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If you want peace, study war

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Re: If you want peace, study war

#71

Post by watwut »

golergka wrote: post #27
jakubp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy. In my country, memories of war (World War II in particular), tragedies, sacrifices, "heroes" etc. are continually fueled by the ruling party. They built hundreds of new monuments in the past 10 years, gave thousands of streets names related to their selection of war and post-war heroes, etc. Let me tell you, this is the main way to drive nationalistic divide, because the other half of the people in the countr…

Nationalistic drive has nothing in common with the real memories of tragedies and horrors of the war.

You can remember sacrifices as horrors to not be repeated. Or you can remember sacrifices as aspirating thing, the one that motivates you to pick up the gun to go sacrifice yourself, so that you proves your manhood.

The latter is what militant regimes do and did.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#72

Post by watwut »

redis_mlc wrote: post #21
chmod600 wrote: 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.

What?

Re: If you want peace, study war

#73

Post by XorNot »

Scramblejams wrote: post #20
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…

when you can just trade Peacetime commerce requires free waterways. Everyone can "just trade" because the U.S. Navy has guaranteed free navigation of the seas since Bretton Woods[1]. When America withdraws from its security obligations, others will fill the vacuum, with all the uncertainty that implies. A national leader who fears being cut off from essential resources will very logically view war as an option. Edit:…

Cut off by who though, and why? Denying what?

These questions don't exist in a vacuum, and wars are terrible ways to secure resources as the US's adventurism in the Middle East has shown.

If your goal is say, oil, it's still cheaper to just buy it.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#74

Post by kubanczyk »

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 suddenly too high and that's why don't have major wars anymore.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#75

Post by XorNot »

adwn wrote: post #23
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…

> [...] because the global economy has shifted from one of physical resources to knowledge based ...except for that tiny detail where we're still critically dependent on raw materials that can only be economically extracted in certain parts of the world. Maybe mathematicians only need a blackboard and some chalk to do their work, but the remaining "knowledge based" economy needs computers, of which many parts are pro…

You can't plausibly wage a destructive war to seize industrial facilities likely to be disrupted or destroyed in said war. Factories and their workers are intellectual resources.

Whereas with raw materials, like rare earths: China has a lock on rare earth's because they're willing to completely destroy their own land's to get them, not because they're actually "rare".

We are arguably in a local minima with regards to rare earth extraction because nothing has pushed us to automate the human element out of it and they're not needed in sufficient quantity yet.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#76

Post by Uberphallus »

im3w1l wrote: post #63
Uberphallus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Well, you can see the first rule as "try not to use what you learn".

Can't speak for all instructors, but mine went directly to technique for those who ran/cycled to the gym and stretched before the class, letting the rest warm up in the meantime... running.

Also most demonstrations you can see on the Internet always end with running and most comments make fun of that, so it's certainly included in the practice.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#77

Post by XorNot »

inglor_cz wrote: post #51
dragonwriter wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think what the GP found disturbing was civilian control of the military, but the distance between the decisionmakers choosing to go to war and the people bearing the cost, which is not significantly different in systems which lack civilian control of the military than those that have it.

This is perhaps an argument to have more veterans in politics. Former Czechoslovak president Ludvík Svoboda, a general who fought in the WWII and went through some of the bloodiest battles involving Czechoslovak forces [0], was known to be very wary of militaristic ideas later. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Dukla_Pass

This is not always the outcome with veterans though, and veterans experiences are not uniform.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#78

Post by arethuza »

ersii wrote: post #43
toopok4k3 wrote: post #37

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?

"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in American, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering

Re: If you want peace, study war

#79

Post by notahacker »

inglor_cz wrote: post #51
dragonwriter wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think what the GP found disturbing was civilian control of the military, but the distance between the decisionmakers choosing to go to war and the people bearing the cost, which is not significantly different in systems which lack civilian control of the military than those that have it.

This is perhaps an argument to have more veterans in politics. Former Czechoslovak president Ludvík Svoboda, a general who fought in the WWII and went through some of the bloodiest battles involving Czechoslovak forces [0], was known to be very wary of militaristic ideas later. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Dukla_Pass

This probably is an appropriate time to Godwin the discussion and point out a certain Austrian/German leader's very different ideas were also shaped by his negative experiences of a world war. Veterans react differently even to similar experiences and cover the full range of positions on war from gung ho militarism to unapologetic pacifism. Perhaps military experience lends them a more informed perspective on what the realistic outcomes of a war might look like, but it's no inoculation against militarism.

Re: If you want peace, study war

#80

Post by Razengan »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #52
Razengan wrote: post #46

> “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.

Natural selection isn't good . In terms of “bad things to do to humans”, it comes in just behind eugenics, and that's only because we haven't worked out how to do that without horrible horrible crimes against humanity (yet). (Yes, natural selection is legitimately bad enough that “make eugenics less genocidey and then do that instead” is actually on the table – I am so glad the problem can probably keep for another c…

Whether humans like it or not and whether we want to admit it or not, wars do end up with mostly the fittest (not just in terms of physical ability, but also intelligence, cunning, etc.) surviving.
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