Which is why you are a writer and I'm just a blogger. Excellent and clear exposition.Tom Ligon wrote:There is an idea I've used in several stories, and I still think it is true. What follows is an excerpt from "Payback" (Analog July/August 2009), in a conversation between a Turkish cultural anthropologist and the UN Secretary General (a Nez Perce), trying to understand the motives of Evil Aliens who attacked Earth:
“Do you know what causes wars?” Dr. Sariskal asked.
“I have my own notions, but I’d love to hear yours.”
“Wars have been blamed on arms races, and on failure to arm. They have been blamed on starvation and on plenty. They have been blamed on people hating others they have little in common with, but more wars occur between close neighbors of similar culture. An angry populace may make it easy to go to war, but that is not why they start. The basic truth is, war is caused by exactly one condition: the leadership of at least one side sees an advantage in going to war. That is the sole common cause of all wars.”
Since the thread is supposed to be about achieving world peace, I would suggest that preventing war means preventing leaders from having any reason to believe they will benefit from it. The reason globalization of the economy tends to promote peace is that, on the whole, war hurts a globalized economy, and so erodes the support of leaders that encourage it. But this is not universally true. Local politics are what really motivate leaders. If their countries do not feel they benefit from the global economy, they may rile the population with talk of war, or acts of war. This is why we are having trouble with Iran and North Korea, and have testy relations with Russia. Local politics in response to the attack of the US by Al Qaeda caused the US to invade Afghanistan and Iraq despite the inevitable negative impact on our economy and relations with other governments. Local politics caused the Taliban to rise to power and offer sanctuary to Al Qaeda. Local politics, with ambitions to expand "local" to include the entire ME, drove Saddam's reign.
The path to world peace
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
That would be the universal bottom line. All the other factors relate to the military and political calculus of determining what advantage or disadvantage exists for going to war.The basic truth is, war is caused by exactly one condition: the leadership of at least one side sees an advantage in going to war. That is the sole common cause of all wars.
The world was very different back then, in about every aspect. The basic conditions were all different. It is impossible to compare the situations.I'm glad to hear that globalization prevented WW1.
And WW2? Well it is commonly attributed to perceived weakness.
WW1 was a war caused pretty much by the same reasons the US invaded Afghanistan. A bunch of terrorists commited murder and a country was giving them shelter. Only that back then, the economic ties between the big nations of the world were to weak. So they all decided to chime in.
Today the economic ties are much, much stronger. It is almost impossible to compare the situations.
WW2 was just a continuation of WW1.
The countries that you are mentioning Tom, do not have very stron economic ties to the rest of the world yet, or they are about to develop them (in case of Russia). Iran and North Korea are rogue nations ruled by mad men. Their economic ties to other nations are rather weak.
Sure, wars are started by leaders seeing an advantage in going to war. The thing is, that if going to war will hurt your own economy, even if you win, you will think about it twice.
There are better ways to fight and win wars these days. You can take your enemy over economically (if things progress this way, then Chinas economy will just simply swallow Taiwans and China simply wins that way). You can also win via immigration and procreation, which is what the muslims do in Europe right now.
Both are much more efficient and much more likely to be successful.
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CaptainBeowulf
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Nonetheless, a number of economists in the two decades before WWI talked about how a general war would be impossible, because the economies of the major powers were too interconnected by what we would now call globalization.
I don't think the economies are interconnected enough to prevent global war yet. My suspicion is that, despite great reductions of nuclear arsenals, it's still MAD deterrence that keeps major power adventurism off the table.
If globalization continues, and in a manner that eventually raises the standards of living everywhere and leads to liberalization of totalitarian regimes like in China, we probably will get to a point where it would be sufficient to prevent global war in itself.
I don't think the economies are interconnected enough to prevent global war yet. My suspicion is that, despite great reductions of nuclear arsenals, it's still MAD deterrence that keeps major power adventurism off the table.
If globalization continues, and in a manner that eventually raises the standards of living everywhere and leads to liberalization of totalitarian regimes like in China, we probably will get to a point where it would be sufficient to prevent global war in itself.
You are right, not yet. Not yet. But we are getting there. It is a process that is happening. This is why China and Taiwan are signing trade deals now. It is an economic necessity.I don't think the economies are interconnected enough to prevent global war yet.
Territorial disputes are IMHO going to be a thing of the past. The EU (by all the things that I hate about it) shows that pretty clearly. All the countries that wanted to get away from Austria after WW1 and that expelled Germans en masse after WW2, are now pretty much asking to join Austria again in the EU. Of course so that we can pay for them again (which I am totally against doing). Still, there is no need to fight over land with a country that wants to merge with yours anyway...
Just an example.
Russia would love to join the EU, I am sure. For that, they will have to play by the rules. Right now they are still coming arround. But they know, that with their huge amounts of natural resources and the technological superiority of certain EU countries combined, there is a huge potential.
Heck, I bet with you that in 40 years from now, Taiwan will happily reunite with China in some kind of EU (but their version of it) so they can do free traveling and free trade with each other. By then China (at latest) will be the largest economy in the world. That is an important economic factor. The chance of free trade with them, will build bridges. With a free trade organization a la EU, China gets Taiwan back under their umbrella, though in a slightly more relaxed way. Taiwan gets access to their large market. Everybody is happy!
Of course, there is always the chance that something goes catastropically wrong, but it is getting smaller the stronger the economic ties get.
Also, I want to emphasize this again, you can not compare today with the way the world was at the beginning of WW1. Back then most people were still riding horse carriages across their countries in Europe and trains were only affordable to the rich.
It took as long to travel from one end of Austria to the other as it takes to fly from Vienna to Tokyo today.
The world is much smaller now. Nothing is as it was back then.
Tom Ligon wrote:There is an idea I've used in several stories, and I still think it is true. What follows is an excerpt from "Payback" (Analog July/August 2009), in a conversation between a Turkish cultural anthropologist and the UN Secretary General (a Nez Perce), trying to understand the motives of Evil Aliens who attacked Earth:
“Do you know what causes wars?” Dr. Sariskal asked.
“I have my own notions, but I’d love to hear yours.”
“Wars have been blamed on arms races, and on failure to arm. They have been blamed on starvation and on plenty. They have been blamed on people hating others they have little in common with, but more wars occur between close neighbors of similar culture. An angry populace may make it easy to go to war, but that is not why they start. The basic truth is, war is caused by exactly one condition: the leadership of at least one side sees an advantage in going to war. That is the sole common cause of all wars.”
On the surface, this seems like a reasonable theory, but I cannot help but think that wars can also be caused by egos and other haughty notions that don't necessarily correlate with financial or property gain. I suppose if you count "status" as a non tangible advantage, then I suppose the idea would still apply. The notion of "advantage" is subjective.
Matt Ridley's book argues pretty persuasively that all civilizations began with trade (specifically, specialization allowed for by gains from trade, which are very very high for the first traders). Then the empire-builders come in and seize the wealth of the specialists and traders, enforce monopolies, etc, which screws everything up.
Did you know humans are the only animals that really trade? No other primate understands the concept at all. A chimp will only trade your apples for his grapes, never the reverse, no matter how many grapes he is offered for an apple. We're the only animals that understand the concept of 12 of X being worth 1 of Y. That may be our primary evolutionary advantage.
Amazingly, for about a million years pre-humans only made one tool: a stone hand axe. Every one of them over that period looks pretty much the same, too; it probably wasn't even a skill so much as an instinct. Then our brains grew and -- bang! suddenly all kinds of tools start to appear, probably made by big-brained specialists who understood that if I learn to make nets and you learn to catch fish, I can trade my nets for your fish and we both come out ahead. And so those specialties and trading made humans much, much stronger as a species.
Did you know humans are the only animals that really trade? No other primate understands the concept at all. A chimp will only trade your apples for his grapes, never the reverse, no matter how many grapes he is offered for an apple. We're the only animals that understand the concept of 12 of X being worth 1 of Y. That may be our primary evolutionary advantage.
Amazingly, for about a million years pre-humans only made one tool: a stone hand axe. Every one of them over that period looks pretty much the same, too; it probably wasn't even a skill so much as an instinct. Then our brains grew and -- bang! suddenly all kinds of tools start to appear, probably made by big-brained specialists who understood that if I learn to make nets and you learn to catch fish, I can trade my nets for your fish and we both come out ahead. And so those specialties and trading made humans much, much stronger as a species.
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...
And they also come from madmen who wreck a country and then start a war in the hopes of covering their losses or at least staying in power a little while longer.Tom Ligon wrote:Yes, and it also includes miscalculated gain. Both factors feed a cruel madman, surrounded by yes-men and getting very bad advice because he kills people who tell him "no." Individuals in this mold cause more than their share of wars.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
In our globalized economy with multinational corporations that have larger budgets than entire countries, governments and their leaders have less power.
Of course there are some corporations that may want to wage war. Weapons manufacturers, e.g. could benefit from a nice war. The question is whether they are strong enough in a country to lobby the government into going to war.
In the US that is clearly the case, btw...
Of course there are some corporations that may want to wage war. Weapons manufacturers, e.g. could benefit from a nice war. The question is whether they are strong enough in a country to lobby the government into going to war.
In the US that is clearly the case, btw...
TallDave wrote:Matt Ridley's book argues pretty persuasively that all civilizations began with trade (specifically, specialization allowed for by gains from trade, which are very very high for the first traders). Then the empire-builders come in and seize the wealth of the specialists and traders, enforce monopolies, etc, which screws everything up.
Did you know humans are the only animals that really trade? No other primate understands the concept at all. A chimp will only trade your apples for his grapes, never the reverse, no matter how many grapes he is offered for an apple. We're the only animals that understand the concept of 12 of X being worth 1 of Y. That may be our primary evolutionary advantage.
Amazingly, for about a million years pre-humans only made one tool: a stone hand axe. Every one of them over that period looks pretty much the same, too; it probably wasn't even a skill so much as an instinct. Then our brains grew and -- bang! suddenly all kinds of tools start to appear, probably made by big-brained specialists who understood that if I learn to make nets and you learn to catch fish, I can trade my nets for your fish and we both come out ahead. And so those specialties and trading made humans much, much stronger as a species.
Kinda like the organs in a body? Now if we could just activate the immune system against the pathogens!
It has long been the bugaboo of the left (here in America) that the Military/Industrial complex is an example of just such a thing. From time to time I see bits of information that begin to make me think they might have a point. However, I have a hard time getting over the notion that they are always wrong.Skipjack wrote:In our globalized economy with multinational corporations that have larger budgets than entire countries, governments and their leaders have less power.
Of course there are some corporations that may want to wage war. Weapons manufacturers, e.g. could benefit from a nice war. The question is whether they are strong enough in a country to lobby the government into going to war.
In the US that is clearly the case, btw...
I will say that I look uneasily at the relationships between a lot of corporations and government. BP is the latest to come in view.