The scary thing for me about wars is that the soldiers aren't the ones making the decisions. Some group of people in comfortable offices look at a map, says "yeah, I think this option is more favourable to us than peace". Then a war happens. It is all about incentives and capabilities.
One of the lessons from being a Stallman watcher for many years - people are profoundly evidence based. If there hasn't been a war in 30 years, then they assume there will not be a war next year no matter how the background is changing.
The fading of WWII in the public memory could be argued as the biggest single risk that society faces. There are too many people who just won't understand how bad and how possible total war is. There is a huge background risk that the age of abundance ends and then things get dicey.
> The scary thing for me about wars is that the soldiers aren't the ones making the decisions.
Letting Soldiers & Generals control the military is the exact mistake which lead to Japan's military aggression. Keeping the head of the military a civilian/politician is perhaps one of the few ideas everyone should be able to agree is smart.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is another example where if things had been left purely to the militaries of both sides things would probably have escalated very badly.
One thing that I cannot find a second citation for but really intrigued me is that there is apparently some kind of parallel-narrative around the double agent Oleg Penkovsky - at first glance he gave information to the west about the situation in Cuba, but on closer inspection some of his antics may be too good to be true (he apparently made it in and out of the Soviet Union alive despite being rumbled). Peter Wright in Spycatcher says that Penkovsky's assessments data of Soviet ICBM accuracy often didn't line up with satellite imagery of their missile testing ranges.
Ultimately we'll never know but its fascinating just how much we don't know about the cold war.
"I wouldn't want to be quoted on this.... We've spent $35 or $40 billion on the space program. And if nothing else had come out of it except the knowledge that we gained from space photography, it would be worth ten times what the whole program has cost. Because tonight we know how many missiles the enemy has and, it turned out, our guesses were way off. We were doing things we didn't need to do. We were building things we didn't need to build. We were harboring fears we didn't need to harbor."
Thanks for that name. I went down a rabbit hole, and found out that the double agent who blew his handler's cover - George Blake died less than a month back!
The story of the CMC is absolutely bonkers. There were so many close calls and possible disasters that I am surprised we even ended up in this non-nuked timeline, even with the anthropic principle!
I don't think that's true, but I'll also admit that the history of the cold war is very muddled and I am no historian.
The US's version was written by the white house's journalist. It is not objective and lots has been refuted from calls leaked by the soviets after the fact, and a few of the advisors too.
TruTV/Adam Ruins Everything has a take on it [0] (not saying that's the objective history but they raise some eyebrows).
Some facts we do know though:
1. JFK rode on an anti-communist wave to beat his opponent into office
Additional recommendation: The Fog of War, the McNamara interview documentary. Absolutely fascinating look into the mind of the secretary of defense at the time.
I need to watch that again - saw it years ago when it first came out. I'm currently reading Ellsberg's Secrets
A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers - which is pretty shocking - they knew all along they could never win in Vietnam but continued for "reasons".
"The total death toll as calculated by the Joint Chiefs, from a U.S. first strike aimed primarily at the Soviet Union and China, would be roughly 600 million dead. A hundred Holocausts.
I remember what I thought when I held the single sheet with the graph on it. I thought, this piece of paper should not exist. It should never have existed. Not in America. Not anywhere, ever. It depicted evil beyond any human project that had ever existed. There should be nothing on Earth, nothing real, that it referred to."
Any similar books that are not written by either born US persons or people heavily influenced by US either via politics or education? Not saying the information in the books are not true, but would love an opinion and summation on the matter from someone not so deep into US politics.
note that it's not that they're in the military, it's that they're too close and invested. distance fosters dispassion, so the leader not being part of the military specifically, rather than simply being a civilian, is what makes decisions more rational (also, as others have noted, that dispassion can also foster war because the civilian leader has no real skin in the game).
> note that it's not that they're in the military, it's that they're too close and invested
My strong impression has been that the Japanese military in the 1930s was a catastrophically-extreme illustration of Dunning-Kruger syndrome when it came to understanding international affairs and in particular understanding the psychology and industrial capacity of the United States.
(Admiral Yamamoto was a noteworthy exception: Having spent considerable time in the U.S, he strongly favored friendly relations with the U.S. and opposed going to war. When he was overruled by the militarists in the Army, he planned Pearl Harbor and Midway as a roll of the dice for what he judged to be Japan's only hope of success, namely by striking hard blows and trying for a quick negotiated peace. It didn't work out that way.)
That is straight up at odds with American (or Canadian, or for the most part, UK) history. In the United States Trump is the first "war-time" president to blow re-election during an active war, and his term was punctuated by attempts at troop draw down, coupled with inflammatory rhetoric towards Iran when he was low in polls.
Engaging in something that can be spun as a just war is a viable re-election tactic.
Yeah, it's sketchy, which is why I put it in quotes. The reason he is not really a war-time president is the only war he is even close to actually starting is a civil war :P
Wars are scary regardless of who makes the decisions, but I think that the situation where the army obeys civilians is, in general, much better than the one where the military decides whether it wants to go to (or continue) a war or not.
For example, it seems that the civilian elite of Germany and Austria-Hungary was ambivalent about war in early 1918, especially in A-H, and willing to entertain possible ceasefire with subsequent negotiations; but serious peace negotiations were not possible anymore, because the de facto power shifted to general Ludendorff and other high officers, who were determined to go on.
I don’t think what the GP found disturbing was civilian control of the military, but the distance between the decisionmakers choosing to go to war and the people bearing the cost, which is not significantly different in systems which lack civilian control of the military than those that have it.
This is perhaps an argument to have more veterans in politics.
Former Czechoslovak president Ludvík Svoboda, a general who fought in the WWII and went through some of the bloodiest battles involving Czechoslovak forces [0], was known to be very wary of militaristic ideas later.
This probably is an appropriate time to Godwin the discussion and point out a certain Austrian/German leader's very different ideas were also shaped by his negative experiences of a world war. Veterans react differently even to similar experiences and cover the full range of positions on war from gung ho militarism to unapologetic pacifism. Perhaps military experience lends them a more informed perspective on what the realistic outcomes of a war might look like, but it's no inoculation against militarism.
In the United States, we specifically block appointment of officials to civilian office that have recently left military service with the National Security Act of 1947 [0]. A waiver from Congress is required to grant exception to this rule, and the first time that waiver was ever sought and granted was just a few years ago in 2017 for General James Mattis to serve as Secretary of Defense only a few years after retirement from the Marines.
It is probably an argument for having diverse views in politics in general, and beyond quick reactions, limiting the power to declare war, or engage in aggression more broadly, to more control by deliberative bodies
Well it was said that Prussia was an Army with a nation vs. everywhere else. (nation with an Army) This militaristic attitude most likely fed the mindset of crushing of the Revolts of 1848 in Germany, and probably had a big influence on starting WW1. A large group of Germans who became disillusioned with the path that Germany was headed down migrated to the US after that. This probably furthered Prussia/Germany down the more aggressive militaristic path.
> people are profoundly evidence based. If there hasn't been a war in 30 years, then they assume there will not be a war next year no matter how the background is changing.
I model this differently - people are very conservative about narrative change. I feel it works more generally.
Examples:
If we've had peace for 30 years, then war seems impossible.
If we've had government fiat currency for a centuries or more, then of course cryptocurrencies are a joke.
If we've been on the gold standard for long enough, then of course that's how money should work.
Yeah, “first principles” is such a SV cliche, but it’s very powerful for getting around this.
I think the pendulum can swing too far the other way, though. People imagine a blank slate, but we don’t live in a blank slate, so you’re essentially imagining a fantasy world. Or, you just end up recreating the old world in the new one but worse.
In particular, he argues that the way you avoid things like World War II is in part precisely by making sure the military does not make decisions of war and peace.
The link is actually referencing Germany in WWI, not WWII.
For context on that, Bismarck's abdication in 1890 left a leadership vacuum that was was gradually filled-in by military elites, who were more interested in the mechanics of warfare than the nuance of politics. Where Bismarck used military force as political tool, in his absence every problem began to look like something that only the military could solve.
Although, it's worth taking this opportunity to repeat: the same military elites responsible for the tragedy of WWI and the Dolchstoss myth were responsible for appointing Hitler into power and legitimizing his militant tactics. Hindenburg and Ludendorff created Hitler, from inside and outside the establishment, respectively.
> For context on that, Bismarck’s abdication in 1890 left a leadership vacuum that was was gradually filled-in by military elites, who were more interested in the mechanics of warfare than the nuance of politics.
The significance of that, while it shouldn’t be dismissed either, often exaggerated; while, yes, that absolutely did happen, you see in the entirety of Europe, no matter the role of military vs. civilian authority, the myth of offense dominance, aggressive mobilization plans and hair-trigger activation, etc.
Basically everyone, civilian and military, had drawn the wrong conclusions about the direction of the evolution of warfare, and it affected every major powers diplomatic strategy, military posture, etc., because everyone saw the other side getting ahead of them as an existential threat.
Think of a corporations that make all decisions at top level vs corporations that at the top level mostly worry about creating correct environment for the individual contributors and low level managers to be able to make right decisions, individually.
US military won the IIWW war because it created that right environment.
Mobilizing people (people who are not interested in achieving goal are almost useless), keeping spirit (for example US military will always do what's necessary to save individual solders vs Japanese that treated soldiers mostly as expendable), ensuring that people are promoted on merit and not birth, ensuring people are trained and are given right tools.
All those things are so that soldiers can make the right decisions, on the spot.
It is naive to think that a general can say whatever he wants and make it happen. It will only happen if all those people want to make it happen and are prepared to make it happen.
The US military did not win the war, at least in Europe. They pottered around in Africa, Italy, and Belgium while the Soviet army won the war. Ten of the ten biggest battles were on the eastern front, while a tiny fraction of axis assets held off the West for years. Western bombing (despite huge losses) had negligible effect on German industrial production, which increased right up to 1945. (US industrial imports to Russia through Iran were important, though.)
The US did win the Pacific war, despite that its torpedoes were wholly almost wholly non-functional until 1944. It won at monstrous cost in wasted Marine Corps lives, apparently because blockade work was not dramatic for home audiences.
The Soviet Union could not have won without US support of arms and materiel. It might have been able to survive in some form by completely abandoning everything east of the Urals. US industrial production was crucial to Soviet survival, not a nice to have. Costly business, dividing up Eastern Europe in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Russia stopped the Germans by building more than 34000 tanks and sacrificing millions of lives. The US only really entered the war after 4 years of sitting on the side lines. Yes US support of materials to Europe was important but don’t overplay it’s significance. Also, remember that Europe paid for the US materials in gold. The US was basically acting as an arms dealer, with the 2nd world war being a huge business opportunity for US manufacturing, and the direct reason for the US moving ahead of Europe.
But it had beaten back most if the invasion before US materiel showed up in substantial quantity, and its industrial output (also) grew dramatically throughout the war.
Whether it could have secured enough food to sustain that output, without US SPAM, is unclear; the Soviets openly acknowledged the importance of the SPAM. The hundreds of thousands of trucks, millions of tires, millions of tons of steel, and corresponding amount of refined petrolem the US delivered probably mattered too, when it finally got there. Soviet pilots liked the P-39s, sort of proto-A10s.
The Soviet materiel placement in 1941, immediately before Germany invaded, was consistent with immediate plans to invade Germany.
Yeah I had never been talk that in school. Recently kasporov pointed it out in a pod cast I was listening too. It's so obvious but I'd never thought of it that way because of the narrative that we are taught.
Here in Poland this is very well known fact and nobody is going to forget this, for a very long time.
Soviets attacked Poland on September 17th, 1939 in accordance with plans they made with Nazis before the war. They made plans which part of Poland belonged to Soviets and which to Nazis and then were all too happy to occupy until Nazis turned on them.
Hey, wars are messy business. Usually if there is so much disparity in power that the outcome is known beforehand it does not come to war.
US had declared Axis powers to be the enemy and then the enemy was defeated. Nobody questions that US was key to winning WWII. It seems impossible that soviets would hold if Nazi Germany was able to send all their resources to eastern front. Even with the help on the western front, soviets held JUST BARELY. And at key moment US troops landed in Italy forcing Hitler to divert his forces that were necessary to win battle of Kursk.
I don't see how you can question that US won the war, it is a fact documented by representatives of states involved in the war signing their capitulation to US.
What we are after is who, if anybody, was responsible for a clear majority of the total effective engagement of Axis forces.
On that question, it is dead clear that the Soviets were, and by a huge margin.
Did US and British troops contribute? Yes. Did P-51s and P-38s help clear the skies of effective German air power? Sure. Would the outcome have been notably different without them? Probably not.
The biggest single setback for Germany, driving deep into original German territory, happened while the US and Britain were pinned down in Belgium and Southern France by a tiny fraction of German assets. Without, the war might have gone on for up to another year, and the Soviets would have ended up owning all of Europe and, probably, Africa. We must be satisfied that that did not happen.
The US did almost nothing for 4 years, except selling materials to Europe in return for gold. It only joined the war after Europeans had already killed more than 23 million Germans, and destroyed most of its military. Claiming that the US won the war is BS. The US was part of a large group of countries that won the war, all contributing to defeat the Nazis.
Four years? Counting how? War in Europe began in September 1939. So the US didn't do anything until September 1943? Bull. (I mean, I guess they didn't land in Europe until Italy, which was 1943. But even though it wasn't in Europe, they were still fighting Germany in Africa in 1942.)
> It only joined the war after Europeans had already killed more than 23 million Germans, and destroyed most of its military.
German military casualties were only 5.3 million by the high estimate. Total German casualties were only 7.4 million by the high estimate - for the whole war. So... I don't know where you get your ideas, but they are objectively very wrong.
So you agree that it took 4 years before the US entered the war in Europe. And yes I am probably wrong about the 23 million. It doesn’t change my conclusion though: the US spent 4 years on the side line selling weapons to Europe, and only joined the war after most of the German war machine was defeated.
If you consider the entire North Africa campaign to be "the sidelines" I suppose. I completely disagree with your conclusions, though, because I completely disagree that North Africa was "the sidelines", even with respect to Europe. What were they doing in North Africa? Killing Germans. Was that "selling weapons to Europe", or was it more than that? I claim that it was much more.
The entire North Africa campaign certainly was the sidelines, by any measure. It involved a tiny fraction of German forces. Every day spent in Africa was a day not spent advancing on the German heartland.
That said, the US was far from ready to advance on the German heartland until after the time they were pottering about in Africa. It was a way to look busy.
Entering the war while Germany and Russia were on the same side would have been fatal, and might even have prevented or delayed their fission.
Staying out long after the split, while Germany and Russia gored one another, was clearly the wiser course. Entering before the Soviets could subdue Germany and overrun western Europe was necessary. But any claim that the US had any sort of primary role in defeating Germany remains nonsense.
if it was the soldiers making the decisions, it'd still be a group of people in comfortable offices looking at a map, they'd just be wearing uniforms while doing so. And I think (going back to Clausewitz), that military goals should be subordinated to the political goals of why there is a military action in the first place. And if it's the military that decides the political goals, they're in power and it's a junta.
Any modern military defers field-level decision making to soldiers in the field. It’s become an absolute necessity as the post WW2 diplomatic regime put in requirements for individual soldiers to refuse illegal orders and making them personally liable for war crimes.
Individual soldiers don’t plan wars, obviously they don’t have a high enough level view to do that adequately. So much of war planning is logistics and not tactics or strategy. The idea is to get the troops there, make sure they have enough weapons and ammo, give them their objectives, then let field commanders do their jobs.
thats a great simplification for the nature of war. there is an entire school of thought among western nations that agrees that war is politics. Political influence in geopolitical situation is often enabled via primary instruments of Diplomacy, Information, Military, and Economic actions from a nation state or independent actors. each instrument retains different costs for their desired effects, and the very real cost of global nuclear annihilation is one of the defining characteristics of the cold war.
soldiers devotion to duty is ingrained in their head from day zero because they MUST be better than their enemies to win the fight, and the people in comfy chairs MUST devote themselves to the study and strategy of war, not tactics, to enable proper deployment of said soldiers. The danger is when innovation on the battlefield outpaces innovation in strategy, and leads to situations like the American Civil War and World War 1...real life meatgrinder horror.
>>people are profoundly evidence based. If there hasn't been a war in 30 years, then they assume there will not be a war next year no matter how the background is changing.
Not just that. Neighbor dies of COVID, people are careful for a few days. Then they forget what the virus can do
This is why the ideal scenario is the whole military is voluntary, meaning you're forced to make sure everyone is educated and trained well enough to understand the consequences of different scenarios, enough that people will volunteer when the time comes. Well, at least historically that's how it would work - now it's technology that's used without human life at stake, to those who send, and hopefully modern warfare will use AI and weapons that are designed for no collateral damage; destroy infrastructure and military tools, so if well targeted then soldiers et al will learn to simply avoid this infrastructure and tools and they will live.
> The fading of WWII in the public memory could be argued as the biggest single risk that society faces. There are too many people who just won't understand how bad and how possible total war is. There is a huge background risk that the age of abundance ends and then things get dicey.
Perhaps this is really what peace means. It is the security of being able to live and plan a life or a business without ever once worrying about "but what happens if there is a war?". The collective impact of that on psychological security and the free movement of goods, people, ideas across the world is huge.
On average, military tends to be more pro-war then civilians. Partly it is self-selection, partly it is values taught in training (values taught because they make you more effective soldier).
> The fading of WWII in the public memory could be argued as the biggest single risk that society faces. There are too many people who just won't understand how bad and how possible total war is.
People who started WWII were WWI veterans - that is who Nazi leadership were. Starting from Hitler, through Goebbels, down the rank. Not being veteran was seen as weakness. For that matter, Stalin was veteran too.
> On average, military tends to be more pro-war then civilians.
A lot of veterans would disagree about your "on average" thought. Sure, there are belligerent vets out there, but most have a better idea about the not-so-good stuff that happens in a war.
People in 'comfortable offices' are right now deciding who gets vaccines, and who will not until later.
People are dying in the US due to lack of access to healthcare due to other people making decisions in 'comfortable offices'.
We entrust those in positions of power with such legitimate authority.
And finally: "I think this option is more favourable to us than peace" - is an inappropriate analogy because it's generally never the case. If the US were to have entered WW1 and 2 earlier, a lot of lives would have been saved. While those were easier decisions in hindsight, they're all nuanced, for example, the US+Coalition decision to liberate Kuwait after Saddam's incursion.
Oh boy. In my country, memories of war (World War II in particular), tragedies, sacrifices, "heroes" etc. are continually fueled by the ruling party. They built hundreds of new monuments in the past 10 years, gave thousands of streets names related to their selection of war and post-war heroes, etc.
Let me tell you, this is the main way to drive nationalistic divide, because the other half of the people in the country recognize for what it is -- evil manipulation of people's emotions for political gain (through conflict, much like Trump was doing in US).
You can remember sacrifices as horrors to not be repeated. Or you can remember sacrifices as aspirating thing, the one that motivates you to pick up the gun to go sacrifice yourself, so that you proves your manhood.
Is there any evidence whatsoever to this claim?
France, UK, US, Canada all have huge chronic trade deficits.
Weimar Republic's economic problems were mostly related to hyperinflation caused by their unsustainable debt, not sure how you're factoring trade deficits into that.
I agree nationalism is just an excuse like any other, but it's a remarkably good one: it's a cancerous mind virus that makes solving problems impossible, everyone is too busy calling everyone else unpatriotic or something.
Not only could Germany not get any credit because of the Dawes plan, but the Great Depression caused Germany's creditors to start calling all existing loans.
It caused central banking failures all throughout Central Europe. Germany's banking system collapsed in the early 30s. In the wake of the Depression, European nations had very protectionist trade policies. With weakened international trade as a result of such policies, countries like Germany that did not have global empires had to resort to military force to acquire raw materials.
WWII was inevitable and that summary of the Weimar Republic's problems is overly-simplistic to the point of being misleading.
It's not enough just to look at trade imbalance from the lens of balance sheets. It's about what resources markets are (un)able to provide. You can look at the Opium wars similarly, which we think based on the name are about Opium but really were largely about the Silver trade from West to East and China's refusal to circulate that Silver back into the market.
Defecits are fine as long as everyone thinks they have reasonably fair access to the same resources. Notice the soft trade war that started mostly as a result of global manufacturing shifting to China and China's theft of IP...
Nationalistic drive is a great way to convert "that politician took away 2% of power from this politician" into "that nation offended our nation!!!1one1!" without any new facts happening. It's especially important within a democracy, because war would need huge popular support - and that support needs to be manufactured by media by pushing any emotional buttons available.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in American, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Historically that is false. The common farmer might want to come back to the land - but his younger brother needs to leave the farm because it can't support him! Thus those younger brothers have nothing to gain by coming back to the farm. Their gains can only be found in being really great at something the city needs (cities are less than 5% of the population because farms don't have enough surplus to support more than that, so this is worse than farming), or winning a war and making a farm on the enemies land. If the war is fought to a stalemate, but only one of the two brothers returns back to the farm that is okay too.
The sexist language is historically correct. Sorry ladies, history wasn't kind to you in general.
For a war to be supported by people (soldiers, and in democracies, civilians as well), they need to view the other side as the Other side. The Enemy. The Others.
Nationalism is about building a strong us/them split, about having people internalize clear categories of Our Nation and The Others. This directly facilitates war.
I made a mistake. I was responding to the first commenter's words "The fading of WWII in the public memory could be argued as the biggest single risk that society faces". And in my view, the continued attempts at making people remember the war are a very bad,destructive thing, because they are used to political ends. Will remember next time to quote :)
There are notes in Sapiens proposing that war (the violent kind) is no longer useful / does not produce outcomes because the global economy has shifted from one of physical resources to knowledge based. That it no longer makes sense to fight over things that aren't worth as much these days, like land, oil or gold, when you can just trade. Most of money comes from peace time commerce.
Peacetime commerce requires free waterways. Everyone can "just trade" because the U.S. Navy has guaranteed free navigation of the seas since Bretton Woods[1]. When America withdraws from its security obligations, others will fill the vacuum, with all the uncertainty that implies.
A national leader who fears being cut off from essential resources will very logically view war as an option.
To be fair, the US doesn't exactly keep out uncertainty or anything like that. US military policy is subject to the whims of the current management - and no one can really expect the US to keep any sort of agreements at this point. Not only that, but enforcement seems to be more aimed at trying to show strength (ships in china seas) or sanctions, and less on making sure folks can trade or have safety.
I'd argue that the real reason for being able to "just trade" is simply that most countries aren't interested in warring and impeding this: The agreement works out for many. The organizations set up at Bretton Woods would be in place even if the US fails completely.
Sure it does. Every dictator knows that if he builds up a little navy to extract advantage over his neighbors by claiming sea lanes, there's a good chance he'll get smacked down by the world's largest navy. Navies are expensive to build, and this threat keeps most (exception: China) from even trying. That creates certainty for shippers, their customers, their insurance companies, and the economies in which they operate.
no one can really expect the US to keep any sort of agreements
To the extent you're correct, national leaders will feel the need to build up their own navies. If the US isn't going to protect their sea lanes, they will be forced to take on that responsibility themselves.
most countries aren't interested in warring
Most. What about the others? All it takes is one bully in your neighborhood to cause serious problems. Will the enlightened nations of the world come to your rescue? Maybe. Maybe not. It may cost you.
The organizations set up at Bretton Woods would be in place even if the US fails completely.
Bretton Woods is an agreement, and an agreement is only as good as its enforcement. Free global trade can only happen as long as someone enforces it, by keeping those sea lanes open. When the US withdraws, how long before a country decides it can exploit that insecurity to its advantage?
I do not share your optimism.
If the US cedes the sea, every other oceangoing nation will be forced to build up its navy to preserve its trade security. More armed ships at sea under more flags will lead to more flashpoints, more clashes, and more opportunities for small conflicts to spin out of control.
Withdrawing from the sea may turn out to be the smart move for the US, but I believe it will portend bad things for the rest of the world.
The sea has never belonged to anyone but this statement implies that the US has ownership rights with regards to ocean usage that they now let others use at their whim.
The only word I can use to describe that is hubris
The fact that the sea does not belog to anyone is exactly why the US guarantees free navigation. If someone tries to seize your property in a nation's territory, you can go to that nation's government for restitution. They'll police their territory and prevent would-be thieves or other bad actors. At the very least, you can bring a suit against the bad actor and the government will force them to comply with the court's decision.
However on the open sea, there is no such authority. What's to stop someone from sailing up and seizing your crew and cargo? You don't know the nationality of these pirates, and even if you did you have no way of forcing their government to do anything about it. Indeed they may be working for that government. You could try to defend yourself, but then the pirates will just better arm themselves and the odds of violence escalating dramatically increases.
Someone needs to prevent piracy and unlawful seizure for international shipping to be possible at its current scale. Having a single power guarantee free navigation allows ships to cross the world while avoiding complicated jurisdiction divides (if one nation won't give you permission to sail through its waters, you can go around) and eliminates jurisdictional overlap (Country A says Country B's ship is committing piracy and vice versa) which could lead to conflict. It's also just more efficient as the vast majority of nations don't need to duplicate the infrastructure to maintain a navy that can protect assets on the other side of the world - which also means countries don't need to enter arms races to protect themselves from their neighbors' defensive fleets "just in case" they aren't really that defensive.
Yes. Yes. This sounds like a regurgitation of an American view of international trade law and treaties therein. International waters should be policed by international organisations or do you find a flaw in that logic? Not the UN, not NATO, an international body independent of any single state.
> Having a single power guarantee free navigation allows ships to cross the world while avoiding complicated jurisdiction divides
So the rest of us are to assume the US taxpayer and their government are acting in good faith? nothing in return for having all those ships and men out there for months at a time? Whats the cost to the US for protecting assets from Guinea-Bissau?
> Someone needs to prevent piracy and unlawful seizure for international shipping to be possible at its current scale
I don't think you get the gist of my argument. To put it simply, to whom does the US account in their capacity as police of international waters?
Who said the US must be that 'someone'? Even the UN - if we won't kid ourselves is a US institution - might have been acceptable. A single power's whims are to be trusted for what reason? How do we know they wont collaborate with Pirates and other bad actors? Who will bring them to book or answer questions?
I do find a flaw in that logic. International waters are not and should not be under anyone's authority. The system the US implements, like the one which proceeded it, is a fundamentally decentralized system. The US guarantees free navigation, but there's nothing stopping any other nation from doing so as well. China could, Russia could, Guinea-Bissau could. Indeed, the US is not the only nation engaged in anti-piracy operations. You don't need the US to act in good faith, the system is stable in that every country doing what is in their own best interest is also in everyone else's best interest. Really, every nation should independently guarantee free navigation, but luckily that is unnecessary.
In practice the US has such an immense navy that while it guarantees free navigation there is no real need for other nations to, and if it were to oppose free navigation there is no navy that could stop it, so at the moment the US de facto decides if free navigation is guaranteed, but there is nothing de jure entrenching the US in that position - should it ever derelict its duties or otherwise grow weak there is nothing stopping another nation, or group of nations, from taking up the mantle.
On the other hand if an international body were to be set up to do the job, then we become totally reliant on its efficacy. It's impossible to have a truly independent organization - the people who compose it, as well as the people who provide material resources to it, are not independent and unbiased - and unlike a nation which benefits from the trade it protects, this organization's only incentive would be to appease its backers. Even if it avoided malicious corruption, it would fundamentally entrench the geopolitical status quo, and getting everyone to agree to remove it may be impossible even if it strays woefully far from its mission.
The US's position may rub a lot of people the wrong way, they see the US as being some sort of self-appointed overlord and fear if it has nefarious intent. They fail to realize the level of gross indifference that the US has towards the larger world. We just want to be able to import cheap crap, any benefit to other nations is purely ancillary, and we will continue on our course for precisely as long as it is the easiest way of maintaining our steady supply of cheap crap.
I don’t have a citation in front of me at four in the morning, but I distinctly recall this exact argument being made prior to the First World War - that the increasing trade between the major powers precluded war because the financial interests were too powerful.
Interesting. I recall the idea that wars come when the money spent on the military exceeds the money made in trade. I don't recall how much evidence there is behind the idea, but I think it's an interesting POV...
The elephant in the room is nuclear weapons. Take a hard look when the history actually changed.
As long as politicians didn't fear for their own precious lives, they didn't mind throwing heaps of others' lives to shift the balance of power by 1%. They weren't starting these wars for merely economical value of land or money - it was always about (non-economical) value of power. Since 1945-1949, the stakes are suddenly too high and that's why don't have major wars anymore.
Nuclear weapons is significant, but recently I've been considering how much information also plays a part.
Information about other powers is much more accessible now and spying is easier given the internet. If they weaker power knew beforehand that they were in fact weaker, it makes no sense to challenge.
> [...] because the global economy has shifted from one of physical resources to knowledge based
...except for that tiny detail where we're still critically dependent on raw materials that can only be economically extracted in certain parts of the world.
Maybe mathematicians only need a blackboard and some chalk to do their work, but the remaining "knowledge based" economy needs computers, of which many parts are produced in a country [1] which is claimed by another country [2] that's been growing increasingly aggressive in recent years.
You can't plausibly wage a destructive war to seize industrial facilities likely to be disrupted or destroyed in said war. Factories and their workers are intellectual resources.
Whereas with raw materials, like rare earths: China has a lock on rare earth's because they're willing to completely destroy their own land's to get them, not because they're actually "rare".
We are arguably in a local minima with regards to rare earth extraction because nothing has pushed us to automate the human element out of it and they're not needed in sufficient quantity yet.
except for that tiny detail where we're still critically dependent on raw materials that can only be economically extracted in certain parts of the world.
That’s a contingent, not a necessary fact. The Haber-Bosch process was invented to provide nitrogen for German armaments faced with the same kinds of difficulties. If you really need something the fact that it just got ten times more expensive matters very little.
Maybe for now, but there's no way that is going to be true in 10-20 years. Resources are going to get more and more important as high grade ore deposits (needed for the nickel, copper, etc. that go into renewable energy tech) are concentrated in politically unstable regions (Congo, Central Asia, Russia). Couple that with even moderate economic growth in the developing world and you are going to see EU/USA, China, Russia, etc. all trying to secure access to these important resources.
Exactly so. It requires just one suitable black swan event to destabilize an entire continent.
Extreme events are really badly understood by many popular writers as demonstrated by Harari's 2016 book "Homo Deus" which stated pandemics are a thing of the past.
It is accurate for dealings between liberal democracies, but I don't think you can take this approach to states who operate according to a different paradigm. Otherwise you will just be helpless when authoritarian regimes become aggressive.
Seems accurate, at least until increasingly extractive trading (which externalizes almost all costs), leads to the collapse of the ecological systems underneath it. Then we're back to good old fashioned war-war :/
Without condoning it, that wasn't an all out war. It's a really complicated situation and seems more like a political action. Less people were killed than in the Capitol breach, don't think anyone is referring to that as the second civil war.
While I agree with you that it's purely political, it's a war nonetheless. The Capitol breach resulted in 5 deaths, while it took more than 13000 lives in Ukraine.
If it's not a war, then we can safely assume that even a villager in Ukraine has accessed to military grade equipment that even some countries can't get access to.
It would be not bloodless if Ukrainian soldiers would not try by all possible means to avoid the shooting, trying to treat russians as former brothers and stop russia’s hostile actions by negiotiations.
From the classic Latin “Si vis pacem para bellum” [0]
I’d always interpreted this to imply that deterrence was good - appear strong to prevent others picking a fight with you, rather than studying.
I always wondered if the 9mm Parabellum cartridge was named after the saying too, but no such enlightenment is available on the Wikipedia page at least [1]
While it's true even today,I think at the time it was heavily related to the fact that most countries usually had to raise money and hire majority of soldiers when facing/declaring war rather then keeping them on payroll permanently. So if an enemy is banging at the gate, it's a bit too late to start sending message around 'we are hiring'.
Also interesting how that's the approach of Krav Maga as martial art. The 1st rule is, run if you can. The 2nd rule is, finish the fight ASAP and run. The rest derives from those two rules.
Well, you can see the first rule as "try not to use what you learn".
Can't speak for all instructors, but mine went directly to technique for those who ran/cycled to the gym and stretched before the class, letting the rest warm up in the meantime... running.
Also most demonstrations you can see on the Internet always end with running and most comments make fun of that, so it's certainly included in the practice.
I was taught the same through Shotokan Karate. The credo spoken at every training (called "Dojo Kun") starts with "Seek perfection of character" and ends with "Refrain from violent behavior."
"Causes of Civil War are also, that the Wealth of the Nation is in too few mens hands, and that no certain means are provided to keep all men from a necessity either to beg, or steal, or be Souldiers." - William Petty
While this is a quote about civil war, it points out a key fact. A country with a strong middle class is much less likely to send its children to war over stupid things. Even the USA barely sent 177,000 troops to Iraq and, despite a jingoistic upswell from 9/11, it was still terribly unpopular.
Richer folks also tent to study more and have say more options to expand their mind to various views, cultures and places. Far harder to manipulate/outright brainwash those into some patriotic bullshit about defending your home from those evil bad guys.
Unless you force drafts with hard punishments for those avoiding of course, but such an army would have very low morale not only these days.
There's a reason why the draft let people pay someone else to take their place - if the wealthy thought they would find themselves in the trenches too then we would never send forces overseas.
It's an inversion of history, in some ways, as typically the elite were responsible for much of the fighting and defense of the land (e.g. Medieval England).
Enabled, I would say at a more fundamental level, by an erosion of the middle class.
Note the election rhetoric for several iterations now has focused on promising improvements in prosperity for the common man.
Nothing new of course, but the subsequent inaction and worsening of the situation by the time the next election cycle rolls around just leads to the rhetoric intensifying and a populace increasingly willing to elect whomever makes the most outlandish promises.
A conflict large enough to be classified as a civil war would require a great deal more organization than has occurred so far. At best it was a halfhearted coup attempt by a small group of nothing to lose hysterics under cover of a protest. Not much of a plan other than to cause trouble and maybe kill a target of opportunity.
Now if, for instance, a group of state legislatures and governors decided to meet and elect Trump as president of their own collective splinter nation I would say we'll have ourselves a "Civil War." Though how long it would last is hard to say.
I would nudge your course slightly. Instead of simply poverty, economic opportunity. In poverty, with no economic opportunity, war is your only opportunity.
A lot of the great wars of history have been instigated by rich countries - modern USA, Nazi Germany / Imperial Japan, Spanish Empire, British Empire, Napoleonic France, Roman Empire.
I can't speak for the other nations, but Nazi Germany was a very poor country. The standard of living in Germany was relatively bad, in no small part because of the post-war economic turmoil.
I submit the first few chapters of Wages of Destruction as my source. I am totally unqualified to summarize it, but it's shock full of data that support this thesis. It's a really good book.
Totally buying that book now. One of my most memorable classes back in college was Economics of War. While I'm sure Economics isn't the only reason for wars, it seems to be one of the big ones.
I'd be curious to know more, I'll try to take a look at that book when I get a chance. Are you saying, though, that Nazi Germany was very poor relative to its neighbors (e.g. France, Poland, Italy) or relative to the world at the time (e.g. Mexico) or in an absolute sense (widespread extreme poverty, lack of basic necessities of life)?
Wealthy nations are definitely more likely to engage in war. Especially if there is something to be gained from it.
However, I'm not referring to the wealth of the countries themselves, but the concentration of wealth within them. Both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were desperately poor with a starving citizenry. Germany from paying reparations completely devaluing their currency and Japan from a lack of natural resources. The empires of the 18th and 19th century would be third world states by our standards. Life was cheap and people dying en masse wasn't a big deal.
Modern USA hardly even engages in full scale warfare since Vietnam. Now we have a few limited engagements against small countries without any real backers. Even then the tiny US losses from those wars has killed our taste for them. Even Donald Trump is disengaging from them.
It's hard to send a bunch of people to die when they are the ones holding the wealth of your nation. It's much easier to send the poor huddled masses if they exist.
Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were major industrial centers with large cities, educated populations, newspapers, trains, etc. They were vastly richer than peasant societies like China or Mexico.
Modern USA hardly even engages in full scale warfare since starting one of the deadliest wars of the late 20th century, except for the time we started the deadliest war of the 21st century?
Your reasoning strikes me as kind of post-hoc, but maybe I'm mistaken .. could you say more precisely what you think causes countries to go to war, in a way that I could take a random country and see if it fits the criteria?
To say what I think causes a country to go to war would take a book, and NOT a short one. Causing a war seems depressingly easy. In fact the relative peace we have been living in the past half century is exceedingly unusual.
In this instance, I'm talking about preventing war. A major factor is ensuring that those most responsible for paying for the war in taxes and blood (Lower and middle classes) have the wealth and the power to say no. (Convincing them that NO is the right answer is another thing!)
The wealth of the countries themselves is not necessarily the wealth of the people who live within them. Take a look at the so called "Banana republics."
I don't know exactly what you disagree with in my reasoning or what exactly is ad-hoc but I always love to talk about it.
Now, to address a few of the facts above:
Japan and Germany were both desperately poor following World War I. It was only after significant military expansion that they reached the prosperity you mention above. Japan gained most of their wealth through their expansion during the Showa era and consecutive wars.
Nazi Germany started from the poverty of 1933 with the suspension of civil liberties after the burning of the Reichstag. Their economic success was mostly spurred by efforts to gear up their military. By that point it was too late for any middle class to object and they hardly had the power to avoid being sent to concentration camps.
China makes us all look like pikers when it comes to war. Mao Zedong and the Chinese Nationalist party before him engaged in mass killings to make your blood turn cold. The modern PRC is the result of almost constant wars consolidating the region we now refer to as "China." Before the 20th century, the countries that make up modern China were engaged in almost constant warfare.
As for Mexico, they barely have anyone to go to war with anymore. In fact, part of the reason there is a wall between the US and Mexico in Nogales is because of a war between the two about 100 years ago after World War I.
Mexico seems to mostly be wrapped up in insurrections and criminal organizations lately though. I wouldn't be surprised if some intelligence agency cooked up most of Mexico's problems during the 1960s to keep them weak and it's just been burning since then. Sort of a Cold War toxic waste spill... But that's pure speculation of the quality used in light fiction.
The Art of War, basically the first textbook ever written (and understandably so) is still relevant today.
It's almost oddly metaphysical, and relevant in zero-sum games.
Also:
"evidence of how you have come to understand the barriers faced by others, evidence of your academic service to advance equitable access to higher education for women, racial minorities, and individuals from other groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education, evidence of your research focusing on underserved populations or related issues of inequality, or evidence of your leadership among such groups.”
It's funny how some forms of censorship are evil, but other forms are lauded.
They are essentially demanding that research 'be in service to' a specific intersectional perspective, which has to be the opposite of academic freedom.
War Studies has always been a peculiarly conservative field. The War Studies department at Kings College London was the most Tory, privately educated one I’d ever scene (and one of the few feeder schools to the intelligence services outside of Oxbridge)
I wonder if any studies have done on military/intelligence/political leaders who were War Studies graduates? I.e were they better at it?
> However, part of the shift away from war studies owes to the quest for “social justice”
...
> history overall is worryingly in decline as an academic subject
There might be a connection there.
People who want to think about social justice will go to the political science department. Nothing wrong with that. But people who are passionate about history want professors who are also passionate about history.
History and social justice can go together, of course, but the passion really goes behind one or the other.
The people who work on "social history", which is the social justice-y branch of history, are passionate about history. Just different history. I'm not uncritical of social history (I think they're not good at economic history), but I don't think you can say that they don't care about history. No one who lacks passion for history is going to spend years reading papers in dusty archives.
You can learn from history the same way you can learn how to be a mogul from Bill Gates. That is to say, not much other than general principles and that you have to find your generation's big idea on your own. Certainly nothing that will guarantee anything.
This is a backward way of coming to terms with conflict. In the modern world war is increasingly an outmoded way of handling conflicts. The number of wars, casualties in wars, and so on are a tiny fraction of what they have been historically. The idea that war is the basis of peace is held strongly by those who study wars, but a thorough analysis puts and social inequality and disasters such as famines as being both the current drivers of war and in many cases avoidable. At this time trade wars and competitions like the space race have a bigger effect on society than open conflict.
Don't go too far down that road because you can never be sure when a smart (but insane) person will get enough dissatisfied people and go to war. Thus everyone needs to know enough about war so that society as a whole can deal with war if it comes.
At least in Europe,while there were appalling conflicts throughout, we already had a couple of generations in most countries that hadn't lived through any war. We never had it so good for so long. War seems such a distant, incomprehensible thing anyone can hardly grasp. We get a little bit excited and shocked when we see reports from Ukraine or Balkans back in the day, but that's it. It's all somewhere out there,not in my neighborhood. And long,pieceful periods bring out all sorts of cretins who, otherwise, would be put in place at the very beginning but instead being given platforms,funds,and other resources to spread division, misinformation,and drive some random agendas.
It is also very hard to grasp that a war can start just like that, so people tend to dismiss clues too: 'Nah, they won't do it.'
I have a theory that offensive weaponry advancements produce peace, while defensive advancements produce war. If you're in a castle, it's easier to send armies around, knowing that you'll be safe. But if there are nukes and ICBMs, just stick with the status quo.
I think it is the other way around. Cavalry could beat pretty much any group of non-cavalry unless they had a massive numerical advantage, so castles/walled settlements were the way to defend against that, but they only arose by necessity.
Carol Quigley's theory is that technology changes the balance of power, sometimes favoring centralized power other times favoring decentralized power. Cavalry/knights/castles favored centralized power because equipping knights with armor and feeding their horses required a lot of peasants. The invention of cheap firearms led to the masses having more power (and around this time democracy began to spread). Then tanks, ICBMs, aircraft, submarines, etc. centralized power again, where we remain today, although that may be changing with cheapish drones and semi-successful insurgency tactics.
Cavalry could absolutely not beat 'any group of non-cavalry'. Cavalry was a very specilised, powerful and effective tool. But the real world wasn't what the English guy said in Braveheart ("We have the heavy cavalry, we win"). Many knights fought on foot as well.
Cavalry could not break many infantry formations. You were safe in a square.
Cavalry was great at harassing supply lines in raids, and importantly running down fleeing infantry.
This is all purely a European perspective, steepe cavalry was very different, but many of their benefits were at a larger scale than a single battle.
Generally the whole thing is too complicated to draw some simple conclusion from. War is, and always has been complicated and messey, not a game of chess.
Cavalry dominated the middle ages except in mountainous areas until artillery became prominent. Yes, cavalry could be defeated, but all things being equal it was far superior.
Armchair general here, I've never been in any war. The biggest highlight of my general career was tower defence rushing unsuspecting human players in Warcraft 3 with orcs.
With that said: I think that whenever a human or organization has a stable situation with their current affairs, they can afford to take more risk. Attacking weapons don't necessarily make a situation stable, they simply give an edge when you have them. However, when you're the only one that has them and are stable enough, then you might be able to annihilate entire civilizations (e.g. the Aztecs versus a few hundred Spanish people). But when more people have them, then they can point them at you, making your own situation more unstable if you provoke those people.
If you could build a caste (Expensive, even if you use slave labor) that also meant you had the ability to hire and train knights. In fact most castles were built because the king (who often wasn't very powerful, thus the need to make these deals) offered you rule over some area of land in exchange for raising those knights.
The Castle was built as a place to live on your land so you could keep it. If there was a peasant revolt the castle meant they couldn't do anything about you, while your army could leave anytime the peasants were busy elsewhere to harass them. Thus the castle enabled war as you said, but the castle generally came after raising the army in the first place.
All wanna be conquerors build and used offensive weaponry and produced war. Including Hitler. Plus practically, it is more off weaponry in general used for both offensive and defensive purposes based on strategic goals.
> If you're in a castle, it's easier to send armies around, knowing that you'll be safe.
I do not think that is how it worked historically.
>If by defensive you mean isolationist, both WW1 and WW2 were started because of US isolationism, and ended when the US became offensive and occupied Europe and Japan
This is a truly impressive level of American exceptionalism. Wars only start if we let them, and then stop when we take an interest.
>However, the CCP and Islam are ideologies that believe they can win against the West. Xi is doubling their nuclear weapon count from 200 to 400, and nuclear technology is proliferating throughout the Islamic world.
Pakistan is the only Islamic nuclear power with no other country actively attempting to become one. Iran's "program" has always been overblown, and at best would not enable an offensive war.
Meanwhile, China's doubling should take into account the US's 6000 weapons, 3000 active, and I think still growing. China's program is still primarily defensive as well.
>Mao started a cold war against the US in the 1950s, which the US never took seriously until now, "Hide our strength, bide our time." And Xi is using Mao's playbook.
The US refused to acknowledge China's existence until the 70's, and are the ones that barred most of the world from trading with China. Even in the Korean War, the United States invaded before China got involved.
Much of the rest of your post is also drawn straight from US propaganda. Other countries do things out of their own self interest, not out of some desire to attack America.
> Wars only start if we let them, and then stop when we take an interest.
The US wasn't always a powerful military force. It became this way after WWII.
So no, it wasn't the case then, but yes, it is pretty much the case today. Every country knows that they cannot win a traditional war against the US - so the OPs point is correct here. It's just lucky that the US is not imperialistic. Imagine if China was the most powerful militarily.
There was certainly a cold war between the two nations via other conflicts. If it's a question of who was the initial aggressor, that's hard to say because there was no direct conflict.
>It's just lucky that the US is not imperialistic. Imagine if China was the most powerful militarily.
Another jaw dropping example of American exceptionalism. Look at your link, notice how we call the start of the PRC the "loss of China?" Any country not under our economic and political dominion is labeled the enemy
> If by defensive you mean isolationist, both WW1 and WW2 were started because of US isolationism, and ended when the US became offensive and occupied Europe and Japan.
“War can also speed up advances in science and technology that have benefits in peacetime.”
Well that escalated from extolling the benefits of studying war to extolling the benefits of waging them rather quickly.
“Although anthropologists and archeologists still wonder why human beings have for so long organized themselves to fight...”
Do they? Surely that bit is just an obvious extension of conflict in evolution, i.e. it’s the thinking meat’s equivalent to organisms taking nutrients away from each other instead of from the sun.
Not sure there’s really any evidence that teaching military history is going to somehow diffuse future conflicts to be honest. The most likely candidates for our long peace have little to do with us becoming students of military history.
I have always found interesting the question of why countries go to war? Obviously, if you need to defend yourself you don't have too many options.
But why the elite of a nation will start a war will all the consequences and the danger of loosing territory. Of course, this elite believes they will never suffer the consequences of war. That's why nuclear weapons are a terrifying deterrent.
However, something I read recently was very illuminating: every time somebody decides to go to war, believes it is going to be short and quick. You don't start a war when you don't believe you have a clear advantage. We can also see that many times this thought was wrong and led to lengthy with a high cost on human lives.
Sun Tzu: "If ten times the enemy's strength, surround them; if five times, attack them; if double, be able to divide them; if equal, engage them; if fewer, defend against them; if weaker, be able to avoid them."
To quote Blackadder: It was too difficult not to have a war.
I think any idea of the noble war between great nations died in the trenches of the first world war, although it was definitely preempted by the Army Napoleon assembled.
Brings to mind The Judge's position on war from McCarthy's Blood Meridian:
"It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
Maybe slightly trite of me to reply only to the title, but there's actually a rich and interesting study of peace and peace processes which is more relevant than war, which only signifies their failure.
History always repeats itself. Strong men create weak times, weak times create strong men. If you look at history, 1917 problems created 1932 solutions. What do we learn from that? Not a lot, apparently.
The truth of the matter is that all wars are the result of economic incentives. As a Greek i can assure you that almost all the wars of Greece to everyone else, and of Romans, were the result of gaining profit. Just like slavery stopped because of education, and educated capitalists with well trained human workers amount to thousand of times more wealth than any amount of slaves, the same holds for wars. We live in a low-war environment because invading in another country and stealing fridges and cars is just unprofitable.
With the current technology, computer, genetics, and just the sheer creativity of the human mind, any country can contribute to the world trade, and start making bricks from sand using bacteria, any amount of food if they plant pine trees or palm trees which they both have an edible and highly nutritious bark, poison free too. The bark of these trees diminish the thirst so humans need a lot less water, contrary to, say producing livestock for meat. It is not economically viable any more, to create an educated and highly productive population, just to send them killed in a moments notice.
I am all about occasionally suspending the peace for a war, for one philosophical reason. The only truth in the world, is death. Someone can bribe a basketball team to lose, but not an army. No one dies for money. When one male kills another in a fight, we all know the dead gave it all to stay alive. When there is too much unhealthy peace in place, people start believing in lies.
That recent covid hysteria, i think it proves me right.
This is a pretty reductionist view of war. You can't reasonably deny the importance of economic factors, but attributing all of war to economics is a very opinionated view and I would argue pretty specific to a particular academic school of thought. I'm reminded of Stringer Bell in "The Wire," trying to use his business school lessons to evaluate every part of the drug trade. Avon stops him mid-sentence and says, "String, this ain't about your business class. This ain't that part of it. It's that other thing." Sometimes that's true of war, too.
> Do we ever want another president asking, as Donald Trump did during a visit to the Pearl Harbor memorial: “What’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?”
Yeah, but Donald Trump is old and studied before decline of military history. And I dont think it was failure of his school, someone who dont care and insists on not caring, wont remember.
Natural selection isn't good. In terms of “bad things to do to humans”, it comes in just behind eugenics, and that's only because we haven't worked out how to do that without horrible horrible crimes against humanity (yet). (Yes, natural selection is legitimately bad enough that “make eugenics less genocidey and then do that instead” is actually on the table – I am so glad the problem can probably keep for another century or two, so I won't have to be responsible if we end up with some dystopia or other.)
These aren't good things. I mean, war does accomplish them, but… I'd rather they weren't accomplished.
Whether humans like it or not and whether we want to admit it or not, wars do end up with mostly the fittest (not just in terms of physical ability, but also intelligence, cunning, etc.) surviving.
Wars end up with those best at surviving surviving. The ones best at getting allies to protect them, the ones who keep their children alive even at the cost of thousands of others' lives, the ones who groom an ally to throw themselves on the grenade, the ones who climb the power ladder and then use that power to keep themselves safe from the conflict…
War is a terrible selection pressure, if you value the light and good in this world. (Probably) less bad than the ones genocidal dictators apply, given how indiscriminate (and therefore bad at selection) it is, but it's certainly not in the “good” category.
> Wars end up with those best at surviving surviving. The ones best at getting allies to protect them, the ones who keep their children alive even at the cost of thousands of others' lives, the ones who groom an ally to throw themselves on the grenade, the ones who climb the power ladder and then use that power to keep themselves safe from the conflict…
Yes, natural selection at the civilization level. Those survivors will be the ones to write history and continue the species’ civilization.
Civilization gave rise to the warring forces and allowed them to come into power, and those forces in turn shape civilization.
> it’s certainly not in the “good” category.
Our sentiments don’t matter to the grand picture, which has been painted by thousands of wars and continues to be.
War is certainly not a natural calamity. It’s caused by millions of humans who willingly want it to happen, so maybe we “deserve” it, to be sentimental.
Next you'll be saying millions of humans want to be addicted to social media. I don't understand how you could even think this in the first place, let alone believe it to be true.
I mean you believe that human sentiments of “good” and “evil” matter much outside of human heads, or that the world would magically be a much better place if no wars ever happened.
(of course I predict you will cherry pick some wars to be perfectly justified)
Not neceassary it's overall positive. You usually kill best&brightest from oponent side first, so summing over average capability of human population wars can cause regressions.
> wars do end up with mostly the fittest (not just in terms of physical ability, but also intelligence, cunning, etc.) surviving.
1.) There is massive random factor.
2.) The fittest are often selected for unit that have large mortality. That was the case of SS in Germany - supposed to be the fittest selection. And as result going to hardest fights dying the most.
In Russia, it was year of birth that made difference. The guys who were 18 by the start of the war died almost all. You was better off if you was 17 or 22.
3.) The fact is, the fit male goes to combat and is more likely to die. The weaker one who wont be selected for that, survives.
War kills off the healthy, the young, the brave, the stress-resistant and so on. All of these are qualities that can make society better in a context of peace, but are a liability in the context of war from the perspective of the individual. The deformed, the less healthy and those adept at finding loopholes get to stay at home. A war on a massive scale thus has a negative effect on long term fitness.
One of the lessons from being a Stallman watcher for many years - people are profoundly evidence based. If there hasn't been a war in 30 years, then they assume there will not be a war next year no matter how the background is changing.
The fading of WWII in the public memory could be argued as the biggest single risk that society faces. There are too many people who just won't understand how bad and how possible total war is. There is a huge background risk that the age of abundance ends and then things get dicey.