So, I've been kinda dancing around this topic on some other posts, but given I touched on this on the genocide topic, I feel like I need to make a post about war itself. The temptations wrote a song about war, asking "what is it good for, absolutely nothing". My dad, a vietnam vet, will say war is only good for two things: breaking things and killing people.
War is, essentially, an organized use of force by a group to impose its will on other. While we love to talk about social contract theory and natural rights theory, and all of these theories of governance, preceding them all was essentially the equivalent of a military dictatorship. Early states were basically run by dictatorial strong men who imposed their will on others. They rose armies, conquered others, and forced their will on them. The reason why anarchy is actually impossible, is because as long as someone has the brilliant idea to organize some humans in a way where they can have a military force capable of conquering and killing others, those guys are going to win over whatever disorganized mass of people exist. Functionally, an organized group will beat the unorganized group. A group capable of developing weapons that dont exist in the state of nature will be able to kill more effectively, those who do not.
Wars are nasty. They're brutal, and that's the point. In one group imposing their will on another group, it really is a matter of what people tolerate. What we get when we discuss the nice and warm and fuzzy theories of governance like the social contract, is a shared concept of morality where we can all come together, agree to a certain set of concepts, and live by that. Those who break the shared morality and the laws that come from it are often punished by society. And normally, individual citizens dont stand up very well to organized military forces either.
But then sometimes you get different societies with different sets of ideals and they want to go to war with each other. Maybe one faction wants to expand their land. Or enslave the others. Maybe they disagree over ideology, one side is capitalist and the other socialist, or one side is in favor of authoritarian dictatorships while the other supports freedom and democracy. Well, generally speaking, whomever wins is the one with the biggest stick.
The reason we live in a world where capitalism and liberal democracy are dominant because in the 20th century, we had wars fought over them. Well, let's go back. In the 1700s, we mostly had monarchies. But then some high minded political theorists during the enlightenment came up with new theories. And these theories led to rebellions and revolutions, such as those here in the old US of A and France, where we overthrew monarchies (or in the US's case just broke away from the British crown), and established new systems of government. Basically, the reason the british gave up was it was too costly for them to keep trying to fight a losing war. The people over here felt strongly about breaking away, and the guerilla warfare tactics made occupying the colonies painfully expensive, both in terms of money and manpower. So ultimately the british cut their losses and let us live as we wanted. In France, they basically had a peasant uprising that led to a violent overthrow of the government. Again, breaking things and killing people. And they didnt even get democracy. They ended up getting dictators for a while like Robespierre and Napoleon. That happens fairly over with revolutions. You replace one tyrant with another, because no matter how high minded your ideals are, unless the victors of the revolution are as high minded (like happened here in America), you're not gonna get a good outcome.
Even then, as many will point out, we had slaves in America. And we later fought, guess what, another war over it eventually. The south said they wanted states rights, the north wanted to get rid of slavery, they fought, people died, sherman burned georgia to the ground, aaand eventually the south surrendered. No more slavery. They were able to use force to oppress blacks in their territories, but they didnt have the military might to break away from the US.
But yeah, 20th century. In the 20th century, we had three major philosophies. Liberal democracy, communism, and fascism. All three hated each others. And we got into WWII over fascists trying to invade everyone else, and we liberal democracies formed an uneasy alliance with the communists to kill the fascists. And we did, and we imposed our will on them through complete and utter military victory from both sides, and from then on, it was capitalists and communists going at it. Of course by this point, we couldnt just have a good old war. Weapons got so destructive that we couldnt do that without wiping out all of humanity, so now we mostly see asymmetrical warfare, such as the US in vietnam, or the russians in afghanistan, or us in afghanistan, or us backing ukraine with weapons but not getting involved completely, and you get the idea.
But yeah, generally speaking, war is how we maintain our way of life. Leftists might not like this, but the reason we have liberal capitalist democracies being so dominant today is because they won the wars. They won World war II, and then it was us vs the authoritarian communists, and then we won the "cold war" as the soviet union imploded. Now we face a new cold war against an authoritarian capitalist russia, and against china. Not a hot war, but russia clearly wants to expand its influence into europe, hence why they're going after Ukraine. They created this narrative about ethnic russians there which was right out of the hitler playbook (see: sudetenland), and decided to attack. And the reason i so staunchly oppose that attack is because if russia succeeds, it could embolden them to engage in more wars. And that's bad. We want russia to not succeed and to be punished for trying this stuff. But what russia is doing now is trying to hold out through our public opinion, which will eventually decline, making it harder to supply ukraine with arms. meanwhile, they dig in, make it darned near impossible for ukraine to take their territory back, and eventually sue for peace at the current borders. basically, they used force, they managed to take territory with force, ukraine cant take it back, and they want to make that the new borders. But again, that would be letting russia win, we would ideally like to drain them of resources so they cant continue the fight and they have to give up and quit.
Or take gaza. UN tried giving israel and palestine 50% of the land. Palestine said no, started a war. Lost the war. Lost territory, nakba happened, horrible all around, but hey, that's war for you. It's nasty, it breaks things and kills people. In some ways, war is really a matter of will. Wars get nasty with worse and worse conditions and it really is a matter of what people are willing to put up with. What wars are about is exercising power. Take WWI. I watched all quiet at the western front. Germany wanted to sue for peace. France told them to accept crappy terms or screw off. So they ended up fighting, and eventually ended the war, but at what costs. The terms sucked. They made germany responsible and made them pay for reparations. This combined with the great depression led to hitler, who wanted to rebuild germany's military and take back its former glory. They got some early wins, but eventually the war got so out of hand that the germans were rocketing london, and the allies were bombing entire german cities to the ground. Russia rampaged through europe on a blood lust. And in the far east, we firebombed tokyo and nuked hiroshima and nagasaki. We wanted what was called an unconditional surrender. Again, since war is about power, if one side still has leverage, they might seek better terms to surrender. No, we wanted it full stop, you lost, deal with it, youre fully at our mercy. And then we built them back up into the countries they are today, and they're staunch US allies.
But yeah, back to israel and gaza. So...it started 50/50, then Palestine didnt like that so they started a war, israel won, they lost land, the nakba happened. Eventually they tried again. They lost more land and basically israel took over the entire country. Palestine full on lost. And, being relatively good neighbors, and given that post 1945 genocide is considered bad, they didnt kill them all but let them live, but now a lot of them on the palestinian side are so crazy theyre committing terrorism and asymmetrical warfare and keep attacking Israel. And at this point israel is sick and tired of their crap so they're just bombing gaza to the ground, not caring how many civilians are killed, because they want a total victory. They want hamas and palestine that they lost, get used to it, and as long as they fight, they'll continue to suffer.
And the reason we dont have a peace agreement is hamas are a bunch of radicals who basically dont know when to quit, so they're just letting their country get bombed into oblivion while western teenagers and 20somethings balk at the human rights abuses.
Now, on human rights. Human rights are nice and good and we should have them. But they ARE a western invention. We established this stuff as the winners of world war II, in response to the horrible stuff hitler did. I mean, a lot of the international order we have now was established in 1945, after the last big war. The UN is run by the security council, where the winners of said war have permanent seats. And the UN has always been controversial, with the US and the UK on one side, China and Russia on the other, and France often being the tie breaking vote in the middle (France is a capitalist democracy but one that is often quite leftist and independent thinking in how they approach things).
But yeah. We made this stuff, they're morals that we decided should be followed. And we condemn people for not following them, often selectively. We'll bash a nation we dont like, especially a weak one we cant do anything to, for committing human rights abuses. We'll downplay it if a liberal democracy like say israel commits abuses. And we might condemn and wag our finger when russia and china do stuff, but because we cant invade them, we dont do crap other than talk. but we do do things on the periphery, like arming their opposition in their asymmetrical battles.
But yeah. What leftists dont understand is there is no objective morality. These moralities are social conventions, and they high minded, but they're only as valid as can be enforced. And we're also going to be reluctant to enforce it against an ally, especially in the larger political environment. Because having those powers on our side is more valuable to us than alienating them.
And on pax americana, we have the world we live in with all of this awesome human rights stuff and morality and democracy, because we have the biggest stick. If Nazi Germany and Japan won WWII, we would live in a MUCH different world than today. If the Russians and the CHinese won the cold war, the same. The world looks like it does because we're top dog, and IMO, since i also agree with human rights and democracy and the like, I think we're actually the best people to do so, we're like relatively benevolent overlords, and we should want our side to succeed.
Now, on capitalism, yeah, capitalism, as it exists, kinda sucks. Communism...sucks worse. Would I be willing to have revolutions to overthrow capitalism like communists want...no. Because that would throw us into a state of war, war is nasty, and with the power vacuum that a revolution would cause, a lot of high minded ideals could go out the window for strong men, which is what went wrong with every communist country ever and why they all turn into authoritarian crapholes. it's like war and revolution as a matter of change, is often bad.
The fact that we have a democracy, is good. It means the people can, to some degree, change things. And i have committed myself to reform and working within democracy. Now, as we know, even democracies often have entrenched power structures to minimize change. Yeah, I know that. But it isnt worth fighting a war over that as the odds are things will get worse. What we need is to utilize power safely within democracy instead.
We also should keep democracy out of the hands of wannabe tyrants like Donald Trump, because if we lose democracy, we're kinda screwed.
But yeah, this is turning into a theory of everything, but generally speaking, yeah. The world looks like it does because we have the biggest stick, if someone else had the biggest stick, it would look worse. Also, despite having the biggest stick, just going in and forcing our will on people in a different part of the world generally doesnt lead to good results. Because much like the british, trying to impose rule on someone from far away, when the people there dont want that is expensive and costly and generally it will either bankrupt us, or we will have to back out, with such ventures being failures.
Which is why i aint really for going into parts of the world that arent directly allied with us, to get involved with conflicts that dont concern us.
It also explains why i have stances like i do on ukraine and israel. We shouldnt let russia succeed in ukraine as it could threaten europe's security, europe being allied with us. on the other hand, going against israel is kinda problematic, even if they are committing what we would call in a post 1945 environment, "war crimes." Because if we did enforce international law against them, it would harm them, compromise their national security, and potentially strengthen our enemies and adversaries, and we dont want that.
But yeah. You gotta keep in mind, for as high minded as my ideals are domestically, like social contract theory and democracy, and liberalism and the rule of law, and freedom as the power to say no. Foreign policy wise, again, we just got a hobbesian war against all and whoever has the biggest stick wins. This is why i adamantly oppose dismanting the military industrial complex, and abandoning bases overseas, and cutting our military by more than 10-20%. Sure, we can have SOME mild cuts. But still, our military is overkill intentionally, it's so no one can mess with us, and that we can realistically fight a two front war in Europe and Asia at the same time, much like we did in WWII.
So yeah. This is why I tend to have a much dimmer idea of humanity and morality in international issues, vs national ones. We can afford to be high minded at home, but that high mindedness comes on the assumption that we got the biggest stick and can keep ourselves safe and secure from foreign powers seeking to expand their leverage and oppress us. If we dont maintain that biggest stick, we will lose our ability to maintain our way of life, and that should scare all of us. Really, as the flag worshippers say, "freedom isnt free". it actually aint. it needs to be fought for against and kept safe from would be tyrants, including rival powers like Russia and China.
And yeah. I just felt like I needed to explain this to people because I feel like leftists seem hopelessly naive about the world and seem overly critical and cynical of US policy in an unjustified way. What's going on in gaza is WAR. War is nasty. War isnt nice. What's happening in ukraine is WAR. And the world isnt nice, the world isnt warm and fuzzy, and we can only afford to be warm and fuzzy on top of the assumption that we got the biggest stick and no one can screw with us. Really, without that stick, someone else would be using their stick on us.And that isnt what you want. And in such a case god help you, because your protests will go unheard. Because they wont care. because they wont have the same values we do, and they wont care if they're killing and oppressing you.
Just something to think about when you start crapping on US foreign policy.
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