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Can men live without war? (1956)

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Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#51
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.

But we might also implode before we solve that.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#52
post #23

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 wha…

1945 gave us a way out of this equilibrium. 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 K…

That doesn't make sense.

> 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.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#53

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 successi…

Your ancestors are the ones that won wars in the past. Inasmuch as warfare can be "inscribed" in genes, it definitely is.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#54
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 riche…

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.

Only a matter of time until semi-autonomous hunter killer drones are perfected for mass deployment.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#55

The whole thing is assuming that men drive progress and war drives progress, and both of those things are debatable.

> 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.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#57
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> War between nuclear powers doesn't happen any more It didn't happen yet, but there are no is reasons for nuclear war to be avoided indefinitely.

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.

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#58
post #23

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 wha…

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 riche…

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.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#59
post #14

In an ideal future, firearms would be banned worldwide. A body like interpol would investigate the entire world, to surveil if anybody is trying to make firearms. People would make bows and spears, but it would be more difficult to conduct war. It would not make war and violence impossible, but it would certainly be a better world. EDIT: lots of pedants: obviously there would be an joint army answering to an internat…

Why would they make bows and spears, but not guns? That seems a fairly arbitrary technological line to draw.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#60
post #12

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....

half of those are not proxy wars in any way shape or form.

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.

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