So the US beat the Mexicans in a fair fight because of underlying culture. Does that just about sum it up? Maybe you're right that the Latin cultures are crippled by lingering remnants of feudalism. I've never found that to be a particularly convincing argument - how did Japan become so rich and powerful, when they had one of the harshest feudal structures in the world, which endured to remarkable degree even after WWII? It's not that simple - not by a long shot.
"Blood and Iron" is not a bad term for what happened: this war's political conclusion was decided by military force. The US decided that they'd rather draw the border down to the Rio Grande and across to California. Texas was unable to do this by themselves, but with the might of the US? Not so tough. They beat the tar our of the Mexicans until that idea became fact. They knew they could win, and events proved them correct.
If the Mexicans had been blessed with a brilliant leader, rather than a bold idiot who gets himself captured by every force he takes on, they might have preserved some extra slice of their territory with a better defensive war and the help of Yellow Fever - but there was absolutely no way they were going to turn the war around and march deep into the US without a counter-reaction that would have destroyed them. Can you imagine Santa Anna sitting in Washington DC, bickering with the folks back home about whether to annex all of the States, or just take Dixie and be done with it? The image is absurd, and for good reason - a fundamental imbalance in total power that was not going to be undone by any issue of leadership. If the US started losing (which didn't happen, but counterfactually) they had the capacity to hold the borders, regroup and fight again with a larger, better organized army - with very little the Mexicans could have done about it. When the Mexicans started losing, it was straight to Mexico City from two directions, next stop Guadelupe-Hidalgo.
The issue of large standing armies is a red herring. If the US was vastly expanding its territory by winning military campaigns (against Mexico, against Spain, against the indigenous nations) without a large standing army, then what need did they have for one? No enemy presented that required a gigantic standing army until they turned their guns on themselves in the Civil War - at which point it became frighteningly obvious just how much reserve power the US had, in terms of manpower, in terms of wealth, in terms of industrial production, and in terms of organizational capacity. Just because they didn't need to *use* all that capacity against Mexico doesn't mean they didn't *have* it. Indeed, since the money saved could be funnelled back into economic growth, in the long run, not having a large standing army probably made the US more powerful, rather than less. It certainly didn't do Mexican governments any favours having to pay out so much of their budgets to keep the army happy.
-Jester
"Blood and Iron" is not a bad term for what happened: this war's political conclusion was decided by military force. The US decided that they'd rather draw the border down to the Rio Grande and across to California. Texas was unable to do this by themselves, but with the might of the US? Not so tough. They beat the tar our of the Mexicans until that idea became fact. They knew they could win, and events proved them correct.
If the Mexicans had been blessed with a brilliant leader, rather than a bold idiot who gets himself captured by every force he takes on, they might have preserved some extra slice of their territory with a better defensive war and the help of Yellow Fever - but there was absolutely no way they were going to turn the war around and march deep into the US without a counter-reaction that would have destroyed them. Can you imagine Santa Anna sitting in Washington DC, bickering with the folks back home about whether to annex all of the States, or just take Dixie and be done with it? The image is absurd, and for good reason - a fundamental imbalance in total power that was not going to be undone by any issue of leadership. If the US started losing (which didn't happen, but counterfactually) they had the capacity to hold the borders, regroup and fight again with a larger, better organized army - with very little the Mexicans could have done about it. When the Mexicans started losing, it was straight to Mexico City from two directions, next stop Guadelupe-Hidalgo.
The issue of large standing armies is a red herring. If the US was vastly expanding its territory by winning military campaigns (against Mexico, against Spain, against the indigenous nations) without a large standing army, then what need did they have for one? No enemy presented that required a gigantic standing army until they turned their guns on themselves in the Civil War - at which point it became frighteningly obvious just how much reserve power the US had, in terms of manpower, in terms of wealth, in terms of industrial production, and in terms of organizational capacity. Just because they didn't need to *use* all that capacity against Mexico doesn't mean they didn't *have* it. Indeed, since the money saved could be funnelled back into economic growth, in the long run, not having a large standing army probably made the US more powerful, rather than less. It certainly didn't do Mexican governments any favours having to pay out so much of their budgets to keep the army happy.
-Jester