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If you want peace, study war

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Re: If you want peace, study war

#181

Post by jhpriestley »

foxyv wrote: post #107

"Causes of Civil War are also, that the Wealth of the Nation is in too few mens hands, and that no certain means are provided to keep all men from a necessity either to beg, or steal, or be Souldiers." - William Petty While this is a quote about civil war, it points out a key fact. A country with a strong middle class is much less likely to send its children to war over stupid things. Even the USA barely sent 177,000…

A lot of the great wars of history have been instigated by rich countries - modern USA, Nazi Germany / Imperial Japan, Spanish Empire, British Empire, Napoleonic France, Roman Empire.

This is my qualitative sense from studying history, and it seems to hold up quantitatively based on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll

Re: If you want peace, study war

#183

Post by RobRivera »

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…

thats a great simplification for the nature of war. there is an entire school of thought among western nations that agrees that war is politics. Political influence in geopolitical situation is often enabled via primary instruments of Diplomacy, Information, Military, and Economic actions from a nation state or independent actors. each instrument retains different costs for their desired effects, and the very real cost of global nuclear annihilation is one of the defining characteristics of the cold war.

soldiers devotion to duty is ingrained in their head from day zero because they MUST be better than their enemies to win the fight, and the people in comfy chairs MUST devote themselves to the study and strategy of war, not tactics, to enable proper deployment of said soldiers. The danger is when innovation on the battlefield outpaces innovation in strategy, and leads to situations like the American Civil War and World War 1...real life meatgrinder horror.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#184

Post by aeternum »

kubanczyk wrote: post #74
sudhirj wrote: post #16

There are notes in Sapiens proposing that war (the violent kind) is no longer useful / does not produce outcomes because the global economy has shifted from one of physical resources to knowledge based. That it no longer makes sense to fight over things that aren't worth as much these days, like land, oil or gold, when you can just trade. Most of money comes from peace time commerce. This seems accurate, but time wil…

The elephant in the room is nuclear weapons. Take a hard look when the history actually changed. As long as politicians didn't fear for their own precious lives, they didn't mind throwing heaps of others' lives to shift the balance of power by 1%. They weren't starting these wars for merely economical value of land or money - it was always about (non-economical) value of power. Since 1945-1949, the stakes are suddenl…

Nuclear weapons is significant, but recently I've been considering how much information also plays a part.

Information about other powers is much more accessible now and spying is easier given the internet. If they weaker power knew beforehand that they were in fact weaker, it makes no sense to challenge.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#185

Post by jjk166 »

vagrantJin wrote: post #176
jjk166 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

I do find a flaw in that logic. International waters are not and should not be under anyone's authority. The system the US implements, like the one which proceeded it, is a fundamentally decentralized system. The US guarantees free navigation, but there's nothing stopping any other nation from doing so as well. China could, Russia could, Guinea-Bissau could. Indeed, the US is not the only nation engaged in anti-piracy operations. You don't need the US to act in good faith, the system is stable in that every country doing what is in their own best interest is also in everyone else's best interest. Really, every nation should independently guarantee free navigation, but luckily that is unnecessary.

In practice the US has such an immense navy that while it guarantees free navigation there is no real need for other nations to, and if it were to oppose free navigation there is no navy that could stop it, so at the moment the US de facto decides if free navigation is guaranteed, but there is nothing de jure entrenching the US in that position - should it ever derelict its duties or otherwise grow weak there is nothing stopping another nation, or group of nations, from taking up the mantle.

On the other hand if an international body were to be set up to do the job, then we become totally reliant on its efficacy. It's impossible to have a truly independent organization - the people who compose it, as well as the people who provide material resources to it, are not independent and unbiased - and unlike a nation which benefits from the trade it protects, this organization's only incentive would be to appease its backers. Even if it avoided malicious corruption, it would fundamentally entrench the geopolitical status quo, and getting everyone to agree to remove it may be impossible even if it strays woefully far from its mission.

The US's position may rub a lot of people the wrong way, they see the US as being some sort of self-appointed overlord and fear if it has nefarious intent. They fail to realize the level of gross indifference that the US has towards the larger world. We just want to be able to import cheap crap, any benefit to other nations is purely ancillary, and we will continue on our course for precisely as long as it is the easiest way of maintaining our steady supply of cheap crap.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#186

Post by busterarm »

qsort wrote: post #173
busterarm wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 imp…

Not only could Germany not get any credit because of the Dawes plan, but the Great Depression caused Germany's creditors to start calling all existing loans.

It caused central banking failures all throughout Central Europe. Germany's banking system collapsed in the early 30s. In the wake of the Depression, European nations had very protectionist trade policies. With weakened international trade as a result of such policies, countries like Germany that did not have global empires had to resort to military force to acquire raw materials.

WWII was inevitable and that summary of the Weimar Republic's problems is overly-simplistic to the point of being misleading.

It's not enough just to look at trade imbalance from the lens of balance sheets. It's about what resources markets are (un)able to provide. You can look at the Opium wars similarly, which we think based on the name are about Opium but really were largely about the Silver trade from West to East and China's refusal to circulate that Silver back into the market.

Defecits are fine as long as everyone thinks they have reasonably fair access to the same resources. Notice the soft trade war that started mostly as a result of global manufacturing shifting to China and China's theft of IP...

Re: If you want peace, study war

#187

Post by nicbou »

jhpriestley wrote: post #181
foxyv wrote: post #107

"Causes of Civil War are also, that the Wealth of the Nation is in too few mens hands, and that no certain means are provided to keep all men from a necessity either to beg, or steal, or be Souldiers." - William Petty While this is a quote about civil war, it points out a key fact. A country with a strong middle class is much less likely to send its children to war over stupid things. Even the USA barely sent 177,000…

A lot of the great wars of history have been instigated by rich countries - modern USA, Nazi Germany / Imperial Japan, Spanish Empire, British Empire, Napoleonic France, Roman Empire. This is my qualitative sense from studying history, and it seems to hold up quantitatively based on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll

I can't speak for the other nations, but Nazi Germany was a very poor country. The standard of living in Germany was relatively bad, in no small part because of the post-war economic turmoil.

I submit the first few chapters of Wages of Destruction as my source. I am totally unqualified to summarize it, but it's shock full of data that support this thesis. It's a really good book.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#188

Post by hobby-coder-guy »

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.

What active war? Covid? How could you possibly use that as evidence.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#189

Post by foxyv »

jhpriestley wrote: post #181
foxyv wrote: post #107

"Causes of Civil War are also, that the Wealth of the Nation is in too few mens hands, and that no certain means are provided to keep all men from a necessity either to beg, or steal, or be Souldiers." - William Petty While this is a quote about civil war, it points out a key fact. A country with a strong middle class is much less likely to send its children to war over stupid things. Even the USA barely sent 177,000…

A lot of the great wars of history have been instigated by rich countries - modern USA, Nazi Germany / Imperial Japan, Spanish Empire, British Empire, Napoleonic France, Roman Empire. This is my qualitative sense from studying history, and it seems to hold up quantitatively based on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll

Wealthy nations are definitely more likely to engage in war. Especially if there is something to be gained from it.

However, I'm not referring to the wealth of the countries themselves, but the concentration of wealth within them. Both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were desperately poor with a starving citizenry. Germany from paying reparations completely devaluing their currency and Japan from a lack of natural resources. The empires of the 18th and 19th century would be third world states by our standards. Life was cheap and people dying en masse wasn't a big deal.

Modern USA hardly even engages in full scale warfare since Vietnam. Now we have a few limited engagements against small countries without any real backers. Even then the tiny US losses from those wars has killed our taste for them. Even Donald Trump is disengaging from them.

It's hard to send a bunch of people to die when they are the ones holding the wealth of your nation. It's much easier to send the poor huddled masses if they exist.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#190

Post by jhpriestley »

foxyv wrote: post #189
jhpriestley wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the great wars of history have been instigated by rich countries - modern USA, Nazi Germany / Imperial Japan, Spanish Empire, British Empire, Napoleonic France, Roman Empire. This is my qualitative sense from studying history, and it seems to hold up quantitatively based on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll

Wealthy nations are definitely more likely to engage in war. Especially if there is something to be gained from it. However, I'm not referring to the wealth of the countries themselves, but the concentration of wealth within them. Both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were desperately poor with a starving citizenry. Germany from paying reparations completely devaluing their currency and Japan from a lack of natural re…

Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were major industrial centers with large cities, educated populations, newspapers, trains, etc. They were vastly richer than peasant societies like China or Mexico.

For a somewhat objective example, look at the life expectancy around those years ... Japan and especially Germany are near the top both before and after the war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_life...

Modern USA hardly even engages in full scale warfare since starting one of the deadliest wars of the late 20th century, except for the time we started the deadliest war of the 21st century?

Your reasoning strikes me as kind of post-hoc, but maybe I'm mistaken .. could you say more precisely what you think causes countries to go to war, in a way that I could take a random country and see if it fits the criteria?

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