> From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.
(I'm not American nor living there btw, I don't mean it as any sort of political point.)
It is also perhaps dated in the send that it assumes crushing defeat happens on the battlefield.
A foreign state would need to cross the Atlantic ocean, contend with the most powerful Navy on earth several times over, land in either Canada or Mexico, both of which are US allies, and then mount a land invasion on the US homeland. It’s hard to imagine how that would be possible.
You raise a good point when you say crushing defeat does not necessarily happen on the conventional battlefield. Nuclear weapons create the possibility of MAD, and other “battlefields” like the cyberspace or global economic warfare have developed since Lincoln’s time. I still think the essence of what he said is true though: the greatest threat to the US comes from within.
I'm thinking of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
almost forgotten, but how different it would be if they were intelligent.
Talk about an amazing coincidence:
"On March 10, 1945, one of the last paper balloons descended in the vicinity of the Manhattan Project's production facility at the Hanford Site. This balloon caused a short circuit in the power lines supplying electricity for the nuclear reactor cooling pumps, but backup safety devices restored power almost immediately."
I haven't gone out of my way to familiarize myself with the perennial rocket launches at Israel, but that's the general sort of thing I'm picturing. Harassment that would demonstrate people are never safe, while not rising to the level where the international community would accept massive retaliation.
And in any case, Israel is used to it and used to having missile defense, and is a very small country. Nobody expects that any part of the country is far away from the borders and enemies. Whereas it would be a sea change for the US, if attacks could occur anywhere, and psychologically it would be like an invasion.
I'm using "invasion" loosely to mean an attack that reaches inner areas that people take for granted are safe, not necessarily boots on the ground.
But I didn't. I merely defined it more loosely than infantry on the ground.
Which us why those which dislike the US's place in the world, focus so much on fanning any flames of discontent, or political differences they can.
I'm truly surprised Hitler never tried some sort of guerrilla attack with a small force just to cause chaos and terror in the heartland. it's not like the USA was very well defended at all from any sort of coordinated landing back in the early 40's.
Supposedly it was pointed out that their agreement for mutual defense with Japan didn't require them to declare war if Japan was the aggressor. But that was ignored.
Mexico is also about equally protected from foreign invasion. I guess their biggest threat would be us, and not without precedent, but they are not a threat to us. And just as Mexico is not a threat, neither are the nations south of Mexico a threat to Mexico. This was all true even in Lincoln’s time.
So, yeah, suicide it is. That includes any kind of internal fracturing.
We have forest fires in the northwest territories that span hundreds of thousands of acres and its a coin flip if they'll even send a plane up to observe them. No one cares because no one lives within 500 km of them.
If you average the number of people per square kilometer, from a statistical perspective, this country is completely empty.
Mauritania: 4.272157756864267
Botswana: 3.8729690721649486
Libya: 3.7956278345476657
Canada: 3.712146921230246
Guyana: 3.6238062232228834
Suriname: 3.5159931632279333
*French Guiana (France): 3.387099863528623
Iceland: 3.2690582524271843
Australia: 3.2368791361025395
Namibia: 2.9702730179990002
Western Sahara [note 10]: 2.13309022556391
Mongolia: 2.0268419989310256
*Falkland Islands (UKOT): 0.2656699252443933
*Svalbard and Jan Mayen (Norway): 0.04253308128544423
*Greenland (Denmark): 0.026113459945726992So yes, Canada has 37 million people and may or may not rank up there with the lowest densities in the world. But if you actually drive around Canada you'll quickly realize that the entire family is packed into one tiny closet when the rest of the house is completely empty.
You may be interested in the Revolutions podcast though which touches on these events from a couple of different perspectives, but includes an entire part dedicated to Revolution in Mexico.
It case you don't know, he was the president when states did fracture (US civil war).
That's precisely Lincoln's point:
> if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher