171–180 of 500 posts
Surely this is a defensive measure against the next incident, rather than a response to this one?
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> Game theory is useless if you don't understand the interests of all the relevant players in a polity and even in an authoritarian regime like Russia or Saudi Arabia there are a LOT of them. Game theory can be applied to infer interests when behavior and context are known as well as to predict behavior when interests and context are known (it can also be used to infer hidden elements of context when interests and be…
That's just ivory tower wishful thinking.
Something I'm unsure about is what does and doesn't trigger wars. Russian jets downed a US drone over the black sea in March 2023, I thought for sure there'd be a commensurate US military response. But there didn't appear to be one. Was it because no human was aboard the drone (so no response was justified), from fear or escalation, or something else? In any case, if a large cargo ship were sunk, would the US or othe…
I'm thinking that if the same thing happened in the days of the British Empire, there would be a lot of high velocity response on the way from the fine battleships of of her/his majesty battleships. Sure, showing that you can shoot most of the missiles down or ignoring the other party might actually be the right thing in the end. But it still seems wrong when someone just starts shooting on ships on one of the main g…
The Houthis in this case are closer to kids throwing rocks at cars than a viable military force. Bringing the SWAT team to rain terror on the whole neighborhood is, as you say, likely not the best course of action.
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That's just ivory tower wishful thinking.
Its no more ivory tower wishful thinking for the other applications than for predicting behavior; they are all idealized in that one never has certain knowledge in any of everything relevant in any of the dimensions.
Which is why it's particularly useless for geopolitics. It's literally the furthest you can get from "idealized" anything - far more so than plain sociology, economics, or psychology. It's the global sum of all of the most unpredictable traits of humanity. It's one of the messiest human pursuits and always has been.
It's a nice "cows are spherical" approximation to write papers about but game theory really ain't that great at predicting basic human behavior either. Except like with evolutionary biology you can always come up with a "just-so" game theoretic story that sounds right but has no real predictive ability.
Something I'm unsure about is what does and doesn't trigger wars. Russian jets downed a US drone over the black sea in March 2023, I thought for sure there'd be a commensurate US military response. But there didn't appear to be one. Was it because no human was aboard the drone (so no response was justified), from fear or escalation, or something else? In any case, if a large cargo ship were sunk, would the US or othe…
It's time to read some Clausewitz. That book outlines the philosophy of how most western states think about war. The short version I would say is that war is a tool of politics, so if there is no political goal, there will be no war, regardless of how bad the supposed Causus Belli is. Shooting down a drone usually doesn't do it partly because of the political implications: it would be deeply unpopular to put "boots o…
Worth noting is that Clausewitz lived in a world where wars were events that were declared between states.
Today a major difference is insurgency/counterinsurgency. And our state likes to wage wars without formal declaration. Not to mention its wars against abstract concepts instead of foreign states.
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That might be a necessary condition, but definitely not a sufficient one to be considered a superpower. Simple thought experiment, "completely erasing" the US as you suggest would render the Earth unpleasant to live on, for a while, for all inhabitants.
yes, that's why they remain a superpower. If you have the ability to make life on earth extremely unpleasant for all of humanity, that's super power status. Even just having nuclear weapons isn't enough for that- you need large numbers of fusion bombs -- which Russia has, and the US has, and no one else does.
How much longer can this go on? It seems like there are so many parties whose economic interests all align that this would just be dealt with swiftly and decisively. Am I just naive? Is there no reasonably straightforward way to stop the Houthis? Wouldn't much of Europe, Saudi Arabia and others be very interested in ending this as quickly as possible?
If there is anything the wars in Afghanistan, against Isis and especially against Ukraine has thought me, it is that the answer to that question is always a lot longer than we like.
Something I'm unsure about is what does and doesn't trigger wars. Russian jets downed a US drone over the black sea in March 2023, I thought for sure there'd be a commensurate US military response. But there didn't appear to be one. Was it because no human was aboard the drone (so no response was justified), from fear or escalation, or something else? In any case, if a large cargo ship were sunk, would the US or othe…
It's time to read some Clausewitz. That book outlines the philosophy of how most western states think about war. The short version I would say is that war is a tool of politics, so if there is no political goal, there will be no war, regardless of how bad the supposed Causus Belli is. Shooting down a drone usually doesn't do it partly because of the political implications: it would be deeply unpopular to put "boots o…
Supposedly there are political implications for not responding to the shooting down the drone too. How are those taken into account I wander?
It seems that there is a deep believe in the US that if they wouldn’t “provoke” then russia would not attack as it would not have a reason to do it.
While I understand the logic it is still a very serious and dangerous miscalculation because “provocation” happens within russian head independently of the reality. russia can simply claim it was provoked/attacked by NATO so I really do not understand how “trying not to escalate to avoid provoking” works as deterrence.
From what I observed it doesn’t and only gives green light message to russian aggression and this could be hardly seen as a desirable political goal for US as I understand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there is a difference between how wars are "sold" to voters and why nations actually go to war.
Yes, good point. But let's not overestimate leaders' deep strategic thinking or rationality; they can be mislead and emotional too.
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MH17 was shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile, killing all 298 p.o.b. with no consequences for Russia. Russia has flown Bear nuclear-capable bombers over the UK (actually over land), with no consequences [1]. Russia, Iran, and North Korea all trade arms with each other and supply missiles, drones, and ammunition to the Houthi. Russia invaded Ukraine and deploy weapons from the above "axis" countries. I don't…
> MH17 was shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile, killing all 298 p.o.b. with no consequences for Russia I don’t think this is a good example, given that the act is widely considered to be a mistake. The US shot down IR655, Soviets KL007, Ukrainians S7-1812, Iranians PS752 ... it happens. MH17 is egregious (as was KL007) for a refusal to admit blame, but hardly a casus belli, despite the tragedy.