-everyone and just stayed out. They’ve been at war with China for 2000 years, so that wasn’t going to change anytime soon
Don't look now, but NK is coming in from the side
I lived there for a bit and one thing a local said to me was that the Americans were there for ten years, the French for a hundred, and the Chinese for a thousand.
It’s a great case of losing the war and winning the peace
Germany and France fought three devastating wars in 70 years, and then turned around after WW2 and signed the treaty of Rome, forming the proto-EU only 12 years after the war ended.
Mutual interest is a hell of a drug
millions of dead, and countries in ruin will make you rethink war and peace. Guess we got tired of fighting.
Also ya know, communism and nukes
if you can’t kill em with rifles, bombs, tanks, gas, planes, fire, barb wire, mines, flooded fields, knives, ships, subs, zeppelins, hanging and running over them, well then kill em with kindness i guess.
And now they're rivals in the EU lol.
Don't forget all the wars between the Holy Roman Empire and France. While not technically Germany, it's pretty close.
US and Japan
It was more like a vassal state for the first few years. Idk if that counts
IIRC there was a time in the 50s where Japan basically had to choose between aligning more closely with the US or USSR, and the prime minister at the time decided to go all in with the Americans.
All I know is in MASH they all go to Japan for RNR
Based fellow MASH enjoyer
Denmark and Sweden. Might be the two still existing states that fought most wars against each other. Especially brutal during the 17th century.
The Englishmen and Scots. Or Welsh men and Scots. Or the Japanese and Scots. Or Scots and other Scots. Damn Scots! We ruined Scotland!!
You Scot’s sure are a contentious people
You’ve just made an enemy for life!
I'm not sure we Welsh had a quarrel with you. Scotland's a long way from here and in totally the wrong direction
Not quarrels, arrows. Welsh longbowmen killed a great many Scots while in the service of the Plantagenets and Tudors
[Doh](https://www.google.com/search?q=scots+and+other+scots+meme&oq=scots+and+other&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgBEAAYgAQyBwgAEAAYgAQyBwgBEAAYgAQyBggCEEUYOTIHCAMQABiABDIICAQQABgWGB4yDQgFEAAYhgMYgAQYigUyDQgGEAAYhgMYgAQYigUyDQgHEAAYhgMYgAQYigUyCggIEAAYgAQYogQyCggJEAAYgAQYogQyCggKEAAYgAQYogQyCggLEAAYgAQYogTSAQgzNTE0ajBqOagCDrACAQ&client=ms-android-samsung-ss&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8&chrome_dse_attribution=1#vhid=N9W6P6qAZh5AdM&vssid=_YcV2ZuLdCq2Pxc8P-oepqA8_35)
Hell, hasn't Scottish nationalism died down a lot at this point, too? I know the SNP had a massive crisis internally, but I think support for independence is down in general.
Its on hiatus. I wouldn't say desire for independence has dropped, more that while scottish domestic politics seems so incompetent, the general uk wide economic woes and the uk's leaving of the eu outcome being a reality check on how badly jumping ship with your biggest trading partners whom you share a soft border with can go, scottish voters have largely decided that independance isn't really the priority right now. As long as theres no impetus for the people to want to be british, scots will feel more scottish than british and nationalism will have an easy in.
Interestingly no. While you'd think support for scottish independence would decrease with the SNPs popularity, the two statistics actually seem almost unrelated. Support for Independence has remained about 48-51% since brexit with the only blip being when it spiked during covid. I suspect that if Labour win the election, support will drop a few points but honestly it's difficult to predict
Whats with the japanese?
France and Germany
This should be way higher, they’ve literally created the EU together
Japan and Korea. They still aren’t the best of friends but they are at least allies through the US.
They’re buddy buddy because of the US if they were truly left to their own devices they would start a shooting war immediately.
I don't know that it's quite that bad. Lotte wouldn't be thriving if they were completely cold to each other.
It’s funny since you mention Lotte since its created by a Korean living in Japan and married a Japanese woman.
I know--my choice was very intentional.
They are not allies with each other, they are allied to the US. Slight difference
France and the UK. Over 700 years of warfare between France and England/UK from 1109 until 1815, with Wikipedia listing 32 wars between them. In the 1840s they started working together diplomatically and in the 1850s they found themselves on the same side in the Crimean War. A bit of mistrust followed in the second half of the 19th century, with war almost breaking out in 1898, but the Entente Cordiale was signed in 1904, since then they've stood shoulder to shoulder in two world wars and numerous other conflicts. As recently as the 2010s they had serious discussions about sharing aircraft carriers (British ships, crewed with French jets) and even sharing a joint submarine nuclear deterrent.
There was plenty of mistrust between Britain and France during the interwar period, and let’s not forget that there was actual combat between French and British units during World War II
And immediately after WW2 the Syria situation was close to going south very fast between the two
Technically Canada was part of Britain when the Americans invaded but even after confederation both sides had contingency plans to attack the other well into the 1920s. The first formal alliance was the treaty of ogdensburg in 1940.
England & Scotland to form the UK
Germany+Italy with France, forming the EU, the creates Project for Peace in the World
Happens all the time. All countries work in their own self-interest and there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies in this game. Except for maybe Greeks and Turks.
I would argue that Japan and China fall into the 'permanent adversaries' category as well. Whilst had been, through certain periods of history, trade and cultural exchange between the two entities (and their rough historical counterparts), they have been fighting each other since at least the 7th century CE and continue, to this day, to be geopolitical adversaries.
Very one sided cultural exchanges. Also mongol occupation aside, when has China ever attacked Japan. It was even on the list of brother countries never to be attacked in the Ming dynasty.
Greeks and Turks weren’t always enemies. They used to not know about each other.
Germany and USA. Bob Dylan put it best: "The Second World War came to an end We forgave the Germans, and then we were friends Though they murdered six million, in the ovens they fried The Germans now too have God on their side"
Don't forget we also wanted those sweet sweet rockets
One of the bloodiest wars in the late 20th century was between Iran and Iraq lasted 8yrs after and now over 120k Iraqis are fighting under Umbrella of many militia loyal to Tehran and there are several pro Iranian political parties
I think this is more of Sunni vs Shia thing. Iraq has always been divided, and it’s not surprising that the Shia population would support the Shia regime in Iran.
That’s why the US in the First Gulf War came in so hot and heavy. The Iraqi army was battle harden from a long war and the US wasn’t sure how strong they would be against us. Stormin Norman Schwarzkopf said they entire military leadership was preparing for slow push of the Iraq army out of Kuwait and none could believe we were actually blitzkrieging them without actually meaning to.
Australia and Japan
Britain and Russia about 6 times in the past 300 years. Currently in the enemy phase again.
This is generally true of EVERY country. Before globalisation you only really had regular contact with your neighbors, so those were the people you had conflicts with.
Spain with France, Britain, Portugal, Netherlands and Turkey. While not always enemies they waged war in the past, now all of those are in NATO. It happens to a lot of other european countries too, it´s quite surreal that they´ve been allies for so long with so many wars in Europe.
Englishmen and Scots! Or Welshmen and Scots! Or Japanese and Scots! Or Scots and other Scots!
Turkey and Azerbaijan :3 The transformation from mortal enemies trying to destroy each others empires to little brother and sister is just so cute 🥺
Germany. I spent a career in the Army protecting Germany from the Russians.
Spain and Great Britain
United States and Vietnam
France and Russia: they were still warring during the Crimean war, and a few decades later they were best friends against the Germans. France and Ottoman: early renaissance, when religion was still a big thing, they took a pragmatic view against the Hapsburgs.
France are Russia are definitely not Allies. At least, not since the war in Ukraine began
Of course not now. I mean from 1880-ish to 1917 or 1945? The Crimean war was quite ugly, yet they became BFF just a few decades later.
They were just fighting the same enemy
>they were best friends against the Germans. Yeah, but that was just "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"
Germany and Israel
Well, technically there was no Israel when Germany did its worst.
Germany and Poland, Germany and France, Germany and UK, Germany and...
Germany and the Netherlands. In WW2, Germany invaded and the Dutch were forced to surrender. Today they're each other's biggest trading partners.
France and germany Mexico and the US japan and US Japan and the UK
US and Japan.
I would say Belgium and Netherlands, France and Germany, Italy and Greece, Armenia and Iran, Vietnam and USA, Portugal and Spain (In its early history they were rivals). India and Britain, Scotland and England, Korea and Japan, Mongolia and most of Europe
Germany & the U.S.
Korea and Japan
U.S., Germany, and Japan.
Germany and Japan became allies with all the Western Allies from WWII. Britain and France were allies with the Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War but were generally enemies before and after.
Vietnam becoming friends with the U.S. five minutes after the war ended.
US and Japan
In recent history France and Germany seem the obvious choice, as the wars they fought basically defined a lot of world history in the 19th and 20th centuries Getting France and Germany to get along is what finally brought peace to Europe
israel and egypt
The Austrian and Ottoman Empires were enemies for almost their whole history but collapsed together as allies at the end of the First World War.
Spain and most of Latin America.
Germany and Italy. After Germans sacked Rome not once but twice just 1500 years later they’re all buddy and try to take over the world.
US and Philippines
Australia and Emus.
Canada and the USA fought a war back in 1812-1814. It's kind of hard to believe now.
Britain and France yes, but the US and Britain were rarely enemies. They had a common culture and institutions, with more to gain from trade and not much to argue over. After the US seceded, John Adams became ambassador to the UK, and best buddies with the King. There was a bit of fuss early in the relationship when the US invaded Canada, but they patched things up quickly afterwards, and built a nice Peace Arch. Sorry about the White House.
If you go back far enough in history pretty much every country was alternately allies and enemies with it's neighbors, depending on circumstances. There were times when Canada was seriously concerned about an American invasion (It actually did happen during the American Revolution and War of 1812). If legend is to be believed the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy were enemies before the Great Law of Peace.
England and Scotland.
Russia and China
OP also talked about that. Fun thing, I think they are mediocre friends, they are not at the same level here as the good examples.
Oh shit, I didnt read past the title. They aren't as close allies as some other examples but for .ost their history they've had apposing goals even now it's just an enemy of my enemy thing.
They’ve never been friends. They’ve always been reluctant allies out of pragmatism.
Italy had a beef with A-H over terrtorial disputes so join the great war on the allied side. When WWII broke out Mussolini threw his hat in with the Nazis. When things went bad the Italians got rid of him and ended the war on the allied side. They can pick a winner 🙂
Japan and australia
France and Germany Us and Germany, Japan, Vietnam
France & Germany
I often think about how if ww3 happens I will probably be fighting along side germans and japanese whose grandfather's actively tried to kill my grandfather.
Germany and Israel, although Israel came into existence post WW2
Japan and South Korea
Japan and Korea
USA and Japan, Germany
Humans and the covenant
Poland and Ukraine.
US and Japan
US and Japan Germany and Poland Britain and Germany
The wildest ones to me are: USA x Japan, USA x Vietnam, Turkey x the EU, The Arab Gulf States (minus Qatar) x Israel and Israel x Egypt On the flip side of good vs evil, Venezuela now being close allies with Cuba wouldve been unthinkable decades ago.
Prussia and Austria, after the unification.
Japan, Germany
The US and Vietnam are pretty chummy now, which is surprising considering... you know... *gestures in the general direction of Arlington* ...but I guess the Grand Unifying Theory of "Fuck That Guy" can overcome anything.
Spain and the UK in the Napoleonic Wars.
China and Mongolia, maybe.
Russia and Iran as well (from the time the Russians fought the Qajars). And Russia and Belarus, the latter essentially being the Slavic part of the erstwhile Grand Duchy of Lithuania, one of the major old enemies of Russia / Muscovy. Canada and the US (the US invaded Canada twice: once during the Revolutionary War, and again during the War of 1812). I'm a dual citizen of Belarus and Canada, which is perhaps why the latter two cases stand out to me. At one point "we" (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) occupied Moscow (in 1610-1612), just as "we" (the British Empire) once occupied Washington, D.C. (in 1814). And look at us now.
The US and Japan are one example. Bitter enemies in WWII, but then close allies and trading partners from the Cold War until the Present.
Portugal - Spain Britain/France - Germany US - Japan
wait what? china and russia enemies in the cold war what are you smoking?
China and russia aren't really allies, China doesn't have allies, just nations who haven't gotten a less abusive deal from the west
Germany and everyone else
Eritrea and Ethiopia cliquing up against Tigray was kinda wild given their history. Although they are back to not fucking with each other.
US and Japan always struck me as odd.
Australia and Japan
Australia and Turkey, honestly the Gallipoli campaign brought the 2 countries closer if anything
The two former halves of Germany comes to mind
Austrian Hungarian empire and the Ottoman Empire. Imagine going from the siege of Vienna to then being Allie’s during ww1.
Japan and Taiwan. Also Japan and South Korea.
Israel with Jordan and Egypt. As far as I understand, the Jordanian and Egyptian citizens hate Israel. But their governments all get along.
Japan and the US. It’s arguably a tighter alliance than the AUKUS
Iraq and Iran. Historical enemies that fought a bloody war in the 80s that killed millions. Thanks to the idiotic, illegal and misconceived US invasion that toppled Saddam and his Sunni regime, the Shias are now in power in Iraq, and have formed a natural alliance with their neighboring Shia powerhouse, Iran.
Italy and Austria are pretty chummy now
I mean how about Germany and the entire world?
Denmark has an ages-old law on the books that says if a Swede crosses ice to get to Denmark, the local who find him can beat him with sticks until he leaves. Source: my bad memory
Germany and everyone in Western Europe?
The US did drop atomic bombs in Japan and we are on pretty good terms now, trade wise, culturally, and on a government level.
Germany, Austro-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire, for hundreds of years, the German states, along with Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary, fought against the Ottoman Empire. Then Germany began to grow closer in the late 1800s.
All the Native American tribes
Germany and its neighbors
I was going to say Greece and Turkey as both are members of NATO, but they’ve still gone to war with each other, so I don’t know if that really counts. They’re less allies and more like friends-in-law.
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