#minktribe

“We judge someone by their character, not by their race.”

Why? you may ask since loyalty to ones friends is such a serious them in the manga. 

Well I have two issues: the lack of substantial relationship and the lack of consent.

The Mink tribe and Wano seem to be quite historically entangled, but it is unclear how much of an actual contact they had with each other. It feels like the Minks are fulfilling some sort of obligation to common history or like they have subordinate status to Wano rulers. They do not seem to be parties on par with one another. By this point it is really hard to say if Minks experienced actual relationship with Wano citizens at all, even long distance one. By comparison virtually every other party in this story were sacrificing themselves for people, they had actual established connection with. But of course meaningful relationship between Mink Tribe and Wano can be establish later, so it’s smaller of my concerns. 

But far bigger issue is the lack of consent of everyone involved. By this point in the story if anyone was deciding to sacrifice themselves they were a) personally involved in the situation, b) able to reason and make their own more or less informed decision. Those people were free to their decision, no matter if those were morally wrong or morally right decisions and no matter if the consequences were good or bad. By contrast it’s impossible for the whole country to make decision to risk life and well-being of everyone involved - it’s impossible to make decision to face total annihilation by the consent of everyone involved, because there are far more people involved than the ones that are able to consent, and since the issue at question involved secrecy, it is reasonable to assume that many people were not informed about everything. That means the decision have been made on the behalf of some people but it should not have been. 

Whitebeard Pirates and allies could follow their leader to their deaths, on the top of the decision to be pirates and face danger on regular basis, they were also given the choice to follow him or not, knowing fully were what they risked. They were also people with clearly established connection. Fishmen Island citizens could refuse to step on Queen’s Otohime portray - they respected her for what she did for the Island and all of them so many of them choose not too. Each of the Strawhats decide if they involve themselves with life threatening situation for the sake of their friends - they do not blindly follow Luffy, they just believe in the same things. 

But you can’t apply this frame of making individual and common decisions to the whole country. A country has also persons of interest who cannon make such decisions, but who are also involved and affected and who are not able to consent to such decisions, like the small children. To make the decision to face total or almost total annihilation on the behalf of a whole country is simply unfair.