What if some of the locals want it taken away for protection, but the government wants it destroyed?
There’s no clear ‘owner’ in many cases. I think it places where it’s uncertain, then we should prioritize saving the artifacts over the ones that seek to destroy them.
Who do you recognize as the authority to make that decision though? If the locals are currently ruled by a terrorist group or Nazis or whatever, do they get to decide? What about the locals that disagree with the government currently in power?
And an answer of ‘if we just didn’t needlessly meddle’ might be the ideal, but it’s ignoring the realities that we have meddled and some countries are unlikely to stop doing so. We have to accept the world we have not the one we wished we had.
What’s the opinion on certain high risk countries where there’s a high likelihood of the artifacts simply being destroyed? If I remember correctly ISIS and other similar organizations have burned or bombed several historical sites before.
I mean it’s kind of classic issues with unions. It doesn’t work if only place is doing it, but the more that do, the less market they have access to. Europe is a pretty decent sized market, so it may still hurt. And if they do leave, well China certainly has a lot of their own homegrown solutions, so that’s not an entirely unreasonable option.