
Why It’s No Longer Possible for Any Country to Win a War - ptrptr
http://time.com/4826856/russia-trump-north-korea-china-war/
======
gozur88
The author of this article is both dishonest and hopelessly naive. He's
redefined war to mean "conquest" and "winning" to mean "come out ahead
financially", which isn't always or even usually the point of war.

And even if it was he's still wrong. Land itself has value, and with
sufficient brutality you can still "win". The fact that we haven't seen a war
like that since 1945 in the developed world doesn't mean it's not going to
happen again. Hitler planned to basically kill everyone to the east of Germany
and replace them with Germans. That would have been "winning" by any
definition of the word.

~~~
tpeo
It certainly didn't come across like that to me, because to me as if he was
talking about the economic spoils of war, not the financial spoils of war. And
mind you, these are different things. So long as a group is able to fulfill
it's strategic objectives in a conflict while acting in consistence with well-
behaved preferences, that's not merely a "victory" by some other arbitrary
definition but is in fact an economic victory. Any action which leads an agent
to a state closer to his preferred state is an economic victory.

If he meant only that war currently has no financial value, I don't see why
he'd make references to Assyria or Rome. Because whatever value those peoples
derived from conflict wasn't most likely in increased treasuries, but instead
in the extension of land and in the number of subjects, which in itself can be
very valuable things to warlike societies as it improves their ability to wage
war, either by increasing the defensibility and depth of their borders or by
making them able sustain larger armies.

I've might have read him more generally than he meant, though. But still, I
don't see the need for such a specific reading.

~~~
gozur88
>Any action which leads an agent to a state closer to his preferred state is
an economic victory.

I find that construction odd. Are you trying to say all goals of war are
ultimately economic? If so I think that's needlessly restrictive.

>Because whatever value those peoples derived from conflict wasn't most likely
in increased treasuries, but instead in the extension of land and in the
number of subjects...

I know next to nothing about Assyria, but the Roman treasury profited quite
handsomely from conquest, to the point that in the Republic's most expansive
period you only had to work two days a year as a Roman citizen to pay your
taxes.

Because when the Romans conquered a people they took everything that wasn't
nailed down, sold the land, sold the rights to collect taxes in that area, and
then sold people themselves.

~~~
tpeo
What I meant is that "economic" phenomena encompass a much wider range of
phenomena you might be thinking of. It's the opposite of being restrictive:
any problem at all where have something like an agent which has to choose
something over something else might be considered an "economic" problem, at
least from an economist's perspective. If anything like a ranking of choices
can be defined as well as a set of possible choices, that's something an
economist can work with.

About the Roman bit, the real issue would be how much of any direct monetary
gain from conquest ended up in the hands of the Roman state rather than in the
hands of private citizens.

------
maxxxxx
That's a very dangerous line of thinking. Before WW1 the same argument was
made because the world was supposed to be too connected by trade.

~~~
tpeo
Don't remember hearing an argument along those lines, but the world being "too
connected" in 1914 would be only partially true, since the Great Powers were
in frequent commercial competition among themselves.

~~~
maxxxxx
Here is an article along those lines: [http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-
kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-w...](http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-
kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-war-one-first-war-was-impossible-then-inevitable/)

------
Axsuul
One can say that nuclear weapons have been the biggest peacemaker known to
man. It's hard to imagine another World War since the advent of such weapons.
Furthermore, the nuclear weapons today wield a power that cannot even be
compared to the ones that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I don't
think any superpower today wants another global war knowing that it would
spell total annihilation for all those involved.

We also shouldn't discount that the world today has so much more
globalization. Just about every country has become interdependent on each
other.

------
gmarx
Countries cannot profit by war perhaps but that won;t prevent wars. I don't
think most wars are entered as the result of a cold economic calculation. They
are caused by ancient programs written into our DNA before humans even
evolved. So for the time being war is disincentivized by economics but I am
confident we will eventually find reasons for a big war anyway

~~~
smt88
> _I don 't think most wars are entered as the result of a cold economic
> calculation. They are caused by ancient programs written into our DNA before
> humans even evolved._

There are credible arguments that the Second Red Scare (which started after
WWII) was the result of ruling classes in capitalist countries becoming afraid
that they would be the victims of a proletariat revolution. A revolution like
Cuba's would have been their worst nightmare.

That's perhaps not a cold economic calculation, but almost certainly an
economic one.

There are also many Middle Eastern conflicts that the US is only involved in
because we're afraid of losing access to oil.

~~~
gmarx
are we though? Our alliance with Saudi Arabia was a calculation of that nature
back around WWII. Recently though did the revolution in Iran cause a problem
for our oil supplies? Is there a scenario in which a middle east war or lack
of such war affects our access to oil?

~~~
gozur88
The "war for oil" thing is looking at the wrong end of the telescope. The
problem in the middle east is oil gives the rulers of these countries a way to
purchase security organizations and strong militaries they could never afford
based on normal economies. It's not just the middle east, either - it's also
places like Nigeria and Venezuela.

------
1812Overture
"For the first time ever, fewer people die today from human violence than from
traffic accidents, obesity or even suicide."

I don't think many hunter gatherers died of traffic accidents or obesity.

