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If you want peace, study war

persuasion.community

61–70 of 223 posts

Re: If you want peace, study war

#61
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean “time will tell”? It doesn’t tell already? Now when Russia have occupied parts of Ukraine?

Without condoning it, that wasn't an all out war. It's a really complicated situation and seems more like a political action. Less people were killed than in the Capitol breach, don't think anyone is referring to that as the second civil war.

While I agree with you that it's purely political, it's a war nonetheless. The Capitol breach resulted in 5 deaths, while it took more than 13000 lives in Ukraine. If it's not a war, then we can safely assume that even a villager in Ukraine has accessed to military grade equipment that even some countries can't get access to.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#62
post #5

I have a theory that offensive weaponry advancements produce peace, while defensive advancements produce war. If you're in a castle, it's easier to send armies around, knowing that you'll be safe. But if there are nukes and ICBMs, just stick with the status quo. Any validity to this theory?

Armchair general here, I've never been in any war. The biggest highlight of my general career was tower defence rushing unsuspecting human players in Warcraft 3 with orcs. With that said: I think that whenever a human or organization has a stable situation with their current affairs, they can afford to take more risk. Attacking weapons don't necessarily make a situation stable, they simply give an edge when you have…

But this assumes the enemy is not knowledgable/simple, which is no longer the case.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#63

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.

With such a motto, you'd expect them to practice sprinting a lot, but curiously, I've never seen that happen!

Re: If you want peace, study war

#64
post #6

"If You Want Peace, Study War" the groups I heard about that adopted that or similar motto were all aggressive and originators of the violence.

Can you elaborate which such groups?

They only say the name of the group when they have a comfortable majority.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#65
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In what way do nationalistic drive have everything in common with how wars start?

Nationalistic drive is a great way to convert "that politician took away 2% of power from this politician" into "that nation offended our nation!!!1one1!" without any new facts happening. It's especially important within a democracy, because war would need huge popular support - and that support needs to be manufactured by media by pushing any emotional buttons available.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#66
post #5

I have a theory that offensive weaponry advancements produce peace, while defensive advancements produce war. If you're in a castle, it's easier to send armies around, knowing that you'll be safe. But if there are nukes and ICBMs, just stick with the status quo. Any validity to this theory?

[flagged]

>If by defensive you mean isolationist, both WW1 and WW2 were started because of US isolationism, and ended when the US became offensive and occupied Europe and Japan

This is a truly impressive level of American exceptionalism. Wars only start if we let them, and then stop when we take an interest.

>However, the CCP and Islam are ideologies that believe they can win against the West. Xi is doubling their nuclear weapon count from 200 to 400, and nuclear technology is proliferating throughout the Islamic world.

Pakistan is the only Islamic nuclear power with no other country actively attempting to become one. Iran's "program" has always been overblown, and at best would not enable an offensive war.

Meanwhile, China's doubling should take into account the US's 6000 weapons, 3000 active, and I think still growing. China's program is still primarily defensive as well.

>Mao started a cold war against the US in the 1950s, which the US never took seriously until now, "Hide our strength, bide our time." And Xi is using Mao's playbook.

The US refused to acknowledge China's existence until the 70's, and are the ones that barred most of the world from trading with China. Even in the Korean War, the United States invaded before China got involved.

Much of the rest of your post is also drawn straight from US propaganda. Other countries do things out of their own self interest, not out of some desire to attack America.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#67
post #6

"If You Want Peace, Study War" the groups I heard about that adopted that or similar motto were all aggressive and originators of the violence.

Can you elaborate which such groups?

A mafia/crime organization had it tattooed. They were violent.

Also, I read about military group having that logo, it was written about due to crossing the lines.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#68
post #3

> However, part of the shift away from war studies owes to the quest for “social justice” ... > history overall is worryingly in decline as an academic subject There might be a connection there. People who want to think about social justice will go to the political science department. Nothing wrong with that. But people who are passionate about history want professors who are also passionate about history. History an…

The people who work on "social history", which is the social justice-y branch of history, are passionate about history. Just different history. I'm not uncritical of social history (I think they're not good at economic history), but I don't think you can say that they don't care about history. No one who lacks passion for history is going to spend years reading papers in dusty archives.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#69

> “War…What is it good for?” the classic song asks. Many universities agree on the answer: “Absolutely nothing.” War culls human populations, and carries out natural selection. So it's "good" for something even if we don't want to admit it or to use the word "good" when bringing up those things.

[deleted]

Re: If you want peace, study war

#70
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…

On average, military tends to be more pro-war then civilians. Partly it is self-selection, partly it is values taught in training (values taught because they make you more effective soldier).

> The fading of WWII in the public memory could be argued as the biggest single risk that society faces. There are too many people who just won't understand how bad and how possible total war is.

People who started WWII were WWI veterans - that is who Nazi leadership were. Starting from Hitler, through Goebbels, down the rank. Not being veteran was seen as weakness. For that matter, Stalin was veteran too.

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