Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: CliffordK on 08/12/2013 18:44:03
-
There is very little evidence of intelligence among humans. We consistently outbreed our resources, and frequently hurt and kill each other for no good reason. We prolong the lives of the bedridden, incontinent and incommunicado, even against their wishes, and send our fittest and finest to war. Remarkably, they go off and fight for abstract and valueless notions of faith or patriotism. We deliberately ingest toxins and hallucinogens, and then try to stop others from doing so. I could go on...the list of human stupidity is endless, and pretty much unique in the animal kingdom.
Yes, I find it odd that so much of humanity is to protect the young. Yet, it is the young we send to battle.
Ideally we'd just fill the armies with octogenarians. Unfortunately they may forget what they're battling for, or who their enemies are.
I suppose this is a bit off topic. However, many species do battle for territory, mating, and etc. However, in general, they usually don't battle to the death among their own species. Humans certainly have excelled in battling to the death.
-
Yet, it is the young we send to battle.
Ideally we'd just fill the armies with octogenarians.
I can't claim originality for this idea, but a good friend suggested that a declaration of war should only be made by a majority vote of parliamentarians who have either fought in one, are on reserve to fight in the next one, or have close relatives in combat units.
Next week: politicians' pay shall be the minimum dole allowance. No expenses scandals: all transport and accommodation to be provided by the armed forces.
-
Chimp war isn't very pleasant either according to this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/science/22chimp.html
Chimps, Too, Wage War and Annex Rival Territory
A band of about 20 males moves silently in single file into enemy territory, assess the opposition, and if not outnumbered, they will bite and beat to death enemy males. Females are let go, but babies are usually eaten.
The reason for this is to control more territory and its fruit trees, which allows females to reproduce faster. The article raises the question - do they know "why" they do this or is the agression just an adaptive, selected response?
In addition to raids, baboons and chimps sometime die as a result of third party violence - displays of violence that may be intended to intimidate someone else.
In another article, a baboon troop culture changed drastically when Tuberculosis eliminated many of the alpha males who had been scavenging at a near by dump for food. The group became more peaceful and cooperative. I would have thought the lower ranking males would have just moved up the ladder of dominance, but that isn't what happened.
What surprised the researcher was the more peaceful culture persisted and couldn't be explained entirely by genetic selection. While female baboons spend their lives in the troop into which they are born, males leave their birth troop around puberty."By the early 1990s, none of the original low aggression/high affiliation males of Forest Troop’s tuberculosis period was still alive; all of the group’s adult males had joined after the epidemic."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC387823/
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/can-animals-save-us/warrior-baboons-give-peace-a-chance?b_start:int=1
-
Annexation of territory is a rational casus belli. Jihad, crusade or pogrom is not.
The idea that you should give a nation five months' warning of invasion "because they have weapons of mass destruction that can be readied in 45 minutes" defies all interpretation of intelligence, never mind the fact that it was a barefaced lie. What baffles me most about the invasion of Iraq is the fact that Parliament and Congress have many ex-military members, and access to that well-known oxymoron "military intelligence", but not one of over a thousand representatives challenged that absurd adventure on the obvious grounds that it contradicted logic and the most basic military principles.
-
When I took European history in high school, the teacher attributed access to warm water seaports as a major reason for every war, dynastic marriage, alliance, etc. that took place. It became kind of a joke among my classmates - if you didn't know the answer to an essay question on the exams, just scribble "warm water seaports" and you'd get at least a few points.
In a an old book I have (1974) called "Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches" an anthropologist looks at the function of warfare in primitive societies. Some of them followed a bizarre pattern of intensive agriculture and raising of pigs, a massive slaughter and feasting, followed by war with some neighboring tribe, and then a return to peaceful farming. Of course, the people themselves had their own reasons for warring - accusations of witchcraft causing illness, settling of old scores, etc. But the episodes of conflict always followed a predictable pattern that, at least to the ethnographers, had more to do with maintaining ecological balance and population control. Oddly, the reduction of population was not through loss of warriors, but more because of female infanticide and neglect, in order to raise more warriors for the next skirmish. In addition, the skewed gender ratio made males more competitive and violent within in the society as well.
The author wasn't really making any parallels between the function of war in primitive societies and more complex ones, other than to suggest that the reasons groups think they go to war may not be the reasons that perpetuate it, and that it often has more to do with internal mechanisms, than competition or conflict between groups. It did make me wonder how often excuses for military aggression are outright attempts to deceive the public, or if leaders really believe what they are saying. I'm not sure which is worse.
-
Drifting way off topic, and I'll probably be modded for it, but recent military adventures, at least from the UK, have been initiated by politicians who stood an even chance of losing the next election. The Falklands war was a particularly interesting exercise in cynicism on both sides - an unpopular president and prime minister, both desperate for a political breakthrough, both rallied the patriotic spirit by starting a war over a tiny bit of land with no strategic or economic value. Whatever the outcome, one of them was bound to win the next election, and thus it came to pass.
What Galtieri needed was something that would unite the country behind him, take the sting out of the calls for reform and play on the traditional patriotism of the Argentinean people. The ownership of the Falkland Islands had always been an issue in Argentina – a successful taking of the islands would, so Galtieri gambled, unite and rally everyone behind him. So it proved to be.
All of which would have been no more than a curious footnote in history had Tony Blair not followed in his idol's footsteps and declared war on Iraq for no good reason except to raise his personal profile and divert attention from a failed home policy and general governmental incompetence. It was such an effective tactic that George W ignored his father's wise advice and hiked up his approval rating by 40 points declaring "war on terror" (despite the complete absence of meaning or policy in that phrase) and again raised it by 10 points by invading Iraq.
-
The Falklands War is one of those events that would be hard to satirize. (Has any one ever made a film about it?)
Came across this article from the NY Times about WWI, saying that the causes still aren't well understood or the explanations don't seem satisfying, given the losses on all sides:
World War I still haunts us, partly because of the sheer scale of the carnage — 10 million combatants killed and many more wounded. Countless civilians lost their lives, too, whether through military action, starvation or disease. Whole empires were destroyed and societies brutalized.
But there’s another reason the war continues to haunt us: we still cannot agree on why it happened. Was it caused by the overweening ambitions of some of the men in power at the time? Kaiser Wilhelm II and his ministers, for example, wanted a greater Germany with a global reach, so they challenged the naval supremacy of Britain. Or does the explanation lie in competing ideologies? National rivalries? Or in the sheer and seemingly unstoppable momentum of militarism? As an arms race accelerated, generals and admirals made plans that became ever more aggressive as well as rigid. Did that make an explosion inevitable?
Or would it never have happened had a random event in an Austro-Hungarian backwater not lit the fuse? In the second year of the conflagration that engulfed most of Europe, a bitter joke made the rounds: “Have you seen today’s headline? ‘Archduke Found Alive: War a Mistake.”’ That is the most dispiriting explanation of all — that the war was simply a blunder that could have been avoided.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/opinion/macmillan-the-great-wars-ominous-echoes.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
The rest of the article makes some interesting comparisons between that time period and now, between the US now and Britain then, the Middle East and the Balkans.
This may seem like more of a political or historical topic, but it is, I think, even more puzzling and bizarre, if you try to think about it in terms of evolutionary biology, or even game theory, and the explanations make even less sense.
-
Let me suggest the Nutmeg theory of WWI and WWII.
Spain & France, and generally England more or less unified early. In the late renaissance and early industrial revolution, they had growing prosperity, and hunted around the world for resources (wood), and the exotic (spices such as nutmeg). And, of course, gold, and more wealth.
Some colonization may have been peaceful, but much also was military conquest.
Germany and Italy unified late. In a sense, they themselves were subject to the colonial rule of other nations.
At the time of their unification, all the prime colonial real estate was taken. And, in fact with the US Revolution, it was the beginning of the end of the great colonial period.
So, the lack of colonies, and not being a colonial power led them to attempt to acquire the resources and colonies through war and conquest. Unfortunately their attempt was during a waning period of global conquest.
-
we still cannot agree on why it happened.
This reminds me of Middle School... quite some time ago.
I suppose I've never taken kindly to bullying. Anyway, one day a kid decided to pick a fight with me. To this day, I'm not quite sure why, but I think I may have been on the wrong side of the hallway.
Anyway, I quickly did a take-down, and tied him up in a cradle (not a wrestling move I was familiar with, but it seemed appropriate at the time), then more or less tried to get him to give up until a teacher came to break it up.
So, I ended up with in-school suspension for the day. And, of course, had to go around to all the teachers to explain why I would be absent.
One instructor asked "Did you win?"
Another teacher, perhaps my math or science teacher, asked "Why did you fight"? I never really had a good answer to that. I thought about it off and on ever since.
I suppose it has helped steer me to a position of pacifism, although perhaps still believing in a strong defense.
-
The Falklands War is one of those events that would be hard to satirize. (Has any one ever made a film about it?)
I saw an interesting TV interview with one Major Chris Keeble. He described the final stage of the British attack on Goose Green IIRC thus:
"As dawn rose I realised that we were lying in a meadow with as much cover as a billiard table. My commanding officer was dead and one third of my men were dead or injured. We were beyond the reach of naval artillery, with no vehicles, no supply chain, and no contact with air support. Our enemy, who outnumbered and outgunned us five to one, were dug into a village where they had been for six weeks. Having no alternative, I invited the Argentine commander to surrender, which he promptly did."
You can't write satire better than the truth.
So here's the conundrum of human intellect. Real men with balls and brains are sent to fight for no purpose by cowardly politicians with no talent whatever. Fortunately, just once in a while, common sense prevails on the battlefield, but such moments are rare.
-
There are two games in game theory I like. Even though game theory operates on the assumption that people are rational and will do what is in their best interests, it's interesting when they don't, and sometimes the reasons seem to have something to do with long term strategies or even evolutionary biology.
In the first game, you start with $100 and a button you may push. You are playing with 100 other people you do not know and can't communicate with. Pushing the button has two effects- it causes every other player to lose $2.00. But If you lose money because of other people pushing their buttons, pushing yours will cut your losses in half. The ideal strategy is for no one to push his button, and everyone walks away with a $100.00. But if 50% of the people push their buttons, you will be broke, and every one who did push still has $50.00. (When they actually do the experiment, percentages of people who push vary from about 30 to 70%.) What interests me about this game is that greed or self interest is not really the motivating factor - fear or lack of trust is. One could argue that its ultimately related to self interest -coming out ahead, but I think not wanting to be "the only sucker" is even more motivating.
And the same is true in the game Ultimatum. Two players decide how to divide a sum of money that is given to them, say $100. The first player gets to propose how divide the sum between them, and the second player can either accept or reject this proposal. If the second player rejects, neither player receives anything. If the second player accepts, the money is split according to the proposal. Rationally, even if the first player only offers a tiny amount, it's in the second player's best interest to accept, since once the offer's made, he will get nothing if he says no. But no one ever does this if the split is too lopsided or insulting. Interesting, primates and dogs respond in similar ways. A dog will stop performing a trick for a reward if he sees another dog getting a bigger reward, even if he's hungry.
Mistrust and fairness may be hardwired concepts.
-
Mistrust and fairness may be hardwired concepts.
Or they may be learned. If you let people rip you off, they and their ilk will continue to rip you off. If you live in a world where people are allowed to rip other people off, you'll be ripped off more often, so you gain in the long run by preventing them from getting away with it, even if that means taking an immediate loss.
With the game where you push buttons, I'd press the button because I know that there's no chance of no one pressing it. Even if they're all intelligent, there'll always be someone amongst them who doesn't care about getting the full amount as they'd take so much pleasure in depriving others of getting anything.
-
Mistrust and fairness may be hardwired concepts.
Or they may be learned. If you let people rip you off, they and their ilk will continue to rip you off. If you live in a world where people are allowed to rip other people off, you'll be ripped off more often, so you gain in the long run by preventing them from getting away with it, even if that means taking an immediate loss.
Yes, they definitely could be learned, and if not, certainly reinforced by experience. One reason, (and it is admittedly anecdotal) I think fairness is hardwired is the time I spent substitute teaching in elementary schools. Fairness is a mental obsession amongst 2nd grade students. (It starts a lot earlier than that, but really peaks at age 7) Fairness is the crux of every argument and dispute, a crucial element in every game, every negotiation, the decision to follow a rule or not follow it, the willingness to share, the reason for tattle-telling. And the basics tenets of fairness are easily recognizable and agreed upon by all 2nd graders, regardless of personality, socioeconomic background, gender, intelligence etc. Even when the rules of fairness are transgressed, the second grader doing it, knows exactly what he has done and how it will be perceived by others.
I remember once taking my daughter when she about two to play with some other children. She is an only child. Another kid snatched a toy out of her hands. Her little eyebrows shot up in stunned disbelief, and she ran away. She stood off to the side for a while, and I could almost see the wheels turning in her brain - "hey, wait a minute, that's not fair..." Maybe I should have intervened but I was really curious what she would do. She looked at me. She looked at the kid. She stood and watched for a long time before rejoining the group.
On future encounters, she was no longer shocked by this behavior, but rarely engaged in a tug-of-war struggle. Instead she'd select another toy which she pretended to enjoy immensely until the other child became interested and dropped the one she really wanted.
With the game where you push buttons, I'd press the button because I know that there's no chance of no one pressing it. Even if they're all intelligent, there'll always be someone amongst them who doesn't care about getting the full amount as they'd take so much pleasure in depriving others of getting anything.
The professor asked us to write down what we would do before telling us what generally happens. I said I wouldn't push. And it's not because I'm a good person or I think other people are good, but it just seemed like the rational thing to do. It takes no effort or personal sacrifice on anyone's part, it's the simplest, most obvious solution, and if I realize it, then everyone else should be able to as well. But statistically I was the sucker. And you were probably right about your assumptions about the other players. The game theory professor said people are basically rational - the trick is knowing what their pay off really is.
-
Young children are indeed very good fairness meters, but it does take them a while to work out the rules, so that suggests that it may not be hardwired. It's primarily about not missing out rather than a desire for others not to miss out, although for some people the latter becomes just as important or occasionally even more so (while for others they're happy to get or take more than their fair share whenever the opportunity arises).
Going back to the button game, with a hundred randomly selected players, it's practically guaranteed that someone will feel so compelled to press the button that they'll do it even if it goes against their own interests. When George W. Bush was president, I suspect they gave him a dummy nuclear button because they feared he wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to press it.
-
When George W. Bush was president, I suspect they gave him a dummy nuclear button because they feared he wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to press it.
Many years ago I had a theoretical physics colleague who for the sake of his pension* we shall call Smith. He was clearly a frustrated experimentalist, banned - nay excommunicated - from the mechanical workshop and chemical stores, and a walking disaster if he strolled into a laboratory because he couldn't resist twiddling knobs and pushing buttons. So whilst fitting out a new lab, we fixed a large handwheel to one wall, attached to a pointer in the adjacent room and with a large DO NOT ADJUST notice. Sure enough, Smith visited the lab and....the pointer moved.
*he recently retired as a well-known professor of applied maths and theoretical physics
-
It was interesting how often kids wanted to arbitrate or involve the teacher when acts of unfairness occurred between others, that didn't directly effect them either way (hence the tattle-tailing)
And there was surprisingly little rationalization of unfair acts by the guilty party, unless they felt the were only rectifying a previous injustice. Which is often the same reason given by military aggressors, like Germany in WWI or II, that they were shortchanged originally when land and resources were originally divvied up.
-
It is not uncommon for some kids to tattle on their siblings... and seem to forget their role in instigating the altercation.
"A" pushes "B".
"B" pushes "A".
"A" tattles on "B" for pushing him or her.
"A" may even deny their role in instigating the altercation.
-
There often seems to be a disjuncture between the declared casus belli and any possible gain for the actual combatants. Clearly somebody must stand to make a short-term gain from going to war, but modern conflict offers very little in terms of prizes for the soldiers and almost nothing of value for the majority of civilians.
Who actually gained what from Vietnam or Iraq? Or prospectively, who stood to gain what? The defence of civilisation against fascism made sense in WWII, but exactly what personal benefit did the average German, Italian or Japanese soldier or civilian expect to gain from aggression?
-
The hegemony of the U.S. dollar was maintained through the use of the recent and continuing military engagements. Because of this, printed money worth precisely nothing, equivalent to the pre-WWII german money, is spent at face value for the worlds most precious product, oil. If the history books don't rate this as the most successful war ever, it's because the historians can't do the math.
-
Are you suggesting that all soldiers have shares in oil companies? My point is that the people who do the fighting never seem to make much money from their efforts, compared with the directors of Halliburton.
Did the average Japanese squaddie really expect to gain a hundred acres of prime US farmland?
-
Without the draft, the military, where I live anyway, has had to exploit other means of "motivating" people to do their bidding, and I can't recall (open to correction as always) any recent major conflicts, say, from about the year 1900 forward, where the so called "common man" has been motivated by personal gain to go and fight.
It appears that the ones duped into actually doing the killing these days (young and physically fit but mentally still maleable and easily influenced/brainwashed) are never motivated by personal gain. In their case it's not the old carrot hanging on a string in front of them that gets them going, but rather more of a red hot poker hanging on a chain behind them. It appears (just speculating, nothing racial) that different cultures have employed a variety of methods at different times.
Socially conformist cultures like China and Japan would seem to be good examples that (at least in the old days) seem to have used "conformity", the fear of being seen as abnormal or different somehow from the rest and the accompanying shamed/shunned social status that went with it, to get people motivated to do pretty much anything they were told to simply because everyone else was doing it.... No profit motive there, self preservation and a constant widespread internalized heightened state of fear and anxiety did the trick.
Among more individualist cultures, America would be a good example of the approach of "rallying" individualists who probably couldn't agree on much of anything as a general rule, around a cause after announcing a perceived affront (real or imagined) of some sort and sufficiently drilling it into the populace, causing a sunami of willing volunteers to start coming out of the woodwork.... No profit motive there, just a stern patriotic call to duty in defense of the homeland does the trick. Pat Tillman comes to mind. An otherwise apparently intelligent fellow who, in the aftermath of 9/11, gave up an enormously lucrative sports career to march off to Iraq and shoot anyone he was told to.
9/11, no matter it's origins, stands as an absolutely perfect textbook illustration of the individualist "rallying" technique in action. I watched the coverage as it all unfolded and by the end of the day the enemy was very clearly labeled and demonized and people in the streets, even before being prompted, were shouting for immediate "action" be taken.... any Arab would do. They were all promptly marched off to Iraq, a country rich in oil, and Afghanistan, a country sitting on a trillion dollar treasure trove of mineral riches, neither of which had anything to do with it.... magnificent!
So who profits? Why, the West of course. Not the common man though, except indirectly perhaps, through increased employment opportunities. All very transparent and predictable really.
There's a joke (I'm sure you've probably heard it) about the missing link between neanderthal and civilized man being discovered.... it's us!
-
Boredom is a surprisingly good motivator. I suspect that the isolation of rural life was a big reason for enlisting in many past wars. Even my brother decided after a year of harrassing people for car payments that he would rather be in Iraq.
-
One of my favorites quotes is that generated by German General Herman Goring in his interviews with writer Gilbert, shortly before Goring killed himself (he had been sentenced to be executed by hanging):
"Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
"Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
"Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
*****************************
And the above pattern was sure effective in drumming up support in the U.S. for attacking Afghanistan (even though the Taliban offered us Osama Bin Laden to be tried in a neutral country with our evidence of his complicity, thus obviating the need to attack Afghanistan) and Iraq.
It also was effective in helping George W. Bush get re-elected in 2004.
Certainly callous, heartless, etc., but effective in stirring up people who are made unnecessarily afraid.
Caleb
-
"Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
No longer the case, it seems. The US President can declare war on an abstract enemy like "Terror" and all the Congress can do is to limit the military budget, not the deployment of troops. The UK Prime Minister can lie to Parliament but our elected "representatives" no longer represent the interests of the electorate.
Goering had an exceptional military mind, sadly deployed on the wrong side.
-
alancalverd --
Regrettably yes. Goering sure reminds me of Karl Rove in his Machiavellian machinations and lack of concern about human lives, pain, etc.
Yours,
Caleb
-
The US President can declare war on an abstract enemy like "Terror"
I agree that one can't really fight a war against a methodology.
Nor, can one truly have a war on drugs.
What's next? Declaring a war on "WAR"?
-
How did the British "win" the war on terror?
I suppose the IRA had been obsolete for decades, but it still is pretty major to convince them to lay down their arms.
-
How did the British "win" the war on terror?
By capitulating to both sides, dividing up the spoils of organised crime, and giving parliamentary salaries to the spokesmen of the criminal gangs who have ruled Northern Ireland illegitimately for the last 400 years or so. Nothing has changed on the ground, but who the hell cares about the lives of ordinary people?
-
"Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
It is interesting that it works so well in democracies and dictatorships alike. Accusing dissenters of being unpatriotic, or traitors, does seem to provoke fears that may be deeply ingrained in our evolutionary history.
-
The Romeo and Juliet complex is interesting in literature. Not just Shakespeare, but many works of literature across many different conflicts.
Sworn enemies falling in love while the war essentially rages around them. Or, perhaps the discovery of compassion and humanity in one's enemy.
-
More likely, the realisation that running with the herd is not necessarily the route to happiness. There's a difference between sworn enemies (individuals with a personal unresolved grievance) and born enemies (Catholics/Protestants; Sunni/Shiah; Jarndyce/Jarndyce;....you name it) but priests and politicians don't want you to know that.
-
An interesting distinction between "war" and other types of violence - assault, feuds, etc. is the process of substituting one anonymous individual for another in the conflict. Arguably, in a feud, one might retaliate against the relatives of the person who harmed you, but it is usually with the presumption that the intended enemy will suffer indirectly, or that their relatives have unfairly benefited from the injustice done to you.
In war these links become even more bizarrely remote and contradictory. It makes me think of Mohammed Ali's opposition to the draft during the Viet Nam war.
-
How good is game theory at predicting whether countries will take military action? Is it better or worse than predicting the weather or the economy? Do we only hear about successful predictions?
-
I don't know about game theory. I would think that "war" includes a number of factors that would be hard to capture in a computer model.
Years ago I played a game called RISK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_(game)) where the goal was to conquer the world based purely on military power. However, war tends to have many motivations including economic, racial, and religious motivations. I suppose you could try to capture some of the motivations behind the various "hot spots" around the world, and treat them as variables, but one would certainly run the risk of writing a program biased towards the current "hot spots".
I would hope our military has some good models of war.
Back in 2003, I can remember thinking that our country was leading us into another Vietnam with the invasion of Iraq. I was stunned by how quick Baghdad fell and was about ready to eat my words. Little did I know the war would simmer for another decade. I had expected Christian/Muslim principles to be a core of the war. Little did I expect the war to be about Muslim sect X vs Muslim sect Y vying for power. A bit better knowledge of the country and the Iran/Iraq war though, and one should have realized how bad of an idea the invasion actually was.
Anyway, the complexity of human reactions can be hard to predict. And a single wildcard such as Adolf Hitler is hard to capture. Could Adolf have been French? Russian? Perhaps Napoleon was France's Adolf.
-
Has central Europe entered a "Post War" era? Why?
I was listening to the radio the other day about the early WWII period and the US's reluctance to enter what was then considered to be Europe's War.
So what happened between 1918 and 1939, barely a 20 year period?
Now, nearly 70 years post war, there hasn't been a major war between Britain, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, and Luxemburg. Not that they always have agreed about everything, but they haven't taken up arms against each other.
So, is central Europe now "post war"?
What would it take for Europe to take up arms against themselves again? A major economic collapse? Collapse of the EU? Collapse of the Euro currency? Global crop failure?
Are we just one single Nazi with a funky mustache away from global catastrophe?
-
What happened between 1918 and 1939? The resurgence of German nationalism and the rearming of Germany. For almost 50 years after its near-total annihilation, Germany was under Allied military occupation. Since the previous two wars were started by German invasion of neighbouring territory, this seemed to be the best way of preventing a third one, at least in western Europe.
Meanwhile, just a few hours' drive away, Russians, Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, Chechens and miscellaneous Balkanites were slaughtering each other and Spain retained a fascist dictatorship until the royal family was reinstated.
Funky Nazis may be unfashionable in western Europe right now but the hot scene for pointless genocide has moved to Africa.
-
I was reading a book that mentioned a study done by Gabriel Schreiber that analyzed military conflicts over the last 3000 years and said they correlate with season and temperature in the northern and southern hemispheres but not in the equatorial regions. It's just weird to think that the decision to declare war or not might be tipped by something that primitive. Would it even be a factor now in world powered by electricity?
-
Which season sets them off?
-
No doubt that Winter is a hard season for fighting wars.
The winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge was supposed to be particularly hard on General Washington and his troops in the US Revolutionary war.
And, the Russians are apparently able repel attackers during the winter months, and apparently the cold winters did help in the war against the Nazis.
With the hardships due to weather in mind, one may choose war strategies which would use adverse weather against the enemy including obscuring troop movements.
It is a good point that modern logistic support and war vehicles may aid with the ability to fight off-season battles, but it is hard to get too excited about fighting when it is pitch black outside with blizzards and minus 30 degree weather.
-
Which season sets them off?
oh sorry - summer. You'd think spring would be even better, but I suppose some kind of planning/ escalation occurs. Plus, people are probably in a weakened state after winter.
People joke that that is why Canada is less violent than the States, but I think there's some truth to it.
-
We need more indoor skiing facilities then.
-
WW1 for example began an industrial scale war, with the best intellects working on weapons of mass destruction. Cannons, gas, mines, barbed wire...
The governors should have anticipated this and prevented it. Thankfully they learned wisdom to prevent nuclear war.
I would say we are being watched and people like Hitler bring down our name as a race, to a low level.