The scary thing for me about wars is that the soldiers aren't the ones making the decisions. Some group of people in comfortable offices look at a map, says "yeah, I think this option is more favourable to us than peace". Then a war happens. It is all about incentives and capabilities.
One of the lessons from being a Stallman watcher for many years - people are profoundly evidence based. If there hasn't been a war in 30 years, then they assume there will not be a war next year no matter how the background is changing.
The fading of WWII in the public memory could be argued as the biggest single risk that society faces. There are too many people who just won't understand how bad and how possible total war is. There is a huge background risk that the age of abundance ends and then things get dicey.
> The scary thing for me about wars is that the soldiers aren't the ones making the decisions.
Letting Soldiers & Generals control the military is the exact mistake which lead to Japan's military aggression. Keeping the head of the military a civilian/politician is perhaps one of the few ideas everyone should be able to agree is smart.
Wars are scary regardless of who makes the decisions, but I think that the situation where the army obeys civilians is, in general, much better than the one where the military decides whether it wants to go to (or continue) a war or not.
For example, it seems that the civilian elite of Germany and Austria-Hungary was ambivalent about war in early 1918, especially in A-H, and willing to entertain possible ceasefire with subsequent negotiations; but serious peace negotiations were not possible anymore, because the de facto power shifted to general Ludendorff and other high officers, who were determined to go on.
> people are profoundly evidence based. If there hasn't been a war in 30 years, then they assume there will not be a war next year no matter how the background is changing.
I model this differently - people are very conservative about narrative change. I feel it works more generally.
Examples:
If we've had peace for 30 years, then war seems impossible.
If we've had government fiat currency for a centuries or more, then of course cryptocurrencies are a joke.
If we've been on the gold standard for long enough, then of course that's how money should work.
In particular, he argues that the way you avoid things like World War II is in part precisely by making sure the military does not make decisions of war and peace.
Think of a corporations that make all decisions at top level vs corporations that at the top level mostly worry about creating correct environment for the individual contributors and low level managers to be able to make right decisions, individually.
US military won the IIWW war because it created that right environment.
Mobilizing people (people who are not interested in achieving goal are almost useless), keeping spirit (for example US military will always do what's necessary to save individual solders vs Japanese that treated soldiers mostly as expendable), ensuring that people are promoted on merit and not birth, ensuring people are trained and are given right tools.
All those things are so that soldiers can make the right decisions, on the spot.
It is naive to think that a general can say whatever he wants and make it happen. It will only happen if all those people want to make it happen and are prepared to make it happen.
if it was the soldiers making the decisions, it'd still be a group of people in comfortable offices looking at a map, they'd just be wearing uniforms while doing so. And I think (going back to Clausewitz), that military goals should be subordinated to the political goals of why there is a military action in the first place. And if it's the military that decides the political goals, they're in power and it's a junta.
Any modern military defers field-level decision making to soldiers in the field. It’s become an absolute necessity as the post WW2 diplomatic regime put in requirements for individual soldiers to refuse illegal orders and making them personally liable for war crimes.
Individual soldiers don’t plan wars, obviously they don’t have a high enough level view to do that adequately. So much of war planning is logistics and not tactics or strategy. The idea is to get the troops there, make sure they have enough weapons and ammo, give them their objectives, then let field commanders do their jobs.
thats a great simplification for the nature of war. there is an entire school of thought among western nations that agrees that war is politics. Political influence in geopolitical situation is often enabled via primary instruments of Diplomacy, Information, Military, and Economic actions from a nation state or independent actors. each instrument retains different costs for their desired effects, and the very real cost of global nuclear annihilation is one of the defining characteristics of the cold war.
soldiers devotion to duty is ingrained in their head from day zero because they MUST be better than their enemies to win the fight, and the people in comfy chairs MUST devote themselves to the study and strategy of war, not tactics, to enable proper deployment of said soldiers. The danger is when innovation on the battlefield outpaces innovation in strategy, and leads to situations like the American Civil War and World War 1...real life meatgrinder horror.
>>people are profoundly evidence based. If there hasn't been a war in 30 years, then they assume there will not be a war next year no matter how the background is changing.
Not just that. Neighbor dies of COVID, people are careful for a few days. Then they forget what the virus can do
This is why the ideal scenario is the whole military is voluntary, meaning you're forced to make sure everyone is educated and trained well enough to understand the consequences of different scenarios, enough that people will volunteer when the time comes. Well, at least historically that's how it would work - now it's technology that's used without human life at stake, to those who send, and hopefully modern warfare will use AI and weapons that are designed for no collateral damage; destroy infrastructure and military tools, so if well targeted then soldiers et al will learn to simply avoid this infrastructure and tools and they will live.
> The fading of WWII in the public memory could be argued as the biggest single risk that society faces. There are too many people who just won't understand how bad and how possible total war is. There is a huge background risk that the age of abundance ends and then things get dicey.
Perhaps this is really what peace means. It is the security of being able to live and plan a life or a business without ever once worrying about "but what happens if there is a war?". The collective impact of that on psychological security and the free movement of goods, people, ideas across the world is huge.
On average, military tends to be more pro-war then civilians. Partly it is self-selection, partly it is values taught in training (values taught because they make you more effective soldier).
> The fading of WWII in the public memory could be argued as the biggest single risk that society faces. There are too many people who just won't understand how bad and how possible total war is.
People who started WWII were WWI veterans - that is who Nazi leadership were. Starting from Hitler, through Goebbels, down the rank. Not being veteran was seen as weakness. For that matter, Stalin was veteran too.
People in 'comfortable offices' are right now deciding who gets vaccines, and who will not until later.
People are dying in the US due to lack of access to healthcare due to other people making decisions in 'comfortable offices'.
We entrust those in positions of power with such legitimate authority.
And finally: "I think this option is more favourable to us than peace" - is an inappropriate analogy because it's generally never the case. If the US were to have entered WW1 and 2 earlier, a lot of lives would have been saved. While those were easier decisions in hindsight, they're all nuanced, for example, the US+Coalition decision to liberate Kuwait after Saddam's incursion.
Oh boy. In my country, memories of war (World War II in particular), tragedies, sacrifices, "heroes" etc. are continually fueled by the ruling party. They built hundreds of new monuments in the past 10 years, gave thousands of streets names related to their selection of war and post-war heroes, etc.
Let me tell you, this is the main way to drive nationalistic divide, because the other half of the people in the country recognize for what it is -- evil manipulation of people's emotions for political gain (through conflict, much like Trump was doing in US).
There are notes in Sapiens proposing that war (the violent kind) is no longer useful / does not produce outcomes because the global economy has shifted from one of physical resources to knowledge based. That it no longer makes sense to fight over things that aren't worth as much these days, like land, oil or gold, when you can just trade. Most of money comes from peace time commerce.
Peacetime commerce requires free waterways. Everyone can "just trade" because the U.S. Navy has guaranteed free navigation of the seas since Bretton Woods[1]. When America withdraws from its security obligations, others will fill the vacuum, with all the uncertainty that implies.
A national leader who fears being cut off from essential resources will very logically view war as an option.
I don’t have a citation in front of me at four in the morning, but I distinctly recall this exact argument being made prior to the First World War - that the increasing trade between the major powers precluded war because the financial interests were too powerful.
The elephant in the room is nuclear weapons. Take a hard look when the history actually changed.
As long as politicians didn't fear for their own precious lives, they didn't mind throwing heaps of others' lives to shift the balance of power by 1%. They weren't starting these wars for merely economical value of land or money - it was always about (non-economical) value of power. Since 1945-1949, the stakes are suddenly too high and that's why don't have major wars anymore.
> [...] because the global economy has shifted from one of physical resources to knowledge based
...except for that tiny detail where we're still critically dependent on raw materials that can only be economically extracted in certain parts of the world.
Maybe mathematicians only need a blackboard and some chalk to do their work, but the remaining "knowledge based" economy needs computers, of which many parts are produced in a country [1] which is claimed by another country [2] that's been growing increasingly aggressive in recent years.
Maybe for now, but there's no way that is going to be true in 10-20 years. Resources are going to get more and more important as high grade ore deposits (needed for the nickel, copper, etc. that go into renewable energy tech) are concentrated in politically unstable regions (Congo, Central Asia, Russia). Couple that with even moderate economic growth in the developing world and you are going to see EU/USA, China, Russia, etc. all trying to secure access to these important resources.
It is accurate for dealings between liberal democracies, but I don't think you can take this approach to states who operate according to a different paradigm. Otherwise you will just be helpless when authoritarian regimes become aggressive.
Seems accurate, at least until increasingly extractive trading (which externalizes almost all costs), leads to the collapse of the ecological systems underneath it. Then we're back to good old fashioned war-war :/
"Causes of Civil War are also, that the Wealth of the Nation is in too few mens hands, and that no certain means are provided to keep all men from a necessity either to beg, or steal, or be Souldiers." - William Petty
While this is a quote about civil war, it points out a key fact. A country with a strong middle class is much less likely to send its children to war over stupid things. Even the USA barely sent 177,000 troops to Iraq and, despite a jingoistic upswell from 9/11, it was still terribly unpopular.
Richer folks also tent to study more and have say more options to expand their mind to various views, cultures and places. Far harder to manipulate/outright brainwash those into some patriotic bullshit about defending your home from those evil bad guys.
Unless you force drafts with hard punishments for those avoiding of course, but such an army would have very low morale not only these days.
I would nudge your course slightly. Instead of simply poverty, economic opportunity. In poverty, with no economic opportunity, war is your only opportunity.
A lot of the great wars of history have been instigated by rich countries - modern USA, Nazi Germany / Imperial Japan, Spanish Empire, British Empire, Napoleonic France, Roman Empire.
The Art of War, basically the first textbook ever written (and understandably so) is still relevant today.
It's almost oddly metaphysical, and relevant in zero-sum games.
Also:
"evidence of how you have come to understand the barriers faced by others, evidence of your academic service to advance equitable access to higher education for women, racial minorities, and individuals from other groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education, evidence of your research focusing on underserved populations or related issues of inequality, or evidence of your leadership among such groups.”
It's funny how some forms of censorship are evil, but other forms are lauded.
They are essentially demanding that research 'be in service to' a specific intersectional perspective, which has to be the opposite of academic freedom.
War Studies has always been a peculiarly conservative field. The War Studies department at Kings College London was the most Tory, privately educated one I’d ever scene (and one of the few feeder schools to the intelligence services outside of Oxbridge)
I wonder if any studies have done on military/intelligence/political leaders who were War Studies graduates? I.e were they better at it?
> However, part of the shift away from war studies owes to the quest for “social justice”
...
> history overall is worryingly in decline as an academic subject
There might be a connection there.
People who want to think about social justice will go to the political science department. Nothing wrong with that. But people who are passionate about history want professors who are also passionate about history.
History and social justice can go together, of course, but the passion really goes behind one or the other.
You can learn from history the same way you can learn how to be a mogul from Bill Gates. That is to say, not much other than general principles and that you have to find your generation's big idea on your own. Certainly nothing that will guarantee anything.
This is a backward way of coming to terms with conflict. In the modern world war is increasingly an outmoded way of handling conflicts. The number of wars, casualties in wars, and so on are a tiny fraction of what they have been historically. The idea that war is the basis of peace is held strongly by those who study wars, but a thorough analysis puts and social inequality and disasters such as famines as being both the current drivers of war and in many cases avoidable. At this time trade wars and competitions like the space race have a bigger effect on society than open conflict.
At least in Europe,while there were appalling conflicts throughout, we already had a couple of generations in most countries that hadn't lived through any war. We never had it so good for so long. War seems such a distant, incomprehensible thing anyone can hardly grasp. We get a little bit excited and shocked when we see reports from Ukraine or Balkans back in the day, but that's it. It's all somewhere out there,not in my neighborhood. And long,pieceful periods bring out all sorts of cretins who, otherwise, would be put in place at the very beginning but instead being given platforms,funds,and other resources to spread division, misinformation,and drive some random agendas.
It is also very hard to grasp that a war can start just like that, so people tend to dismiss clues too: 'Nah, they won't do it.'
I have a theory that offensive weaponry advancements produce peace, while defensive advancements produce war. If you're in a castle, it's easier to send armies around, knowing that you'll be safe. But if there are nukes and ICBMs, just stick with the status quo.
“War can also speed up advances in science and technology that have benefits in peacetime.”
Well that escalated from extolling the benefits of studying war to extolling the benefits of waging them rather quickly.
“Although anthropologists and archeologists still wonder why human beings have for so long organized themselves to fight...”
Do they? Surely that bit is just an obvious extension of conflict in evolution, i.e. it’s the thinking meat’s equivalent to organisms taking nutrients away from each other instead of from the sun.
Not sure there’s really any evidence that teaching military history is going to somehow diffuse future conflicts to be honest. The most likely candidates for our long peace have little to do with us becoming students of military history.
I have always found interesting the question of why countries go to war? Obviously, if you need to defend yourself you don't have too many options.
But why the elite of a nation will start a war will all the consequences and the danger of loosing territory. Of course, this elite believes they will never suffer the consequences of war. That's why nuclear weapons are a terrifying deterrent.
However, something I read recently was very illuminating: every time somebody decides to go to war, believes it is going to be short and quick. You don't start a war when you don't believe you have a clear advantage. We can also see that many times this thought was wrong and led to lengthy with a high cost on human lives.
Brings to mind The Judge's position on war from McCarthy's Blood Meridian:
"It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
Maybe slightly trite of me to reply only to the title, but there's actually a rich and interesting study of peace and peace processes which is more relevant than war, which only signifies their failure.
[+] [-] roenxi|5 years ago|reply
One of the lessons from being a Stallman watcher for many years - people are profoundly evidence based. If there hasn't been a war in 30 years, then they assume there will not be a war next year no matter how the background is changing.
The fading of WWII in the public memory could be argued as the biggest single risk that society faces. There are too many people who just won't understand how bad and how possible total war is. There is a huge background risk that the age of abundance ends and then things get dicey.
[+] [-] Danieru|5 years ago|reply
Letting Soldiers & Generals control the military is the exact mistake which lead to Japan's military aggression. Keeping the head of the military a civilian/politician is perhaps one of the few ideas everyone should be able to agree is smart.
[+] [-] inglor_cz|5 years ago|reply
For example, it seems that the civilian elite of Germany and Austria-Hungary was ambivalent about war in early 1918, especially in A-H, and willing to entertain possible ceasefire with subsequent negotiations; but serious peace negotiations were not possible anymore, because the de facto power shifted to general Ludendorff and other high officers, who were determined to go on.
[+] [-] joshmarlow|5 years ago|reply
I model this differently - people are very conservative about narrative change. I feel it works more generally.
Examples:
If we've had peace for 30 years, then war seems impossible.
If we've had government fiat currency for a centuries or more, then of course cryptocurrencies are a joke.
If we've been on the gold standard for long enough, then of course that's how money should work.
[+] [-] pkkim|5 years ago|reply
In particular, he argues that the way you avoid things like World War II is in part precisely by making sure the military does not make decisions of war and peace.
[+] [-] lmilcin|5 years ago|reply
Think of a corporations that make all decisions at top level vs corporations that at the top level mostly worry about creating correct environment for the individual contributors and low level managers to be able to make right decisions, individually.
US military won the IIWW war because it created that right environment.
Mobilizing people (people who are not interested in achieving goal are almost useless), keeping spirit (for example US military will always do what's necessary to save individual solders vs Japanese that treated soldiers mostly as expendable), ensuring that people are promoted on merit and not birth, ensuring people are trained and are given right tools.
All those things are so that soldiers can make the right decisions, on the spot.
It is naive to think that a general can say whatever he wants and make it happen. It will only happen if all those people want to make it happen and are prepared to make it happen.
[+] [-] baud147258|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vinceguidry|5 years ago|reply
Individual soldiers don’t plan wars, obviously they don’t have a high enough level view to do that adequately. So much of war planning is logistics and not tactics or strategy. The idea is to get the troops there, make sure they have enough weapons and ammo, give them their objectives, then let field commanders do their jobs.
[+] [-] RobRivera|5 years ago|reply
soldiers devotion to duty is ingrained in their head from day zero because they MUST be better than their enemies to win the fight, and the people in comfy chairs MUST devote themselves to the study and strategy of war, not tactics, to enable proper deployment of said soldiers. The danger is when innovation on the battlefield outpaces innovation in strategy, and leads to situations like the American Civil War and World War 1...real life meatgrinder horror.
[+] [-] onetimemanytime|5 years ago|reply
Not just that. Neighbor dies of COVID, people are careful for a few days. Then they forget what the virus can do
[+] [-] loceng|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaptheimpaler|5 years ago|reply
Perhaps this is really what peace means. It is the security of being able to live and plan a life or a business without ever once worrying about "but what happens if there is a war?". The collective impact of that on psychological security and the free movement of goods, people, ideas across the world is huge.
[+] [-] watwut|5 years ago|reply
> The fading of WWII in the public memory could be argued as the biggest single risk that society faces. There are too many people who just won't understand how bad and how possible total war is.
People who started WWII were WWI veterans - that is who Nazi leadership were. Starting from Hitler, through Goebbels, down the rank. Not being veteran was seen as weakness. For that matter, Stalin was veteran too.
[+] [-] jariel|5 years ago|reply
What's 'scary' are the stakes involved.
People in 'comfortable offices' are right now deciding who gets vaccines, and who will not until later.
People are dying in the US due to lack of access to healthcare due to other people making decisions in 'comfortable offices'.
We entrust those in positions of power with such legitimate authority.
And finally: "I think this option is more favourable to us than peace" - is an inappropriate analogy because it's generally never the case. If the US were to have entered WW1 and 2 earlier, a lot of lives would have been saved. While those were easier decisions in hindsight, they're all nuanced, for example, the US+Coalition decision to liberate Kuwait after Saddam's incursion.
[+] [-] jakubp|5 years ago|reply
Let me tell you, this is the main way to drive nationalistic divide, because the other half of the people in the country recognize for what it is -- evil manipulation of people's emotions for political gain (through conflict, much like Trump was doing in US).
[+] [-] Haga|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sudhirj|5 years ago|reply
This seems accurate, but time will tell.
[+] [-] Scramblejams|5 years ago|reply
Peacetime commerce requires free waterways. Everyone can "just trade" because the U.S. Navy has guaranteed free navigation of the seas since Bretton Woods[1]. When America withdraws from its security obligations, others will fill the vacuum, with all the uncertainty that implies.
A national leader who fears being cut off from essential resources will very logically view war as an option.
Edit:
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_Conference
[+] [-] Ancapistani|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kubanczyk|5 years ago|reply
As long as politicians didn't fear for their own precious lives, they didn't mind throwing heaps of others' lives to shift the balance of power by 1%. They weren't starting these wars for merely economical value of land or money - it was always about (non-economical) value of power. Since 1945-1949, the stakes are suddenly too high and that's why don't have major wars anymore.
[+] [-] adwn|5 years ago|reply
...except for that tiny detail where we're still critically dependent on raw materials that can only be economically extracted in certain parts of the world.
Maybe mathematicians only need a blackboard and some chalk to do their work, but the remaining "knowledge based" economy needs computers, of which many parts are produced in a country [1] which is claimed by another country [2] that's been growing increasingly aggressive in recent years.
[1] Taiwan.
[2] China.
[+] [-] jeffreyrogers|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacksonkmarley|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patcon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liquidify|5 years ago|reply
Or even more broadly, if you want peace, study history and make it an important part of your decision making process.
[+] [-] chmod600|5 years ago|reply
I've always heard: if you want peace, prepare for war
[+] [-] foxyv|5 years ago|reply
While this is a quote about civil war, it points out a key fact. A country with a strong middle class is much less likely to send its children to war over stupid things. Even the USA barely sent 177,000 troops to Iraq and, despite a jingoistic upswell from 9/11, it was still terribly unpopular.
In my opinion, if you want peace, study poverty.
[+] [-] saiya-jin|5 years ago|reply
Unless you force drafts with hard punishments for those avoiding of course, but such an army would have very low morale not only these days.
[+] [-] ip26|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loceng|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhpriestley|5 years ago|reply
This is my qualitative sense from studying history, and it seems to hold up quantitatively based on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jdxcode|5 years ago|reply
> Roger: As my mother used to say, your options were dishonor or war. You chose dishonor, you might still get war.
> Don: That was Churchill.
[+] [-] jariel|5 years ago|reply
It's almost oddly metaphysical, and relevant in zero-sum games.
Also:
"evidence of how you have come to understand the barriers faced by others, evidence of your academic service to advance equitable access to higher education for women, racial minorities, and individuals from other groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education, evidence of your research focusing on underserved populations or related issues of inequality, or evidence of your leadership among such groups.”
It's funny how some forms of censorship are evil, but other forms are lauded.
They are essentially demanding that research 'be in service to' a specific intersectional perspective, which has to be the opposite of academic freedom.
[+] [-] jack_riminton|5 years ago|reply
I wonder if any studies have done on military/intelligence/political leaders who were War Studies graduates? I.e were they better at it?
[+] [-] 3131s|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chmod600|5 years ago|reply
...
> history overall is worryingly in decline as an academic subject
There might be a connection there.
People who want to think about social justice will go to the political science department. Nothing wrong with that. But people who are passionate about history want professors who are also passionate about history.
History and social justice can go together, of course, but the passion really goes behind one or the other.
[+] [-] mrvenkman|5 years ago|reply
- Georg Hegel
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12801-we-learn-from-history...
[+] [-] Bakary|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tomte|5 years ago|reply
Slightly related, because they have "He who wants peace shall speak of war" at their entrance: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3b/Be...
[+] [-] m0llusk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cosmodisk|5 years ago|reply
It is also very hard to grasp that a war can start just like that, so people tend to dismiss clues too: 'Nah, they won't do it.'
[+] [-] chmod600|5 years ago|reply
Any validity to this theory?
[+] [-] hyko|5 years ago|reply
Well that escalated from extolling the benefits of studying war to extolling the benefits of waging them rather quickly.
“Although anthropologists and archeologists still wonder why human beings have for so long organized themselves to fight...”
Do they? Surely that bit is just an obvious extension of conflict in evolution, i.e. it’s the thinking meat’s equivalent to organisms taking nutrients away from each other instead of from the sun.
Not sure there’s really any evidence that teaching military history is going to somehow diffuse future conflicts to be honest. The most likely candidates for our long peace have little to do with us becoming students of military history.
[+] [-] torcete|5 years ago|reply
But why the elite of a nation will start a war will all the consequences and the danger of loosing territory. Of course, this elite believes they will never suffer the consequences of war. That's why nuclear weapons are a terrifying deterrent.
However, something I read recently was very illuminating: every time somebody decides to go to war, believes it is going to be short and quick. You don't start a war when you don't believe you have a clear advantage. We can also see that many times this thought was wrong and led to lengthy with a high cost on human lives.
[+] [-] HPsquared|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rodaveli|5 years ago|reply
"It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
[+] [-] gverrilla|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wintorez|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkt|5 years ago|reply