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If you want peace, study war

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Re: If you want peace, study war

#171

Post by yaster »

phoinix wrote: post #141

The truth of the matter is that all wars are the result of economic incentives. As a Greek i can assure you that almost all the wars of Greece to everyone else, and of Romans, were the result of gaining profit. Just like slavery stopped because of education, and educated capitalists with well trained human workers amount to thousand of times more wealth than any amount of slaves, the same holds for wars. We live in a…

This is a pretty reductionist view of war. You can't reasonably deny the importance of economic factors, but attributing all of war to economics is a very opinionated view and I would argue pretty specific to a particular academic school of thought. I'm reminded of Stringer Bell in "The Wire," trying to use his business school lessons to evaluate every part of the drug trade. Avon stops him mid-sentence and says, "String, this ain't about your business class. This ain't that part of it. It's that other thing." Sometimes that's true of war, too.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#172

Post by scarmig »

ygjb wrote: post #170
SllX wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but when the leader is a politician, he has skin in a different game: getting re-elected. It doesn’t stop them from going to war, but it makes it less likely.

That is straight up at odds with American (or Canadian, or for the most part, UK) history. In the United States Trump is the first "war-time" president to blow re-election during an active war, and his term was punctuated by attempts at troop draw down, coupled with inflammatory rhetoric towards Iran when he was low in polls. Engaging in something that can be spun as a just war is a viable re-election tactic.

I'm not sure I'd count Trump as a wartime President, though perhaps that's a result of appallingly low standards for what counts as peace.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#173

Post by qsort »

busterarm wrote: post #131
toopok4k3 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But nationalistic drive has everything in common with how wars start.

Nationalistic drive is more a symptom than anything. Trade imbalance is responsible for nearly 100% of wars. It is always about backing a nation into a corner where their status quo is untenable. And despite nationalism being part of the fuel of WWII, trade imbalance was both the biggest log and the match.

Is there any evidence whatsoever to this claim? France, UK, US, Canada all have huge chronic trade deficits.

Weimar Republic's economic problems were mostly related to hyperinflation caused by their unsustainable debt, not sure how you're factoring trade deficits into that.

I agree nationalism is just an excuse like any other, but it's a remarkably good one: it's a cancerous mind virus that makes solving problems impossible, everyone is too busy calling everyone else unpatriotic or something.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#174

Post by vinceguidry »

roenxi wrote: post #14

The scary thing for me about wars is that the soldiers aren't the ones making the decisions. Some group of people in comfortable offices look at a map, says "yeah, I think this option is more favourable to us than peace". Then a war happens. It is all about incentives and capabilities. One of the lessons from being a Stallman watcher for many years - people are profoundly evidence based . If there hasn't been a war i…

Any modern military defers field-level decision making to soldiers in the field. It’s become an absolute necessity as the post WW2 diplomatic regime put in requirements for individual soldiers to refuse illegal orders and making them personally liable for war crimes.

Individual soldiers don’t plan wars, obviously they don’t have a high enough level view to do that adequately. So much of war planning is logistics and not tactics or strategy. The idea is to get the troops there, make sure they have enough weapons and ammo, give them their objectives, then let field commanders do their jobs.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#175

Post by drummojg »

Uberphallus wrote: post #35
skinkestek wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father would drill that into me as a kid. That and the fact that war is not like in books or movies: it is ugly and best avoided.

Also interesting how that's the approach of Krav Maga as martial art. The 1st rule is, run if you can. The 2nd rule is, finish the fight ASAP and run. The rest derives from those two rules.

I was taught the same through Shotokan Karate. The credo spoken at every training (called "Dojo Kun") starts with "Seek perfection of character" and ends with "Refrain from violent behavior."

Re: If you want peace, study war

#176

Post by vagrantJin »

jjk166 wrote: post #152
vagrantJin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my colorful language and preaching. > the U.S. Navy has guaranteed free navigation The sea has never belonged to anyone but this statement implies that the US has ownership rights with regards to ocean usage that they now let others use at their whim. The only word I can use to describe that is hubris

The fact that the sea does not belog to anyone is exactly why the US guarantees free navigation. If someone tries to seize your property in a nation's territory, you can go to that nation's government for restitution. They'll police their territory and prevent would-be thieves or other bad actors. At the very least, you can bring a suit against the bad actor and the government will force them to comply with the court…

Yes. Yes. This sounds like a regurgitation of an American view of international trade law and treaties therein. International waters should be policed by international organisations or do you find a flaw in that logic? Not the UN, not NATO, an international body independent of any single state.

> Having a single power guarantee free navigation allows ships to cross the world while avoiding complicated jurisdiction divides

So the rest of us are to assume the US taxpayer and their government are acting in good faith? nothing in return for having all those ships and men out there for months at a time? Whats the cost to the US for protecting assets from Guinea-Bissau?

> Someone needs to prevent piracy and unlawful seizure for international shipping to be possible at its current scale

I don't think you get the gist of my argument. To put it simply, to whom does the US account in their capacity as police of international waters?

Who said the US must be that 'someone'? Even the UN - if we won't kid ourselves is a US institution - might have been acceptable. A single power's whims are to be trusted for what reason? How do we know they wont collaborate with Pirates and other bad actors? Who will bring them to book or answer questions?

Re: If you want peace, study war

#177

Post by vagrantJin »

barry-cotter wrote: post #115
vagrantJin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my colorful language and preaching. > the U.S. Navy has guaranteed free navigation The sea has never belonged to anyone but this statement implies that the US has ownership rights with regards to ocean usage that they now let others use at their whim. The only word I can use to describe that is hubris

Before the US the sea belonged to Great Britain. Now it belongs to the US.

True but no one cares about Britain. At least not after WW2. Even their colonies were like "can't even protect yourself against one country? F*ck off"

They have been US' fluffy poodle ever since.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#178

Post by hyko »

“War can also speed up advances in science and technology that have benefits in peacetime.”

Well that escalated from extolling the benefits of studying war to extolling the benefits of waging them rather quickly.

“Although anthropologists and archeologists still wonder why human beings have for so long organized themselves to fight...”

Do they? Surely that bit is just an obvious extension of conflict in evolution, i.e. it’s the thinking meat’s equivalent to organisms taking nutrients away from each other instead of from the sun.

Not sure there’s really any evidence that teaching military history is going to somehow diffuse future conflicts to be honest. The most likely candidates for our long peace have little to do with us becoming students of military history.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#179

Post by lmilcin »

bennysonething wrote: post #139
thehappypm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same Soviets who started the war -- sorry if history hasn't smiled brightly on the Soviet war effort, they were gladly in the Axis when the conflict began.

Yeah I had never been talk that in school. Recently kasporov pointed it out in a pod cast I was listening too. It's so obvious but I'd never thought of it that way because of the narrative that we are taught.

Just out of curiosity, where are you from?

Here in Poland this is very well known fact and nobody is going to forget this, for a very long time.

Soviets attacked Poland on September 17th, 1939 in accordance with plans they made with Nazis before the war. They made plans which part of Poland belonged to Soviets and which to Nazis and then were all too happy to occupy until Nazis turned on them.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#180

Post by lmilcin »

bluGill wrote: post #151
lmilcin wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, wars are messy business. Usually if there is so much disparity in power that the outcome is known beforehand it does not come to war. US had declared Axis powers to be the enemy and then the enemy was defeated. Nobody questions that US was key to winning WWII. It seems impossible that soviets would hold if Nazi Germany was able to send all their resources to eastern front. Even with the help on the western front…

It was a joint effort. To claim any single entity won alone is wrong. There are alternate history questions, but they will never be conclusive.

Well, every one of those entities won. Do you want to say nobody actually won the war?

In a sense it is true, but not in the sense we are talking about.

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