41–50 of 131 posts
paywall! "Once you've registered, you can read up to three articles each week." pretty sure I've not been to economist.com in a while. :/
Thankfully, I don't see WWIII starting anytime soon... But I've always strongly thought the "globalisation will make war unthinkable" argument is naive. We're tribal creatures -Nationalism trumps economic interest at the end of the day. History shows this to be true. As the author hinted at - Russia, Germany, Britain, Belgium, and France were each other's biggest trading partners - by far! Heck, a Belgium company bui…
>Nationalism trumps economic interest at the end of the day. History shows this to be true. I interpret history as "nationalism used to trump economic interests". A lot of has changed since. Most countries are representative democracies, and it's more difficult for leaders to go into a war. As for the tribal argument, I think the "nation state" is dying. Tribes are subcultures these days[1]. The internet connects me…
I agree representative democracies are far less likely to go to war. I also don't think war is likely anytime in the present era. On the other hand, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are not representative democracies. They represent a fair portion of earth's landmass, population, and potential destructive power. I'd say the trend towards democracy has already peaked, and authoritarian governments are on the rise.
>As for the tribal argument, I think the "nation state" is dying.
I think we have very different worldviews on this subject, so a debate isn't going to be productive. But from where I'm coming from, it's easy to be idealistic when we're living in a golden age of peace and prosperity (despite the great recession). I'm more pessimistic about humanity in times of scarcity, disasters, and conflict.
> There's also the argument that the world is more united these days (particularly thanks to the European Union and somewhat because of United Nations).
I truly hope post-WWII institutions like these continue to have force for as long as possible. I think the world is safe from major war as long as this continues. But eventually, be it 50 years or 500 hundred years, they will fall.
Thankfully, I don't see WWIII starting anytime soon... But I've always strongly thought the "globalisation will make war unthinkable" argument is naive. We're tribal creatures -Nationalism trumps economic interest at the end of the day. History shows this to be true. As the author hinted at - Russia, Germany, Britain, Belgium, and France were each other's biggest trading partners - by far! Heck, a Belgium company bui…
Drop the Naturalistic Fallacy, please, and the.... damn.
Is there some actual name for the particular fallacy of predictive sociology being invoked when someone says, "People will do X because it's human nature to do X!"?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if you define dictatorship as someone the US doesn't like and democracy as someone the US likes. There's no evidence that the government of north vietnam was worse than the organized crime cartel the US backed in the south (that had monks immolating themselves in the streets in protest against them). The US also backed Saddam Hussein against Iran, overthrew a left-wing but democratically elected government in Ch…
@bertb Communism isn't worse than anything no matter how bad. It's hard to determine how bad some of the less nasty communist regimes such as Cuba and Vietnam would have been without massive economic sanctions from the US. (Both Cuba and Vietnam wanted to be US allies.) There are several cases among my examples of the US taking action against real democracies. Some references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_B…
I asked for examples after the cold war (stupid of me to feed the trolls).
You don't have anything relevant here either, so you list cases that are 40+ years old...
This is a common pattern -- you can excuse anything (including burning food on the stove) with that a bad dictator had common interests with USA 50+ years ago...
It is seriously funny when left wingers blame that all communist countries are dictators on USA.
As I noted already, the non-communist dictators in that part of the world are gone since a long time. So Batiste would almost certainly be gone too. If Cuba implemented human rights, left governments in West Europe would take care of them.
>>Communism isn't worse than anything no matter how bad.
Oh my, I hope you are trolling.
I've seen this before. If I e.g. mention millions of dead repeatedly, you will do a "no true scotsman" variant. Or some more strange logic. I know the QED anyway, all the dead are USAs fault...
Enough.
Thankfully, I don't see WWIII starting anytime soon... But I've always strongly thought the "globalisation will make war unthinkable" argument is naive. We're tribal creatures -Nationalism trumps economic interest at the end of the day. History shows this to be true. As the author hinted at - Russia, Germany, Britain, Belgium, and France were each other's biggest trading partners - by far! Heck, a Belgium company bui…
Interesting perspective. Agree that national interests ultimately trump economic interests. At the same time, what would advance the discussion even more is data on how critical international trade was/is to each country. For instance, what % of GDP for pre-WWI Germany came from beyond its borders vs. present-day China. Globalization may not prevent war, but perhaps it's possible that more intertwined relationships -…
I also agree that deeper cultural understanding can only help, not hurt. I particularly wish all 7 billion of us had the opportunity to spend a year traveling the globe and live with different peoples.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Germany had overseas colonies" Yeah like 3 small states in Africa almost by accident. To compare to a "real" colonial empire take a look at the Spanish empire at peak, or the British empire around WWI, or the French colonial empire, or the Russian empire, the Dutch empire... Needs a sense of scale. The Russian Empire around 1900 was the 3rd largest empire in history, something like 1/8th of a billion people. German…
Yes, a point you did not make and which I did not contradict. Indeed, the same applies to several other European "powers". Also some European nations had quite extensive overseas colonies while not really being military powers (e.g. Belgium and Holland). For that matter. Russia had no colonies that I know of.
There are some name game disagreements where Germany wanted to pretend to be in the colonialism game despite a totally laughable achievement level (a hundred years ago it was considered cool, not like now at all) and Russia ran the provinces of its empire much like Britain ran its colonies, other than the ocean in the middle, look at Finland for an example. Or the name game that modern world trade is not called colonialism.
So the argument that we can't have a WW3 because we have world trade, is incorrect because at WW1 time they had almost the same thing but called it colonialism and everyone but Germany was heavily into it and that didn't help prevent war very much (and yes yes OK OK Germany achieved the most pitiful level of colonialism of all the European powers, not none at all, but it rounded to zero compared to every other European power)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Nationalism trumps economic interest at the end of the day. History shows this to be true. I interpret history as "nationalism used to trump economic interests". A lot of has changed since. Most countries are representative democracies, and it's more difficult for leaders to go into a war. As for the tribal argument, I think the "nation state" is dying. Tribes are subcultures these days[1]. The internet connects me…
>Most countries are representative democracies, and it's more difficult for leaders to go into a war. I agree representative democracies are far less likely to go to war. I also don't think war is likely anytime in the present era. On the other hand, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are not representative democracies. They represent a fair portion of earth's landmass, population, and potential destructive power.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if you define dictatorship as someone the US doesn't like and democracy as someone the US likes. There's no evidence that the government of north vietnam was worse than the organized crime cartel the US backed in the south (that had monks immolating themselves in the streets in protest against them). The US also backed Saddam Hussein against Iran, overthrew a left-wing but democratically elected government in Ch…
@bertb Communism isn't worse than anything no matter how bad. It's hard to determine how bad some of the less nasty communist regimes such as Cuba and Vietnam would have been without massive economic sanctions from the US. (Both Cuba and Vietnam wanted to be US allies.) There are several cases among my examples of the US taking action against real democracies. Some references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_B…
Hahahahaha. Have you taken a good, long look at the U.S. recently (not via U.S. state-propoganda-driven media)?