Fascinating article...written not that long after it looked like men or anybody else could never live with war again.
But, those fretting about the necessity of war need not have worried, as subsequent events proved. War between nuclear powers doesn't happen any more, but instead we've had endless proxy wars. Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine....
We’ve had at least one war between nuclear powers off the top of my head. The Kargil war of 1999 between India and Pakistan, I believe both sides had nuclear weapons deployed at the time.
Both were basically small border skirmishes. Yes there’s trivia claims that “nukes almost flew between each state” but in reality no one was anywhere near nuking each others cities.
Sarah Paine says that the Kremlin asked Washington if Washington was OK with the Kremlin's nuking China -- during or right after what you dismiss as "small border skirmishes".
According to Paine, Washington responded with a firm no. Paine didn't specify the targets the Kremlin wanted to nuke: I'm guessing Beijing's new (and consequently small) nuclear stockpile and nuclear production facilities rather than cities.
In the Kargil War both sides deployed multiple divisions, and the Sino-Soviet War armored units were employed. Sure, neither side came close to using nukes, but they were still at war. It just goes to show that war between two nuclear states is possible without nuclear weapons being employed.
All it takes is one madman to get near the button and gain enough power that his button-press is honored. It almost seems inevitable given a long enough time frame.
The weaker version of madman scenario is a head of state believing they can use nukes in a limited scope to achieve its political goals.
Imagine this scenario: the war in Ukraine goes for some more time, Russia starts to have economic problems and is desperate to settle it (without having to compromise), force Ukraine to surrender and demand sanctions to be lifted. So he uses a couple of small tactical nukes along the frontline to cripple Ukrainian forces. Civilian deaths are in tens of thousands.
Ukraine can't respond, but apparently some threat has been declared from US to prevent this scenario - NATO / US launches conventional strikes on Russian military installations within Ukraine. Russia is not able to respond symmetrically, so it drops a tactical nuke on a military base within NATO territory (in Eastern Europe, far from major population center) as a kind of last warning to step back. There are multiple ways how this can go from then on, but there are scenarios ending in a major or all-out nuclear exchange. Without the need for misunderstanding and madmans.
Note that the smallest tactical nuke, the Davy Crockett, is One-Million times smaller than the largest nuke ever tested (The Tzar Bomba).
USA Policy is that all nukes are nukes. The idea being that we've never wargamed a scenario where small nukes were used that didn't turn into the treadmill of larger and larger nukes anyway. (Well, they used a 50 ton nuke. We should respond with a 500ton nuke, then they respond with a 10,000 ton nuke. Then we respond with a 100kTon nuke. Then they respond with a 1Mton nuke....)
So the minute a 'Small Nuke' is used, we should just respond with the biggest nuke. No point dilly dallying, if we are all going to die we might as well get it over with faster and in a way that is to our advantage.
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The issue is that Russia or China may not see it that way. They might see the small nukes as a different thing that doesn't deserve the response of the larger nuke.
It's not that the world is composed of madmen. It's that the world is composed of people with different points of view.
As such, Russia stockpiles tactical (aka: small) nukes. USA stockpiles strategic (aka: large) nukes.
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Also note: we stopped making larger nukes for political reasons. There seemed to be no end to the size of 'Large' nukes. The H-Bomb seemed to scale as large as we ever wanted.
A collection of 10x 10 MTon nukes would deal more damage than a single 100MTon nuke anyway. But there's nothing stopping us from making 10x 100Mton nukes.
There's a difference between stated policy, actual policy, and what people will actually do when in a given scenario. For example, the PRC has a stated nuclear no first use policy, but I don't think anyone really believes that if the Indian army were advancing on Beijing that nukes would actually be off the table.
> The idea being that we've never wargamed a scenario where small nukes were used that didn't turn into the treadmill of larger and larger nukes anyway. (Well, they used a 50 ton nuke. We should respond with a 500ton nuke, then they respond with a 10,000 ton nuke. Then we respond with a 100kTon nuke. Then they respond with a 1Mton nuke....)
> So the minute a 'Small Nuke' is used, we should just respond with the biggest nuke. No point dilly dallying, if we are all going to die we might as well get it over with faster and in a way that is to our advantage.
The French nuclear doctrine is actually the exact opposite of this: they have a small nuke (the ASMP-A) that's explicitly designed as a nuclear warning shot to make everyone stop and think for a second before escalating into full scale nuclear war.
So the minute a 'Small Nuke' is used, we should just respond with the biggest nuke.
In any case the U.S. has stated that it won't do that unless it was a close strike against a very close ally (NATO partner or similar, or their deployed units). Most likely won't reciprocate to a nuclear strike against just Ukraine (provided it were of "limited" scope such as a warning or sequence of tactical shots).
> So the minute a 'Small Nuke' is used, we should just respond with the biggest nuke. No point dilly dallying, if we are all going to die we might as well get it over with faster and in a way that is to our advantage.
Yeah, it's one of those crazy nuclear doctrines. Another is Launch on Warning, or the idea you can use nukes tactically without escalation.
Now, think about what's the point of publishing such strategic information? Isn't it a huge disadvantage when the enemy can anticipate how you will respond? In reality, you declassify information which you want that your enemy knows. These mentioned policies are meant as a deterrence, they're a bit of "playing madman" captured as a policy, because they're thought to provide an advantage when the enemy believes them.
I believe that the US has war game scenarios where one side uses a nuke, without the situation escalating into an all-out war, but these are extremely sensitive and thus highly secret. You don't want your enemy to believe there is some way where they can get away with using nukes, so in public you only mention the doomsday scenarios.
So, overall, I believe that the actual nuclear doctrine differs from the one published and should be less crazy. Note also that the head of states are not bound by the doctrine.
> The issue is that Russia or China may not see it that way. They might see the small nukes as a different thing that doesn't deserve the response of the larger nuke.
Part of it is again the deterrence aspect. Russia has a clear conventional disadvantage in comparison to US / NATO, so threatening with tactical nukes is a way to deter NATO from directly engaging Russia. It is in Russia's advantage to at least pretend that they think that tactical nukes can be used without major escalation. Just like US wants others to think there's no way to win a nuclear exchange, Russia wants you to think there's no way to win a conventional conflict (because it will soon escalate to nukes).
I'm not saying it means they're completely bullshi*ing, but there can be again a gap between what they think and what position they're trying to project.
> Also note: we stopped making larger nukes for political reasons. There seemed to be no end to the size of 'Large' nukes. The H-Bomb seemed to scale as large as we ever wanted.
Nukes become impractically large / heavy in that size, and as you mention, more numerous smaller nukes do more damage.
10 * 10 Mt is more destructive than 1 * 100 Mt, but 1000 * 100 Kt is much more destructive still.
Russia that knows that China and India will not accept a nuclear first use in an offensive war. More than that, nuking Ukraine would also the drive everyone else still dealing with Russia far far away, probably even Iran. Also, if Russia uses nukes to get a favourable deal, presumably involving conquering some parts of Ukraine, why would they nuke the land they plan to loot?
Yes that’s a plausible scenario. Another potential trigger is that Ukraine manages a deep strike into Russia which causes significant damage and a conventional reply is considered non-sufficient.
Look how much carbon we emit when we fight conventionally. Maybe throwing around few nukes might actually save some people in the long run by delaying global warming.
I don't know .. weapons are typically not as good at killing as we imagine. Not as good as slow, mundane things. They could kick up a lot of dust into stratosphere though. Bizzarely it might be a worthy trade in some potential (imaginary) scenarios.
Don’t worry. If there is anything history (and the geological record) has shown us, the planet and other humans have tried very very very hard to kill all humans in the past. And failed.
Not that they didn’t make one hell of a dent sometimes, mind you.
Actually, the geological record shows that mass extinctions are possible, happen somewhat regularly, and are sometimes caused by a single species altering the environment on a massive scale. For example when photosynthesizers converted 20% of the atmosphere into extremely toxic oxygen gas.
Eh, a bit overstated. None of them killed EVERYTHING, near as we can tell. Not even the oxygen catastrophe you're mentioning.
To do that would likely require liquifying the mantle entirely, or some similar scale event.
The last big one was approximately 66 million years ago due to perhaps the Chicxulub impact, and it wiped out most of the dinosaurs - but modern birds are descended from them, and the crocodiles and alligators survived (well, VERY similar looking ancestors) /just fine.
None of them could build space stations, nuclear reactors, bunkers, etc. That we know of at least. None of them could grow hydroponic food, or communicate at near light speed to the other side of the planet, or even know what any of that means.
The entire span of time something vaguely resembling human has been around is also 1/10th of that time, but there have been MANY smaller events with large scale extinctions.
I'm not saying it would be a good time, but there is no way every single human is getting wiped out by anything except a nearby Gamma Ray burst/Supernova, surprise planetary collision, or something of similar destructive scale. Things way beyond even our wildest dreams of destructive power.
Even if we launched every nuke every country has ever produced, while civilization as we know it would be done for, humanity would definitely persist. Even if the next war would be fought with clubs instead of nukes.
And even if all the oxygen in the atmosphere turned to cyanide - guess what, we do (technically) know how to deal with that, there are populations of people who are currently protected from that, and while most of humanity would die while we scrambled to adapt, humanity itself would not perish. At least not just from that.
Hell, not that long ago the most technologically advanced society of the time (Nazi Germany) with a massive and state of the art army tried to exterminate a subset of humans (Jews, Homosexuals, Roma) using massive force, the latest technology, and with a near single minded focus.
And while they did kill a lot of people and perpetrate terrible crimes, they also failed rather completely at the task. Even in areas where they were literally burning everything to the ground.
What makes you think they would have been more successful if they’d also been trying to kill themselves at the same time? Hence impeding their abilities?
And humans are, near as we can tell, the most lethal animals on the planet overall.
Humans survive implausibly terrible situations on the regular, and are currently living in every major ecological niche in the environment except perhaps the very deepest parts of the ocean. Though if we count military submersibles and oil rig diving bells, they too are ‘occupied’.
Would lots of people die, and would it be terrible if an environmental catastrophe occurred? You bet. But killing all humans is even less plausible than killing all ticks, or all roaches. Humans, the most lethal species on the planet, keeps trying and failing to do so.
Short of melting the mantle underneath us anyway. We do have some folks living in a space station. Probably not enough though.
Nazi Germany failed because they used a method that did not scale well. Also because they were trying to exterminate one set of humans while preserving another set. Exterminating all humans together is easier - perhaps flood the oceans with dimethylmercury - the geological-scale equivalent of curing cancer with a flamethrower. Or, just dig up all the fossil fuels and burn them.
That is why eating too much Tuna will give you mercury poisoning. And the Nazis literally used nerve agents (Zyklon B) among other things. Nasty nerve agents (and most household pesticides) came out of WW2 research largely done by the Nazis (through Bayer, as it turns out).
And the moment anyone got wind of an attempt to try to do such a thing, enough humans would go to ground you’d never actually succeed. Hell, enough are probably already under ground for whatever reason you’d never succeed even if you did manage to catch the whole world by surprise and somehow actually release it all at scale.
The Nazi’s did not fail because they failed to try to kill humans at scale. Frankly, they did it at the largest scale since probably Ghenghis Khan. Certainly in a far more industrial fashion.
The issue is that it’s actually really hard to kill a lot of humans. Something that personally warms the cockles of my very human heart.
Embrace your ancestry of murderous (and loving) hominids, and aim to use it to make things better. Rejecting it is a false path.
Actually Zyklon B came out of WWI research, and in the interim it was licensed worldwide for use as a fumigating agent. Including from 1929 onwards in the United States, where it was used by the Public Health Service to fumigate freight trains and clothes of Mexican immigrants entering the country.
70 years is not a useful timeframe for analysis of human warfare. Historically speaking a 70 year peace could be considered brief. Recall that empires have lasted thousands of years, city states have warred on and off for centuries, warlords have emerged with a cadence measured in centuries and great conquests on a cadence of thousands of years.
70 years is a blip. Compare that to the 6 known close calls where all-out nuclear war was narrowly averted and we’re not looking great. (What is that about once a decade?)
I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll see a nuclear war in my lifetime. And if it gets out of hand billions of people will die.
I’m not sure the invention of nuclear weapons was a net positive for the world.
All it tells me (just personally) is that the threat of being nuked (and especially being nuked in retaliation) is an effective deterrent since 1945. Not perfect of course, but it’s prevented larger conflicts than we have seen.
No, they are fighting because the government wants it. Ukrainian men have no choice: they can't fly away from the country, they can't safely walk on the streets because the special patrol with take them to the military registration and enlistment office without consent. But some of them are really do.
Ukraine may not have started as a proxy, but it became one as its military stocks were exhausted. Both EU and US politicians claim on record that Ukraine would fold within days or weeks if it didn’t get support.
At this point US+EU are paying for the pensions, military and keeping Ukraine’s economy afloat. Our military aid is keeping Ukraine in the fight.
This doesn’t mean the Ukrainians don’t have agency or don’t make their own decisions, but the US and to some extent EU have a huge amount of influence.
By the way, South Korea has already sent hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to Ukraine at the request of the US. They’re now considering sending weapons and this might trigger Russia to send missiles or nuclear tech to North Korea.
Russia is as far as the world knows is just buying weapons from North Korea.
By the way, South Korea has already sent hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to Ukraine at the request of the US. They’re now considering sending weapons and this might trigger Russia to send missiles or nuclear tech to North Korea.
It's actually the other way around. North Korea getting new tech is prompting South Korea to respond in turn. That's why Russia and Ukraine became 'proxies' for the Koreans, North or South.
"This doesn’t mean the Ukrainians don’t have agency or don’t make their own decisions, but the US and to some extent EU have a huge amount of influence."
In the era of the atomic bomb, conventional war no longer takes place directly between tier 1 (nuclear) powers because the rulers can’t have that. The rulers on both sides ultimately want to enjoy their wealth and power. They want to go to the brothel at the end of the day. So they won’t risk getting into a nuclear war. This is even truer in the era of Globalism where enjoying wealth and power generally means enjoying the benefits of the global supply chain: yachts, supercars, travel, exotic imports, etc. A nuclear war would disrupt all that. It would make being an oligarch a lot less fun, so they will generally avoid messing with the world at that level. Finally, in the era of the atomic bomb, conventional warfare (sending your tanks and battleships against your enemy) is obsolete for tier 1 powers. If you are a tier 1 power and another tier 1 power starts sending tanks your way, you send off one nuke to nuke all the tanks. Conventional warfare is not obsolete for tier 2 powers since it’s all they have. A tier 2 power battling it out in conventional warfare against another tier 2 power means something. Conventional warfare means very little to tier 1 powers. Tier 1 and tier 2 powers play by completely different rules.
As a result, conventional war only takes place now on tier 2 (non-nuclear) lands. If there are sabers to be rattled between two tier 1 powers, the rattling will happen on tier 2 land, usually with tier 2 powers being the primary warring parties (proxy war). You also see tier 1 powers making the occasional move but always against tier 2 powers only, e.g. Russia -> Ukraine. If Ukraine had nukes there would be no war in Ukraine. Notice how it’s war IN Ukraine: on tier 2 land. If Ukraine managed to make it a war IN Russia, they’d be nuked to oblivion.
Agree except that Ukraine is slowly taking the war to Russia itself, their drones are getting further and further. I think Russia would rather invent a way to safe face than face whatever consequences may come after nuking Ukraine to oblivion.
But those are small, isolated attacks. Front line is still deep in the Ukrainian territory. If Ukrainian counter-offensive manged to move it deep enough withing Russian borders, Russia would nuke them.
And as for consequences I do not think the West would do anything about that. US won't go on full scale nuclear war with Russia over some insignificant country at the end of the world, that isn't even a NATO member. So the worst outcome of nuking Ukraine for Russia is to get even more economic sanctions, that's all.
And as for consequences I do not think the West would do anything about that.
The worst outcome of nuking Ukraine for Russia is to get even more economic sanctions, that's all.
The response won't be nuclear, per its stated posture on this. But it's hard to imagine the United States would do basically nothing of substance in response, and it hasn't ruled out a violent conventional response. And at least back in 2022, Biden took care to put this messaging out indicating there would be a "consequential" response, per his interview with Scott Pelley:
"And I wonder, Mr. President, what you would say to him if he is considering using chemical or tactical nuclear weapons?"
"Don't. Don't. Don't. You will change the face of war unlike anything since World War II," Mr. Biden said.
When Pelley asked what the consequences would be if Putin crossed that line, the president wouldn't say.
"You think I would tell you if I knew exactly what it would be? Of course, I'm not gonna tell you. It'll be consequential," Mr. Biden said. "They'll become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been. And depending on the extent of what they do will determine what response would occur."
US won't go on full scale nuclear war with Russia over some insignificant country at the end of the world
First, while it isn't a NATO partner or of similar status, Ukraine is absolutely not "insignificant" to the at least the current administration in the U.S., and the whole Atlanticist crowd. It would not have stuck its neck out (and expended its political capital) as far as it has on Ukraine's behalf thus far, if that were the case.
And while it won't go nuclear over Ukraine -- it is definitely concerned about its strategic posture and global stability, and the detrimental consequences of giving Russia perceived "pass" to use nukes in any offensive context. And would basically have to make some kind of genuinely serious response. Which some people close to the administration have quietly hinted could be a conventional military response.
I'm not sure how that "conventional violent response" would work.
Russian military doctrine includes nuclear first strike when there's an "existential threat" to Russia, even if that threat is from conventional military attack. If Russia can use nukes against Ukrainian army entering the Russian territory, then for sure it would use them against NATO troops doing the same.
Also, in such a dire situation, Putin and other Russian leaders are crazy enough to use not just tactical nukes but to start full scale nuclear war without any hope of winning, just to "go with a bang".
I'm not sure how that "conventional violent response" would work.
One can imagine scenarios of varying effectiveness, but this a separate matter. The point is -- the Biden administration has made it clear to the Russians that there would be a significant response, with strong hints that it would be military in nature and not limited to extra sanctions.
If Russia can use nukes against Ukrainian army entering the Russian territory, then for sure it would use them against NATO troops doing the same.
The response doesn't need to involve NATO troops in Ukraine.
Meanwhile it'd be kind of hard to use nukes against stealth bombers, cruise missiles, drones and SF operations.
Interesting thoughts but I feel it is the wrong level of analysis. Maybe we will reach some sci-fi utopia but personally I see war as a kind of law of nature.
Think about a petri dish and how bacteria grow on it until they saturate the entire surface area and then the resources run out, unless half of the bacteria destroy the other half, and then they can survive longer. War is the result of humans fighting over the metaphorical petri dish of land, resources, and also power. From this high level perspective, humans go through periods of growth, tension, war, and then the winner gets to continue surviving, only to repeat the cycle eventually.
Unless we discover infinite energy and resources somehow, we are going to be forced to clash in this way, and the ultimate way to resolve these conflicts is war. That said, we can have long periods without it because we discover new technologies that alleviate these tensions for some time, but I think a great war will be inevitable, the question is how long will our current peace streak last?
> War is the result of humans fighting over the metaphorical petri dish of land, resources, and also power.
People do all of that in modern economies without resorting to physically eliminating each other.
To get millions of individuals to coordinate over long times, mobilizing massive resources etc. in order to exterminate other millions (to grab their resources, subjugated them or whatever) is not "natural" or biological in any sense.
War is a cultural adaptation that worked for aeons because it did not threaten the survival of the species. In a technologically advanced civilization this is no longer assured. Vannevar Bush was simply a century or so ahead of his time. In the arc of human history this is just a blip.
I think it's more about our resource growth outpacing our resource demand, because if that happens we bypass the resource competition that drives most conflict.
This has a lot of pathways, tech efficiency, slower population growth, more resource acquisition (asteroid mining etc). It's definitely possible in the large scope, but I suspect there will be periods of spiking demand that still cause lots of short term conflicts.
Famines and mass migration are very likely with climate change going the way it is. Over the course of 100 years I suspect the resource problem will alleviate but until then there will be a lot of conflict.
The only real long term trick is creating larger and larger gulfs between the resource demand and availability, buffers that can withstand the smaller scale changes. But, unfortunately, our current dominant systems of power view buffers like that as either weakness or opportunity that are antithetical to progress.
That's very promising since some of the most undesirable characteristics can be bred out within a few generations. Actually that might have been what happened to some isolated cultures (even if nomadic) where they had nothing to fight over for thousands of years.
While other isolated or marching cultures bred out any non-violent tendencies in the opposite way themselves.
See my reply to my comment - I kind of feel a bit more optimistic, as I finally watched the Veritasium video I've tucked away in my Watch Later the past few weeks.
> That's very promising since some of the most undesirable characteristics can be bred out within a few generations.
It’s funny how most of the discussions below have as a basis that people will always behave rationally. As if the threat of total destruction will always stop a particular cause of action.
Putting the fate on mankind in this basic premise is the flaw behind the entire building of such bombs in the first place.
Don’t work on terrible weapons. If you’re smart enough to create them you’re smart enough not to misuse them.
But the last act in creation is relinquishing control.
You’re putting them in the hands of people who aren’t smart enough to build them. And you don’t get to choose who that is.
The US president who bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t even fully understand that he was bombing civilian targets. How could he be so stupid? Do you even have to ask? Think quietly for five minutes about the average intelligence of politicians. About their ability to think calmly and consider facts when making decisions. If you do that you’ll never work on weapon systems again.
The 1953 sci-fi novel Limbo touches on these concepts and references the Moral Equivalent of War essay heavily. Must have been something in the air at the time.
In the novel's far future time of 1990 it's effectively a religious text and all the young men are volunteering to have their limbs removed as a protest against wars that were fought with those limbs.
It gets a bit philosophical, and takes a very 1950s detour into the philosophy of rape, but is overall a very interesting read, sci-fi catch-22 in many ways.
i wonder how much of our current views be seen this way another 50 years from now.
however i think some things will most likely be for certain, like how there are key parties who economically depend on war or planning for it. there have been countless seeds of conflicts sown around the time when this article and the essay it refers to were written. they are still being played out and i won't be surprised if they still influence some things decades from now.
another think i find repeating from the past into the future is the nature of aliances switching over time. predicting one major conflict between two currently strong allies in my bingo card.
our brains remain wired like the tribes that fought for survival. one might continue to find "us vs them" problems when there exists none.
> our brains remain wired like the tribes that fought for survival
If that was literaly true then there would only ever be a single organizational structure for human society, like bees, ants, chimps or whatever.
When you look at recorded history alone, societies have organized in many different ways and the complexity and variety is only exploding over time.
Organized war has generally been part of societal behavior, but that has been because perceived benefits always exceeded the attributed cost. From the nuclear age forward the calculus has changed. It only gets worse with each new potentially lethal invention.
The reality of a finite planet, where organized, technologically assisted violence can wipe out billions will eventually sink and lazy ideological thinking, vested interest in warmongering etc. will disappear.
Logically, given the trajectory of human development, for war-as-we-know-it to persist we'd have to wipe out modern civilization in a final global war and go back to primitive societies that can afford this "game".
It seems like the barriers for becoming an expat are lower now than what they were in the 20th century.
There are plenty of online expat communities. You can find maps, living arrangements, and machine translation all online
In general, the internet has made it so that people are a lot less dependent on their immediate community. So in the future, if the government starts making a bunch of hostile demands and tries to draft people, I'm not sure if that will be as effective as what it once was historically
I actually think war driving progress is a strong argument. Not to use any obvious examples (e.g. internet), I would argue war has a profound effect on the psyche of nations (whether they lose or win).
A few examples:
- Germany rose to power in the 1800s, with a culmination at Sedan in 1870, driven by the humiliation Napoleon inflected on 60 years earlier. In 1870, Germany was a behemoth of technology (especially chemistry) & industry
- France won WW1 with such heavy losses that its people said “never again” (they called WW1 the “Great War” or the “last war”). War left an indelible mark (one wished it had left the same mark on the German).
Many such examples. Countries compete and war is a great impetus to modernize the Nation.
> men drive progress and war drives progress, and both of those things are debatable
I'm fairly confident that the progress mentioned in the article is meant as technological and maybe social progress. How would either of those happen without being driven by humans, or another hypothetical technological species?
In terms of war, I don't see how it's debatable. It may not be the only driver but it's definitely a strong one. It may not be progress towards something you (or I) desire but it's progress nonetheless.
The thing is without force your stuff gets taken. We haven't got a good way around this. Our current peace is heavily based on nuclear weapons and the implied threat of force.
Don't like the status quo? Use force to try to change it.
Do like the status quo? Use force to try to keep it that way.
We don't have a stable equiliubrium where no force exists in the system. Many in this thread effectively say "You can do what you like, but I am above using force".
They can say that because their existence is secured by the force of others. There are enough people willing to take by force that if you have no force your stuff and land get taken.
This was how the world worked for all of human history until 1945. The only thing that changed it was nukes, the ultimate force.
In theory you could have a global government with a monopoly on force that enforced no more war. But that still depends on force.
Is there any convincing argument for getting out of this equilibrium?
Consider it an economic problem. War costs money, therefore war will be conducted when its benefits exceed its costs. What makes war profitable? For that you need to know the benefits of war. The most obvious benefit is the changing of borders and conquering of new land. Now you might say that it always makes sense for a country to try to conquer the enire world, because having the land grants you access to its riches for free, but then you have to consider the costs of war too.
The cost of conquering land and managing it yourself must be cheaper than letting the other country manage the land and production process and then importing the goods you want.
The cost of conquering the land can be split into two parts. First, the initial offensive representing capex and the ongoing defense costs against attackers represent opex. If it turns out that the foreign country is both fleecing you on imports and is spending less in defense per acre than you would, if you managed the land, it would be profitable for you to conquer the land and install a defense force that spends more to protect the same plot of land. Since your spending budget is higher per acre, the original country would lose if they tried to recover the territory.
Now consider the opposite scenario. The original country does not fleece you on imports and has a lean army. Then it would not be profitable for you to conquer the land, since you have higher opex and the benefit is insignificant.
Of course none of this stops crazy dictators from attempting world domination, but it can tell you that on average, people should be uninterested in war.
I think one of the most obvious, major benefits of war is the trillions of dollars that's put into the military-industrial complex every year. Whether war actually breaks out is irrelevant, if the interests involved can make people believe it's always inevitable, so let's keep pumping money into it.
Europe stopped believing in it and "interests involved" couldn't do anything about it. As a result their military-industrial complex has atrophied to a point where without US goodwill they would not be able to protect themselves against the belligerent neighbor with much smaller economy.
I don't believe I made any implications about how the world should act, or whether peace is possible. I made a point about a major motivating factor. That isn't to say it's the only one.
Sure that calculation might have worked when it was purely about the land. But now the land itself is only one small part of the value production. Even for agriculture, there's all that infrastructure, and the knowledge workers to make it viable and competitive. War destroys those, and a war of attrition like the one in Ukraine also has a destructive effect on the land itself.
Internal strife shows this. In Africa where farms were taken with force with no planning on what happened next the agricultural economy collapsed.
It’s interesting that the relative costs of offense vs. defense vary with technological development. In the middle ages when castles existed but guns did not, and societal structure was such that mounting enormous besieging armies of antiquity was not possible, the borders mostly stayed intact. It’s possible we’re entering something similar judging by the drone war in Ukraine which seems to heavily favor defense.
I said the end of _artificial_ scarcity, which much of our current world, and most of it's economic system is based on. As you've flagged, the fact that entropy exists means scarcity itself will be with us until the end of time.
No. I go to the grocery store. Where an army of robots controlled by farmers has already done it for me. We're so good at this more than 1/3 of it goes to waste. We export so much food it literally disrupts world markets.
The question you want to ask is there ever a point where population's psychical space demands overcome the space required to feed those people? We are nowhere near this limit.
Right, so you are claiming you are entitled to the productivity of land worked by the labor of someone else, managed by someone else. What are you contributing to the process?
Artificial scarcity, the proposal is for the elimination of the ability of owning classes to restrict supply of a given good through various means.
That said, >100 years in the future it could be possible to make more land with rotating habitats in space, which would functionally eliminate land scarcity.
It's much more economically viable, but it comes with a lot of ecological and environmental risk that we care about a lot more now (which is right and good). Same with preserving Antarctica, the other one people always bring up. The fact is we care hugely about the environment in the modern day, people who don't care about the environment are a loud minority, so in terms of making new habitable land on a large scale space is the most realistic even though it's more difficult in an economic and engineering sense.
Terraforming takes centuries and trillions.
Depopulation is super easy. Just provide a minimum level of education, opportunity and contraception and significantly more people choose not to have kids.
Not sure if our economies can survive that way though.
And people are slowly testing the limits of the nuke deterrent. Turns out everyone is really hesitant to use them especially when the aggressor has nukes too.
Not the nukes. The Bretton Woods principles. It was not a kumbayah exchange of platitudes. It was an agreement to let things be settled in the free market.
Want more oil from Nigeria? Offer them more money than the other buyers.
Want to fish the waters around Tuvalu? Radio them and offer more money.
Want Congolese cobalt? Same idea.
This was the brainchild of John Maynard Keynes, not Ayn Rand. It was not a matter of market fetishism. It was based on the sensible idea that the market place is a better way to settle these things than the battlefield, something even a Marxist should be willing to admit.
That could have brought us to a world wide peace in 1945, but only the First World went along with this idea. The Second World rallied around endless revolution and war until we get a worker's paradise. And the Third World tried to stay out altogether. (Reminder: by the original definition, Switzerland was in the Third World).
This is very naive. The reason the "first world" is peaceful is only because of two things - nukes and American hegemony.
You need a hegemon for peace. Are you familiar with Japanese history? It was not until unification that the wars stopped. Finally there was a hegemon who brought peace by acting as the ultimate arbiter of power. The same thing happened to the "first world". A dominant hegemon emerged in the form of the US. This hegemon set the rules and made it so nobody needed to worry about their neighbors. A hegemon is the only way you can get peace in an environment that is otherwise anarchic.
> That could have brought us to a world wide peace in 1945, but only the First World went along with this idea. The Second World rallied around endless revolution and war until we get a worker's paradise. And the Third World tried to stay out altogether. (Reminder: by the original definition, Switzerland was in the Third World).
How does your thesis explain the countless violent coups orchestrated and death squads funded by the First World, for example Guatemala 1954?
> Want more oil from Nigeria? Offer them more money than the other buyers.
How about I offer them some lead to sweeten the deal? As in, take my lower offer or else?
> Want to fish the waters around Tuvalu? Radio them and offer more money.
Or I'll just go fishing because what ever Tuvalu can do to me?
> Want Congolese cobalt? Same idea.
The idea works when the players have no better choice than to play by the market rules, win or lose. At small scale, most people figure it's better to lose the deal than be thrown into jail for being extra convincing - but this is only possible because of a legal and enforcement system that's stronger than any individual or group. At larger, international scale, nukes provide a backstop that keeps everyone in check, by keeping total war absurdly expensive for everyone.
> It was based on the sensible idea that the market place is a better way to settle these things than the battlefield, something even a Marxist should be willing to admit.
The market will tell you that peaceful solution is only better if the war is really expensive. Large power imbalance can easily make war the cheaper option.
In general, any solution that requires people to just go along with it is doomed to failure - someone eventually will figure it's in their benefit to defect. Stable solutions are ones that, by design, align with default human behavior. Like MAD.
Worth also mentioning that there isn't just "war" and "peace", except in international laws. Soldiers on the ground are just the realization of threats of use of force, which themselves are a last-ditch diplomatic technique. There are other such techniques - sanctions, for example, are just as brutal as war. All that is implied in international negotiations, not invoked explicitly unless parties can't reach a reasonable agreement without threats of violence.
> In general, any solution that requires people to just go along with it is doomed to failure - someone eventually will figure it's in their benefit to defect. Stable solutions are ones that, by design, align with default human behavior. Like MAD.
The problem with MAD is that it is human nature not to assume that your own destruction will occur. Which ends up meaning that these gentlemen's agreements like open skies and free inspections are more necessary than you'd intuitively assume. MAD only works if the human on the other side truly believes that he will be destroyed.
Right. There's plenty of such non-obvious aspects of MAD. Counterintuitively to any other matter in the military, it's beneficial to you to let your enemy know the extent of your arsenal (or at least the lower bound), and the technologies used - like you explained above. And the corollary to that is, any defense or recon technology that makes it easier for you to defend against enemy nuclear attack, risks causing a war[0]. Same with offense upgrades that make first-strike weapons significantly better. For the balance to work, destruction must be mutually assured, and all sides must believe that.
--
[0] - Which is why I'm worried about recent developments in detecting underwater objects by gravity or whatnot. A critical part of MAD is nuclear SLBM-carrying submarines. Those subs, lurking in the darkness, are what guarantees that no matter how fast and effective your first strike is, you'll still get glassed in retaliation. Being able to detect those subs breaks MAD.
"> Want to fish the waters around Tuvalu? Radio them and offer more money.
Or I'll just go fishing because what ever Tuvalu can do to me?
"
If you can thug your way into Tuvaluan waters, so can anyone.
At that point you get into a conventional arms race with everyone else who
wants to get into a race for empire in the Pacific.
Much cheaper to agree to buy the fishing rights at auction.
> If you can thug your way into Tuvaluan waters, so can anyone. At that point you get into a conventional arms race with everyone else who wants to get into a race for empire in the Pacific.
Yes, that's history of mankind in a nutshell. That's what nukes put a stop to, at least between the nuclear powers themselves[0].
Ironically, auctions are a non-market solution to the same problem you mention: tragedy of the commons and arms race are fundamentally the same thing; they're solved by having an external entity that's more powerful than the players involved set the rules and enforce them. If you follow the recursion, the buck always stops at threats of violence.
Also worth remembering that for any set of rules you want everyone to follow, the rules tend to benefit the winners, and the losers have a lot of incentive to tear the whole game down.
Ultima ratio regum, and all.
--
[0] - In my books, only nuclear powers are truly sovereign nations; everyone else is at their mercy. For politicians and diplomats, it's not something you bring up in a polite company, but the implied threat and order of things is always there in the background.
...You're assuming the seller doesn't simply take your money then sell them to the next person. Or that anyone else will care to recognize any claim of exclusivity as a result of your purchase. Or that they're for sale at all.
In point of fact, any guarantees against any of the above are typically based on a threat of violence at some level.
You have a nice theory there, would be a shame if something happened to it.
I played this older computer civilization-like space game. In it, there was an hyperaggressive race that always went to war with everybody. They always died out first.
I think conflict will always exist, but violence? I am not sure. I think it comes down to availability of information. People don't like a*holes. Once world becomes a global village, and almost everyone will run a SW on their phone that keeps tabs on other 8 billion people, starting a war will become nearly impossible.
If Rebel Moon and the Demolition Man taught us anything, is that even when 8bn people will be spied upon, there will be some that will object this and fight it tooth and nail.
Because we prefer to attribute big deeds (both positive and negative) to a single person rather than a collective. CEOs (and other "leaders") are good at spinning their good deeds as their achievements, while attributing their bad deeds to something else. This is because are brains are not large enough to track misbehaviour in large, anonymous groups, so we cannot prevent hierarchy forming as a sort of simplified model.
No we cannot. A small percentage of humans are wired with a strong territorial mind and/or a greedy personality. It's in the gene. Some of them eventually become leaders.
A small percentage of humans are wired with a strong territorial mind and/or a greedy personality. A large percentage of humans are wired to view those traits as favourable and attractive and view such persons as charismatic "leaders" to follow and identify with.
My suspicion is, this is in the genes too, and I feel this is almost the bigger part of the problem.
The issue observed over millennia, is that if you get rid of -all- the greedy people in your land, the greedy person in charge of next door sees opportunity.
> My suspicion is, this is in the genes too, and I feel this is almost the bigger part of the problem.
My more specific suspicion is that some of it is that those who can 'go with the flow' are more likely to survive various 'cleansing's over the ages, and perhaps in fact the most 'opportunistic' (i.e. those that are not -quite- megalomania tier) find those opportunities and become that sort of 'old money bottom feeder' type.
> The issue observed over millennia, is that if you get rid of -all- the greedy people in your land, the greedy person in charge of next door sees opportunity.
I don't see why that necessarily follows. What you describe is the ability to defend oneself: If you become so weak and/or pacifist that you can't even employ violence against attackers, then, yes, someone else will take your lunch.
Whether or not the ability of effective defense also requires the drive to attack others out of greed is, I'd say, still an open question, even though lot's of people have their own preferred answers.
I'd argue, evolution iself shows lots of counterexamples: If the assumption would be true, then only predators should have survived until today. But that's not the case: We have lots of herbivores that can defend themselves against predators but aren't ones themselves.
Whether or not this holds for humans is a different question and the current "experimental evidence" isn't exactly encouraging: Attempts to build a different society were either not strong enough to defend themselves (paris commune, spanish republic) or were strong enough but got corrupted once again by the drive for greed and power (christianity, the soviet union).
Still, on the other hand, I think overall, humanity has become less aggressive and the social value of war has changed: It used to be a virtue in itself (as discussed in the OP) and today is mostly outlawed and, if at all, seen only as a valid tool for self-defense. That could at least make one hopeful, even though enough decidedly nondefensive wars are still being waged in the world.
> My more specific suspicion is that some of it is that those who can 'go with the flow' are more likely to survive various 'cleansing's over the ages, and perhaps in fact the most 'opportunistic' (i.e. those that are not -quite- megalomania tier) find those opportunities and become that sort of 'old money bottom feeder' type.
That's the darwinist explanation. I still think there are some specific psychological mechanisms that facillitate those social dynamics (and I'd be interested to know if they have a neurological/genetic origin - which might have evolved due to the selection dynamics you derscribe)
Some of those I can think of:
- Ingroup/outgroup bias:
That one is well known, basically the tendency to sort the people we interact with into two groups - often by completely arbitrary attributes. Our sense of empathy and compassion for both groups is wildly different.
(In reaction to this tendency, I actually find the cheesy "we're all brothers/humans/citizens of Earth/children of God/etc" calls actually quite smart: In essence, they try to trick the ingroup/outgroup mechanism by just defining everyone as the ingroup. It's a simple strategy, but there is no obvious reason why it shouldn't work.)
- "Groupthink" (when interacting with the ingroup)
The tendency to judge decisions differently if you do them as part of a group or for someone else within that group instead of yourself - and it has the unfortunate tendency that it lets you do far more morally questionable and risky decisions without appearing as morally questionable.
A harmless example would be buying christmas presents: There is lots of stuff that you would never buy for yourself, because it would seem like selfish and frivolous spending - but you readily buy the same thing for someone else as a gift, even if the purchase would objectively be just as unnecessary.
A more serious example would be conquests: Everyone understands that just breaking into the house of another person and taking their stuff for yourself is morally repugnant. But if your group violently takes land, it's suddenly justifyable, because it's for the good of the group and not for any individual person.
(Thanks to ingroup/outgroup bias, both sides of the conflict will experience and judge this in a radically different way: The conquering group will be quick to justify and forgive itself while the group that was being attacked will see it as a grave injustice and breach of moral)
- "Sadomasochism" (when interacting with the outgroup)
I don't mean that in a sexual or deviant sense, but just as the property that knowingly causing harm to others or imagining how someone else is being harmed can sometimes feel good - which really is odd if you think about it: We're well aware of how bad harm feels and usually we avoid it at all costs. So, naively, we would think that there is a simple connection in the brain that says "(things that you know causes harm) -> stay away from". But in reality, the relationship is much more complex and depends on the context and who is experiencing the harm.
- "Leader worship"
One example I have seen of this that came to my mind was when a new pope was elected: Some relatively unknown (outside church circles) and colorless cardinal went in; then it was announced that this person would become the new pope; when he showed in public the next time, millions of people around the world already had made an intense emotional connection to that person and were ready to take their word as law - only by announcement of his new office and without actually knowing him.
I think you can see the same psychological effect in many parasocial relationships, bei it for streamers, celebrities, royalty, politicians or religious gurus.
I feel as if those mechanisms form some of the "environment" in which a "dark triad" person could actually gain and realize power. They also form an environment in which millions of people would be ready to do something as paradoxical and self-destructiva as to wage war.
>We strive for peace today with conviction and intensity, for great wars must cease if we are to pursue further the path of progress.
As soon as you stop striving with all your might, you could be screwed.
There's still too many people who are greedy, hateful, and power-seeking. That kind cannot be allowed to gain power and run amok, that's what war is.
Every decade, as more of those who were alive then have passed, the less force remains of the kind that's needed to prevent running amok at large scale.
The standard today for world leaders now, as we have seen, is much lower than needed. The whole of society has declined in lockstep so it can't be perceived as an outlier. There are now such defective chains of command all over the place where those with false leadership ability are most likely to rise through the ranks. And these are ones who would have never been worthy of consideration after World War II, whether it was the winning or losing side rebuilding afterward. Everybody wanted real prosperity, not that fake leadership thing any more. Now too many people can't tell the difference again.
Everyone who went through World War II knew instinctively they had to keep up even more challenging work (non-military instead) under peacetime every year for the rest of their lives, just to avoid another war. Even though "total world peace" had not 100% been achieved, the effort must strongly be concentrated on avoiding another world-destroying war first and foremost while some of the same efforts will help to top off peace on their own.
>And our striving is by no means hopeless.
Speak for your own generation kind sir, I remember what you're talking about, it's difficult to be so sure any more :(
I had a look one time, there are tons of alternatives (in all countries) They all have youtube channels and facebook pages.
Beyond the top of the list they have so few viewers, subscribers, likes and followers that it doesn't account for direct family. It means not even journalists bother to watch a video or read a post let alone read the election program. Usually there is a single news article about a person without much if any coverage of the program.
People love to pretend their circular argument is not a fallacy.
Plenty of people would bother to look at other candidates if they got a lot more attention and a lot more votes. Someone will have to start voting for them before that will happen.
This someone is you.
If you refuse to vote for a candidate that has no chance to win they wont have a chance next time. One extra voice or vote is actually a big deal for them.
The search engines are full of articles about "most significant candidates"
You can help gather signatures, promote write in candidates.
I just imagined all those countless election programs should be loaded into some LLM, make it question the humans and point them to the text that fits them best.
Which suggests that an impulse to territoriality may have had a strong survival benefit during our evolution. It may still be correlated with creating more viable zygotes, it isn't obvious to me either way. Likely there's a sweet spot and both too much and too little reduces reproductive fitness.
Luckily, such innate drive and desire to dominate can be funnelled into something more productive and less detrimental to others.
Instead of becoming a president and starting wars of aggression, why not try sports? How about becoming an academic, an expert in some esoteric field, and spend your days acquiring intellectual territory and terrorising your intellectual opponents?
Or use your greed to start a business that somehow ends up benefiting us all even whilst making you richer than all of us.
Por que no los dos? Plug into the MIC, get into politics, get into constant "police actions", scratch other's politician's backs, and make bank.
War is good business. Political power is absolutely something worth being bought/sought. Long as that is the case, the power hungry gonna seek power to wield, and they'll wield it to to their own ends; and realistically, once they're locked in as having it, it isn't for you or anyone else ultimately.
Being good at athletics requires specific good genetics.
> acquiring intellectual territory
Analytical intellect is not a valued trait in the current society. It will not increase your status in most cases. It actively works against you in certain social structures. Unless your intellectual territory grants you significant material benefits, there's no use out of it.
Not feeling threatened is the keyword. Modern society has many complacency triggers. Dangerous situation, drive away. Feel unsafe, call police. Injured physically or spiritually, seek compensation through the law. The interesting question is what happens when these safety systems become stagnant and less responsive
Especially when other social norms 'get in the way'.
Someone that actually hired me at a past job, at her next job wound up hiring someone who performed a very intentional set of revenge porn acts on me. [0]
Of course, I dare not speak up on social media, as it would impact my ability to find a job in the future. At 'best' I would be a drama magnet, at worst claims could be made and it would be a mud-slinging fest.
I still have siblings that dislike when I speak up about how at my first high school, a starting basketball player slammed my head into a locker a half dozen times, I was told afterwards that I was not allowed to go to the school nurse, with no regard given for anything I slurred post-concussion... and that my parents didn't do anything about the injustice because it was a catholic school and mum was so catholic she dressed like a nun.
So, I just have to let it sit.
And it all works out, because Carhartt is shit now anyway.
[0] - Which gives me the dubious claim of having someone blocking me on LinkedIn, lmao.
Helps when you're willing to bank Nazis gold while the rest of the continent was being conquered or trying to resist. Also helps to have US led NATO provide cover against the Soviets.
They also banked plenty of English gold too :-) That's what "neutrality" means; you are not neutral if you refuse to do business with one of the warring parties.
The evidence points to an uninterrupted stream of human violence throughout all history. Meanwhile, you speculate --without basis-- that this will be solved via education, positing some pedagogical or cultural breakthrough that somehow has evaded humanity for all of its existence. What do you think that will be?
There is a particular amount of hubris in your statement that reeks of ignorance. Violence is an innate behavior of all mammals. We can choose to do it less, but it will always be an option. Take people that get brain damage and are otherwise functional but have issues with violence.
You’re not banning anything. You’re proposing a total monopoly on effective weaponry for this joint army.
And requiring global controls on 3D printers, CNC machines, any pressure bearing metal, and a range of chemistry and fertilizers.
All this after a door to door search for weapons and ammunition. What army exactly is going to be kicking down my door to confiscate these at gunpoint?
> A body like interpol would investigate the entire world, to surveil if anybody is trying to make firearms.
And that body would need firearms.
Firearms aren't the problem. It's states because states use firearms to get resources with which to conduct war. But states are unavoidable because without states we'd have caudillos -- warlords, heads of tiny states that will in due time coalesce into large states, and we're back at square one.
A single world state wouldn't be a solution for the same reason that larger states have at times fallen apart into smaller states: there will be resentments and tyranny. Indeed, a single world state would have to be tyrannical just in order to stay together, and its government would be highly non-representative for natural reasons, namely that having it be highly-representative would mean it having -impractically- hundreds of thousands of representatives.
You're not the first to think that extreme violence could bring peace, but it's an illusion. Huge majorities of humans must know internal peace and have tremendous wisdom for us to enjoy peace on Earth.
And these guys who disarm people will read lots of classic literature to stay noble, of course.
A few years of having the greatest power on earth turns 99% of otherwise good men into non-humans. That’s just the fact of life, explained thousands of times throughout history. That’s why you have to elect a new guy every few years, cause the old one starts to lose it. Try removing him if his gang is the only gang with firearms.
I live in a country with barely any gun ownership and I feel safe. I feel no need to own a gun, and neither does anyone I know. Are you sure this is not your cultural bias speaking?
That doesn't really matter, because you're taking agency away from people. You say that you know better and everyone should be at the mercy of the system.
Neither will anything else. Ultimately it's your life and you're the only one that's going to have to defend yourself at a random time. If a crime is committed against you then you're just a statistic for the government. Nothing more.
It's been tried in the past, and the disarmed populace is often killed by their own government or invaded and displaced via
demographic changes that the compromised/paid off government leaders allow.
After Interpol's surveillance determined that someone was illegally making firearms, what would happen next? Presumably some sort of enforcement to stop them? How would that enforcement be conducted?
What happens when someone gets to head Interpol and decides they want to become a dictator? And worse, everyone else in Interpol agrees that they should be dictator?
i have a really small machine shop and some scrap steel. i could make a functional but probably unsafe gun, and with some practice make useful weapons. are you going to audit all the use of carbide cutting inserts in the world? make sure you understand where every last pound of steel goes?
the genie left that bottle more than a hundred years ago
To ensure the natural advantage that strong people have over weak people, of course. Nature has ordained that the strong should subjugate the weak, and the equalizing force of firearms is thus an afront to nature, and is not to be tolerated!
Firearms grant their owners the right to say "No".
Tyrants hate that.
Before firearms the world was mostly ruled by "nobles" (i.e., those who had extorted enough from the peasants to afford weapons and armor, and had the free time for the required years of training).
Now, it isn't. That didn't happen because the "nobles" suddenly decided to turn into nice guys.
physical strength, dexterity, skill, and combat training still make a hell of a difference in a gunfight. A gun only makes a physically weak person strong against someone without a gun.
A small child could kill hundreds of people with a single gun (depending on the type). Firearms (including bombs) are force multipliers far beyond any bow or spear.
What an odd framing. Large scale war should always be avoided. That's a problem regardless of personal gun ownership. And personal guns won't keep governments any more responsive to the people, because governments need enough arms to defeat country-sized adversaries anyway.
Small scale 'war' should also be avoided. Guns make personal conflicts much more deadly.
When a child is born there is nothing remotely resembling large scale warfare inscribed in its genes and the discretional cultural path that must be travelled before such detrimental collective phenomena come to be seen as innate and inevitable is enormous.
Our predicament in relation to our war "habit" is similar to many other challenges we are facing: malignant social patterns that got established before a succession of dramatic technological recolutions are now mutating into existential risks.
It is anybody's guess how things will play out. Cultural evolution is our superpower but we are not exactly in control of it. We still in a transition zone where old moralities feel secure in their "it was ever thus" denial.
It is conceivable that we'll outgrow this phase and survive. A pacified humanity is not utopic, its the only solution to a long term sustainable existence. We thus might work backwards from what we know is the only meaningful endgame and see what it takes to get there.
Even purely instinct based animals, like chimps amd lions, engage in war between groups. A human child is still a primate, and no ammount of cultural bs will make your assumption of purity at birth a reality. Life is, in all it's forms, a war between organisms to see who can get more resources. Life is war, unfortunately.
You seem to be confusing traits of individual competition (and even physical violence) with large scale organized war phenomena among increasingly larger and technologically advanced groups.
The logic that says that the latter follows from the former is simply not there. Social organization varies enormously in time and space and it takes a lot of "cultural bs" to get to a society that celebrates organized war and considers it inevitable.
Your argument is that historical patterns of past conditions have to repeat for ever even when these conditions go extinct or get modified dramatically?
What is definitely part of inate individual behavior is competitiveness and occasional propensity for physical violence. The road from this simple trait to organize millions (and now billions) of individuals to apply lethal, technologically assisted force on millions of other individuals is long.
Modern organized war is business, politics, ideology and none of that is biology.
Three billion human lives ended on August 29, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the Machines
But, those fretting about the necessity of war need not have worried, as subsequent events proved. War between nuclear powers doesn't happen any more, but instead we've had endless proxy wars. Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine....