Comment by rocqua | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rocqua | Hacker News Reader

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I think generally, long wars are a mistake.

My hypothesis. Party A wants Thing from party B. Moreover, party A things they could take it by force. Even if party B things they couldn't defend Thing, they can't just give it, because that sets a wrong precedent. Party B relies on being able to exact a very high toll should party A try to get thing.

Rationally, you don't declare a war you don't expect to win. So, in the above scenario, when part A declares war, they expect that party B cannot exact a high enough toll for Thing. When they do, it was a mistake.

The alternative are wars for 'moral' reasons, which are mostly about retribution or saving face. This is essentially how the murder of a prince lead escalated to a war that became WW1.

You may very well declare a war that you don't expect to win if you have even worse expectations for a future war. This was pretty much the situation of Germany in WW1, from my understanding.

Or if you believe the superior power will not respond militarily, as in the Falklands in 1982.

Unfortunately for the junta, they weren't the only unpopular right-wing government who saw warfare and jingoism as a handy distraction from internal economic and social problems.

Britain was hardly a super power in 1982. It took every refueling plane Britain had to send one bomber to the Falklands. Refueling planes had to fuel refueling planes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck

To be fair to Thatcher, I don't think her goal in fighting was to reap electoral success based on "warfare and jingoism" but I agree that it certainly was the result.

That was maybe what a couple of people thought. However it is totally wrong, Germany was not in that situation.

Those are the kinds of things you say that already imply 100s of other theories and assumption and then you are like 'We have no choice'.

Germany was in a fantastic geopolitical situation after Bismark but then just fucked it all up because they had all these wrong (and sometimes crazy) assumptions.

And the Soviets in '83 - who were terrified that the US and its allies were going to attack so they considered a first strike even though they knew this would be disastrous.

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