Monday Town Hall with Ruggles

[MarkD]

The passage of 117 years is the major factor here. If we were to go back 125-200 years ago, we would find that many parts of the world (nations today) had recently gone through one or more of the following:

a) occupation by long-range outsiders, often Europeans on ships,

b) extremely violent invasions from neighboring cultures/civilizations;

c) having no sense of nationhood--being a constellation of regularly warring tribes not yet under control of a central government;

d) highly destructive civil wars;

e) frequently shifting borders and frequently shifting governments.

It is true that the takeover of Hawaii occurred a bit later than the era of the formation of modern nations, but it is still sufficiently far back that we cannot consider that event to be judged by modern standards of international law.