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The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

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Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#81

Post by OkayPhysicist »

safety1st wrote: post #52
georgeg23 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That theory ignores the Cold War, which hinged on M.A.D.

I mean the operative word in "Cold War" is Cold. There was a lot of arms buildup and posturing, and some proxy wars in smaller or less developed countries, but no wars waged directly between the great powers. The Cold War was part of the long peace that HST predicted. I think you could argue that America's supremacy was never seriously contested by the USSR - sure the USSR had nukes, but the US had plenty of those as…

In the first half of the Cold War, the US's economic superiority was far from evidently obvious. The USSR's economy was growing extremely quickly, and S curves are hard to distinguish from exponential growth. With the benefit of hindsight you're probably right, but at the time I think the posturing / arms race was the rational move for both countries.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#82

Post by erikerikson »

michaelt wrote: post #64

> What is – quietly, because they haven’t tried to launch a major invasion recently – most militaries are probably similarly incapable of the basic tasks of industrial warfare? I once read an article that argued in the absence of war, it's impossible to tell if a doctrine or commander is good or not . Maybe you've got five officers up for promotion. One officer wants to give soldiers high-tech equipment, a heads-up d…

Isn't this the problem we've been having?

"Here are the parts of a full solution, pick a favorite to the exclusion of others."

So... Probably the one that despite a specialty has the greatest strength in all the others. Certainly one who appreciates all the others as well as the other aspects you didn't mention

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#83

Post by safety1st »

sdenton4 wrote: post #68
safety1st wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the operative word in "Cold War" is Cold. There was a lot of arms buildup and posturing, and some proxy wars in smaller or less developed countries, but no wars waged directly between the great powers. The Cold War was part of the long peace that HST predicted. I think you could argue that America's supremacy was never seriously contested by the USSR - sure the USSR had nukes, but the US had plenty of those as…

So Vietnam just doesn't count? It wasn't a small way by any metric that matters - it just happened to not be on the home soil of the us or ussr.

Count towards what? The article refers to the "long peace" since WW2 which included the Cold War. This is a well known concept, there's lots of evidence to support it being real, it's a central concept in the field of international relations, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Peace

Vietnam doesn't invalidate the long peace, no. At least I'm not aware of any academic arguments to that effect, they may exist, I haven't studied this stuff since college.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#84

Post by FpUser »

selimthegrim wrote: post #70
FpUser wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it does. USSR was much bigger than standalone Ukraine, hence different consequences.

After WWII Ukraine and Belarus were given separate UN seats from USSR. So in 1991 they just kept those seats.

For fuck's sake. The point was that at the time Ukraine was part of USSR and by attacking Ukraine Hitler has attacked USSR with all the consequences. It seems that you are trying to do something different here but I'll leave you to it.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#85

Post by jandrese »

avgcorrection wrote: post #38
jandrese wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO he is overlooking the most obvious answer to why the Russian military is performing poorly. The one that is backed by historical evidence: widespread corruption rotted the organization from the core. Putin is running his country like the world's largest petro-Mafia, with poor internal controls that allowed for a widespread looting of the state's assets. So when it is time for the institutions to do their job the…

Corrupt relative to what? Russia has always been considered corrupt. - Soviet Union: per definition, at least for ideological reasons - Post-Soviet Union: Yeltsin, the rise of the oligarchs

Corrupt relative to democracies, or really just most other countries in the world.

And historically the Russian/Soviet army has always underperformed for its size, their notable successes have generally been due to being able to crush their opponent in sheer mass of conscripted bodies. Cases where having a lot of people don't help, like ships and aircraft, often end in embarrassing defeats against far smaller foes. A good case study here is the Battle of Tsushima.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#86

Post by OkayPhysicist »

newhaus1994 wrote: post #32
avgcorrection wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Considering that the US was half of global GDP at the end of WW2 and has long been more than happy to sanction anyone who conducts in an (unapproved) war (such as Russia right now), the modern era of "long peace" fits this theory pretty well. How often has the US been at not-war in that period?

IR theorists sometimes try to get around this by narrowing the focus to direct great-power wars, which always felt like a cop-out to me (I'm a political scientist) EDIT: although to be clear, the last time I checked, I believe the stats still back up that overall fatalities from military conflict have been at historic lows. I generally prefer what little Hegemonic Stability there may be to the multipolar shitshows of…

It's not a cop-out: there are fundamental qualitative differences between a near-pear conflict, which demands restructuring of a nation's economic activity around supporting the fight, versus the kinds of conflicts the US was involved in post-WWII, where the costs aren't that much different than the steady-state maintenance of our armed forces.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#87

Post by tomxor »

munificent wrote: post #76
michaelt wrote: post #64

> What is – quietly, because they haven’t tried to launch a major invasion recently – most militaries are probably similarly incapable of the basic tasks of industrial warfare? I once read an article that argued in the absence of war, it's impossible to tell if a doctrine or commander is good or not . Maybe you've got five officers up for promotion. One officer wants to give soldiers high-tech equipment, a heads-up d…

Or, in software engineering terms, it's impossible to optimize code that you can't profile.

I think "can't profile" is probably the most accurate in summary.

Although you can kinda benchmark, i.e training exercises, that allow you to test people physically and technically, but it's a really poor analogy, because it's not feasible to test people emotionally and mentally to the stresses of a real life scenario without having a real life scenario - its possible to simulate, but not ethical, it would be far too dangerous to the individual and the people running the scenario.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#88

Post by sophacles »

sdenton4 wrote: post #68
safety1st wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the operative word in "Cold War" is Cold. There was a lot of arms buildup and posturing, and some proxy wars in smaller or less developed countries, but no wars waged directly between the great powers. The Cold War was part of the long peace that HST predicted. I think you could argue that America's supremacy was never seriously contested by the USSR - sure the USSR had nukes, but the US had plenty of those as…

So Vietnam just doesn't count? It wasn't a small way by any metric that matters - it just happened to not be on the home soil of the us or ussr.

Ignoring the strictly subjective "matters" bit - what metrics make it medium or large?

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#89

Post by 13of40 »

michaelt wrote: post #64

> What is – quietly, because they haven’t tried to launch a major invasion recently – most militaries are probably similarly incapable of the basic tasks of industrial warfare? I once read an article that argued in the absence of war, it's impossible to tell if a doctrine or commander is good or not . Maybe you've got five officers up for promotion. One officer wants to give soldiers high-tech equipment, a heads-up d…

Remember how the US went into Afghanistan with HMMWVs (aluminum bodied cars with canvas doors) and M16a2s (full length battle rifles with iron sights) and left with MRAPs and A4s. You learn stuff when you switch from training to combat.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#90

Post by georgeg23 »

scythe wrote: post #78
georgeg23 wrote: post #7

One of the less spoken but potentially significant reasons for Russia's invasion is that Putin felt the nuclear tables were about to turn with M.A.D. when the U.S. restarted Strategic Defense Initiative development. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative

UCS statement on the establishment of the Space Force and attendant risks of a new arms race (2018): https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/space-based-missile-defense...

I agree with UCS, and even the threat of an SDI can lead to an arms race.
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