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Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

economist.com

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Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#21

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

VLM wrote: post #13
npt4279 wrote: post #9

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…

Another interesting point about globalization is the meaning of WWI style globalization was colonialism, every European power had overseas colonies (other than Germany). Another example where world trade didn't seem to help much.

Didn't you ever see 'The African Queen'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_East_Africa

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#22

Post by berntb »

Tloewald wrote: post #16
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not seeing much warmongering as a cultural phenomena. In the U.S., perhaps not. But nationalism and remilitarisation are flaring up in China and Japan, respectively. Who exactly is supposed to invade China next decade if they don't invade today? China, with good reason, perceives itself as being surrounded by U.S.-allied countries looking to suppress its growth. Since growth is the currency the Communist Party tr…

Go look at US action movies, video games, etc. There's plenty of warmongering going on. Heck, just within the last year we had a mass media frenzy over the prospect of bombing Syria. Bear in mind that the US has been fighting wars against far weaker opponents for over sixty years now, and on the whole doing quite poorly. If any country ought to not be warmongering...

>> Bear in mind that the US has been fighting wars against far weaker opponents for over sixty years now

That is only natural.

The democratic peace theory (see Wikipedia) seems to work, not even USA have wars with democracies but with really unpleasant dictatorships.

With the dictators that have nuclear weapons, you had (have) MAD as in "Mutually Assured Destruction". Not even USA starts a war. Which is why every torturing, murdering and stealing junta wants nukes...

The dictators without nukes come in two flavors. With oil -- or really poor, which implies weak military. (The juntas with oil tend to be corrupt, so no good military either. Iran might be partly an exception.)

The open question here is what happens with China and democracy when the GNP/capita goes up a bit more.

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#23

Post by VLM »

Tloewald wrote: post #16
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not seeing much warmongering as a cultural phenomena. In the U.S., perhaps not. But nationalism and remilitarisation are flaring up in China and Japan, respectively. Who exactly is supposed to invade China next decade if they don't invade today? China, with good reason, perceives itself as being surrounded by U.S.-allied countries looking to suppress its growth. Since growth is the currency the Communist Party tr…

Go look at US action movies, video games, etc. There's plenty of warmongering going on. Heck, just within the last year we had a mass media frenzy over the prospect of bombing Syria. Bear in mind that the US has been fighting wars against far weaker opponents for over sixty years now, and on the whole doing quite poorly. If any country ought to not be warmongering...

That's wimpy warmongering as in "police action" and far away. Psuedo-colonialism.

Real USA warmongering would sound like, "We're gonna invade Canada and take all the maple syrup as our manifest destiny or we'll die trying".

Even the attitude of the Italian-Ethiopian war would be more hard core than the USA now.

Depressingly, our war mongering looks more like serving an arrest warrant in Detroit than being in a world war. Militarization of cops is the depressing part.

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#25

Post by Tloewald »

berntb wrote: post #22
Tloewald wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go look at US action movies, video games, etc. There's plenty of warmongering going on. Heck, just within the last year we had a mass media frenzy over the prospect of bombing Syria. Bear in mind that the US has been fighting wars against far weaker opponents for over sixty years now, and on the whole doing quite poorly. If any country ought to not be warmongering...

>> Bear in mind that the US has been fighting wars against far weaker opponents for over sixty years now That is only natural. The democratic peace theory (see Wikipedia) seems to work, not even USA have wars with democracies but with really unpleasant dictatorships. With the dictators that have nuclear weapons, you had (have) MAD as in "Mutually Assured Destruction". Not even USA starts a war. Which is why every tor…

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 Chile and replaced it with a brutal dictatorship. Castro, for that matter, was no worse than they guys he overthrew. The US repeatedly helped quash popular uprisings in aouth america to help out corporate interests. The US was vetoing sanctions against South Africa as late as 1988.

Oh, and check out our awesome middle eastern ally Saudi Arabia.

Learn some freaking history.

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#26

Post by jessaustin »

Tloewald wrote: post #16
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not seeing much warmongering as a cultural phenomena. In the U.S., perhaps not. But nationalism and remilitarisation are flaring up in China and Japan, respectively. Who exactly is supposed to invade China next decade if they don't invade today? China, with good reason, perceives itself as being surrounded by U.S.-allied countries looking to suppress its growth. Since growth is the currency the Communist Party tr…

Go look at US action movies, video games, etc. There's plenty of warmongering going on. Heck, just within the last year we had a mass media frenzy over the prospect of bombing Syria. Bear in mind that the US has been fighting wars against far weaker opponents for over sixty years now, and on the whole doing quite poorly. If any country ought to not be warmongering...

Here's the (vain) hope that their continued failures won't be used to justify even more spending.

To be fair, however, it often seems that USA military failures are more often due to terrible strategy than poor tactical capacity. I.e., many tactical units can achieve operational objectives that would be impressive in any military. It is the bloated, inept layer of general staff that weighs down the whole structure. But that's really just a reflection of the culture: look at any USA corporation.

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#27

Post by VladRussian2 »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #8
sliverstorm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I would have to wonder what about Japan would be worth a war with the U.S. Logistical value perhaps, for example by denying the U.S. the bases they currently have there, but certainly not for resources?

The Chinese in general still feel humiliated by their treatment at the hands of the western powers and then their occupation by Japan in WW2. Furthermore they have an issue of not having enough resouces to feed their growth. Who ever owns the islands (more then one set - China is arguing with Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Philippines) has the rights to exploit the oil/gas fields in the ocean beds around them. Now to the…

>Who ever owns the islands ... has the rights to exploit the oil/gas fields in the ocean beds around them.

that is the current post-colonial (post-WWI) framework of "independent sovereign nations". This framework starts to show its limitations in dealing with a host of transnational/transcontinental/global issues. Global warming in particular comes to mind. As usually, either framework will get adapted or it will rupture into a new WW, and the new framework will result after it, like it happened after previous WWs.

With regard of mutually assured destruction - this would assure that the war will be fought outside of populated areas, i.e. nobody is going to nuke each others cities (Walmart will still be importing and selling Chinese manufactured goods as sinking the container ships isn't a necessary part of fighting of the modern war for either side :). WWI was new kind of war - trenches. WWII - motorized. WWIII - precision and automated weapons, drones fighting drones.

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#28

Post by Tloewald »

VLM wrote: post #23
Tloewald wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go look at US action movies, video games, etc. There's plenty of warmongering going on. Heck, just within the last year we had a mass media frenzy over the prospect of bombing Syria. Bear in mind that the US has been fighting wars against far weaker opponents for over sixty years now, and on the whole doing quite poorly. If any country ought to not be warmongering...

That's wimpy warmongering as in "police action" and far away. Psuedo-colonialism. Real USA warmongering would sound like, "We're gonna invade Canada and take all the maple syrup as our manifest destiny or we'll die trying". Even the attitude of the Italian-Ethiopian war would be more hard core than the USA now. Depressingly, our war mongering looks more like serving an arrest warrant in Detroit than being in a world…

Colonialism was mostly war as business as usual too. WWI was the exception.

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#29

Post by gress »

ItendToDisagree wrote: post #18
myrandomcomment wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese in general still feel humiliated by their treatment at the hands of the western powers and then their occupation by Japan in WW2. Furthermore they have an issue of not having enough resouces to feed their growth. Who ever owns the islands (more then one set - China is arguing with Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Philippines) has the rights to exploit the oil/gas fields in the ocean beds around them. Now to the…

Outmatching someone militarily doesn't necessarily forecast a short war. This is especially true if you do not have the resources or interest in total annihilation of your opposition. There are many recent examples of this to choose from. Iraq comes to mind.

I think the point is that Iraq was essentially positioned as a police action against the government - not a war against the whole country, so it has been relatively restrained, especially since Iraq couldn't hit back.

An all out war against a powerful nation that could hit back would be far less restrained.

Re: Uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the first world war

#30

Post by VLM »

Tloewald wrote: post #19
VLM wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another interesting point about globalization is the meaning of WWI style globalization was colonialism, every European power had overseas colonies (other than Germany). Another example where world trade didn't seem to help much.

Um, Germany had overseas colonies, including one where they committed genocide (foreshadowing later bad acts). And do you think today's globalization isn't colonialism? Explain the real differences, including a discussion of multinationals investing in third world nations and gaining defacto control of their governments and Chinese treaties sewing up the national resources of African countries and acquiring long term…

"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 colonial population from the linked wiki article before WWI, 23 thousand.

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