The Angry White Man

On Feb 25, 4:08 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:
On Feb 25, 11:30 am, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:



On Feb 25, 1:07 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

On Feb 25, 9:29 am, Jeff Dougherty
wrote:

On Feb 23, 1:04 pm, " wrote:

On Feb 23, 12:45 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

I think war is usually a business mistake, nowadays.
Ken

Right, and that is always the overriding concern that trumps the war
option, I suppose?

Certainly that was the case in 1861, 1914, and 1939 -- years devoid of
business interests.

Every time that argument comes up, I'm more and more tempted to go
digging through the college textbooks I have in storage until I find
one reading that mentions a very compelling book, written by a well-
respected economist, that was very popular in its time. It carefully
explained how, due to the interconnected nature of international
trade, widespread war was now impossible because it would call too
much economic damage to everyone involved.
Written in 1912.
-JTD

That's a case of too much power, not enough brains.
1% of those in control, say we must build 1000's of
ICBM's because the other are guys are.

ICBMs were involved in the buildup to World Wars I and II? Do tell.

Yet, 99% of the people on both sides have not motive
or desire to harm the other guys, apart from being
told they should.

Perhaps true. Even probably true. And almost certainly true of
Americans and Chinese today, or most people all over the world for
that matter. But war happened anyway. So what has changed in the
past 60 years, or even the past 30, that prevents such a situation
from devolving into war?
JTD

I'm lookin at history from 5000BC to the present.
Mongols slaughtered 30 million chinese using a
sword (not the same one), hence the sword is a
weapon of mass destruction, that's why I think
one should take care to the analysis of the 1000
ancedotal tactical battles, humans have fought.



Okay, hang on.

In your original post, you implied that wars weren't going to happen
any more, because they would be a "business mistake", that the world
had gotten too interdependent for a wider war. Others (including
myself) pointed out that for most of human history, war has been a bad
move, economically, and that in fact your thesis had been put forward
early in the 20th Century just before the most devastating wars the
human race has ever fought- and that wars keep happening anyway,
besides being really bad for business in general. In the post you
replied to, I pointed those things out, and asked what you thought had
changed in the years since that meant that this time, business
concerns would trump out, and wars wouldn't happen.

In response, you're invoking 5000 years of history, and calling us to
analyze the wars that humans have fought.

That's a non sequieter, but let's look at it for a second. The last
time anyone could make a case that "war pays for war" between
civilized states with a straight face was in the early 18th Century,
when conscript armies under folks like Blenheim were merrily marching
back and forth blowing the Hell out of civilized Europe. They spent
most of their time "levying contributions", which is a nice way of
saying "we marched into this state and forcibly stripped it of pretty
much anything of value to feed and pay the troops". Since the armies
didn't require a terrible lot of manufactured goods that couldn't be
captured and since international trade wasn't a big deal at the time,
this meant that an army in the field could more or less sustain itself
indefinitely with minimal expenditure from home. Any territory it
captured was more or less gravy for the homeland. As you can imagine,
this led to some awfully long wars.

*After* that time, though, the balance tips the other way. Sustaining
an army in the field takes a lot of manpower, a lot of high-end
manufactured goods, and a lot of mundane supplies like food and
clothing- and you have to supply those on your own now, because armies
have gotten big enough that you can't gather what you need by "levying
contributions"/bank robbery on an international scale. All of that
takes money, and lots and lots of it. All of this means that since (I
would say) about the mid 18th Century, fighting and winning a war is
almost always going to cost more money than any *economic* benefit you
could get out of it.

[All of this applies, of course, to wars between cultures with roughly
equal technology. I haven't looked at the figures in detail, but it's
entirely possible that some of the colonial wars that pitted breech-
loading rifles against spears ended up being economic wins in the long
run. Although conquest was generally one thing, pacification
another.]

The thing is, though, that wars still happen between industrialized
countries, and have for a long time. Even though they're economic
losers, they still happen. Because they can bring political benefits,
like more territory for the Big Man to rule or showing that your
country is not to be trifled with. Because they can fulfill
somebody's idea of national destiny. Because people do stupid things,
don't consider the consequences that their actions might have years
down the road, and get painted into corners. And any of those things
could still happen between the U.S. and China.

I devoutly hope they don't, because the one thing I do think you're
right about is that such a war would very likely be ruinous for both
sides and because I think wars in general are to be avoided, even if
they're sometimes necessary. But saying that it can't happen is
wrong, and dangerous because if we assume it can't happen we may not
be vigilant enough to keep it from happening.

So, with the above in mind: why, specifically, do you think that the
U.S. and China are so economically interdependent as to render war
between them impossible?

-JTD