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Comment by indigochill | Hacker News Reader

Iceland is one example. They have a coast guard but no standing military. On the other hand, their independence is formally guaranteed by the US (and maybe others, I don't remember), so nobody's gonna be trying to annex them any time soon. On the other hand, Iceland's only been "independent" since slipping out from Denmark ~WW2.

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But Iceland has decidedly not been stable. They gained de facto independence in 1918 and completely lost their sovereignty only 22 years later when Britain occupied them (that is despite them still having armed forces in 1940). Since WW2 things have obviously been stable-ish (things were really bad in 2009). How long do you think that would last once Iceland tried to exercise their sovereignty, for instance by leaving NATO?

Analogously, how long did the Shire last against a motivated attacker with comparatively little resources?

Sorry, I meant it as an example specifically of this (similar to the Hobbits "outsourcing" their defense):

> There's not a lot places in the real history of the real world where a society had no defense burden

I'm certainly not making an argument that it has signs of long-term stability.

I guess the US guarantee is what kept the "cod wars" limited to shouldering?

(how well might current DDGs stand up to a similar full and frank discussion?)

Never new about that. Fascinating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars

Even without the US guarantee, I strongly doubt the UK would have entered an actual shooting war with Iceland over fish.

except Icelandic bankers toppled their own government in the 2008 credit crisis due to making a specific haven for certain kinds of crazy leveraged lending in the UK (!) (corrections welcome)

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