[HN Gopher] Thoughts about the impact of long peace ___________________________________________________________________ Thoughts about the impact of long peace Author : gabythenerd Score : 182 points Date : 2023-06-09 14:23 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (acoup.blog) (TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog) | mikewarot wrote: | The first time I heard Eric Weinstein call for periodic above | ground nuclear weapons demonstrations[1], I thought it was nuts. | That's because I grew up with the threat of the H-Bomb[2] and the | impending nightmares that I've had ever since (though thankfully | they are infrequent these days). | | Seeing how casually people dismiss the possible effects of a war | involving 10,000 of these weapons has caused me to re-evaluate | things. | | We should have am internationally sanctioned thermonuclear | weapons demo every few years, at least once per decade, but less | than annually. To remind everyone what's at stake. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/G23s5TX1QRM | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon | alex_young wrote: | Can't you just have them take a look here and observe the | impact of these things? | | https://goo.gl/maps/MqkLCrLqNr4usuj29 | | Seems like we did enough of this already. | quicklime wrote: | There were tests by France and China in 1996, by India and | Pakistan in 1998, and by North Korea in 2009, 2013, 2015, 2016 | and 2017. | | We've never had a decade without a nuclear test since the | 1940s. | gamegoblin wrote: | OP specifically said "above ground". All in recent decades | have been underground. | soperj wrote: | Why not just play videos of previous demos as if it's news. | mikewarot wrote: | Because, just like the moon landings, people will deny they | exist at some point. | AlexandrB wrote: | I'm pretty sure that unless they witness it firsthand, the | same people will deny it exists even with a live broadcast. | soperj wrote: | People still deny that the earth is round. Doesn't really | matter about the demos going on. Question, do moon landing | deniers deny everything due to space? like do they think | that the current SpaceX stuff is all cgi? What about the | space shuttle? Or is it literally just going to the moon | that they don't believe in? | rad_gruchalski wrote: | Current SpaceX hadn't been to the Moon yet. | soperj wrote: | I was asking if they believe what SpaceX is doing with | rockets is cgi. If they believe the space station is cgi, | or the space shuttle, if they just made up the casualties | in the Challenger and Columbia explosions? Do they | believe in Project Gemini? Any of the Apollo launches? Is | it just the landing on the moon piece? | TeMPOraL wrote: | Well, it the hypothetical reality of the thermonuclear | Olympic torch, it would be easier to secure the tickets | for live viewing and witness the blast, than it would be | to go high enough to see Earth in its real shape. | tomatotomato37 wrote: | The problem with such a demo is it will obe conducted in a way | that does minimum actual human harm, as it obviously should. As | such, a raw feed of it won't really demonstrate much besides | "big boom knocks things down" and at worst be celebrated in the | same way people celebrate fireworks and rocket launches. | Nations may attempt to "add context" through fake corpses or | actors or some such to demonstrate the heat & radiation burns | it does to humans, but that will be quickly called out as | manipulative propaganda, as it pretty much is. Tragically the | only way to demonstrate it's effect and prevent a nuclear | attack from happening is have a nuclear attack happen. | seydor wrote: | That's a double edged sword, reminding some people that the | weapons exist and are functional | kajumix wrote: | "Prior to the long peace, there's little question what happens to | a country like Venezuela, which is essentially a giant pile of | barely guarded wealth: one - or several - of its neighbors would | move in, oust the government and seize the territory and its | valuable resources (oil, in this case)." | | While I don't advocate war and violence, I can't help think that | such a hostile takeover of a poorly run country by another better | run country can be perceived as creative destruction in | capitalism. War is too costly now reassuringly, but the incentive | of leaders to keep the country strong, economically as well as | militarily, is much less. The fear of being wiped out by a | neighbor may have kept leaders in check. Now that fear is gone, | and nothing has replaced it yet. The optimist in me hopes that | states abandon the pretense of being above markets. The fear we | desire in those who run states, the fear that we hope will keep | them in check, will be that of losing paying customers, their | citizens, to other competitive jurisdictions. | hackandthink wrote: | Nassim Taleb's critique of the "long peace": | | "We investigate the theses of "long peace" and drop in violence | and find that these are statistically invalid and resulting from | flawed and naive methodologies, ..." | | https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf | | Our technology is smarter than our politics. We will be lucky if | we don't blow up everything. | droopyEyelids wrote: | Its not the main point of the article, but it made me wonder if | finance is the new way "war" (predatory struggle for ownership & | control) is waged in today's world | AndrewKemendo wrote: | This is precisely what happened, it happened long ago though | and has been the driver behind actual physical war more-so than | any other factor that I can tell. | | I'm admittedly kind of annoying with the frequency for which I | post it but I wrote a short paper that attempts to demonstrate | how we got to that position over the last 12,000 years. This is | the most relevant portion here from the Third Proposition: | | ---- | | ""Creating Markets/Value" (Inducing novel scarcity fears via | public storytelling) becomes an optimized resource acquisition | strategy, as monopolization of production is most efficient | when the market "Creator" controls access to the new market | from the outset, minimizing appropriation costs. "Investment | capital" (Hoarded value) is used to generate these new markets | at a sufficient scale, while the relative abundance of capital | for the "house" (Investors) will allow the creators to impede | competitors from the start, thus ensuring a maximum return on | investment. Power law guarantees that existing resource hoards | will forever seek returns and accumulate more into increasingly | fallow pools of capital. Unrestrained "Free" competition, a | reinterpretation of "might makes right," then must represent | the dogma behind forever growth." [1] | | ---- | | In a nutshell, people with a hoard of money will fund the | creation of "New" markets. Think Meta with the "Metaverse", | Apple with the "App store" etc... with the intention of being | the monopolist of that market by virtue of creating it. They | then propagandize extensively (marketing) to convince people | that this new market has value that hasn't been extracted yet | and IF YOU JOIN RIGHT NOW you can get a piece of that growing | value as a new gold rush. People even use the same language | here. | | The problem is, only a handful of people can fund large scale | new markets and they DEMAND monopolist exploitation | capabilities within that new market. Like with Amazon and | Reddit, part of the strategy is to delay exploitation | significantly so as to bolster the monopolistic market position | by pushing platform growth over all other metrics. That way | when you flip the cash flow exploitation switch, nobody has | anywhere to go and everyone just rolls over cause there isn't | enough collective will to change behavior that was reinforced | over a decade or more. | | [1]https://kemendo.com/Myth.pdf | FpUser wrote: | The end result being few big corps that own the world's | governments. | AndrewKemendo wrote: | Which is exactly what we have now | forgotmypw17 wrote: | You may find the book Softwar by Jason Lowery of interest. | karmakaze wrote: | Finance is man-made. Resources are real. But the point makes | sense in that it's a main point of competition with sports | being another. | michaelt wrote: | Finance may be man-made. | | But 200 years ago for a rich country to obtain a poor | country's natural resources they had to invade an army and | add it to their empire; while in the modern age, the rich | country can swap the natural resources for pieces of paper | they can print at will. | | Why bother to invade under such circumstances? | n3v3r3v3r wrote: | Man-made things are real! Finance is the lazy abstraction we | use to represent "resources." Competition also does not exist | for competitions sake, it exists as a result of multiple | agents within a specific context engaging in activity that | has "winners" and "losers" (this is not a great way to put | this but I'm trying not to think too hard about the specific | theoretical nuances of what competition _is_, but more what | it's used _for_). | | For sports, this context is highly constrained to whatever | game is being played and so its impacts are limited to the | scope of that game and those involved with its | orchestration/spectacle (definitionally!). | | On the other hand, global trade is unconstrained by a | specific range of activity (there are states with laws that | try and combat this but ultimately money is money). This is | much closer in effect to the "real" physical violence of war. | By controlling an entity financially, you control that | entities ability to exist in a financial context and so when | that world of finance becomes the dominant form of | interaction you are effectively enacting violence upon and | limiting the expression of that thing (i.e. the conquest and | subjugation of people/land but with money instead of swords). | | In contemporary hyper-reality it is a common mistake to | ascribe "unrealness" to things like money or the internet, in | such a way that we can box out their effects from our | understandings. Then, when those systems are employed to | reinforce and/or expand existing hierarchies that layer of | smoke and mirrors is able to effectively divert attention | away from their _very real_ impacts. At the same time they | become both non-things and the backdrop on which everything | else exists. | | "Just turn off the computer" | | "Just don't purchase exploitative things" | | "Just do your own research" | | [Ad infinitum...] | | These bits of rhetoric shift the unfathomable inertia of | Things(tm) onto the shoulders of the individual, be it a | person, organization or state without recognition as to why | that entity is doing the thing that it is doing in the | context of everything else that is doing something around it. | | There is probably already a term for it but this seems to | itself be a kind of logical fallacy ("ex homine"?) that | collapses the scale of a problem down to the decision of an | individual. Thus it enters the scope of opinion and so is | unreal and unworthy of discussion or understanding. Nuance | and complexity are shunted away systemically because complex | solutions and understandings do not engage well with | efficiency. Because things that are economically efficient | are those things which can be spread through economics, even | the ideas around what it means to be economic can be | distorted by this effect in such a way to detach people | further and further from reality while assuring them that | they are the only ones that _really_ understand how the world | works (in "economic" terms). It is a battlefield that is at | war with all other battlefields--and it is winning. | newuser94303 wrote: | I think that Globalization has increased the costs of war. You | don't want to attack your suppliers. I also think that China is | probably a paper tiger on offense but they are trying not to look | like an easy target on defense. Most of their recent battles have | been fist fights in the Himalayas. | | Deglobalization is an attempt to make war feasible because some | strong countries feel like they are losing economic war and want | to fall back on real war. | MPlus88 wrote: | [dead] | rossdavidh wrote: | France and Germany had a lot of trade in 1913. Russia and | Ukraine had a lot of trade in 2013. Every civil war ever | fought, was between sides that did a lot of "trade". The Opium | War (no small conflict) was fought over trade policy. The | U.S.A. and Canada/UK did a lot of trade prior to the War of | 1812. Napoleon's invasion of Russia was done despite the fact | that the two sides had a lot of trade. Trade has never been a | very reliable deterrent to war. | | To the extent that there is any relationship, it is that | countries sometimes try to avoid depending on trade with | someone they may end up at war with soon; the causality works | the opposite way. | marianatom wrote: | here's the thing, humanity got lucky. there was a nonzero | chance that china and the dictatorships could have triumphed. | if China didn't botch the chance to overtake US in 2008 with a | capable dictator. if China got its hands on many advanced US | military technologies. if Russia didn't botch the Ukraine | invasion. if covid didn't have a vaccine, except one that China | developed. | | I'm sure most of us are aware of the gulags that China ran in | 2022, in the most prosperous city like Shanghai, with welded | doors, lack of food, arbitrary killing of pets, moving their | own citizens against their wills to camps or cells with no | running water and unsanitary conditions. with cries in tall | buildings from families in the middle of night for food. If. | you haven't seen these things, go watch it online. Imagine if | somehow China succeeded, and that's most of humanity's fate. | wazer5 wrote: | Wow you should visit China though, it's great. I feel for | those who don't get to experience the benefits of | globalization. | randomopining wrote: | Great in which way? I guess working for peanuts is a great | step up for people who suffered through famines. | | Otherwise it's the common battle between "orderliness at | any cost" and freedoms. US or Europe seems to strike a | better balance, for all of their shortcomings. In China its | ruled by the CCP with an iron fist. | marianatom wrote: | lol, how presumptuous. I have visited China in 2007, before | it turned authoritarian/dictatorship. I would not visit | China again to support the dictatorship. I can visit any | number of democratic countries like Taiwan. | | I feel for those who don't get that they are supporting | evil. | | Btw, speaking of evil, China isn't giving up yet (Xi still | have 10-20 years to live. free organ transplants from young | Chinese, you know. high ranking politicians get them for | free). It is producing destroyers at a massive rate, and | will exceed # of destroyers that US has by 2040. Combined | with the millions of disposable unemployed single young | men, and there's still a chance that Taiwan would | overwhelmed. and if Taiwan falls, the same strategy can be | used to conquer Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Australia. | jldugger wrote: | > will exceed # of destroyers that US has by 2040 | | Bear in mind that China has pretty much no oil and these | 055 destroyer boats are diesel&gas turbine powered. And | the US has been slowly winding down military presence | since the Cold War ended basically[1]. | | And lemme tell you, if Taiwan goes hot, there wont be any | USN boats spare to patrol the Middle East -> South China | sea route, and nobody would be angry if any oil tankers | on that route go missing. | | [1]: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/graph-of-the-week- | why-flee... | Detrytus wrote: | > Bear in mind that China has pretty much no oil and | these 055 destroyer boats are diesel&gas turbine powered. | | Well, then they are lucky that Russia, now sanctioned by | the West, has no choice but to sell all their oil to | China, at discount prices. | pdonis wrote: | The "greatness" of China is an excellent example of Cheops' | Law: You can do anything you put your mind to if you have | an endless supply of expendable labor. | newuser94303 wrote: | I don't think that China has any interest in conquering the | rest of World. They just want to be rich. They are stealing | IP and spying. The fact that the US needs to use military | force is a failure of policy. | | Violence is the last resort of the incompetent. | | I think that China is pulling on the US what the US did to | the Soviet Union. The US bankrupted the Soviet Union with an | arms race. China is doing it much more economically by | spending 1/3 of the US. This is money that the US could be | using to build a high speed rail network or educating its | citizens. | l33t233372 wrote: | > The fact that the US needs to use military force is a | failure of policy. | | And a million realists(in the technical sense that IR | people use the word) cried out in terror at once. | marianatom wrote: | There are so many wrongs with your statements that I don't | know where to start. I'll just tackle one of them. | | "build a high speed rail network", implying that US is | failing there. China is suffering from a $1 TRILLION debt | for its rails | https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/China-debt- | crunch/C..., while ridership collapses https://japan- | forward.com/weak-demand-for-chinas-high-speed-.... Cities | in China are suffering from $23 TRILLION insolvent debt and | inability to raise more https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat | ures/2023-05-21/china-s-2.... I certainly hope US doesn't | suffer the same fate. | throw_pm23 wrote: | when you are $1k in debt, you are in trouble. When you | are trillions in debt, the "bank" is in trouble. | cyberax wrote: | The thing is, debts are just numbers on paper at the end | of the day. You can erase them, but the infrastructure | will remain. | | Erasing debts wipes out (most) savings and hurts rich | people. So it's not something that can be done lightly, | but it is an option. | | Also, Chinese HSR ridership is back up after COVID | restrictions were lifted. | marianatom wrote: | > You can erase them | | that's not how economics works. if that's the case, you | would not see the Chinese governments (federal and local) | doing desperate things to collect more revenues like: | | - China considers measures to encourage re-employment of | retirees https://hrmasia.com/china-considers-measures-to- | encourage-re... | | - issuing massive traffic/parking tickets a year after, | to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, to | commercial and normal drivers | | - banks preventing normal withdrawals of money. often, | deceased's children can't withdraw their parents savings, | even with all the official documentations | | - government entities delaying several months of owed | salaries to its employees | https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/5/11/chinas-cash- | stra... | cyberax wrote: | > that's not how economics works. | | It is. You can erase all debts by hyperinflation, for | example. | | China for sure has problems, but it's not the "crashing | down tomorrow" kind of problems. They still have a robust | growth, now that COVID restrictions are over. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | Infrastructure needs to be maintained. | throwaway6734 wrote: | It's not just luck though. The American system is better than | both the Chinese and Russian ones. | iamsanteri wrote: | I suspect things may be a tad simpler than discussed in this | essay, even when most of it is compelling and rings true. | | I want to highlight that the main difference in my opinion is, | and always was, that of attacking versus defending. Attacking is | more often a clusterfuck of complexity and a constant process of | messing up as opposed to defending a territory. When attacking | you must have that critical 3:1 or 5:1 ratio in all aspects of | employing your force, and it's expected that mistakes will be | made, losses will accrue and even grander failures will abound | along the way. I would claim that even the Russians eventually | adapt, albeit rather slowly, and so does anyone else. It's about | morale, motivation and will, and here it is likely that defenders | have an upper hand. | | In short, when attacking, be ready for a hell of a suffering in | almost any case, except for when you have a hundredfold | superiority in all facets of warfare, or alternatively, if you | have stellar intelligence capabilities and the benefit of | surprise when your enemy least expects it. And I'm not even | talking about maintaining order after you've conquered a | territory... | GartzenDeHaes wrote: | > Experience needs to be retained and institutionalized. Capable | leaders need to be promoted and incapable but politically | influential leaders sidelined. | | Also applies to government, business, and academia. | wolfram74 wrote: | But those organizations can have fitness pressure applied to | them outside the context of hot wars. People love to make a big | deal of the "fund N losers to find 1 winner" aspect of VC. | noduerme wrote: | >> " What is [sic] - 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?" | | This premise is delusional. The Russian military may have | degraded, but the war in Ukraine shows clearly that the only | aspect of warfare that has significantly changed since WWII is | the vastly increased efficiency in targeting weapons payloads. | Which can be unwound at any moment when smart munitions run thin. | The idea that today's conscripts are less willing to fight than | those in 1940 is ludicrous. Neither wanted to fight and both were | ignorant blobs / yobs. | | The long peace has been sustained only by mutually assured | destruction. That construct has not been slowly undermined by any | determined wish for unity contrary to it on the part of the | people living under the regimes which are yoked into that system. | There is every indication that disrupting that system would lead | to one party or another committing a nuclear holocaust, so | therefore the balance of terror (including Putin's repression of | Russians) must be preserved at all costs. | FpUser wrote: | >"The long peace has been sustained only by mutually assured | destruction" | | I tend to agree. Well, relative piece, as smaller wars are | still constant feature. | [deleted] | avgcorrection wrote: | > I've discussed this before a few times, but I think Azar Gat is | probably right to suggest that the long peace is itself a | consequence of the changing incentives created by the industrial | revolution and to an even greater extent, by nuclear weapons. | Prior to the industrial revolution, war was the best way to get | rich (if you won) because land and conquered subjects were so | much more valuable than any kind of capital investment | (infrastructure, manufacture, tools, etc.) that could have been | developed with the same resources. The industrial revolution | changes this, both by making war a lot more destructive (thus | lowering returns to successful warfare)1 while at the same time | massively raising returns to capital investment in things like | infrastructure, factories and tractors. It suddenly made more | sense, if you coveted your neighbors resources, to build more | factories and buy those resources than to try to seize them by | force. Nuclear weapons in turn took this same effect and | ratcheted it up even further, by effectively making the cost of | total war infinite. | | I'm getting such Beltway Think Tank vibes for some reason. | jameshart wrote: | Well sure - this is just fairly conventional international | relations theory. Trying to apply systems thinking to the | question of 'why conflict' is basically the entire academic | discipline of international politics and strategic studies. | | This particular take is basically a standard neorealist | perspective on how to explain the impact of globalization in | reducing conflict. Basically allowing that trade changes the | playing field, without allowing that states might be anything | other than selfish entities, or that there might be any | relevant entities to consider in international affairs (like | nonstate actors, cultural power, etc). Other schools of IR | theory take different perspectives, but neorealism is basically | the foundational view of western foreign policy. | safety1st wrote: | Honestly another thing I didn't like about this peace was the | "Russian army is weak so maybe lots of other armies are weak" | idea. That's the last thing we need the chickenhawks running DC | to believe | WeylandYutani wrote: | America can win any war but lose the peace. The appetite for | nation building has evaporated in the US. Iraq and | Afghanistan stripped the hubris. | noduerme wrote: | Well, it's manifestly false, and I don't think there's much | danger of anyone in DC believing it. | noduerme wrote: | If the think tanks ran everything there would be no war at all, | just a race for extracting minerals, creating products people | didn't need and finding markets for them, and like, skinning | otters and bludgeoning defenseless animals. How bad is that | _really_ compared to all-out nuclear war? | avgcorrection wrote: | Why? Because they just want to maximize profits which is | inherently peaceful because <repeat points from the article>? | I don't know what assumptions you're using. | noduerme wrote: | It's not inherently peaceful, but it's cautious. | | Invading Iraq or trying to create democracy in Libya or | getting Finland to join NATO is, basically, some attempt to | create stability at a distance - as misguided and chaotic | as the results may be. Engaging in actual, direct _war_ the | way Putin has would be unthinkable; it would be like taking | your pants off at a dinner party. | | [edit] I should clarify that the _invading Iraq_ part of | the above statement was meant as a bit of jest; obviously | that was precisely what Putin has done. | | [edit #2] the article's flaw isn't that it (rightly) | locates the source of both peace and war in the profit- | making capacities of companies and governments; the flaw is | in its fanciful belief (and the subject of the piece) that | this has somehow led to a neutered military situation of | which the present Russian losses are proof. They are no | proof, and the situation is more dangerous and ambiguous | than ever, partially as a result of the ongoing neutering | of one of the three important millitaries in the world at | the hands of the most powerful alliance. Wish that it were | not so, but this destabilizes what had up until now been a | grouping that _was_ mostly driven by profit. | avgcorrection wrote: | > I should clarify that the invading Iraq part of the | above statement was meant as a bit of jest; obviously | that was precisely what Putin has done. | | But Libya was not in jest. | noduerme wrote: | Libya was unfortunately in earnest, but for exactly the | right reasons. | | We didn't seek to conquer it, occupy it, or annex it. We | did seek to support a popular uprising against a vicious | dictator [edit: Something that we've unfortunately over- | promised and failed to deliver on too many times, e.g. | Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Kurdistan, Hmong people, any war | where the Pentagon seizes on a "third way"], but we did | that based on a doctrine that security for ourselves | needed democracy abroad, especially in the Middle East | and North Africa. Let me make the alternative case for a | second: Helping democratic movements in the ME/NA was a | misguided proposition, as obviously the region has zero | history of popular governance and the only actual | alternative to authoritarian rule there on the ground is, | and has always been, hardcore 7th century Islamism which | is among other uglinesses and human rights abuses, deeply | unfriendly to us. And therefore it was a fool's errand to | overthrow any dictator in the ME, because they were the | ones keeping the street quiet. | | Okay, now that I've made that case, here's the case for | helping overturn Qaddafi and try for Libyan democracy: He | was murdering his own people. He had done, and he would | do it again. And given the climate, his state would | become again a breeding ground for terrorism as it had | been in the 70s and 80s. | | Personally, I think it was stupid, but I don't think it | was wrong in the sense that Russia invading Ukraine was | wrong - precisely because I _don 't_ think propping up a | dictatorship is morally valid, the way Russia was | propping up Ukraine before 2014 and the way it still does | in Belarus and all the former Soviet states. | | What I'm saying is that the moral decisions are | frequently poor strategic decisions, and they rarely work | in concert, but the failure of one doesn't nullify the | other; nor do our strategic failures provide | justification for the moral failures of others. If | something is wrong then replicating it would also be | wrong, no? | avgcorrection wrote: | > [edit: Something that we've unfortunately over-promised | and failed to deliver on too many times, e.g. Hungary, | Czechoslovakia, Kurdistan, Hmong people, any war where | the Pentagon seizes on a "third way"] | | It's like there is no need to even compose a reply. This | philosophy is absurd on its face. | | But I'll just say that the US has supported dictatorial | "regimes" (instead of overthrowing them, or fomenting a | popular uprising). | | (What if the US was in fact a capable superpower and not | a bumbling, idiotic giant who whoopsies all of its | attempt to to good? Because the war aims had nothing to | do with spreading democracy.) | safety1st wrote: | This stuff about the world being peaceful due to the industrial | revolution doesn't make a lot of sense to me. For one thing, the | IR significantly predated WW1 and WW2. It didn't prevent those, | so how'd it cause the "long peace" afterwards? The predominant | theory about this in international relations is hegemonic | stability theory - | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemonic_stability_theory - there | have been several periods throughout history that were relatively | peaceful because an exceptionally strong nation state decided to | step up and enforce a peace. 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. | randomopining wrote: | WW1 was an exact showcasing of what he meant. Combined hubris | on all sides led to massive destruction for essentially | nothing. | | WW2 was just before nukes, and also had actors like the Nazis | that were completely off the spectrum - where they would | eradicate or dominate opponents if they were to win. | | We then saw the Cold War, where the Soviets and US never felt | compelled to have an open confrontation because the costs were | so high and the end goals of both sides weren't to conquer the | other (just carve up the rest of the world as much as | possible). | | Now we're at China vs the US -- they are competing over future | influence but the costs of confrontation are too high. | | Putin/Russia thought the Ukraine thing would be a quick victory | where the West would be too slow/split to act effectively in | time and then they would solidify the new "facts on the ground" | easily. | ajuc wrote: | Just before WW2 the Haber Bosch process for fixing atmospheric | nitrogen into fertilizers/explosives (same thing basically) was | invented. Shortly after the war it was widespread, and since | then there was no starvation in any developed or even semi- | developed country. | | Hitler started WW2 to annex Ukraine because of its fertile | soil. Basically he wanted colonies without the inconvenience of | dealing with the sea. Like soviets and Americans had. | | Shortly after WW2 it ceased to make sense to invade for farming | land. | | It's not the only factor (nukes are another), but it is a very | significant factor. | ponector wrote: | What? Hitler started a war with UK, France and other | countries to annex Ukraine a few years later? | Metacelsus wrote: | Haber-Bosch was just before WWI, not WWII | hinkley wrote: | WWII started just before WWI. Some people call the Second | World War part 2 of the first. At the time people were | worried that the settlement with Germany was just an | armistice. Those people turned out to be right. | | I'm not saying you're wrong, just that we should be very | very careful treating the wars like they were unrelated | incidents. They absolutely were not. | jcranmer wrote: | > WWII started just before WWI. Some people call the | Second World War part 2 of the first. | | Ehh...... | | WWI is complicated, but it essentially boils down to a | great power war caused by a breakdown in relations that | reached the point that diplomats were unwilling or | incapable of keeping the war from breaking out. The | result of WWI was that all of the traditional great | powers (both those who won and lost) were spent [1]. The | peace treaty sought to see the victors compensated by the | losers, and part of the compensation was breaking them up | in the vain hope that this would make war less likely, | with some parts being carved up into independent | countries, and others (especially colonies) being annexed | to the victors. | | WWII isn't so much a single war as it is four (sets of) | wars of naked territorial aggression (Germany, Italy, | Soviet, and Japanese) and two civil wars (China and | France) that got merged into a single conflict by the | fact that everyone ended up aligning into one side or the | other. These wars don't start just before WWI; in many | cases, the territorial jealousies that precipitate the | war _can 't_ start until after WWI (e.g., how can Russia | start seeking to invade its neighboring countries when | _they 're still part of Russia_?). | | In between these two conflicts is a very large series of | civil wars and revolutions and failed revolutions that | are largely born from the instability of the | international political sphere following the exhaustion | of all great powers in WWI. These (relatively) smaller | conflicts provide a more or less continuous segue between | WWI and WWII, to the point that it may be better to just | think of the period from 1914 to 1949 as a modern Thirty | Years' War that sees the world shift from a balance-of- | power regime involving the major European powers to a | world that involves just two superpowers and their | alliances. | | [1] The US was the only major country not economically | devastated by the war, but despite its economic size, its | unwillingness to participate in European affairs means | it's not really a great power as far as people at the | time were heavily concerned--it doesn't enter the stage | _until_ WWI. | ranger207 wrote: | WWII was definitely caused by WWI but that wasn't | necessarily always going to be the case. If a more | Marshal Plan-like armistice had been settled rather than | the punitive treaty that actually happened then there's a | decent chance that fascism wouldn't've found such a | disaffected populace to breed in. | scythe wrote: | More descriptively, there was a cascade of revolutions | and coups across Europe and Asia in the wake of WWI: | Russia (1917), Germany (1918), Turkey (1919), Hungary | (1918, 1919), Afghanistan (1919, independence), Egypt | (1919, independence 1922), Morocco (1920, French conquest | resumed), Mongolia (1921, independence), Italy (1922), | Iran (1921, 1925), Portugal (1926), Poland (1926), | Lithuania (1926), Arabia (1925, Saudi conquest), China | (1928, KMT-CPC split), Iraq (1932, independence), | Thailand (1932), Germany (1933, Nazis) Latvia (1934), | Austria (1934), Estonia (1934, _reversed_ 1938), Spain | (1936), Romania (1938), probably some others I left out. | TimTheTinker wrote: | It's interesting to note how many of these revolutions | and coups involved a fall to either communism or fascism. | For the most part, these were _not_ positive | developments. | | Perhaps the declining role monarchs across the world was | a causal factor there -- countries of citizens trained to | live with a highly authoritarian structure, who because | of prior experience gravitated towards fascism/communism | (also highly authoritarian) | KineticLensman wrote: | > Hitler started WW2 to annex Ukraine because of its fertile | soil | | Ukraine wasn't a distinct state then. There were many many | factors involved [0] | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II | devnullbrain wrote: | >Ukraine wasn't a distinct state then. | | That has no relevance. | FpUser wrote: | Well it does. USSR was much bigger than standalone | Ukraine, hence different consequences. | selimthegrim wrote: | After WWII Ukraine and Belarus were given separate UN | seats from USSR. So in 1991 they just kept those seats. | FpUser wrote: | 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. | ajuc wrote: | I didn't think I'd it necessary to mention that Ukraine | was a part of USSR and Poland at the time. It's common | knowledge. What isn't common knowledge is that Hitler had | plans for Ukraine in particular (inspired by Hlodomor). | BSEdlMMldESB wrote: | > anyone who conducts in an (unapproved) war (such as Russia | right now) | | you're actually saying that any war is OK as long as the USA | starts it. | | it's an expression of: "do as the USA tells you to do; do not | do what the USA itself does" | | the 'grown up view' is that there are trade-offs. the USA is an | empire... I define the essence of an empire to be: a group of | people from one place telling people from another place what to | do. the most often thing they're told is to pay tribute (which | by this point is part of a semi-obscure system of taxes, | tariffs, technological transfers, and other hidden things) | safety1st wrote: | I'm not saying any war is OK, regardless of who starts it. I | would prefer there be no wars, if such a thing were feasible. | I'm just saying that if you start a war the US doesn't like | they have the ability to fuck you up with sanctions, and they | use this ability pretty liberally to enforce a US-led peace. | | And no one else really has this ability, take the Iraq War | which was exceptionally vile - did the US get sanctioned for | it? Nope, because sanctioning the US is basically shooting | yourself in the foot. Even today it's still about a quarter | of global GDP and a huge buyer of everyone else's stuff. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | > you're actually saying that any war is OK as long as the | USA starts it. | | Bush Jr. has been convicted of war crimes in at least one | country because of his actions with respect to the Iraq war: | https://www.esquire.com/news- | politics/politics/news/a35397/b... | | Very few countries are opposed to the US invasion of | Afghanistan, as those plotting the previous attack on the US | were doing so from a position of sanctuary in Afghanistan at | the time. | | Wars of genuine self defense are basically automatically | approved by standard international law: | https://legal.un.org/repertory/art51.shtml | georgeg23 wrote: | The problem with hegemonic "stability" is it can be derailed by | one guy who likes to fire people on television. | avgcorrection wrote: | > 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? | rufus_foreman wrote: | It's going to depend on your definition of not-war, but | according to https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been- | at-war-93-of-..., which counts things like the late | 70's/early 80's CIA involvement in Afghanistan as war, it | would be 1976, 1977, 1978, 1997, and 2000. | newhaus1994 wrote: | 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 the early 20th and mid-to-late 19th | centuries. | OkayPhysicist wrote: | 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. | avgcorrection wrote: | It's certainly a cop-out if you use such a segmentation | to argue that things are peaceful. | mcguire wrote: | Is it really a cop-out if most people are not involved in | a conflict? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in- | state-based-con... | avgcorrection wrote: | I can't... I can't respond to a completely different | claim, can I? Or at least I don't care to. It's a cop-out | if you cherry-pick what is a "war". That has nothing to | do with your interjection. | l33t233372 wrote: | Peaceful just has to be a continuum in order for us to | make any sense of a theory of peace. | | Certainly wars between great powers and much smaller | countries are more peaceful than near-peer wars. | avgcorrection wrote: | > Peaceful just has to be a continuum in order for us to | make any sense of a theory of peace. | | Nope. Any reasonable person will accept an argument about | how things are peaceful in relative terms. Factoring in | everything and not cherry-picking. | | Demanding perfect peace would be way too idealistic. | l33t233372 wrote: | I think we're saying the same thing. Are we not? | avgcorrection wrote: | Sure. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | > I believe the stats still back up that overall fatalities | from military conflict have been at historic lows. | | The argument can't be about overall fatalities, but about | overall conflicts (and the numbers/proportion of people | involved in such). Medical and sanitation technology alone | has dramatically decreased the human-life cost of war, at | least in proportion to total population. | ilaksh wrote: | This almost makes sense to me but I think that characterizing | it as "stepping up" to "enforce peace" is part of a fairytale. | | This hegemony is not actually so different from all of the | empires that came before it. | georgeg23 wrote: | That theory ignores the Cold War, which hinged on M.A.D. | jdlshore wrote: | In what way? The fundamental argument is that war is less | profitable than economic competition, which is exactly how | the Cold War progressed, and why the US _won_. | | _Edit:_ My mistake, I thought you were talking about | Deveraux's theory, but it looks like you were talking about | the Economic Stability Theory OP mentioned. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | > The fundamental argument is that war is less profitable | than economic competition, which is exactly how the Cold | War progressed, and why the US won. | | So for countries that lose the economic competition, might | war be a 'better' option? | safety1st wrote: | 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 well, it had the better economy, overwhelmingly | better navy etc. There were more chips on the strategic board | than MAD and most of them belonged to the US. | sdenton4 wrote: | 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. | sophacles wrote: | Ignoring the strictly subjective "matters" bit - what | metrics make it medium or large? | safety1st wrote: | 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. | OkayPhysicist wrote: | 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. | andsoitis wrote: | Why do you say that? | anonymouskimmer wrote: | A couple of possible reasons: | | 1) It takes time for countries to break old habits when it | comes to war. | | 2) Probably most important for WW1, the personal wealth of | monarchs is in the lands they own, not the industries their | tax-payers own. And this source of wealth, prestige, and | vertical mobility is also of immediate importance for the upper | classes in a monarchy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Nelson%2C_1st_Viscount... | | Very few of these monarchies exist now. Many of them fell in | the aftermath of WW1, and some of the big remaining ones fell | in the aftermath of WW2. A positive of this is that now the | remaining monarchies see war not as a means to extending their | wealth, but, if on the losing side, as a means to ending them | entirely. This didn't use to be the case, as previously losing | monarchies might be given the opportunity to fold into the | conquering monarchy as a subordinate power or noble. | bradrn wrote: | Deveraux explicitly endorses (1) in the article: | | > If anything, I think cultural values have lagged, resulting | in countries launching counter-productive wars out of | cultural inertia (because it's 'the doing thing' or valued in | the culture) long after such wars became maladaptive. Indeed, | I'd argue that's exactly what Russia is doing right now. | krunck wrote: | It's what the US has been doing since WWII. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | In the past 30+ years the US wars (minus Afghanistan) | have probably been reactive responses to the OPEC oil | shock of the 70s and a bit of the US Embassy hostage | situation in Iran. I wonder how much a gallon of gas | costs if you factor in all of the money (not including | the cost of lost lives) from those wars. | epicureanideal wrote: | [flagged] | Benjammer wrote: | "If you would just do what I told you, you wouldn't get | hit!" | | Big yikes here... | epicureanideal wrote: | That's not at all what I said. | | What do you think about the video I linked? | | Also, analogies to dysfunctional interpersonal | relationships don't represent the dynamics of many-party | international competition very well. | alvarezbjm-hn wrote: | "If the USA had not continued to expand NATO eastward | (especially the discussion of making Georgia and Ukraine | part of NATO in 2008), a few hundred thousand Ukrainians | and Russians would still be alive and Crimea would still | be part of Ukraine." | | Yes, you did say that. Russian response was overkill, but | you didn't mention Putin there. Clever. | Benjammer wrote: | "We must respond to defensive fortifications that put | missile batteries up outside our sovereign borders with | extremely violent, extremely aggressive, expansionary | excursions to conquer territory and move our border | CLOSER to said missiles" | | The logic makes zero sense, I'm sorry. It's still a | "well, I wouldn't have to do X if you didn't do Y" | mentality that completely and utterly shirks any sense of | responsibility for one's or one's country's own actions. | It's hogwash doublespeak used by BOTH abusers in messy | interpersonal relationships, AND by international | politicians playing realpolitik. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | > What do you think about the video I linked? | | I rarely take political speech on its face value. I only | watched half a minute but Putin was stating what he | stated for a particular audience, to get a particular | reaction. | dotnet00 wrote: | I wonder what it says about a country's intentions if | they feel threatened enough to kill tens of thousands of | innocent people over them shifting towards joining a | defensive alliance. | epicureanideal wrote: | > defensive alliance | | I almost spit out my coffee I laughed so hard. | | That's how the alliance markets itself, but that's not | how everyone in the world, especially their potential | adversaries, perceives it. And its potential adversaries | have been saying so, publicly, for decades. | | As I'm sure you understand, all military alliances, even | if they start out defensive in nature, can easily become | offensive in nature. | | > if they feel threatened enough | | Exactly, they felt threatened, because they did not and | do not perceive NATO as a defensive alliance. | | I highly recommend watching the videos I linked in my | earlier comment. | adzm wrote: | Whether they feel threatened or not still is no | justification for their war in Ukraine. Not to mention | their attempts to annex Donbas etc, or their annexation | of Crimea. | | Ukraine was no threat to Russia. By invading, Russia just | proved to everyone else in the world that Russia is the | threat. | | Which interestingly leads to even more "Russophobia" | because apparently having enough Russian speakers in your | area is justification enough for Russia to come in and | invade. | | It's all ridiculous and shameful behavior on Russia's | part. I feel bad for all those having to live under their | current regime. | llamaLord wrote: | Correlation does not imply causation. Of course countries | that are already involved in a joint-forces defensive | military alliance are going to be more likely to enter | into other external wars together. That doesn't mean the | defensive alliance is somehow a contributing factor to | that external war. | | Countries in an existing defensive alliance are likely | using similar gear, have similar doctrine, have similar | values, and have alignment strategic interests. | | The defensive alliance exists as an outcome of these | alignments, as does the cooperation on the external war. | The alliance doesn't cause the external war. | | Australia is not part of NATO, yet it's followed America | into basically every war it's had in the last 60 years | because of these preexisting alignments, not because of | NATO. | chrysler wrote: | >> That's how the alliance markets itself, but that's not | how everyone in the world, especially their potential | adversaries, perceives it. | | Not since 1990, at least. Cold War era defensive | structures were dismantled when Warsaw Pact dissolved and | Russia never established any comparable defensive | structures on its own borders. | | In terms of military doctrine, composition and placement | of armed forces, preparations of border defenses, early | warning systems etc, Russia has not prepared for invasion | in any way. Why, if they perceive this as a threat like | you say? With virtually all of Russia's fighting force in | Ukraine, the road to Russia is wide open. There isn't | even a wire fence on Russian side of border with NATO | countries Norway, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia! Where do | you see any signs of belief in threat from NATO to | Russia? | | Countries that border Russia, in contrast, have made | extensive preparations to fight off another Russian | invasion. | dotnet00 wrote: | The only ones pretending that it isn't a defensive | alliance are the ones who have some territorial claim | they're hoping to take military action against. For whom | it is very inconvenient that there's this group of | countries who would very much rather they didn't. | | Everyone else sees very clearly that an alliance which | only invokes when attacked and requires the resolution of | territorial disputes prior to gaining membership is not | going to just invade them first. | | Half of the members were literally dependent on Russia | for their energy needs, many of them thinking that the US | was the warmongerer for being constantly paranoid about | Russia's intentions, with defense budgets trending | downwards and the former American president having openly | questioned the need for NATO. There is no reasonable way | to argue that they were at all going to be attacking | Russia as an alliance in that state. | jcranmer wrote: | The historical Russian counterpart to NATO was the Warsaw | Pact, which was pretty clearly solely an instrument by | which the USSR exerted its will over its members --its | primary intervention was to invade a country that wanted | to leave. | | So it's not entirely unreasonable for a Russian to look | at the NATO as potentially acting like the Warsaw Pact | did, although, as you note, the fact that much of NATO | _doesn 't_ share the same foreign policy as the US | (indeed, often criticizes the US's foreign policy aims!) | should disabuse them of that notion. | eropple wrote: | This is a Good Post, and honestly your last point | includes one of the things that I (as an American, and | generally critical of our own foreign adventurism) am | most astonished by. We have culturally never expected | much of NATO to stand up to Russia; the saber-rattling | _felt_ like it was frequently working against Europe. | That Russia could push too far and stiffen European | resolve so sharply seemed off the table. | | The cynic in me sometimes thinks that part of it, and the | American response as well, is perhaps as much that it's a | European country being bullied and not somewhere far away | (read: brown), but that it's happening at all is any port | in the storm. | dotnet00 wrote: | I don't really think you're being cynical for thinking | that. The entire "war has returned to Europe" narrative | from the start of the war kind of confirms that as part | of the reason for the response. | | I disagree that it was due to racism though (in the sense | that they're explicitly thinking that "brown people's | lives are less valuable"), it's simply that Europe | naturally cares more about problems closer to home and | the US has the context of its relationship with Russia. | | On top of that, both of them have a lot of historical | "trauma" from the part of WW2 which was fought by big | powers in Europe. I think there would be a similar | reaction from Japan, South Korea, and America in response | to an invasion of Taiwan by China due to their own | history on that front. | actionfromafar wrote: | It's that it's happening close to large strategic allies. | jackpirate wrote: | There was rather a lot of NATO coordination in the US-led | invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan. None of the | military missions in these countries were in response to | the Article V mutual defense clause of the NATO treaty. | It's very easy to see how these operations (and therefore | the NATO alliance) would be seen as aggressive to these | countries. | danbolt wrote: | The 2003 invasion of Iraq wasn't the same group as NATO. | France and Germany opposed the US's "coalition of the | willing". [1] | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willin | g_(Iraq... | pydry wrote: | >defensive alliance | | Offensive alliance. | | Libya. Serbia. Afghanistan - all offensive operations. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | The major government organization in Afghanistan was | actively providing security, aid and comfort to those who | organized the attack on the US. | | Libya was in order to implement United Nations Security | Council Resolution 1973, which Russia or China could have | vetoed had they wished. | | Yugoslavia (Serbia) stands. | pydry wrote: | The Taliban offered to hand over bin Laden if the US | offered evidence of his culpability. It was never a | threat to NATO. NATO was not defending itself from | Afghanistan. | | Libya was supposed to be a UN sanctioned humanitarian op. | It got silently upgraded to regime change, which is why | Putin publicly expressed regret at not vetoing it. | | Libya was never a threat to NATO. NATO was not defending | itself from Libya. | | Serbia was never a threat to NATO. NATO was not defending | itself from... well, not to put too fine a point on it | but... Russia's closest ally in Europe. | | It is not a purely defensive alliance in any sense of the | word except an Orwellian one. All of its military | operations have been exclusively offensive in nature. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | This doesn't explain the Chechen conquest. https://en.wik | ipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Russi... | | Russia had nukes, they had no existential reason to worry | about NATO. | | The key element in all of this is Putin. Not NATO. | Animats wrote: | No, it's mostly Putin. He wants to be Tsar of All the | Russias, like Peter the Great, whom he greatly admires. | | 'All his (Putin's) ideas... come from the past. He wants | to move the country to the 19th century, to a time when | empires were possible.' -- Marat Gelman, former Putin | adviser.[1] | | [1] https://archive.is/ddazo | marketerinland wrote: | Your analysis is accurate in one sense but inaccurate in | another. | | Correct; Putin had an issue with NATO expansion. | | But the reason this was an issue for him is completely | missed (or deliberately ignored) by people like yourself. | | The fact that NATO is a defensive pact IS the problem. | | Because if a country joins NATO, that means Russia can't | invade it. | | Putin's wet dreams all revolve around restoring Russian | glory and territory. He's also said this publicly, too. | | And that is why NATO expansion is such an issue for him. | Any other narrative is absolute hogwash | llamaLord wrote: | For context for anyone reading this, Mearsheimer is one | of the most hardcore anti-nato theorist's in the | International Relationship world. | | He IS credible, don't get me wrong. But he does also | represent the extreme end of the "Realist" school of | thought so definitely isn't what you'd call "balanced". | | Just make sure you balance his theories out with some | other options, don't take him as gospel. | ProjectArcturis wrote: | You posted a lecture in which Mearsheimer says Russia | will never try to conquer Ukraine, because "Putin is much | too smart for that" -- and ask us to accept him as an | expert? | mecsred wrote: | Not that I agree with the content of the lecture, but you | have to read between the lines for that. "Putin is much | too smart for that" is a stand in for "it would be very | stupid for Putin to do this please don't" that looks like | a compliment at surface level. | ProjectArcturis wrote: | Here he is in February 2022 again saying they won't | invade: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbj1AR_aAcE&t=4731s | | At a certain point it sure looks like Russian apologism. | pydry wrote: | "That would probably involve the invasion of the eastern | part of the country" - direct quote from your YouTube | video. | | Mearshimer's claim to fame stems from accurately | predicting this invasion _would_ happen. | | He did also say that Putin wouldnt try to occupy Ukraine | (presumably beyond the eastern part/crimea) but would | instead aim to wreck it. | | That part seems to be coming true as we speak. | | The only way to "disprove" Mearshimer's prediction is | mischaracterize Russia's military goals during the | initial strike on Kiev (I am not certain what they were | but I am 200% certain occupation _wasn 't_ one of them | because the force was far too small for that task). | dralley wrote: | He tried to invade and occupy the whole fucking country. | Not just "the eastern part". He went for Kherson, he went | for Odesa, he went for Kyiv. The fact that he failed | doesn't diminish the fact that he tried. | | JM was just wrong. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVmmASrAL-Q&t=27m27s | | Putin gave his speech about wanting to be Peter the | Great, how Ukrainians are just Russians who've been | convinced otherwise by the evil West, and Russian state | media went around praising Putin for "solving the | Ukrainian question" (yikes, and yes that's a quote). | | None of that fits into JM's worldview. | | No geopolitical doctrine should take for granted that all | geopolitical actors are rational, especially dictators. | This ought to have been obvious after WWII. | pydry wrote: | >The fact that he failed doesn't diminish the fact that | he tried. | | The fact that he sent a force 1/10th the size required | for military occupation does tend to suggest that he had | a different military goal in mind when he sent the force. | | (not that we can prove the military objectives of sending | that force with any great certainty) | | >No geopolitical doctrine should take for granted that | all geopolitical actors are rational | | Definitely not, but if you dont know a military objective | for sure and from a list of 7 you pick the _least_ | rational, _least_ likely one because reasons your | doctrine is _absolutely stupid_. | | Furthermore presenting that assumption as the sole piece | of "evidence" that proves someone wrong is just...wow. | | >JM was just wrong. | | No, JM absolutely nailed it. Every word of that YouTube | video you linked to was prescient. | dralley wrote: | >The fact that he sent a force 1/10th the size required | for military occupation does tend to suggest that he had | a different military goal in mind when he sent the force. | | Lol. No. | | Explain the military purpose of sending riot police and | parade uniforms? Explain the military purpose of getting | 10,000 of his most capable special forces troops | slaughtered in 3 days? Explain the 30 mile convoy? | | The simplest explanation is that he in fact did believe | all the shit he said on TV about Ukrainians secretly | yearning to be Russians, that they would welcome the | overthrow of their government, etc. That he believed | Russia was the 2nd most powerful military in the world, | that Ukrainians would immediately surrender, that it | would be easy. | | All of which is in fact backed up by intercepts and | intelligence as well as the entire state narrative in the | early war. | | >Furthermore presenting that assumption as the sole piece | of "evidence" that proves someone wrong is just...wow. | | What? It's not the sole piece of evidence... | | You need to read the reports about what actually happened | on the ground. JM did not "nail it", he was clueless. | They've been planning this for a long time. They thought | they had deeply infiltrated all levels of Ukrainian | government with spies whom would be able to paralyze the | response (and to be fair, in the South, they did). | | https://static.rusi.org/202303-SR-Unconventional- | Operations-... | | https://static.rusi.org/special-report-202202-ukraine- | web.pd... | hackandthink wrote: | Mearsheimer saw it coming and got it basically right. | | He predicted "Putin will wreck Ukraine" and this is | happening now. | ProjectArcturis wrote: | That is some pretzel logic right there. | hackandthink wrote: | Just plain and simple facts. | alejohausner wrote: | This is the point that Robert Kennedy Jr has been making, | very eloquently. Regardless of how heinous Putin may be, | how nasty the Russian invasion has been, it was not | unprovoked. The USA put missiles in Turkey in 1961, and | the Soviets responded by puting missiles in Cuba. The | Soviets felt threatened by missiles that could hit Moscow | in 30 minutes, and they responded in kind. What did the | USA do? They blockaded Cuba, and the Soviets backed down, | seemingly cowed. But secretly JFK had made a pact with | Krushschev, and withdrew missiles from Turkey shortly | after. | | In other words, the USA acknowledged that they had | provoked the Soviets. | | But somehow bringing NATO to Russia's doorstep should not | be seen as provocation? | | It's very tempting to paint your military enemies as | cartoon villains. In fact, painting Putin as a | cleptocratic thug is easy. It gets you reelected at home. | But openly humiliating him is bad foreign policy. | | RFK Jr's message is that Ukraine did not benefit from | this war. Their young men are being sacrificed to an | American plan to wear down the Russian army. | | Why provoke the war when realpolitik says it's better to | compromise? | | Cui bono? Who benefits from this conflict? American | military contractors, and American exporters of natural | gas. | adzm wrote: | > Their young men are being sacrificed to an American | plan to wear down the Russian army. | | Their young men are being sacrificed to evict a foreign | army that has invaded their soil. This has the side | effect of wearing down the Russian army, so of course | others are going to help who want that effect, too. But | that is not why they are sacrificing their lives. | dralley wrote: | Even "being sacrificed" is a bs characterization. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | If Russia had been consistent in their reasons for | expansion this would be believable. But they've said too | many things to believe that they are primarily motivated | by NATO expansion on its lonesome. | | > Who benefits from this conflict? | | Minority populations in a variety of countries (Moldova, | Ukraine, Belarus) who nostalgically yearn for Russian | confederation again. | chrysler wrote: | Comparisons with Cuba ignore the fact that the balance of | military power in Europe is heavily in Russia's favor. | For example, Russia hosts nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad | enclave, in the middle of Europe. Map: https://www.washin | gtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2016/1... | | And now it's placing further nuclear missiles in Belarus. | | And yet, when countries directly threatened by these | weapons seek mutual defense pacts and cooperation with | other countries in Europe and North America, you call | this a provocation. Russia can place nukes in Europe and | that's fine, but Poland can't even hold joint military | exercises with France. Can you tell me why? | adzm wrote: | NATO expansion is a scapegoat for Russia's imperial | conquests. They will latch on to any reason to justify | the invasion of Ukraine. If I recall correctly, it was to | take care of "Nazis" in Ukraine, right? But then they | kind of stopped promoting that angle. Also they took | Crimea, which understandably made a lot of Ukrainians | very nervous. | | Russia should have just not invaded Ukraine. I find it | incredible that people try to justify that action on | increasingly flimsy grounds. | barbariangrunge wrote: | The peace is due to nuclear weapons and the threat of global | extinction. When that isn't a factor, we still see lots of | wars. Period. Because the next major war between nuclear | equipped powers might be the worlds last | downWidOutaFite wrote: | I see no mention of the UN in these discussions. The post-wwii | international order has been maintained in large part thanks to | the global agreement to recognize the UN as the venue to arbitrer | large disputes. But there's a dangerous growing movement to | denigrate the UN for various ideological reasons. | DubiousPusher wrote: | > But because the leaders of a country like Venezuela know that, | they may well try to avoid developing their country into such a | weak state in the first place. Sure, bribery and corruption are | fun, but only if you live long enough to use it; it's not worth | ruining the economy if the only consequence is being killed when | Brazil, Colombia or the United States invades. | | Interesting read but the above point is moot. History features | many selfish leaders letting their kingdom, fief, colony, what | have you fall into exactly that state of affairs. And when they | were occupied, as often as not, the leadership was left intact so | long as the tribute did flow. This is true from the ancient world | up to through the 20th century. | | > This is why, I'd argue, you see the proliferation of failed | states globally: in the past it would be actively profitable for | non-failed states to take advantage of them | | Sure, there may be more independently standing "failed states" | but occupation by a "more competent" power was rarely a | corrective. These largely just became failed vassals. The little | bit of bureaucratic support imposed by the occupier usually had | the effect of depriving locals of the experience of self | development and coordination and thus deepening and prolonging | the crises within. | | > I should note I find this version of the argument, based on | incentives and interests more compelling than Steven Pinker's | version of the argument based on changing cultural mores. | | > The value of the oil and other resources would be less than the | cost of maintaining control of the country. | | The reasons that managing such a country would be too costly now | vs in the past are almost purely cultural. Treating an occupied | place like a colony has diplomatic and internal consequences for | the occupier (not enough in my opinion but much more than in the | past). And much more importantly, the cultural inventions of | nationalism and total insurgent warfare have made it much harder | to maintain an occupation. Yes, there were insurgencies in the | past but the cultural expectation that hundreds of thousands or | even millions of people will live in craters, subsist on worms | and rats, forgoe medicine, endure exposure, hunger, pain and | trauma for years or decades or even generations to guarantee self | rule. | | The cultural invention of nationalistic mass resistance depends | on technological innovations. You need modern small arms and | explosives to make every cell of 20 or so fighters a threat which | can't be ignored by an occupier. You need modern communication to | coordinate these cells. | | And of course the value of this cultural invention is in its | ubiquity. So you need an era of sentimental propaganda that | depends on modern mass media to disseminate it. | | Ultimately technology and culture are not separate things. They | shape each other as they develop and sometimes they are one in | the same. | KineticLensman wrote: | > For those unfamiliar with the concept, the 'long peace' is a | term we apply to the period since WWII which has had a low and | indeed falling level of war, both inter-state and intra-state. | | There's an alternative view is that there was a long war | essentially from the beginning of WW1 to the collapse of | communism [0]. The so-called long peace also included the Korean | War, the Vietnam war, various Arab-Israeli conflicts. I've seen | it stated that there were only in fact a few days of peace in the | entire 20C: the very brief period between Japan's surrender in | August 1945 to the start of conflict that gradually ramped to the | Vietnam war, when an Anglo/French force supported by rearmed | Japanese took on the Viet Minh[1]. | | [0] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shield_of_Achilles:_War,_P... | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Vietnam_(1945-1946) | jamesgill wrote: | " _Normally, when I say this is something that has happened, I | find I encounter a great deal of incredulity among the general | public._ " | | No, not just the general public; the 'long peace' is a hotly | contested idea amongst academic and professional circles too. | And, it's arguably a rather large amount of hand-wavey bullshit | trying to paint certain nation states in a particular light and | narrowly define 'war', 'peace', and 'violence'. | bendbro wrote: | > And, it's arguably a rather large amount of hand-wavey | bullshit trying to paint certain nation states in a particular | light and narrowly define 'war', 'peace', and 'violence' | | tl;dr lefty academics disagree? | georgeg23 wrote: | 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 | scythe wrote: | 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... | georgeg23 wrote: | I agree with UCS, and even the _threat_ of an SDI can lead to | an arms race. | dirtyid wrote: | Pinker's "long peace" theory with respect to global conflict is | likely bad statistics - 20th-21st century under US military | hegemony had a comparable if not higher number of conflicts, see | Max Roser's work documenting global conflicts over the past 600 | years. What has changed is that war now is generally shorter and | less deadly especially towards combatants, but that's more | reflective of the pace of modern war enabled by modern weapons. | High intensity wars don't last for 20+ years anymore because you | can pretty much destroy nations in 1-5, and belligerents are | quicker to exhaust and forced to settle. In aggregate war | fatalities is down, but not # of conflicts. US hegemony didn't | stop USSR and RU from warring in their periphery, nor PRC border | skirmishes pre 90s when US had vast more naval power asymmetry. | When countries want to fight for their interests, especially | regional, they still do. | | Ultimately, US military dominance is good for US+LIO interests / | serenity, but hard to extrapolate anything more. IMO | multipolarity will increase the chance of "smaller" conflicts as | poles assert their own interests for sure, but it's going to be | around the baseline of conflicts that's consistently been | simmering throughout history. The fear is increasing large-scale | conflict between poles/blocks - ending the cyclic gap between | major wars among major powers - but that's what happens when | declining hegemon pushes their interests to the exclusion of | others too intensely for too long. | IceHegel wrote: | The Grand Illusion II | nerdponx wrote: | I'm surprised to hear the author state that war is more | destructive than in the past. Is that actually true? Certainly we | are more _capable_ of destruction than in the past, but modern | millitaries have put a lot of effort into being less broadly | destructive, unless they specifically intend to broadly destroy | things. Photos of bombed-out cities in Syria are jarring, but | even the worst devastation there doesn 't look as bad as what we | saw in WWII, WWI, or even the American Civil War. When is the | last time a city was "sacked" or a countryside "pillaged"? When | is the last time an entire city population was executed? If | anything, it seems like war is much less destructive than it used | to be, because weaponry and tactics are much more precise than | they used to be. | pdonis wrote: | _> Certainly we are more capable of destruction than in the | past_ | | That is what the article is referring to when it talks about | war being a lot more destructive--that _if_ we choose to wage a | total war, like we did in WW II, we can potentially destroy a | _lot_ more than at any time in human history. But the article | is arguing that that very fact has _prevented_ countries from | trying to wage total war, because the costs now greatly | outweigh the benefits. So the _actual_ destructiveness of | actual wars has gone down. | | _> If anything, it seems like war is much less destructive | than it used to be, because weaponry and tactics are much more | precise than they used to be._ | | I think this is true, but it's also true that more precise | weaponry and tactics also change the goals of war. You can't | conquer a country, or reclaim a country that someone else | conquered, with low-level targeted munitions. But you _can_ do | things like eliminate terrorist leaders or take out particular | dangerous capabilities (like the Israelis bombing Iraq 's | Osirak nuclear weapons plants) _without_ having a major impact | on the rest of the population. This kind of change is exactly | what the article is describing when it says that democracies | now have an incentive to build a military not for fighting a | conventional war but for "the kinds of actions which mitigate | the harm caused by failed states" (of which terrorism is one). | mcguire wrote: | " _It is really quite hard for ancient or medieval armies to do | meaningful long-term damage to an agricultural economy; farmers | flee, crops are hard to destroy and in any case armies can't do | anything to the land itself. [...] Even a sustained collapse | might mean something like only a 25% reduction in total | production; by contrast Liberia lost 90% of its GDP in just six | years of internal warfare from 1989 to 1995._ " | | Now, I could pick some nits with that: crops are not that hard | to destroy. But that just results in a few years of famine. On | the other hand, a proper counterexample would be the Thirty | Years War, but I don't know what the actual long term | consequences for the northern German economy were. | nitwit005 wrote: | > because it no longer makes economic sense to do so. The value | of the oil and other resources would be less than the cost of | maintaining control of the country | | That's always been the case. People used to just murder or | enslave the populations they conquered. | | While you can get away with mass genocide and slavery internally, | it has gotten far riskier to attempt such a thing against a | neighboring state. It'll also destroy your status as a leader, | when previously a violent conquest was often viewed as | "glorious". | pdonis wrote: | _> That 's always been the case. People used to just murder or | enslave the populations they conquered._ | | I don't understand. Murdering or enslaving the population of | the conquered country is a lot _cheaper_ as a way to maintain | control of it. So the fact that it 's a lot harder politically | to do those things now, than it was in the past, greatly | _increases_ the cost of maintaining control of a country. As | the article says. | nitwit005 wrote: | What's changed isn't the economics, it's what other leaders | will do if you attempt it. | pdonis wrote: | I would say both have changed. The economics has changed | because, even leaving out political factors, the _benefit_ | of invading a country has greatly decreased, because the | kind of war you need to wage to invade a country now will | destroy whatever wealth in that country you were hoping to | gain by invading it. And the political factors have changed | because previous ways of trying to reduce the cost of | controlling a country will now trigger consequences (in the | form of actions by other countries) that they didn 't | before. | inglor_cz wrote: | "Murdering or enslaving the population of the conquered | country is a lot cheaper as a way to maintain control of it." | | Depends on what you need the country _for_. | | Nazis crushed the Czechoslovak state and executed any | guerrillas caught fighting them, but they didn't mess with | ordinary Czech workers, who were needed to keep the factories | running. Mistreating qualified workers would decrease total | industrial output and harm the German war effort. | michaelt wrote: | _> 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 display in | every helmet and a grenade-dropping drone in every backpack. | | One officer wants to train loads of soldiers as linguists, so | they can win hearts and minds in any country they might occupy. | | One officer wants to focus on PR at home, as maintaining a steady | supply of cash and adventurous young men is key to winning any | conflict. | | One officer wants to cut bureaucracy and red tape, as every | individual in a support function is someone not in a front-line | function, and it's front line fighters that win battles. | | One officer thinks the important thing is physical conditioning | and classic soldiering - Marching, marksmanship, long hikes | carrying heavy backpacks. | | How do you decide who to promote, if it's 30 years since you were | last at war and none of them has ever won a real battle? | munificent wrote: | Or, in software engineering terms, it's impossible to optimize | code that you can't profile. | [deleted] | tomxor wrote: | 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. | jacobr1 wrote: | The thing about benchmarking and profiling is that you need | a target scenario. Even if you can simulate a generic | representation of a given workload, you might have | different workload, or your specific environment might | differ from the norm. One could imagine an armed force that | actually was well attuned to fight a near-peer power in a | border conflict, but wasn't well setup to fight battle a | continent away against guerrilla forces. This is a peril | all benchmarking has, even when correct, it is still | limited to its own assumptions and context. | 13of40 wrote: | 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. | WeylandYutani wrote: | America didn't learn it forgot. Many people wrote about | counter insurgency warfare in the 70s after Vietnam. | | Mind you much of it was political: "we're about to occupy a | country where 20 million people want to kill us" would have | sounded pretty awful at the State of the Union. | roarcher wrote: | The military took many lessons from Vietnam that didn't | work in the Middle East. | | As one example, at the start of the war in Afghanistan, | Marine scout snipers would operate in two-man teams. This | was a Vietnam-era SOP that favored stealth over firepower-- | two men can't lay down much heat, but they don't need to if | the enemy can't find and engage them. It's pretty easy to | hide a couple guys in a jungle, so it worked well. | | The problem with that doctrine in Afghanistan is that | hiding even two men is difficult in arid environments. A | team is far more likely to be seen regardless of its size | and needs to be able to defend itself if compromised, which | happens far more often in a desert. By 2010 the SOP was | 8-man teams. At least one bloody incident was the cause of | those numbers being bumped up. | | There's a saying that rings true, "The military is always | fighting the last war". | dvt wrote: | Super cool insight, I wonder what the turnaround or | bureaucratic process is of fundamentally changing an SOP. | It can't just be generals mandating these things (or is | it?). | | Changing organizational processes tends to be extremely | hard in large orgs, and I wonder how the military deals | with it. | roarcher wrote: | Although I was tangentially involved in the | aforementioned incident, I'm not sure what level the | change came from or what the process is but it was an | extremely broad order--at least Marine Corps-wide, and | possibly for all units in theather (excluding SOCOM/JSOC, | I assume). So pretty high up. The incident made some | pretty big waves. As far as the turnaround time, it was | quick, within a few days I believe. | | It's worth noting that this was one of many incremental | changes. When I started that deployment in 2009, snipers | were going out in 5-man teams. The team that got hit | actually did technically consist of 8 men (as was already | the SOP), but they were split into two four-man elements | that took different positions about a kilometer apart. | The mandate going forward was that all 8 team members had | to be within earshot of each other at all times. It was | the latest of many orders in the trend of ratcheting up | firepower at the cost of concealability. | jasonladuke0311 wrote: | You talking about the team that fell asleep in their nest | and all got killed? | tester457 wrote: | Why the change? What lessons were learned? | akiselev wrote: | The primary change to HMMWVs is the shape of the hull: | they're now designed in a V shape to deflect the force from | explosives away to the sides of the vehicle. | ikiris wrote: | that bombs go boom, and militaries don't have the | monopolies on them they thought they did. | ProjectArcturis wrote: | MRAPs: you need better defense against IEDs. | | M4: a short barrel is easier to use in close quarters | fighting, and this outweighs the loss of accuracy at longer | distances. | stanford_labrat wrote: | I am merely a military/tactical gear hobbyist so anyone | with actual subject matter expertise feel free to chime in. | | In this specific case humvees were particularly ineffective | against the IED-based warfare being conducted in Iraq and | Afghanistan. Light, fast, vehicles are not particularly | resilient to explosives. | | Also, while the 20" battle rifle does provide superior | ballistics for the 5.56 round, it's unwieldy and there was | a fair bit of CQB during the GWOT. 14.5" carbines were a | sort of middle ground that could perform in both long range | and short range engagements. Night time direct action raids | by special forces even opt for shorter 10.5/11.5 barrels. | | I recommend Jeff Gurwitch on YouTube he goes in depth into | the history and rational behind equipment evolutions during | the GWOT from a first hand perspective as an ex-SF soldier. | ared38 wrote: | The US and the HMMWV did great at the combat part of Iraq and | Afghanistan. The real switch was from conventional military | operations to the long peace. | | "Instead, the new incentive for most countries would be to | build a military in a way that aims to minimize the political | costs... it makes sense not to build an army for conventional | operations but instead with an eye towards the kinds of | actions which mitigate the harm caused by failed states: | armies aimed at policing actions or humanitarian operations." | | MRAPs exist to minimize the political costs (dead and wounded | soldiers) in a policing action. When you look at conventional | wars like Ukraine, HMMWVs remain very relevant in their | doctrinal role. | bratbag wrote: | None of those things. | | The one who is most flexible and has the best ooda loop when | under pressure. | karmakurtisaani wrote: | Probably not his point tho. | cosmojg wrote: | Wait, isn't the point of teaching the OODA loop to avoid | maintaining a legible OODA loop? As I've been taught it, OODA | loops are a means of modeling and interfering with | adversaries, not a tool for organizing yourself. | gsatic wrote: | It doesn't matter in the military. People aren't machines. And | when you throw them into high stress, chaotic, unpredictable | environments, the expections of performance arent like what you | see in the movies. | pfdietz wrote: | You can wargame and simulate. It's not perfect, but it can give | very useful pointers, especially at the strategic level. | | The US Navy did extensive wargaming at the Naval War College in | the inter-war years, from after WW1 to about 1933. The results | were extraordinarily valuable in the Pacific when WW2 came | about. The strategic issues the Japanese had can be seen as the | consequence of not gaming full campaigns (as opposed to | putative "decisive battles"). | jcranmer wrote: | The Youtube channel Drachinifel covers those war games, and | the lessons the US learned (and didn't learn) from them in | pretty extensive detail here: https://www.youtube.com/playlis | t?list=PLMK9a-vDE5zEmzgruoWAy... | pfdietz wrote: | That's a different set of games. The Fleet Problems were | LARPing with ships. This could be invaluable for | understanding (some) tactical issues but could not apply to | understanding prolonged campaigns (that would be too | costly). For that, the Naval War College did tabletop/paper | games, lasting up to months, that covered multiple | engagements. | | Fascinating free book that motivated these comments: | | https://www.history.navy.mil/research/publications/publicat | i... | | "Between 1919 and 1941, the U.S. Navy transformed itself | from a powerful if unsophisticated force into the fleet | that won a two-ocean war. The great puzzle of U.S. naval | history is how that was accomplished. This book argues that | war gaming at the U.S. Naval War College made an enormous, | and perhaps decisive, contribution." | | A whole string of vital lessons were learned during the | gaming, which I can go into if you like (or you can read | the book.) | jacobr1 wrote: | One take from that historical episode that might be | applicable to those on HN: the real value came from | building the organizational muscle around metaproblems. | How do we adopt the organization to a changing | environment? How do we introduce feedback loops? How do | we get good data and test assumptions? How do we | continuously improve? Building that mindset and | capability was potentially as important as any specific | lesson on logistics or whatever. | LandStander wrote: | Paintball. | DubiousPusher wrote: | > 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. | | I would argue even more drastically that, a commander or | doctrine is only as good as the war they are in. I mean that | every conflict has the capacity of developing so differently | that even a tested commander or strategy is suspect. | Historically, conflict during a period was more homogenous. | Having a war every 5 to 10 years would keep your officer corps | relatively relevant. Only in large empires with a huge variety | of martial interests would we see commanders succeed wildly in | one engagement and utterly fail in another. | | But modern wars swing suddenly from guerilla, to conventional, | to insurgent, to cold with such rapidity that command | experience is profoundly difficult to rely on as a predictor of | success. | | Probably the wisest way to promote in a modern military is to | use all your standard expectations in peacetime. Who is | organized, dutiful, etc. But maintain the knowledge that once | shit hits the fan, you will be moving people around based | largely on success. Which is what happens in real full blown | conflicts. France in WWI is a good example. | | The much harder question is how do you measure performance in | non-conventional wars? | distortedsignal wrote: | How do you know which conflict you're going to fight next? | | Each of these commanders may be better suited to a different | conflict. The commander who is competent in one conflict may be | a buffoon in a different conflict. | | Even winning battles doesn't necessarily set up a commander for | success. If your enemy changes between conflicts (say, going | from a near-peer adversary to an insurgent adversary, a-la-Gulf | War 1 -> Gulf War 2, or insurgency to near-peer, a-la Russia- | in-Chechnya to Russia-in-Ukraine), radically different | strategy, operations, and tactics are required. | | I think this goes a long way to explaining the old saying | "everyone prepares to win the last war." It boils down to "this | guy did good last time, he'll do good this time too" when what | helped him the last time is a very specific way of thinking | that is not applicable now. | | TL;DR: Responding to Change over Following a Plan | erikerikson wrote: | 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 | photochemsyn wrote: | This blog post has some curious blind spots that, if taken into | account, negate most of its primary thesis about 'the long | peace'. | | The focus of the post is two-fold: the recent outbreak of war in | eastern Ukraine, in truncated form (the war has been going on at | a low level since 2014, with militia forces supplied by Russia | and Ukraine fighting one another in eastern Ukraine throughout | that period), and a recommendation for a book about a naval | battle in World War II. Hmm... what about Vietnam and Iraq? | | This is pretty standard American exceptionalist propaganda-speak, | as seen in corporate media and Hollywood: lots of material on | WWII, and on today's conflict. It's obvious why neither Vietnam | nor Iraq/Afghanistan are mentioned in the post, those being the | largest post-war conflicts the US was involved in. The Vietnam | War was in many ways the result of European colonial powers | (France) to hold onto their colonial possessions post-WWII; the | US could have supported Vietnam independence in 1945 but chose to | allow France to try to seize control again, and then took over | from the French under JFK's tenure, and spent about a decade | killing Vietnamese people in a futile effort to keep the puppet | South Vietnam government in power. There was also an element of | Cold War proxy fight. | | The Iraq War is even less defensible; the WMD claims were | deliberate lies concocted by the CIA on the orders of the Bush | Administration and supported by the UK's Blair government. | Basically a class A war crime. Similarly, the debacles in | Afghanistan (NATO-backed), and Libya (NATO-backed) don't get any | scrutiny. | | As far as nuclear weapons, well, they haven't stopped war, just | pushed the conflicts into various proxy wars, as seen in the | India-Pakistan border region. The architects and profiteers of | war don't want to get nuked themselves, though they are quite | happy to send kids off to die in these conflicts, so nuclear | weapons are somewhat stabilizing, barring some accident or other. | bell-cot wrote: | He puts quotes around 'long peace', and links to his definition | - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Peace. Notice all the | disclaimers there - "absence of major wars between the great | powers of the period" ... "period of 'relative peace' has been | compared to the relatively-long" ... "wars have declined since | the 1950s" "Periods of regional and relative peace" etc. etc. | | Also, the record of America's post-WWII wars actually supports | his thesis. Except when brighter U.S. Presidents had a "rush | in, accomplish very limited objectives, rush out" game plan - | those minor wars have ~all proven too expensive to continue. | ~Nothing actually gets conquered, and on a military-prowess- | per-dollar basis, the American armed forces come out looking | pretty underwhelming. | [deleted] | reducesuffering wrote: | The blind spots are entirely your own. The very first paragraph | of the article includes: | | "the period since WWII which has had a low and indeed falling | level of war, both inter-state and intra-state. Normally, when | I say this is something that has happened, I find I encounter a | great deal of incredulity among the general public. Surely they | can list off any number of wars or other violent conflicts that | happened recently. But the data here is actually quite strong | (and we all know my attitude towards certainty on points of | real uncertainty; this is not one of them) - violence has been | falling worldwide for nearly 80 years, the fall has been | dramatic and relatively consistent." | | > standard American exceptionalist propaganda-speak | | "the USA's record as a neighbor to Central and South America is | not one we ought generally to be proud of" | jcranmer wrote: | > The focus of the post is two-fold: the recent outbreak of war | in eastern Ukraine, in truncated form (the war has been going | on at a low level since 2014, with militia forces supplied by | Russia and Ukraine fighting one another in eastern Ukraine | throughout that period), and a recommendation for a book about | a naval battle in World War II. Hmm... what about Vietnam and | Iraq? | | That is not the focus of the post. It's a "Fireside Friday;" an | abbreviated [1] discussion of some topic, combined with a | generally _unrelated_ list of recommendations. You 're | misreading a lot into the author to assume that there's some | hidden agenda to avoid talking about America's modern wars. | There's no discussion of the US here because the entire theory | is essentially a pondering (not structured enough to be a full | thesis) of "does long peace make countries into paper tigers?" | where the US _not_ having been at peace means it fails the | precondition. | | And as other commenters have noted, the author _does_ have | include criticism of America 's foreign policy misadventures in | this blog post, not to mention that there's been more forceful | denunciations in other blog posts. | | [1] Abbreviated here is relative; the author's in-depth | discussions will be _multiple_ blog posts on a single topic. | Merad wrote: | I thought I recognized the site. This the same author who wrote | very detailed analysis of the Siege of Gondor and the Battle of | Helms Deep from LOTR as well as articles about military and | political topics from Game of Thrones, and many real-world | historical topics. They're a military historian IRL and have a | lot of content worth reading: https://acoup.blog/resources-for- | world-builders/ | akiselev wrote: | Brett Devereaux (or Ollie, really) is very popular on HN: | https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=acoup.blog | ihm wrote: | A lot of cogent analysis here, but I'm surprised the author | doesn't seem to know about the economic and political forms of | warfare which the US has been pursuing as a cheaper alternative | to conventional war. | | To use Venezuela as an example, the author says no one has tried | to invade it (which is actually not even true, see below) but | also the US has been imposing crippling sanctions for over 15 | years in an attempt to punish the people and weaken the | government. | | Moreover there was a US supported coup attempt in 2002 and one | basically cooked up entirely by the US in 2020 (Operation | Gideon). This was a plan to actually invade the country by boat | with a small force to try to take control of the government. | | This is part of a pattern of behavior for the US in the 20th | century. The book Washington Bullets does a good job cataloguing | the various interventions of this form. | dsaavy wrote: | Agreed. Most modern forms of Western warfare are non-violent | with occasional violent repercussions. It's not lining up | troops and sending them places in uniforms, although that does | happen. | | It's economic, cyber, covert, cultural and other less | noticeable sieges that cause collapse from the inside. | steve76 wrote: | [dead] | MostlyStable wrote: | So, not to come off as "these are good things" or anything, but | you have to be able to see that "economic warfare" is | preferable to "warfare warfare", right? It would obviously be | better to have neither, but if I have to pick one, I know which | one I'm going to pick, and I don't think it's unreasonable to | characterize a switch from traditional warfare to economic | warfare as "more peaceful" or even just "peaceful". | pphysch wrote: | You don't have to pick one. Venezuela has approximately zero | capability to wage _any_ flavor of warfare against the USA, | and certainly didn 't provoke the current hybrid war by | threatening USA national security. | 5040 wrote: | >you have to be able to see that "economic warfare" is | preferable to "warfare warfare", right? | | Economic warfare can resemble the sieges of traditional | warfare. Yemen was blockaded "economically" to prevent food | and medical aid from entering the country. Syrians were only | getting an hour of electricity per day in recent memory | because of economic strictures preventing them from importing | oil. It can get pretty brutal. | iskander wrote: | > But in a world where most invasions are - or at least ought to | be - self-deterring, for countries that do not have revanchist | neighbors who might launch a stupid war of conquest out of pique | | Seems a bit dismissive about the degree of revanchism in many | former empires (or among people who imagine themselves the | descendants of those empires). | | Turkey, Iran, China, and Russia at the very least are all waiting | for or working towards a world where territorial acquisition by | conquest is the norm. | digging wrote: | Still, reading, but I'm looking forward to this. I've read a lot | of the author's other posts about things like military | organization in LOTR and theory of history in Crusader Kings. I | typically find the tone to be careful and nuanced but also | engaging. I am likely unqualified to really determine the merits | of a given argument in this article, but I feel confident I can | trust the author to present them fairly. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | "We have all noticed that the Russian military appears far less | capable than we thought it was; frankly it seems incapable of | even some of the very basic tasks of modern industrial armies | engaged in conventional military operations." | | I wondered about that. For the record, I have zero evidence of | this as reliable records are hard to find in that arena. Chechnya | was Russia's bigger conflict and now, unlike Syria and few other | spots, Russia's approach resembled anti-terrorist stance ( pop in | for a quick action and hold a small group keeping tabs on things | ). | | The societies that seem to have a handle on this are ones that | currently do not have peace ( say Ukraine or Israel, where both | deal with an enemy threat on a regular basis ). | | "Instead, the new incentive for most countries would be to build | a military in a way that aims to minimize the political costs, | rather than maximize combat power or even 'security'." | | I am willing to agree on this one. There is a clear weariness in | US for giving military even more money. I am seeing something | similar in the old country and that is despite Russian aggression | aimed at Ukraine. | | "Meanwhile, maximizing the army for repression means developing | paramilitary internal police forces at scale (Rosgvardiya is an | obvious example), which direct resources away from core | conventional military; such security-oriented forces aren't | designed for a conventional war and perform poorly at it." | | The argument seems valid, but I am not entirely convinced. Secret | police is not new to Russia and if any country has their | apparatus working, it likely is Russia. If that is the case, it | makes it difficult for me to believe that they do not have a | working system that recognizes and gives some leeway, like any | wars before that, to people doing the actual fighting ( like.. | you don't put a front soldier in Gulag just because he openly | says Putin is a dick ). That said, the argument does provide an | explanation for Russia's failure. I am just not sure I agree | though. | | "revanchist powers (Israel, Taiwan, Poland, Finland, Ukraine, | etc.)" | | I found the listing of Poland and Finland interesting, but I am | not sure what argument for keeping them on that list is. | | " Of course the big unanswered and at the moment unanswerable | question is where countries like India or the People's Republic | of China fit." | | I am not sure it is unanswerable. Some people have definitely | taken a stab at it. Right now, the momentum seems to be | generating a new axis with both India and China rising as new | powers and flexing their individual muscles ( we hear a lot about | China, but that seems like it is mostly, because it is US's | current main concern ). | perardi wrote: | _I am willing to agree on this one. There is a clear weariness | in US for giving military even more money. I am seeing | something similar in the old country and that is despite | Russian aggression aimed at Ukraine._ | | Is there really? There's some grumbling online, and the recent | debt ceiling fight did involve a cap on spending. But they | still increased spending, and it's entirely possible and | probable that cap is going to get uncapped in a supplemental, | as Republican and Democrats in the Senate are still quite into | spending on this. | | https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/mcconnell-says-mil... | | The US populace may get grumbly about spending on Ukraine, | although realistically most people are just bored and have | tuned out that news. But I think there's about a 0% chance we | won't still increase military spending, especially given even | more posturing and escalation about Taiwan. | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | You raise a valid point. There does seem to be an - not | completely unexpected - disconnect between average US denizen | and established powers ( in this case, an ancient senator ). | | << The US populace may get grumbly about spending on Ukraine, | although realistically most people are just bored and have | tuned out that news. | | I chuckled, because I kinda see that. That said, that boredom | will evaporate rather fast when that bored person is asked to | pay even more, while given little to no support. And that ask | is coming eventually. | | US has been running on borrowed time for a while now. It | managed to go into serious debt over Afghanistan and Iraq and | still pretended it does not actually need to pay for it in | terms of taxes. FED also obliged by keeping rates super low | to keep the interest payments a non-issue. That is ending | based on current trajectory. | | As for tuning out, I think you are really onto something. I | went out of my way to limit the amount of news I process. | perardi wrote: | You are vastly overestimating how much the average US | citizen thinks about the military at all, except in the | vaguest ways related to social signaling about their class. | | We basically have a caste system for the military, so | outside certain geographic regions and economic classes, | military stuff happens _[gestures vaguely]_ over there. | People will posture about it, but nah, nobody will | _actually_ cut spending, as the military-industrial complex | is everywhere, and "cutting military spending" actually | becomes "we can't shut down that base or stop making that | engine part, because jobs". | | What will actually happen is superficial cuts to programs | that don't contribute meaningfully to the debt, but are | nice culture war targets. Past that, we'll engage in some | gross race and class cuts to Medicaid. But we are not going | to cut military spending, because, again, it's a jobs | program that's protected by a vague sense of patriotic | duty. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | Even on the right there are arguments against military | funding boondoggles. | https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/boondoggles-where- | did... | colonCapitalDee wrote: | The full quote is "they have real security threats from | revanchist powers (Israel, Taiwan, Poland, Finland, Ukraine, | etc.)". The listed countries aren't revanchist powers, they're | under threat from revanchist powers. | jandrese wrote: | 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 they find | that they are a shell of their former self. | | India also has major corruption problems that bode ill for it | in future conflicts. China is a bit harder to read, sometimes | it seems like the party is clamping down on it, but there is | always the low level stories of how to deal with a system that | is corrupt from top to bottom. | avgcorrection wrote: | 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 | jandrese wrote: | 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. | avgcorrection wrote: | > Corrupt relative to democracies, or really just most | other countries in the world. | | I'll reiterate. You described it as something that Putin | caused (in part). | | > 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. | | But it has always been like that. At least since it was | born from the Soviet Union. | | But now you change your tune to to it being corrupt | "relative to democracies". | jandrese wrote: | I'm not sure what point you are trying to make? Putin is | corrupt and as a result his military underperforms. | Historically the Russian and Soviet systems were rife | with both corruption and military losses. This was my | original point. | | Putin may have inherited a corrupt system, but he | certainly didn't do anything to rectify the problem and | most likely made it worse. | | He is actually very lucky that the world has been | relatively peaceful during his reign, it appears an | ambitious Japan could have bitten off a chunk of Russia | if they wanted to and his military would have been at a | disadvantage trying to stop them. Putin also got very | lucky that the rest of the world didn't get involved in | the invasion of Crimea, but that seems to have made him | cocky and now he's tipped his hand and blown his bluff. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | He mentioned that allowing corruption in a military is a way | of preventing military-driven internal coups. | UncleEntity wrote: | I was watching one of the many videos on the Ukraine war the | other day and they were postulating that the different groups | were competing for war spoils so both don't cooperate and | actively try to get one of the other groups to weaken the | defenses enough (while being destroyed) so they can just roll | in and claim whatever is being fought over like a coal mine. | | Makes sense as the video was about the Russians sending | multiple waves of tanks into a kill zone with no change of | tactics and getting completely wiped out every time. | avgcorrection wrote: | "Postulating" on the propaganda-ridden topic of a major | European war isn't worth much (approximately zero). | JacobiX wrote: | Another possibility for the period of relatively long peace is | the modern equivalent of The Pax Romana. For reference Pax | Romana, describes a 200-year era in the Roman Empire from 27 | B.C.E. to 180 C.E. This timeframe marked a significant phase of | peace and remarkable economic growth achieved through hegemony. | The US has the biggest economy and the largest military spending | by far. | throwawayPAX wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana | pclmulqdq wrote: | Other periods of peace have shown up in history when one empire | is the undisputed hegemon of the known world. The pax | brittanica is another example, as are several periods in | Chinese history. | | We are living in the pax Americana right now, but it is unclear | how long that will last. | nerdponx wrote: | Rome was still actively campaigning on its borders and | violently suppressing revolts in the provinces during that time | period. But it probably felt very peaceful from the perspective | of (middle- and upper-class) Romans, especially in contrast to | the constant warfare and chaos of the centuries before and | after. | [deleted] | karaterobot wrote: | The long post-war era of peace is due to a number of factors, but | the one we don't talk about enough is that the U.S. spent untold | trillions of dollars becoming a global police force. This may be | the biggest factor. I believe it is certainly the prerequisite | for any others to have had an effect. | | The problem is that the U.S. has a tiger by the tail: if they | want to continue in this role, they'll need to step up spending | to cold war levels to have a chance of taking on China. This has | a tremendous cost, culturally and economically. | | If they don't, we'll see (as we are seeing) increased global | disorder and rearmament by, for example, European and Asian | powers. This will likely lead to more wars in the future. | | One thing I am certain of: humans didn't just spontaneously | become peaceful after WWII. Some energy is being expended to | maintain what passes for global peace, and that energy will have | to continue being expended for any conceivable time scale. | bilbo0s wrote: | This thinking is also kind of a problem in itself though right. | | I mean, even if there was no China. OK. Great. Now what? You've | still got India giving Russia as many drones as Russia desires | every month. Is India, or even South Africa for that matter, | ever going to lose its ability to produce drones for Russia? | No. | | The essential problem is that we live in a multi-polar world. | Multiple nations can sustain themselves. Multiple nations can | arm themselves. Multiple nations can exert influence in arenas | that previously only the West could exert influence. China, the | US, India, Russia, the EU. All of these power centers are | realities, and they all sometimes have conflicting agendas. | We're even reaching a point where they need each other less and | less. In fact, the linkages in terms of, for example, global | trade at times may be driving some of the problems. (See | climate change.) | | I'm not sure we know how to operate in this world. We focus so | much on one "adversary", and without fail, we end up in | conflict with another of the global powers or civilizations. I | think this is because of the strangeness of this environment to | us. Ukraine is a good example. You could argue that we didn't | even bother to understand India's position on this before we | issued an edict regarding sanctions. An edict that India | promptly ignored. That's kind of a tell tale sign that we | didn't really understand the underlying environment. Worse, I'm | not sure we even tried to understand it? Did anyone ever | actually solicit India's input in any meaningful way? I'm not | sure they did. | | So as long as that lack of understanding persists, I'm pretty | sure we'll continue to stumble from one crisis to the next. | None of which will be the crisis we plan for. | akkartik wrote: | My only quibble with this article: it fails to apply its own | conclusions to the US. The balance of evidence (Pentagon | procurement processes and cost overruns of major projects) shows | the US military too has a _significant_ paper component. | pdonis wrote: | Where does the article claim this is not the case? | akkartik wrote: | For one, it's alluding to other countries but not really | holding up the US in much of the article. | | Second, this quote at the end: | | > Consequently, I suspect Russia is not the only paper tiger | out there; the forest is likely to be full of them.. the | exceptions are likely to be.. or because they form the | backbone of an international system which requires that | someone carry a big stick (the United States). | pdonis wrote: | Ah, I see; you're not sure the big stick is actually as big | as the article assumes. Yes, fair point. | hackandthink wrote: | In the Ukraine conflict, I was surprised that the military is | more reasonable than the politicians. | | (Vad and Kujat in Germany, Milley in USA). | | Who want's to fight? It doesn't seem to be the military. | badrabbit wrote: | The important to note imo is the length of the period:80. A 17 | year old 80 years ago is 97. The last of the generation that were | alive during WW2 are dying. Putin himself grew up in the shadow | of his brother who died in WW2. | | Those that knew war, kept peace. But now, especially with gen-z, | there is less alarm and awareness of war. All the tech and | military advancement mean war would be even more horrific and | cruel but also as you can see in ukraine the usage of drones and | remore controlled artillery is reshaping war. | | Keep in mind, the rules of war only apply to the loser. The wars | most western people alive today are familiar with are fought in | remote countries and between soldiers. If your homeland was | threatened most of your people will support breaking every rule | of war. | pphysch wrote: | This article is based on the flawed premise that the Russia- | Ukraine war was overwhelmingly one-sided in Russia's favor, | eliding the fact that Ukraine had, over nearly a decade, amassed | the next largest land army in Europe, trained by NATO, armed by | NATO, guided by NATO intelligence, and side-by-side with Western | PMCs. | | In many aspects, they were peer competitors on the battlefield. | The "paper tiger" argument would have made more sense had Russia | unsuccessfully invaded Kiev in 2014. But a lot can change in 8 | years. | | Yes, Russia has had the advantage in long-range strike | capability, but they chose not to strike command centers early in | the war (contrast with the surprise airstrike on Saddam Hussein's | palace 20 years ago, which kicked off Washington's unprovoked | invasion). | lisasays wrote: | _Amassed the next largest land army in Europe, trained by NATO, | armed by NATO, .._ | | Utter BS, both in terms of raw numbers and contextually -- in | "eliding" the fact that they were invaded by a certain | neighboring country in 2014. | | As you are perfectly aware. Please stop posting nonsense like | this. | pphysch wrote: | Yes, Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea induced NATO to | heavily militarize Ukraine. | | Were you not aware of this? It was kept quiet, but not | exactly secret. | | > Since Crimea was annexed in 2014, the U.S. and partner | militaries have helped grow Ukraine's forces from just over | 100,000 troops to nearly 250,000 [in 2017]. Just since | January, Capt. Christopher's unit of 250 soldiers has added | another 3,000 or so Ukrainian soldiers to Kiev's ranks. | | https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2017/10/ukraine-us- | trains... | lisasays wrote: | The language in your post (particularly where you say "over | a decade") misleadingly suggests that there was significant | buildup pre-2014. And that poor, frightened Russia has just | reacting the way any country would, in response to this | imagined buildup. | pphysch wrote: | How is 8 years not "nearly a decade"? How is +150% over 3 | years "imagined"? I understand this is an emotional topic | for some, but let's not be obtuse about the basic | numbers. | lisasays wrote: | _How is 8 years not "nearly a decade"?_ | | By invoking the number "10", subtracted from 2022 -- | you're making an allusion to Russia's claims that it was | significantly threatened by Ukraine's buildup or NATO | musings pre-2014 to do, well -- what it just had to do to | protect itself. | | _How is +150% over 3 years "imagined"?_ | | When it alludes to the pre-2014 situation -- as your post | does. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-06-09 23:00 UTC)