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Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

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Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#161

Post by tareqak »

mistermann wrote: post #139
kiliancs wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only nationalism. Current conflicts are rooted in the same prejudices as a hundred years ago. The root cause (this idea that somehow my nation/religion/race/etc is superior) hasn't been resolved, only more or less patched, and thus these conflicts are bound to reappear and escalate sooner or later until we recognize that that despite the valuable diversity humanity is essentially one and align the political and e…

> Not only nationalism. Current conflicts are rooted in the same prejudices as a hundred years ago. The root cause (this idea that somehow my nation/religion/race/etc is superior) Honest question: is it possible in your opinion for someone to not believe "my nation/religion/race/etc is superior" yet still be opposed to globalism? To me, this is what nationalism means, international cooperation while unequivocally mai…

I don't see how nationalism includes international cooperation. At best, it seems to me that international cooperation is a choice a nationalist might consider amongst protectionism, isolationism, imperialism/colonialism, and outright xenophobia.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#162

Post by stareatgoats »

umvi wrote: post #140
stareatgoats wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand MAD. But "nearly impossible" is not impossible (think not only nuclear, but the whole arsenal of modern weapons, including computerized, chemical, biological etc). The problem is not actual first-strike capability though, it is perceived such, be it one's own or the enemy's.

The whole premise of submarine nuclear strikes is that: A single submarine cannot be trivially located - the ocean is too deep and vast. If countries working together can't find the wreckage of a single crashed airplane in a generally known location, how do you expect them to find dozens of cloaked subs in unknown locations each holding hundreds of nuclear warheads? Even assuming you wipe out 100% of the continental…

I find it interesting that your examples involve the case where the US is under attack. Let's turn it round: do you find it equally implausible that the US would not believe they have a capacity to thwart the second-strike capacity of say, North Korea? I'm not saying this is more realistic, I'm saying it is this perception of first-strike capability that is dangerous, and any country can believe themselves to be invincible, not just the US.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#163

Post by spiritcat »

geggam wrote: post #109
hrktb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another great war could mean at least one country preparing for it and building weapons in advance. As of now the US have the greatest army, but if let’s say China were to prepare for it for enough time in a somewhat stealthy way, couldn’t it bring the USA into a long and dirty foght ?

The US has with no doubt the best ground on the planet to defend themselves with. Isolated by two large oceans and bordered by "mostly" friendly nations Force extended requires significant amplification. So for China to impact us in a meaningful way they would have to somehow sneak a force large enough to damage across a pretty wide open space, then maintain that logistically. Ditto for the RU That said once in the U…

China/US are probably pretty close to a MAD situation. How many minutes do we have to decide if an oncoming Chinese missile attack is nuclear or conventional these days? And vice-versa. Fun fun.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#164

Post by bsder »

pvaldes wrote: post #143
lozaning wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what is absolutely undisputed though? America's love for guns. There are 120 guns in the US for every 100 people. American civilians own 393 million guns, both legally and otherwise, out of a worldwide total of 857 million firearms [1]. Good luck occupying that. Also, FWIW under every circumstance that isn't some kind of military invasion phantasy porn I generally look less positively on our relationship wit…

> Good luck occupying that. The problem is that, even with 393 millions of guns, USA can't stop recurrent fireforests year after year. And this is only an example. Would be naive to think that, as people have a pistol, can't be killed remotely from a million Km of distance. The idea of a foreign army marching in a country and killing people one by one like stormtroopers, is very outdated. And of course you can always…

> The problem is that, even with 393 millions of guns, USA can't stop recurrent fireforests year after year.

Not exactly true.

The problem is that nobody wants to pay the money to do so--especially the people who live in those areas.

In addition, you only get to burn those forests once. After that, they are no longer a threat because there is no fuel.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#165

Post by ImprovedSilence »

jeffdavis wrote: post #29

What's the point of war in the modern world? Gain land/people? If there's a thriving economy there, war will probably change that quickly. If there's no thriving economy, what's the point? You could try to exploit the people/resources there, but the profits in that seem (at least compared to a world power) pretty thin. Unskilled labor and unimproved land are just not worth what they used to be. Specific resources mig…

Less bloody perhaps by use of less kinetic weapons directly against people, but the scary part of war is famine for the populace. Just look at Yemen, I heard 100,000 died in the past few years there, basically just because Saudi Arabia has them under siege in their proxy war with Iran. The biggest killer in Russia in WWII was famine. When the supply chain or a weak link in our technology breaks (or is broken) death tolls rise scarily fast.

also the point of war is simply about power, or to make the other nation/state/population submit to your demands, and the actions of leaders and their path towards war are not always transparent or easy to spot from a rational observers point of view. I saw this the other day (actually came across it here on HN) and really enjoyed the perspective it puts on power and what people incentives drive those that have it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#166

Post by bsder »

kobrad wrote: post #42
beachy wrote: post #37

I believe that the likeliest cause of another Great War is not to save the planet from dictators, but from environmental destruction. At some stage, a consensus must build for stopping our destruction of the climate. (Well perhaps it won't, but in that case we're doomed, so there's little point in evaluating that path). At that point, some countries (presumably rich ones) will have cleaned their own houses emissions-…

I expect some incredibly stupid reason. Post-brexit UK tries to nuke somewhere in the EU, or the USA decides we need to get Jesus here faster, or actually anything on this spectrum of insanity. Right now it seems like science fiction that anybody will try doing anything about the climate. So, in reality we'll probably see a failing ecosystem and the strongest military killing the rest of us.

> I expect some incredibly stupid reason.

China needing to get rid of a couple million excess men is the thing that scares me most.

I could see China throwing a couple million men into a meat grinder with India. That could easily do enough damage to India to provoke a nuclear response.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#167

Post by projektfu »

lozaning wrote: post #78
us-throw1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really sure that the US is undisputed in those 4 categories? A list of obvious weaknesses: * The US economy and industrial power is dependent on IT and brittle supply chains. Nobody knows how much the cyber infrastructure holding this up is already compromised. * Russian S-400s can already deny air superiority to Israeli planes, which are not far behind US planes. * How does the US have space superiority when…

You know what is absolutely undisputed though? America's love for guns. There are 120 guns in the US for every 100 people. American civilians own 393 million guns, both legally and otherwise, out of a worldwide total of 857 million firearms [1]. Good luck occupying that. Also, FWIW under every circumstance that isn't some kind of military invasion phantasy porn I generally look less positively on our relationship wit…

It seems much more likely to me that a crafty foreign power would convince the "real" Americans to fight against the "phony" Americans, whomever they may be. I believe part of the Soviet strategy was to have Americans take arms against their own government. I feel that part of the modern Russian strategy is to get Americans to be willing take arms against their neighbors. Perhaps there are other players as well who haven't made as much of a splash as the Russians in our polity.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#168

Post by Fellshard »

jeffdavis wrote: post #29

What's the point of war in the modern world? Gain land/people? If there's a thriving economy there, war will probably change that quickly. If there's no thriving economy, what's the point? You could try to exploit the people/resources there, but the profits in that seem (at least compared to a world power) pretty thin. Unskilled labor and unimproved land are just not worth what they used to be. Specific resources mig…

War of worldviews.

If your worldview is grounded in the apocalyptic - eg. incoming ecological disaster - you will get people who are willing to wage war if they are persuaded it is preventable and certain nations are impeding it. That's just one example; militant theocracy would be another worldview driven towards war, as well.

In general, it's mindshare that I could see driving more war, a push to add more people under the overall worldview of a nation or coalition, similar to what we saw under the Soviet Union.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#169

Post by learc83 »

zaru27 wrote: post #127
learc83 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and they continue growing at the same rate, That's what I mean by the problem with extrapolation. There is absolutely no reason to think that they will continue growing at the same rate. The likely scenario based on all the historical evidence we have is that they won't. Their GDP growth rate has been declining since 2010, there's no reason to assume that they'll be able to stop it. The most likely scenario is that…

By the same token, there's no reason to think they'll fall anywhere near or under 5% in the near future. They have 1.5 billion people with a higher average IQ than the US with a strong educational culture, increasing economic opportunity with a lot of i's to dot in various industries, their per capita is still a fraction of that of a developed company, and there are another 1000 reasons to paint a fuller picture beyo…

>By the same token, there's no reason to think they'll fall anywhere near or under 5% in the near future.

Why? It's fallen 6 points since 2010. The OECD long term forecast puts it at 5% in just 2 years, and predicts it will drop down to around 3% within 10 years. This is without any serious problems.

These numbers are also based on official GDP estimates, and there are studies that estimate that China's GDP is 30% lower than reported due to padding at the local and national level.

>They have 1.5 billion people

Their official population count is 1.386 billion, rounding up to 1.5 seems a bit much. And we don't even know if that is true. There are reports that they've overestimated their population by around 100 million people.

>with a higher average IQ than the US

We can't even remove all of the cultural biases to make accurate comparisons between native English speakers within the US. There's no way we are going to be able to accurately compare countries as different as the US and China. Not to mention sample differences, suppressed scores from the children of migrant workers etc...

>strong educational culture

And many parts of that educational culture have been criticized. Regardless this is a completely subjective metric that isn't worth comparing.

>really didn't have anything revolutionary to offer

I'm not sure I know what to make of this one.

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/new-study-shin...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/business/china-gdp-econom...

https://qz.com/887709/chinas-liaoning-province-admitted-that...

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-growth-annual

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/20...

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#170

Post by chokolad »

tomohawk wrote: post #148

The thing about war is that at some point, the conditions line up where it becomes seen as a solution (if not the only solution), and its not easy to see the point at which that will occur ahead of time. Will China's big sea grab start a war? So far, they've been able to smother any of their neighbor's push back, and have just ignored any international rulings against them. What about when they invade Taiwan, which t…

Can you please elaborate on Russia's aggression in Syria? Did they annex something there? Tried to depose a government maybe ?
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