Having recently talked about the phenomenon of addition by subtraction [1], I would like to talk about its inverse, subtraction by addition. This is the imperial problem in a nutshell, the result of the mistaken belief that bigger is better. There are a large number of case studies of where bigger is not better, especially in the realm of human behavior. Let us therefore be content to look at a few case studies that examine reasons why bigger isn’t necessarily bigger, rather than attempt to be exhaustive in looking at examples.

Bigger Isn’t Better When It Exacerbates Internal Divisions

We might call this the “Texas problem,” no offense meant to Texans. There is a very direct chain of events between the Texas annexation and the American Civil War, with very good reason. Texas’ annexation dominated the 1844 election, and led to the election of one James K. Polk as President of the United States in a fiercely divided election based (like many elections are) on a lie to seek a 54’40” boundary with England, which would have made British Columbia American.

To put the case somewhat briefly, the United States annexed Texas in early 1845 with a claimed boundary at the Rio Grande, even though Texas’ boundary within Mexico before 1836 ended at the Nueces and Texas had never exercised control over the territory in between the Nueces and the Rio Grande (although, to be fair, neither did Mexico).
The US claim of the Rio Grande boundary quite intentionally provoked a war with Mexico, in which the United States gained a huge amount of territory, including what is now Utah, Colorado, most of New Mexico and Arizona, as well as Nevada and California.

What made this a case of addition by subtraction is that it appeared (with good reason) that the gains had been made to strengthen the slave-owning bloc of states. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly turn out that way. Texas was the last pro-slavery state admitted to the Union, and the fight over slavery in the territories won from Mexico ended up destroying the Whig Party after the 1850 Compromise and leading to the birth of the Republican Party in the heat of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The resulting division of the Democratic party and the refusal of the South to accept the legitimacy of free soil politics and politicians led directly to the Civil War and the destruction of the antebellum political order of the United States.

This is not an isolated case, but let us seek to examine what about this particular addition by subtraction makes it worthwhile in a more general theory. Before the addition of Texas there was already an existing division within the United States about the legitimacy of slavery, which had already led to the banning of the slave trade, the Missouri Compromise and a lengthy and recently completed struggle against the gag rule banning any discussion of antislavery petitions to Congress. With the addition of more land to fight over as well as the problem of federal funds being used for aggressive wars to gain slaveowning territories, as well as the growing population advantage of the North due to its more favorable cultural views toward immigrants and its free-soil economic climate, the South’s provocative moves to increase its power to counteract its growing weakness compared to the North led to increasing conflict since it could not accept a lesser status.

This is a lesson that many others can learn. If an organization or nation or family attempts to increase its territorial holdings with existing divisions, those additions will be seen as political attempts to shift the existing balance of power and will provoke moves to counteract such attempts, leading to an increase in tension and a tendency to provoke increased hostilities. Even if there is intent to use gains and increased holdings for political purpose, such an intent will be assumed and acted upon regardless, making what should be a good thing turn into increased internal conflict and tensions and a heightened sense of crisis. This is obviously a bad thing.

Bigger Isn’t Better When It Provokes Greater External Conflict

This is a corollary of the first situation. As we saw, the annexation of Texas provoked an external war with Mexico before provoking an internal civil war. Since we have picked on Texas enough, though, let us look at another useful historical example, the case of Germany’s rapid growth in the 1860’s and afterward under Prussian domination and its ultimately negative consequences to Germany. A twice-told tale [2] may be tedious, but please bear with me.

Though Prussia had been a recognized military power within Europe since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, it was really the 1860’s when Prussia’s gain in strength began to attract the attention and concern of the rest of Europe. First, Prussia allied with Austria to gain control of some German-populated territories that Denmark had held since the Thirty Years War. Then Prussia defeated a much larger Austrian-led alliance of states (while allied with Piedmontese-dominated Italy) to secure a North German Confederation under Prussia. Then Germany used a Spanish succession crisis to provoke a war with France in which it gained control of the territory of Alsace-Lorraine and also unified the Catholic Southern German states into a Prussian-dominated German Reich.

It was the seizure of Alsace-Lorraine that proved to be one bridge too far for the long-term benefit of German power and strength. Germany’s late unity led it to get the scraps of colonies in Africa and Oceania (Namibia, Tanganika, Camaroon, the Bismark Islands, a tiny bit of concession territory in China). Unfortunately, by taking territory that the French saw as integral territory, Germany ensured that France would remain an enemy as long as Germany held terra irredenta (lost land).

France, knowing it could not take over German land on its own, then acted to surround Germany with an alliance of nations–allying with the United Kingdom and Russia. Russia’s alliance with the new Slavic states of Serbia and Romania also proved useful in provoking conflict with the Austria-Hungarian Empire, which held many oppressed slavic nations within its feeble grasp. Germany, in allying with Austria-Hungary, was chaining itself to a dying empire and bringing upon it more hostility than it could successfully overcome.

Naturally, it responded by a provocative assault of France through neutral Belgium, and its later provocative use of submarine warfare (and its attempt to ally with Mexico to give the United States a two-front war) led to the United States entering warfare against Germany and ultimately leading to Germany’s defeat (despite its victory over Russia) and the loss of core territories like part of Prussia to a new Polish state that was resolutely anti-Russian and anti-German. Its later attempts under Hitler to reverse these losses led to even further losses of its territory, including the loss of all of Prussia as well as the forced removal of Germans from Silesia and Sudetenland by vengeful Polish and Czech nations unwilling to accept the threat of Germans within their territory, no matter how long their ancestors had been there. Germany even ended up losing territory to nations like Belgium and Denmark as a result of their historical sins.

The issue with Germany’s rise was that it rose so great so quickly that it attracted a great deal of hostility without having gained enough power to ensure continued success. Additionally, Prussia’s easy defeat of Denmark, Austria, and France had led Germany to become overconfident of its strategic and tactical superiority as well as addicted to the use of aggressive moves to maintain initiative, not recognizing the diplomatic harm these moves did in seeking to gain a large enough coalition to win wars. The fact that Germany’s aggression led historical enemies like the United Kingdom and France along with mortal enemies like the United States and the Communist Soviet Union to join forces means that Germany failed in the first rule of attempting to win as a smaller power–divide and conquer. They forgot to divide first.

Bigger Isn’t Better When It Leads To More Hassles Than It’s Worth

A third case of bigger not being better comes about when the attempt to take over a territory or increase one’s holdings leads to greater expenditure of resources than the gains one gets from the new holding. We may call this the Somaliland rule (though Afghanistan is a good example of this rule in action as well). If gaining territory leads to increased conflicts where no such conflicts existed before, one can end up worse rather than better for having gained that territory, and Somaliland is a perfect example of this rule in action.

In 1960 both Italian Somaliland and British Somaliland separately gained independence from their colonial masters. Italian Somaliland is more affectionately known as Somalia, an asabiya black hole, and British Somaliland is known, even today, as Somaliland. In a misguided fit of Greater Somaliland solidarity, the two mismatched nations joined together into one larger Somali state leading to decades of oppression by Somalis against the people of Somaliland and the eventual destruction of any kind of social cohesion within Somalila.

What led to the problems is that Somalia’s fractious politics led to dictatorship as the “solution” to threatened anarchy and the destruction of the delicate power-sharing agreements that had given the Somalia-Somaliland Union legitimacy in the eyes of the people of Somaliland. Whatever internal problems Somalia had were exacerbated by a large amount of territory that offered nothing but headaches to Somali dictator Siad Barre, eventually leading (after much destruction within Somaliland) to his own defeat and the destruction of any societal order within Somalia, all while Somaliland has remained as it was in 1960, a small nation with strong social cohesion, a lively political scene, a strategic location, and great potential to go along with its considerable obscurity.

In short, Somaliland lost 30 years of freedom, lost some of its people to oppression, and lost a good deal of its infrastructure to attacks that had to be rebuilt, but maintained its nationhood. Somalia attempted to swallow Somaliland but lost a sense of its own core and is now far worse off than its former province. Somaliland’s experience with Somalia is a clear example of how bigger is not better for either a small but cohesive nation looking to be part of a larger whole or for a large but unsteady nation that lacks its own strong core. But cohesion will trump mere size most of the time, as is the case between Somaliland and Somalia.

Conclusion

We have looked at three general cases where bigger is not better. First, we have seen how gains of territory, population, and holdings can exacerbate internal divisions and lead to greater losses. Next, we looked at how gains (without diplomatic savvy) can lead to increased external conflict that leads to a reversal of those gains. Finally, we looked at how gains can create destructive problems that outweigh the small or nonexistent gains of increased size and holdings. From the examples of Texas, Germany, and Somalia we can see how bigger is not always better. In fact, it is often a lot worse. Let us profit from the examples and ensure a cultural fit and strong internal cohesion during growth and also making sure to prevent growth from leading to destructive external conflicts. In so doing we can make sure that bigger is better, and that we avoid subtraction through addition.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/addition-by-subtraction/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/what-would-otto-von-bismarck-do/