You make it sound simple, and simple is certainly compelling. It is however just a theory, and as it happens it's the same theory (to the extent that logic and theories has anything to do with such) that has lead to 2 devastating world wars. It's time to reconsider, and try a different theory, before the 3rd one wreaks havoc on us all. I have great faith in the prospect of brilliant minds finding solutions in the face of adversities like this race towards mutual destruction.
Unfortunately, many if not all of our brilliant minds are either tied up in how to convince people to buy stuff, or how to enable first-strike capability (enabling 'winning' in your theory). It doesn't bode well.
Hey, you left out brilliant minds moving virtual representations of stocks and futures around to shave off fractions of a cent millions of times a day.
> as it happens it's the same theory (to the extent that logic and theories has anything to do with such) that has lead to 2 devastating world wars.
It appears that you are arguing that those starting the world wars did so because they were suicidal. On the contrary, it seems probable that they started those wars believing it was possible to win them.
No, you misunderstand in that case, sorry if I was unclear. I think people who "start" wars are an anomaly, the vast majority of wars are started as a consequence of a long chain of events, among which the notion of mutual deterrence and the accompanying need for an arms race is one of the most important. Outbreaks of world wars are the empirical proof of failures of that doctrine, and it has happened 2 times with devastating consequences.
Let's understand that mutual deterrence is not the way to prevent world wars already. Let's urgently try other options.
Quite the contrary. The road to the Second World War, at least in Europe, was paved with the good intentions of pacifism and appeasement, and the naïveté of assuming that someone like Hitler could be negotiated with. Britain and France could have chosen not to involve themselves in Hitler’s war (France even tried to make that choice once it started going poorly for them) but that would have done nothing to stop the war from happening. There was a fundamentally irreconcilable difference between Poland and Russia, who wanted to exist, and Germany, who wanted to forcibly depopulate Poland and western Russia and resettle that land with Germans.
You are correct, the interwar period is generally not considered an arms race, especially in the early period there were serious and to some extent successful attempts at arms reduction. But one is not correct to conflate pacifism with appeasement, the former a movement borne out of a sincere hope that the disaster that was WWI would never repeat itself, the latter a British policy that hoped to direct the German expansionism towards the USSR only ("no more territorial demands in Europe").
Among liberal democracies there was an anticipation that Germany would annihilate the USSR, and that Germany could be handled after that, a complete miscalculation. They could have thwarted the military buildup in Germany through other means than war, for example through boycotts like the US currently is so fond of. Or by granting the League of Nations better and sharper tools, but they chose not to. So there was an arms race, but it was mainly between Germany and the USSR, until the west realized that it was too late for Germany to be controlled.
As a side note, your theory that "Disarmament doesn’t prevent war. It only prevents winning." and “'Transparent and neutral international agencies' are a pipe dream." aligns well with fascist ideology. Not that you necessarily harbor such leanings. It just aligns, and is definitely very far removed from the ideas that underpin for example the United Nations, which could give you some pause.
> As a side note, your theory that "Disarmament doesn’t prevent war. It only prevents winning." and “'Transparent and neutral international agencies' are a pipe dream." aligns well with fascist ideology.
Not as much as your style of naive pacifism did, when theory was forced to turn into practice. Fascists are aggressors who will exploit any weakness to their advantage. They don't negotiate in good faith, they will cheat on any disarmament treaty they can, and international agencies are a joke to them. Understanding the world as it is rather than as we wish it might be means understanding that people like that exist.
Having extraordinarily powerful nuclear weapons as a deterrent is a primary reason most of Europe is enjoying the longest uninterrupted period of peace since maybe the Roman Empire. Failing that, "neutral international agencies" who actually had the power to keep the peace could only exist if those agencies, themselves, were an armed hegemon. People with guns always get their way against people without guns. And it just so happens that there is an armed hegemon that actually keeps troops deployed across most of Europe and has done so continuously throughout this long period of peace.
Yes, well. More fascistic talk, the Roman empire was a great inspiration to them too. Again, try and contrast these ideas with the principles on which the UN was founded.
You and your fellow arms race proponents will win, of course. Your prize will eventually be a smoking, poisoned world, billions of people dead or suffering irreparable damage, unspeakable pain (much like large swathes of the Vietnamese and survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have endured), to a large extent uninhabitable where maybe, just maybe some tribe in the deep south will survive to tell the tale of the human folly that ruined the world for millions of years to come, a proud and conceited civilization who thought they knew it all. Congrats.
> Again, try and contrast these ideas with the principles on which the UN was founded.
The UN wasn’t founded by a bunch of pacifists. The pacifists surrendered and collaborate with the fascists. That’s your side. The people who founded the UN killed fascists and tried to build a new world order on the promise, “never again”. A promise that has been broken time and time again.
We’re living in the longest period of peace since before the Middle Ages. I’m not admiring the Roman Empire by pointing that out, I’m admiring the world that exists today. A world in which no one in living memory has had to die to re-litigate territorial claims over Alsace-Lorraine or the succession to the Austrian crown. Not only do you have no explanation for how this world works, you would tear down the structures that keep it peaceful in the name of pacifism.
Yeah, well you could have asked politely what I actually mean before loading the big cannons against a straw-man of my opinions through the course of this thread. I don't feel particularly obliged to expound at this point, but rest assured I'm no pacifist, particularly not towards fascist empire builders. It's just that I have several other goals too - the survival of the earth, and our species, civilization and cooperation among peoples etc. It's probably too complicated for you. Have a nice day.
Unfortunately, many if not all of our brilliant minds are either tied up in how to convince people to buy stuff, or how to enable first-strike capability (enabling 'winning' in your theory). It doesn't bode well.