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Can men live without war? (1956)

theatlantic.com

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Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#171

Post by lazide »

Duwensatzaj wrote: post #80
jokoon wrote: 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…

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?

And who is going to ensure they give up their guns?

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#172

Post by lazide »

notfish wrote: post #117
apantel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’d just prefer the survival rate not drop to zero for everyone at the same time.

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.

We’d more likely end up with an extra mutation or two, similar to the Moties [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God's_Eye] and some solid species level PTSD from the whole mess.

Why do you think the doomsday prepper genes haven’t been bred out yet? I’m guessing because sometimes, they were the only ones left standing!

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#173

Post by dragontamer »

The_Colonel wrote: post #130
blub wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many if not all the close calls in the past were misunderstandings or tensions spiraling out of control. The madman with nukes is a trope. This is also why online commenters thinking that the Ukraine war will not go nuclear are misguided.

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 th…

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.

--------

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.

------

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.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#174

Post by Der_Einzige »

openasocket wrote: post #26
rhelz wrote: 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....

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. EDIT: also the Sino-soviet war of 1969

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.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#175

Post by TeMPOraL »

ocschwar wrote: post #142
TeMPOraL wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

"> 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.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#176

Post by hollerith »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #174
openasocket wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. EDIT: also the Sino-soviet war of 1969

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.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#177

Post by openasocket »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #174
openasocket wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. EDIT: also the Sino-soviet war of 1969

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.

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.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#178

Post by apantel »

telesilla wrote: post #167
lucubratory wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've watched enough sci-fi set in space to know that there's always something for the ruling powers to find scarce enough to start wars over..

Also something always goes wrong.

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#179

Post by 082349872349872 »

bsnsxd wrote: post #153
wolpoli wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> War between nuclear powers doesn't happen any more That might change as more nations acquire nuclear weapons. Or maybe the pathway to world peace is to give every country nukes.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Can men live without war? (1956)

#180

Post by blub »

The_Colonel wrote: post #130
blub wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many if not all the close calls in the past were misunderstandings or tensions spiraling out of control. The madman with nukes is a trope. This is also why online commenters thinking that the Ukraine war will not go nuclear are misguided.

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 th…

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.
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