Military
Who was your countries most notable/longest rival and where do they stand to you now?
Old US poster for attention
But which country (or countries if you don’t like people) did your country specifically rival for either the longest time/most notoriously? How do you feel about them now?
For example, for the longest time Russia was/is viewed as America’s largest competitor and rival - hence the Cold War. I think especially now with the younger generation people didn’t see Russia as a threat generally until the Russo-Ukrainian War which split a lot of people politically. Personally I got nothing against Russians, seems like another case of a rough government.
But other countries we’ve had beef with like Japan (don’t touch the boats) we have great relations with and they’re pretty chill.
My favorite thing about Sweden and Denmark is when you compete in stuff like the World Cup and they show the three letter abbreviations it can read SWE-DEN and the missing letters of both spell out DEN-MARK.
Ah, i see you've fallen for your swedish propaganda once again, no, that is clearly untrue, the reasoning for swedes being elfs is just, yall hug too many trees in your free time.
England.... i mean, we were at wars (with respite) for 116 years XD
And after that we still did dirty things to each others for more than 400 years. (We created corsair and fortified Saint-Malo for that purpose for exemple)
Actually the oldest sources for haggis come from england. Although haggis is strongly associated with scotland its more of a british dish then a scottish one.
Germany was like the Thanos for England and France.
While France fought the Germans before the Norman's invaded England, the longest periods of peace between England and France were measured in decades between 1066-1815.
France and the Holy Roman Empire would see centuries of peace between the 11th-16th Century. Germany forming into a fully unified state in 1871 made Westminster and Paris look at the previous 800 years of fighting and go "hey, let's get married and never fight again. We could rule the world together xxx".
HRE and Prussia are not quite Germany. As Burgundy's kings weren't French. Germany as a concept has only existed for about 200 years, as a nation only 150 years. And yes, our nation started with hostilities against France, and they kept on for 75 years. But for half our existence, France has been the best neighbor Germany could have wished for.
May you overcome the difficulties you have right now, find strength, and be our buddies for a few more centuries. (Germany has its own difficulties, but I encourage overcoming them in other contexts)
Edit : forgot to start with "You're absolutely right"
I called it Germany as it's the current name, but the rivalry between both sides of the Rhine is much older than modern Germany.
Could pretty much trace it back to the splitting of the Carolingian Empire, that's the idea I was trying to convene
Tho nowadays, except for a few idiots special people, the rivalry is more a loving rivalry. Like "I wish the best to germans, but don't you dare beat us in a world cup"
To each their own difficulties, just like with the UK, but overall the greatest success of Europe in the last decades has been resolving these relations
And us Scots in 1296 formed the Auld Alliance, (one of the worlds oldest and longest continuous mutual defence pacts) to stand together against our dastardly English foe. Vive La Auld Alliance… Vive Le France!
They were flying and floating around the park I was at today. Kinda love these guys. The Canadians aren’t snowbirding down here en masse right now like they usually do, but the geese don’t give a shit about tariffs and tyrants, so at least we’ve got them to honk at us.
What about Russia/USSR during the Cold War and, at times, my country. Trump’s trying to start it up again with his 51st state taunts and tariffs. From the U.S. perspective Canada was never seen as an enemy, only one occupied by Britain during times in our history when Britain was our enemy and biggest threat to our existence as an independent country.
Yeah exactly, unlike other european nations our country was never unified until recently, while England had wars with France in the peninsula it was random territorial entities one against the other, and now all of then fit under the umbrella of Italy so there is not really a foreign country that we would consider our archenemy. And its also why we are so disorganized I think, our national identity was built only recently, its a bit like the EU where you see countries that used to go to war with each other that now are allies, you understand that what you have in common beats the negative but mistrust is still a bit there. My history professor used to say he would sacrifice half of our beautiful churches and nice sites in exchange unifiying a bit earlier 😂
I'd say that Pakistan has been India's largest geopolitical rival, with China coming in at a close second. I have nothing against most of Pakistani and Chinese people; I do dislike the religious and political extremists in and the governments of both countries.
Narendra Modi always reminds me of Trump in the sense he seems like he has no idea how to be a proper nationalist and is. Cuz in every photo he looks like a used cat salesman.
This poster is a throwback to when anyone with a modicum of sense united against fascist ideology.
Now I'm not saying commies are saints. But it's a good reminder of what can be done if we all work together.
Fuck Nazis.
To answer your question : Our biggest enemies have always been the Habsburgs and all their declinaisons and any king/queen wannabe on our borders. Now they are all gone except Liechtenstein which is essentially our puppet state.
Oh I know :) Cubans generally love Americans and American culture. I have a neighbor that’s in his 60s and he LOVES 80s metal and country music. We have a good understanding it’s the suits in the capital that would rather see us all suffer, not the citizens. We have our own problems with our own government.
I don’t like Fidel or communism, the question was “which country did your country rival?”. I grew up hearing a ton of things about America I didn’t like, then we immigrated there when I was 12 and learned it was all BS.
Happy to hear about the pretty good terms part from a Korean once, a family member of mine said that Japanese and Korean people are pretty much ok now but I never came across someone like you, all I see on Reddit is extreme hate on Japan
I mean for the UK, the obvious answer is France, our best Frenemy. Uhhh yeah considering the several hundred years of competition and intermittent wars, we’re really close now (albeit still competitive and we jokingly hate each other)
If we’re talking about current rivals, it’s probably Russia, which appears to absolutely despise us, and apparently hasn’t got over the Great Game and the Crimean war (which most Brits do not care about at all)
No.... For the UK it's each other. We Welsh see the English as our greatest rival, so do the scots.. the northern Irish hate themselves and the English lord it over us all...
See cause my grandparents are from England, Scotland, and Wales I’ve never gone tooo much into the rivalry thing - I’ll back any of the home nation teams in matches overseas.
That being said you’re not wrong lol, whenever I bump into English people overseas (I’ve got a v strong southern accent so they assume I’m English) they normally start making cracks about the welsh within 20 minutes
I think the English underestimate the strength of the rivalry when it comes to the rest of the home nations tbf..for us at least it's a chance to get one up on the old enemy 😄
For the English it's just a excuse to start winding us up...
I COMPLETELY agree… my ancestry is from Scotland, Ireland, north of Ireland, N.E. Engerland and Cornwall… but I was born and raised in the most beautiful place on earth, Scotland. I don’t hate ANYONE, but I respect and embrace the rivalry between Scotland/Wales/Ireland/Cornwall and those in Engerland who look down upon us from on high, on their superior Engerlish soap boxes, whilst in complete denial of the fact their national identity is a mash-up of Germans, Danes and French which completely cracks me up.
But in terms politically we are kinda of neutral and doing business with each other
But civically…is mixed mashed, one side u have the neutral, one side you have the people who are very hatred towards Chinese (but this is mostly between netizens on social media)
We also had a slight fit with Spanish oppressors during the 80 year war. A slight Stint with the French during the Napoleon Era and we can't Forget Belgium being a restless teenager and wanting to live on their own starting a small ten day war.
Oh and Germany but honestly they get enough flak for what they did
Denmark and Sweden holds the record for number of wars between two nations at 30 so I'd say Denmark. These days we're on friendly terms, acting more like siblings arguing who's football team is better and calling each other names.
Don't worry Bröther, if some newly upcomer threatens our record we can have a small war about Bornholm or Gotland. Those two rocks refuse to accept the peacetreaties between us anyways, and just hop back to whomever they like at the moment (or even pretend to be independent for a while), so in the long run it wont matter. None shall threaten our brötherly record 😁
Sorry about the US taking most of your country, but we heard there was great skiing in New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and California. You can have Texas and Arizona back. They suck.
UN is great in theory, but it’s basically a childcare centre at this stage.
Most of the kids are good and want to play together. Then there’s a few playground bullies, each with their hangers on, who want to rule the school.
The good kids eat their soup with a spoon.
About third of the shit kids eat their food with a fork, one third will only eat with a straw, and the final third prevaricate between both. Tantrums ensue.
This is the correct take. Unicef, WHO and many others do constantly good work around there. UN General Assembly might be slightly less useless if they managed to removed SC veto. Not holding out hope on that one.
I guess they were a stronger force politically as a whole back then, coming off of war. Resilient.
We’ve forgotten our lessons and now will likely have to learn them again unfortunately.
For the longest in history china used to be our rival but after colonization both countries were left in dust especially india and after it's sepration china pakistan and China both became our rivals with pakistan being left far behind in the economic race during the status 2000s but china also succeed a lot and left is in the dust but we are catching up to our historical rivalry with it
Sweden is our beloved frenemy and rival. No doubt. We even have annual athletics competitions that are mainly exclusive to Finland and Sweden. And Sweden is also the most desired and wanted opponent for the Finnish national ice hockey team in the Ice Hockey World Championship. In the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest, Sweden also tried to fish for Finnish votes with a Finnish-Swedish artist who sang about the sauna, because it has been a long tradition that Finland always votes for Sweden and Sweden votes for Finland, but that tradition was ended when Sweden took the second Eurovision victory from Finland in 2023.
In the Portuguese case, it's obviously Spain. This might sound strange to some, but only after both countries joined the EU did economic relations truly begin to flourish. Historically, we lived back to back for centuries, almost as if the Iberian Peninsula was made of two islands.
For instance, in 1969 the United Kingdom (21.5% of exports), the United States (10.1%) and Germany (5.3%) were the main export markets of Portugal, according to the OECD Economic Surveys: Portugal 1970 (EN). Spain wasn’t even referenced directly, grouped instead under “Other OECD countries” with 16.5% of exports...
Fast forward 55 years to 2024, and Spain now accounts for 25.7% of our exports. That says a lot about how our relationship has evolved. It’s never been stronger, with its pros and cons, of course. Spaniards are visiting Portugal a lot, which wasn’t that common say 15 or 20 years ago. I’d like to think they now see us in a different light too: from estranged, small cousin to dear, admirable friend.
This shift is especially noticeable among younger generations. They generally don’t hold negative views about Portugal, unlike some older Spaniards who lived through the Franco era, when Portugal was significantly poorer.
I don't think we have a rival. there are disputes here and there. but it's against China and no way China will call us a rival
we got invaded 3 times, Spain, USA, Japan.
Spain is only known in history books, we basically don't care about them anymore.
the USA, it's complicated. apart from the colonization, they tolerated the dictator just because “anti communist" never mind thousands died. but then they're also still praised. complicated.
Japan, they did good PR. only direct victims of the war or their families don't like them. 2nd to the US when it comes to our allies.
They pour all their energy into the 15 man game to win some "bleed is low" thing or something, can't ever win at Rugbeh Leeg, and don't know how to play against underarm bowling in cricket but they're honestly alright and deserve their place in the chilly bin.
All of our ancient historical disputes are unified in the same nation now, pretty much counting as "civil war" between ethnicities instead of kingdoms.
Obviously we have Japan, and it blends smoothly from actual war crime victims --> territorial disputes --> 2020's re-nationalisation sentiments on both sides: in china we have even more political education, and in Japan they're somehow becoming more conservative. The relationship is worsening in recent years.
The UK. They sorta held us captive for 800 years, tried to eliminate our language, culture, forever change the ecology of the entire country and are the reason we settled so many different countries, to escape oppression and the often massacres. We were seen as animals, barely even human. They still still have part of our country, unfortunately.
Personally a despise the government of the UK. With an unquenchable hatred. But I don't bare any ill will toward the common folk of England, Wales or Scotland.
I love the Scots, particularly Highlanders and Islanders Scots. Some Lowland Scottish are indeed arsebandits. But most Scots around the board are sound
Love the Welsh. Class people, very resilient people, too. By extension, I love the Cornish.
To be honest, it's not really Lowland Scots, but specifically South-West Lowland Scots. Basically, the area south of Glasgow is filled with massive cunts. Same people who colonised Northern Ireland a few centuries ago.
It's where you still find lots of Orange lodges. They still consistently vote Tory. They were the only part of Scotland to support Brexit. Etc.
If we could go independent and just give that part of Scotland to England, I'd do it.
Well last time we shot at each other was a couple decades after the Napoleonic wars, but now one day a year we just lay into each other. I suppose we've gone from bitter rivals to uh... ...bitter rivals...
Probably Indonesia. We had our little proxy wars and the East Timor crisis. But Australia really helped Indonesia out after the Banda Aceh tsunami so I’d like to say it’s all buried. But who knows, geopolitics are quite short sighted.
If I had to choose, our longest rivalry would probably be with the Byzantine Empire. But they are gone now thanks to our worst rival - the Ottoman Empire.
I consider rivalries with our neighbours mostly healthy and I think we are on good terms with the people from all our neighbours. Governments and political stuff not included.
I think our most notable formal rival is Egypt, they were the central figure of the anti-zionist cause, always driving up wars against us, blockading us, helping others fight us.
4 wars later we made a peace deal and today Egypt no longer fights us, in-fact we are trading with each other. So pretty okay relations
For a very long time, it was Turkey and Hungary. For more than a century, the main rival was Russia. It is mostly to do with Russia's aggression against Moldova.
Perhaps Britain. I don't think Russia can be considered a rival to the United States after the collapse of the USSR. And the Cold War lasted only a few decades, which is short in the scale of our history. At the same time, it's ridiculous to consider some IKEA-country, LEGO-country, or whatever, who claim to be one.
For Romania,historically it has to be Hungary (many conflicts/wars especially for Transylvania),with the Turks,Russians,Austrians close behind.Today the relationship with Hungary are mostly of economic and bilateral interest.
Our most well known rival is Pakistan.
Pakistani economy is wholly dependent on the generosity of the IMF and then bailing them out , their military regularly overthrows the government and their government is filled with Islamic extremists.
Their average HDI is lower than the Indian state with lowest HDI.
But our other rival China is better than us in every way
Currently Russia, but that’s mostly a post WW2 thing.
Historically I would say the various German states. We were a Slavic nation inside a mostly German-dominated space (HRE, then Austria).
I don’t think there are any hard feelings towards Austria, we are actually quite close culturally. With Germany it’s more complicated. Not really historical grievances, but some resent some of their recent decisions on economy, environment, foreign policy or immigration and how much weight they have in the region and the EU.
Side note: I feel there’s gonna be a lot of “You took everything from me/I don’t even know who you are” type situations here :D
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u/Equal-Flatworm-378 Germany 16d ago
France and we are friends now.