[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.
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