A thoughtful, if not particularly well articulated, question

Joel Achenbach asks how Europeans might approach settlement if it were 1492, the Americas hadn’t been “discovered,” but the Europeans had today’s sensibilities and ethical considerations.

Good discussion among the comments.

For NewMexiKen’s part, I think the question assumes that global-strategic ethics have improved over the past 500 years. That, I believe, is doubtful.