
Remote war is bad war - slowhand09
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614488/why-remote-war-is-bad-war/
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jpm_sd
"However, all wars must eventually be won with boots on the ground."

Can wars even be "won", in this sense, any more? Modern war is asymmetric. If
the enemy is a radicalized percentage of the civilian population, hiding in
plain sight, when do you "win"? Who surrenders? Who signs a treaty?

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convery
The only vector I can think of would be improving society for the general
public to the point where there's no reason to support the militants. i.e. so
they end up being viewed the same as biker-gangs / outlaws rather than
representing anyone. The boots being used to protect such work from
interference.

~~~
rayiner
That's not how it works. For example, fundamentalist extremism/terrorism has
ramped up in Bangladesh in the last decade, even as the economy has been
growing at 5-7% annually.

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mr_tristan
One insight from reading about Vietnam, was that the US military actually was
largely achieved the goal it set out for. It was strategy of attrition, and
they were able to post very positive metrics throughout.

My sense is that with more technology, you get more focus on metrics, not
less, with an even greater likelihood of choosing the wrong strategy.

So I read this is less of a "good vs evil" debate. It's just that when you are
up close to the evil, you are really left questioning, "is the end really
going to justify the means". If you are far away, you just see "hey, we're
winning".

Thus, this "bad war" is less of a statement of "evil war" but _ineffective_
war.

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Spooky23
I'd take issue with that -- the US Military was able to put up certain
goalposts and make a credible claim that they hit them. The problem was that
the point of the conflict was poorly defined, and victory was even more poorly
defined. Bodycount was used as a metric for doing something.

IMO, Vietnam was a vanity war against an idea ("Communism"), and remote
warfare is bad because it lowers the cost of vanity conflicts dramatically.

If I need metrics in a historical narrative to keep score, nobody is winning.
That's the problem.

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randcraw
One of the first rules you learn when working for the US military is, if your
kick doesn't go between the goalposts... find a way to move the goalposts.

Every military contract/mission officer wants one thing: to claim success for
their project at the end of the year. They quickly learn the best way to do
this is to reshape the metrics for success so that, whatever the outcome was
for that year, you can claim that was the real objective all along. In the
space of R&D contracting, it turns out that "blind the generals with flashy
demos" does that rather well.

Of course, that also requires that the original mission objective be phrased
in ambiguous terms so "goalpost" and "kick" remain freely fungible concepts.
To that end, in 1964, "Defeating Communism" fit the bill nicely. Today it's
"Defeating Terrorism".

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mr_tristan
Right, the more technology you add, the more kinds of metrics you can track,
and it just adds complexity that allows for more "reshaping" of results.

Since "victory" is often very hard and messy to define, I just expect the more
tech we offer, the more we're going to "win", because of this effect.

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ReptileMan
>The Geneva Convention banned us from using a .50 caliber weapon on a human
target,

Quick google search suggests this is false, but an urban legend told marines
during Vietnam to conserve ammo.

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ThinkingGuy
Here's the version I was told in the early 2000's by a US Army Ranger: "Firing
at humans with a .50 caliber weapon is illegal, but firing at military
'equipment' is allowed. If a soldier is wearing a helmet, the helmet counts as
'equipment.'"

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saiya-jin
I find this very strange, .50cal is one of the standard sniper caliber all
around the world (although originally intended as anti-materiel it works OK
for anti-personnel purposes too).

In fact, longest confirmed hit AFAIK was done quite recently by .50, I think
by canadian sniper.

Plus you have these machine guns on vehicles that are .50, I can't imagine
they are not used 'because rules'. Maybe not against civilians, but that's
another topic.

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aidenn0
.50 BMG (aka 12.7x99) is the common NATO heavy cartridge. The .338 Lapua
Magnum is a more modern cartridge and briefly had several record-holding
shots, but the .50 BMG again has the lead.

The equivalent Warsaw pact round woud be the 14.5x114 (.57 cal) and is the
third round with confirmed hits from a rifle at over 2km.

Note that both the 12.7x99 and the 14.5x114 are heavy machine gun rounds while
the .338 lapua is specifically designed for rifles (at least I'm not aware of
an HMG that fires them). It turns out that for long range you want a heavy
bullet moving really fast with low-drag. an HMG cartridge fitted with a low-
drag bullet does that pretty well.

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buboard
Remote wars are inhuman wars. Not that war is humane, but people (soldiers)
have empathetic reactions when confronted with the conditions on the ground.
Drone wars also have a negative moral impact. Without people witnessing the
horror on the ground, no drone is ever going to go back home and protest the
injustice. Combine that with the end of conscription and you have a perverse
situation in which Nations claim legitimacy, but they rest on armies that are
immoral, dishonorable. In the end, it hurts the sense of nation itself.

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ahurmazda
Depressing topic. I am sure scientists will argue that adversity is a required
ingredient for evolution etc. I just hoped that we/humans can come together
and decide that _this_ particular type of adversity (ie war) is no longer
required. Heck, maybe, I'd settle for Star Trek style simulated war[1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon)

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ISL
If the article's thesis is resonant, consider a David Drake novel or two.
Rolling Hot comes immediately to mind, but Hammer's Slammers started the
series.

Drake served in armored cavalry in Vietnam -- many of his science-fiction
books imagine a universe of higher technology that is no less human.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammerverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammerverse)

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rinchik
The best war is the war that can be won without a single fight, without a
single battle.

A great accomplishment with no waste of resources.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu is quite a read. Did you read it? Well.. your
enemies are reading it.

~~~
goatinaboat
Sort of like, without firing a single shot (at them) your enemies line up to
sing your praises and grovel for offending you.

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wespiser_2018
> I am not a grunt who thinks wars can only be won with boots on the ground.
> However, all wars must eventually be won with boots on the ground.

This has to be an over-simplification, and we should think this narrowly about
armed human conflict. It's definitely possible to win a war by simply not
fighting it, to win a war via stalemate (cold war), by finding a political
alternative, or by just not showing up.

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gnode
The cold war isn't a great example. It encompasses violent proxy wars,
involving plenty of ground combat (e.g. Korean War; Vietnam War).

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wespiser_2018
Fair point! I only bring it up because we didn't directly fight the Soviets,
although the use of combat troops was a large part of the cold war
geopolitical strategy, as you mention!

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jarnagin
What is good war?

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DannyB2
No war is good. But the better question is:

What is a justifiable war? Or necessary war?

While war is not good, what about our participation in WWII?

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pjc50
WW2 is an almost unique example of an enemy that was inherently monstrous on a
huge scale - but that wasn't actually the reason for the war.

If Germany and Japan _had_ started the war with their first strikes in the
same way, but _had not_ committed war crimes on a colossal scale, it might be
remembered rather differently. Few people talk up WW1, it gets remembered as a
pointless slaughter. Or all the various post-WW2 conflicts the West chose to
get involved in.

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bluejekyll
Reading Howard Zinn made me question for the first time how moral we (the
allies) were during that war: [https://www.howardzinn.org/a-veteran-against-
war/](https://www.howardzinn.org/a-veteran-against-war/)

I still believe it was worth fighting, but I agree that we shouldn’t delude
ourselves into believing that we didn’t have other motivations.

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andrewla
Yes -- the framing of WWII as a war of "good against evil" and "fascism must
be fought at all costs" is entirely retrospective. Roosevelt and Wilkie were
stepping over each other trying to argue who was the most anti-
interventionist.

It was only the bombing of Pearl Harbor that gave Roosevelt the political
power to openly support intervention in the European theater, which before he
could only passively push for. If he had announced his intention to get boots
on the ground before the 1940 election, we would have had a different
president in 1941.

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ilaksh
All war is bad war. War is mass killing for profit and control based on lies.
All of it.

It's amazing that people continuously by into the bullshit propaganda they
keep making up.

The wars are about the same thing they have been for thousands of years. Why
is there really conflict in places like Syria and between the US and Iran?
It's the same thing as the Roman-Persian wars. Or the Crusades. It's about
control of resources and territory.

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jeffdavis
"The moral distance a society creates from the killing done in its name will
increase the killing done in its name."

Then why is violence worldwide _decreasing_?

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AnimalMuppet
Is violence _in war_ decreasing worldwide? Or is it more street crime?

And, are you counting something like what China is doing to the Uighurs in
what you count as violence?

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jeffdavis
Read _The Better Angels of Our Nature_ by Steven Pinker. It's a well-
researched book that goes over how all kinds of violence (at least the easily-
measured kinds) have consistently fallen over time. This includes war as well
as crime.

There are local maxima, of course, but over any significant time scale and
area, violence is down a lot.

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oregano
We need someone to remind us why any type of war is bad?

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ken
> The moral distance a society creates from the killing done in its name will
> increase the killing done in its name.

"It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it".
--Robert E. Lee

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ilaksh
The problem is that wars are moralized by propaganda which is outright lies
designed to provide a false moral basis for war.

Wars are about control and resources.

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thinkloop
I don't remember many wars being stopped by soldiers, but I do remember many
instances of shocking imagery causing change. Maybe the problem could be
mitigated by requiring cameras.

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buboard
That's not going to work. Images will be selected, edited etc. That's why it
is important to have real humans witnessing the action.

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scott_s
For those that don't know, the author is Anthony Swofford, who wrote the book
Jarhead, which was turned into a movie of the same name.

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Porthos9K
All war is remote war unless the people who actually start the wars and profit
from them are first to the front. Let Congress and the rich fight their own
battles for once.

~~~
buboard
Alternatively, conscription should come back. People are going to be a lot
more hesitant to fire nukes if their own life is on the line.

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Porthos9K
We already have _economic conscription_ , and it's worked wonderfully for the
military as long as there are enough young poor people with no other options.

> When domestic economic prospects are grim, the military has no problem
> recruiting soldiers. When those prospects improve, recruitment falls. How do
> we know? We can see a micro-version of this process happening right now.

> This year, for the first time in thirteen years, the Army reported it was
> short thousands of recruits. This year’s unemployment rate is also the
> lowest we’ve seen in that same time period. These facts are related, and the
> military agrees.

[https://jacobinmag.com/2018/10/military-recruits-full-
employ...](https://jacobinmag.com/2018/10/military-recruits-full-employment-
welfare-state)

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buboard
It's not the same, economic conscription always existed throughout history. I
also find the idea that a country's military can be staffed with calculating
mercenaries laughable. Nobody could build a state like that

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Porthos9K
We've been doing it since Vietnam.

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GhettoMaestro
I really don’t get this guys post. It is a bit all over the place.

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sillydinosaur
Remote war is bad because pushing a button is easier than putting a dagger
through an eye. War should be ugly enough that it is sad and scary.

