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Comment by wireprotocol | Hacker News Reader

What's the point of war in the modern world?

Gain land/people? If there's a thriving economy there, war will probably change that quickly. If there's no thriving economy, what's the point?

You could try to exploit the people/resources there, but the profits in that seem (at least compared to a world power) pretty thin. Unskilled labor and unimproved land are just not worth what they used to be.

Specific resources might become dramatically more valuable. Seems not terribly likely with oil (more technology, more producers, more alternatives). Maybe water, but the obvious pressure for that would be population, which is somewhat leveling off (though maybe global warming would do it).

I would think any modern war would be very different and less bloody than we're used to. Some kind of weird power play that results in a takeover but is not disruptive enough to damage what was taken. Something more like Russia taking Crimea and less like Germany invading Poland.

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I think that's a possibility but that's provided everything else holding up the system(s) actually holds up. The minute supermarkets stop having enough food on their shelves is the minute panic sets in. After that it's not long before any nation runs the risk of turning into Venezuela and people are killing their neighbor's dog for food. I don't think you're giving enough weight to the grim reality of human nature. The only reason your situation is plausible is because there's some sort of expectation that there will be a certain level of humanity and civility even with extreme events like that and people won't just be left to starve or die. And that might very well be the case. But there are other factors that threaten that decency and if/when that fails, all hell would break loose. Human nature is what it is and people react to their reality. People, generally speaking, have pretty good lives, all things considered. That's why they don't want things like war which disrupt that. But if, for example, their livelihoods are already disrupted and a decent amount of people suddenly have a lot less (or nothing) to lose now, the reasons for shying away from war and violence are less convincing. Toss into the mix that in such cases serving your country can provide people with a purpose to their current existence after their prior purpose and way of life went away, and you have a pretty ugly mix of reasons to engage in war.

Also it feels like food supply is much more fragile now (more dependent), almost 8 bln people now compared to ~1.5 bln 100 years ago, if this collapses, it'll collapse big time.

as TeMPOraL and Erik816 mentioned, it's not just the increase in population that you get the impression the food supply is more fragile. In fact that probably has very little to do with it. It's more of the just-in-time aspect of the supply chain that all the supermarkets and other food producers/sellers utilize. It is done for efficiency to maximize profit. It applies to all food products, but especially with perishables. Supermarkets used to keep about 10-12 days of supply at all times. Now the supply is only about 3 days! That's why the stores always look ransacked at the mere mention of a severe rain. Bread, eggs, milk - gone in an hour.

This practice is pervasive throughout most of the economy and there is very little planning for any disruptions in any supply chains whatsoever. The decades of relative peace, prosperity, expanded trade, and global growth have tricked everyone into thinking nothing will ever disrupt anything at all. That's probably a mistake.

This kind of foolishness may have some serious consequences at some point. We've also become substantially more dependent on a number of nations for constant imports of raw materials and food as well. And we've largely stopped manufacturing pretty much everything which means we also get almost everything sent to us. This could be a real serious issue if there is a sudden large-scale war and a number of countries we rely upon aren't on the same side as ours. And from an economic perspective, business conditions have been pretty sweet for companies over the last 30-40 years outside of a few catastrophic events. Is there even anyone in the business world left at this point that even remembers what it's like to have to survive on low debt and increasing interest rates? Companies have just expected ever-lower interest rates since the early to mid 80's and they've been able to rollover debt easily and take out more money to fund operations. Is there anyone left who has actually managed large businesses in an environment that was less predictable?

It's not just supermarkets.

For most of recent history in the West, it's been fairly normal for homes to maintain a larder, root cellar, pantry, or other long-term food storage as a buffer against both economic and supply-related hardships.

Prudently doing so in the modern era, however, is a fairly surefire way to get branded a crazy prepper. And supply chain buffers at home are becoming even shorter with the advent of DoorDash, Uber Eats, etc.

I’ve been called crazy by my own family for buying 20 cans of baked beans for stock so yes indeed you are right.

This is despite having nothing to live on for 3 months once. Short memory they have.

I used to keep a weeks worth of water, noodles/pasta, canned goods. Would rotate it out every 3 months and buy the same.

Despite the government advocating people have 3 days supply and numerous natural disasters where stores empty in hours, my flatmate and friends thought I was absolutely insane.

Running things on "lean manufacturing" ain't helping either. With just-in-time ordering, near-zero buffer at the edge, everyone depends on undisturbed flow through the supply chains. Break that, and we're all in a world of hurt, as there are little to no reserves.

Just being bigger doesn't make it more fragile. Yes we have more people to feed, but there's a lot more people who can grow food now (and of course we have leveraged technology to an incredible degree to reduce the number of people and amount of land needed to produce that food). The food supply could be more fragile, but you would need a lot more data to convince me. I think it is actually far more stable. Look up Norman Borlaug for an example of the kind of improvements we've made within the last 100 years.

Yeah, I'm not so sure about a food shortage. The midwest has a ton of grain stored away hoping for a good price someday. South America and the rest of the world has taken note of our high yield practices and are crowding the market with their own grain. Granted, you wouldn't want to eat field corn, but then we are talking about tough times which could call for tough measures.

I'm more worried about dealing with the runoff, byproducts and foolish policies that might waste our foodstuff.

>Gain land/people? If there's a thriving economy there, war will probably change that quickly. If there's no thriving economy, what's the point?

The point of war in the modern world may in fact be the denial of a thriving economy or industrial base to an adversary. For instance in a large scale nuclear war many of the plans call for the destruction of enemy nuclear weapons as to protect your own infrastructure/population and to destroy enemy infrastructure/population to gain an economic and industrial advantage after the war ends.

War is also not always an economic calculation: humanitarian concerns, revenge, fear, upholding the law, alliances and thoughts of glory can often motivate a conquest that holds no real value to the victor.

Why did Alexander engage in his wars? He didn't seem to particularly enjoy the job of government.

What was the economic value to Rome of destroying Carthage?

Ultimately the answer to the economic value of Rome destroying Carthage was that Rome became the undisputed ruler of the Med for 500 years. Up until not that much time prior to the Punic wars, it wasn't at all clear that Rome would become the power that it did.

Obviously the animosity between the two played a huge part in the desire to salt the fields of Carthage, but that is almost exactly how The Entente and the Central powers felt towards each other after 2 years of war - neither of them could stomach laying down their arms, because so much blood had been spilt. So they had to keep going, and going, and going

> neither of them could stomach laying down their arms, because so much blood had been spilt.

Lets hope sunk cost fallacy doesn't doom our global civilization. =/

Unfortunately politics works exactly that way. See how far Japan got in WW2, knowing very well what could be the end of it.

In fact the most scary situations in the entire WW2 was the time between the first nuclear weapon and the second nuclear weapon drop and the time after that till surrender. Here is a paragraph from the statement of Emperor of Japan.

Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.

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

Now imagine if the emperor had thought, they might as well endure a little further and let it continue.

Then you have no other option but to the bomb the earth to biological extinction.

Its very dangerous to posses a powerful weapon(like nuclear weapons), what's more dangerous is an enemy country deciding to be oblivious of it.

"At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!"

Your post reminds me of some pre-WW1 opinions shared by Dan Carlin in his great podcast on the topic. There were a number of intelligent observers that thought a pan European war could not happen at that time because the economies of the great powers were going so well.

WW1 was monarchies (professional war-makers) still thinking war-making a major wealth gaining activity. 100 years ago they were proven horribly wrong, and ultimately triggered their extinction. After WW1, world learned that industrial activity had taken the crown from war-making. This brought WW2, socialism and democracy to world scene.

But within next decade world would realize that democrats/socialists are temporary elites filling the vacuum created by the global transition from monarchy to technocracy. This is why there will not be a WW3. Because those who are competent enought to make big money, are making it in tech. There will also not be a global resource war because such mega needs are $$$ opportunity, you can bet there are future-$$$onaires working at this problem this very second.

germany had its royal family as did russia. but a lot of the other countries were not so encumbered by stupid or naive leaders. but then you lose your direction - tech are the deserving brilliant money makers or something? and we are too smart to screw it up. ha.

I feel like you may have not read the article.

"The British author Norman Angell would immortalize himself by suggesting, just a few years before World War I, that what we would now call globalization had rendered great-power conflict obsolete. War, he argued, had become futile because peace and the growing economic and financial linkages between the major European states were producing so much prosperity."

Violence is what a person or government uses when they think it's the only way to get what they want and deem the consequences worth it.

Global warming/water shortages causing a country into forced migration seems like an obvious one, as the alternative is death for that state.

Or a government might view starting a war to prevent itself from being removed from power to be acceptable.

World war may be unlikely, but regional conflicts between desperate governments still seem pretty likely.

Basically all war is caused by a combination of competition over resources, and a fear of/interest in subjugation. There's no such thing as unlimited resources, and there will always be someone who wants to subjugate you, or someone you want to subjugate. Logic doesn't prevent a war.

The point of the article is that people thought WWI would not only be impossible, but that it would also be "bloodless". It turned out to be the bloodiest war the world had ever seen.

The future big wars will (eventually) turn the world into an apocalyptic hellscape, but the beginning will be fought with robots and big guns. Less infantry, but more damage. Lots more civilians dying of starvation, cold, disease, once critical infrastructure gets taken out. People in cities are mostly dependent on utilities, so once those go, it's going to get chaotic. Also we don't really have industry anymore, so a trade embargo might totally erode our ability to wage war once we exhaust our surpluses.

> I would think any modern war would be very different and less bloody than we're used to. Some kind of weird power play that results in a takeover but is not disruptive enough to damage what was taken. Something more like Russia taking Crimea and less like Germany invading Poland.

The annexing of Crimea was "less bloody" because nobody attempted military intervention to stop it. If this sort of thing continues it will result in war that will absolutely involve plenty of blood being shed.

Thinking this is fundamentally different from how various wars started in previous eras is a mistake.

There are reasons to go to war that transcend macroeconomics. Our instincts to tribal violence are ancient, and I suspect the social bonds of shared fear, danger, and trauma are far more potent than most of us peacetime civilians understand, arguably being an end unto itself. Moreover, there are political motivations domestically that have nothing to do with ostensible mission objectives, whether pursued ideologically, or cynically. If anything, our long stretch of (relative) worldwide peace is the anomaly, and it's debatable whether that would be the case if not for the atom bomb setting an existential upper bound on the level of war that first-world societies choose to tolerate.

Less bloody perhaps by use of less kinetic weapons directly against people, but the scary part of war is famine for the populace. Just look at Yemen, I heard 100,000 died in the past few years there, basically just because Saudi Arabia has them under siege in their proxy war with Iran. The biggest killer in Russia in WWII was famine. When the supply chain or a weak link in our technology breaks (or is broken) death tolls rise scarily fast.

also the point of war is simply about power, or to make the other nation/state/population submit to your demands, and the actions of leaders and their path towards war are not always transparent or easy to spot from a rational observers point of view. I saw this the other day (actually came across it here on HN) and really enjoyed the perspective it puts on power and what people incentives drive those that have it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

>also the point of war is simply about power, or to make the other nation/state/population submit to your demands

A point of war is a complete destruction of enemy country, its population, culture, economy, grinding it to all to dust. Enemy being crushed, hunted to the last man, turned into animal by fear. Making enemy fear you more than death — this is the point of war.

You think you know a thing about war? Western people, thinking of war as a ritual sabre rattling with some symbolic bloodshed just to motivate the enemy to accept talks on their terms, know nothing about war.

If Western powers would enter a war with that idea in heads of their leaders, I am afraid to image what the outcome will be. The West is too used to think of wars as wars of politicians. Genghis khan was not a politician, and the next man to follow his steps wouldn't be either.

^ yep, the above point regarding famine [and civilian suffering in general] being the biggest weapon of war is impossible to over-emphasize. Wars are generally won by breaking the will of the people against whom one is waging war, and that is done by reducing the population to a state of utter misery.

Besides the points made already, it's IMO misleading to think about what's rational for a country as a whole. A war can be rational for the coalition in power in one of the countries without it being expected-positive-sum even for that country. (Never mind pure mistakes.) This is historically common, I'd guess more common than not.

It bugs me that thinking of states as rational actors is called "foreign policy realism".

Casus belli doesn't matter that much. There is something else that, in lack of a better term I'll call it "salesmanship", is usually at work. It shouldn't be so hard to imagine a crafty sales plan, with ideas catering and hitting the right demographic groups with the most potent methods for each of them, stirring enough force and demand for change on a scale so large that... well, would make handling things in a peaceful manner too difficult, to put it mildly. That scenario is old as humanity itself (or probably older). Sure, that can be prevented (as the article mentions) but that means work and determination, which are more and more difficult to come by as the time passes and the hard lessons fade from memory or loose meaning. People get comfortable, start taking more and more things for granted, and with that less and less thoughts are given to the truly disruptive situations as plausible events. (And speaking of thoughts, unfortunately the reason isn't always at helm; most of the time it gets called there only after, to clean up the mess.)

> What's the point of war in the modern world?

To create reasons to keep funding the military industrial complex.

To assert political and economical power.

Most wars end up being sparked by violations of sanctity, even if the underlying factors that drive them are economic. Some group considers an idea sacred, and their adversaries threaten to profane that idea. Because their belief is sacred, they will go to any length, and any cost, to protect it.

Think of Catholicism vs. Protestantism in the European Wars of Religion. The injustice of slavery vs. Southern honor in the American Civil War. Nationalism and alliances in WW1. The superiority of the Aryan Race in Nazi Germany. Capitalism vs. communism in the Cold War and conflicts (Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Central America) within it.

Nazism was fundamentally irrational (and its irrationality led directly to the downfall of Nazi Germany), but that didn't stop it from plunging the whole world into war.

There are plenty of similar flash points in the world today. The current U.S. government includes numerous people for whom the idea of the U.S. as a Christian country is sacred - hell, the acting Attorney General just said that he could not support secular judicial nominees. Economic development (to the extent that it enriches the secular, heathen, and heretical) is part of the problem there, as it profanes the Christian moral fabric of America. Similarly, the progressive left in the U.S. has their own sacred idea: equality. Economic development, to them, is a net negative to the extent that it benefits entrenched corporations or privileged groups.

Very similar arguments were made over 100 years ago.

And then the WW1 broke out.

Dan Carlin gives the relevant background quite good.

https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-bluepr...

>> Gain land/people? If there's a thriving economy there, war will probably change that quickly. If there's no thriving economy, what's the point?

Natural resources are often one point.

Access to key geographies are another (e.g., sea access.)

Note: NOT justifying this, just recounting the past 20yrs.

I don't know. Why did the aggressor nations invade (since 2000):

Afghanistan

Anjouan

Crimea

Gambia

Georgia

Iraq

Lebanon

Somalia

Syria

Where is North Korea not on this list? Right...they have nuclear weapons. The surefire way of preventing invasion & war. That's why the Great War isn't going to happen again. If WWIII does happen it's game over folks.

Nuclear weapons are the reason why the competing global powers have found new ways to compete and project power abroad. Global wars have mostly moved from being violence-based to being fought via propaganda and economics. It probably mirrors the way smaller communities moved from physical to intellectual competition.

Crimea is Ukraine. Donetsk and Crimea were captured by Russia because Ukraine signed contract with Shell to develop natural gas field near Donetsk, and because dispute with Romania about natural field in Black Sea was ended, so Gasprom owners worried about competition at European market.

Syria - to stop natural gas pipeline from Qatar’s north Field through Syria on to Turkey and to the EU. Gasprom owners are worried again.

Afghanistan, Iraq - because of 9/11.

Funny how I always heard that Crimea & Syria were about people and terrorists, respectively, whereas Afghanistan and Iraq were about oil.

Maybe all of these were really about resources?

What truth is there to the participation of the world banking system tends to lead to this sort of war ?

>>Maybe all of these were really about resources?

Of course? Though nuts always exist, but as whole do you seriously think people fight for Jesus, Allah or Karl Marx?

Its always Oil, Gold, Wheat or Highway taxes or some thing like that.

When a mosquito will bite you into nose, you will crush it with power enough to crush all mosquitoes in the house and more. How many resources you can extract from mosquitoes?

Stop repeat the Russian propaganda. USA now is the largest oil producer in the world, so give me reason.

The oil of these nations is extremely valuable for the US not to consume them but to acquire exploration rights with ridiculous terms, generating a huge amount of revenue, propping the US economy up keeping up the American dream.

The US has Saudi Arabia and the gulf countries on it's side, Libya in shambles, Venezuela and Iran isolated. That gives the US a lot of power on the energy market.

So there it is, control over oil = money + power.

What else people start wars for?

Spent trillions to steal billions? Numbers does not match.

Does if you realize the horizon for politicians in US is at most 4 years long; after that, it's most likely going to be someone else's problem.

This line of thinking is partly what the author is warning about. France’s early war aims in WWI were to recapture Alsace-Lorraine (think Crimea). Germany’s were, basically, to be taken seriously. Britain was fairly anti-war but got talked into by the Germans triggering their treaty requirements invading Belgium (and being horrible there). Austria-Hungry was a monarchy that started the whole thing because of what they viewed as an act of state sponsored terrorism against the regime.

Everyone knew war was a economically foolish action (although many believed “reparations” would cover the cost), but WWI happened anyway. They believed that the war would be cheap and over quickly- the troops deployed in August would be home by Christmas.

I agree with the worrying trends the article notes. There are two countervailing trends that help stabilize the current system though- one is nuclear weapons, which really make clear the potential costs of conflict, and the other is the consistent success of Guerillia warfare and insurgencies since WWII, which all major powers except China have experienced in recent memory, reminding them of the costs of ground warfare.

To amplify some of the business-related points already mentioned : War as an industry is itself profitable and the mobilization of resources toward the purpose of a war being actively prosecuted puts desirable numbers in a lot of peoples' spreadsheets.

As opposed to run-of-the-mill 'defense spending', wherein materiel and training costs are limited by the nature of routine budgetary apparatus, an active war consumes gargantuan supplies of goods, from weapons and ordnance to socks and coffee, that need to be constantly replenished. And technical costs are free to spiral because the notion of failure in automated systems, communications, etc, is terrible to countenance.

Funding is also easier to get during an active war because, well, 'THIS IS WAR!' The point in this thread from restalis about salesmanship is spot-on.

It's also worth noting that the equities / stocks associated with war-oriented corporations are tremendously widespread in terms of portfolio inclusion. Nearly everybody has Lockheed, General Dynamics, etc etc etc in their retirement fund [for the somewhat circular reason that those stocks generally do perform in the long term].

I'll add trade as an important deterrent to war in the modern world. The more countries' economies become intertwined, the more incentive there is to work things out peacefully. Unfortunately, the wave of protectionism we're seeing undermines this incentive.

That's the same thing they said at the turn of the 20th century. Didn't work out too well...

France was Germany's largest trading partner at the outset of WWI.

But trade was a tiny percentage of either country's economy: these countries had total annual exports something close to 5% of their GDPs. In contrast, for example the USA now exports about 20% of its GDP; China, about 35%.

Also, industrial goods today have complex global supply chains, unlike in the past. In 1914 perhaps the worst French import that Germans lost was something like luxury foodstuffs. Today it might be more like, nobody can build X smartphone or airplane because one of its critical parts is only made in one place, and building an identical plant on this side of the war border will take several years. There's a multiplier on the economic damages here, because losing the ability to trade for a $5 chip might mean your economy loses a $500 smartphone.

That's not to say this makes a big war impossible, but shutting down trade would be vastly more painful today than back then.

Power.

Always has been, always will be.

People either want more power or are concerned about losing it. Either way, the cause of war is always power.

I consider “fear” to be about power too, as it’s usually about fear of losing power of some sort. WWI is probably the best example.

You should read the entire article because you are parroting the people referenced in the article that claimed another world war was impossible, right before WWI broke out.

The entire point of the article is to not ignore history.

War of worldviews.

If your worldview is grounded in the apocalyptic - eg. incoming ecological disaster - you will get people who are willing to wage war if they are persuaded it is preventable and certain nations are impeding it. That's just one example; militant theocracy would be another worldview driven towards war, as well.

In general, it's mindshare that I could see driving more war, a push to add more people under the overall worldview of a nation or coalition, similar to what we saw under the Soviet Union.

I think this is a good question, but it also seems like someone could have said "what's the point of war" with the same arguments in the late 1930s. Maybe I'm wrong, if so if love to hear some thoughts on what has changed.

Good point, but counterpoint is: assets.

Gold. Credit. Mines. Water, forests. Strategic positions.

E.g. I wouldn't be surprised if China has considered invading Mongolia, potentially worth trillions of US$ in minerals alone.

China hasn't invaded a country in 50 years and hasn't put an offensive military anywhere in decades. They very much keep to themselves as far as large economies go.

Find the amount of yellow peril in this thread amusing. I guess no one really worries about the numerous invasions by US/UK/Allies

For most of that time China was not a "large economy".

That said, your "50 years" number is conveniently eliding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War which was closer to 40 years ago. Just because China failed to invade successfully doesn't change the fact that it invaded.

As for China's future actions, we'll see what they are. So far, the territorial claims they are making are not looking like they will lead to peace in the future.

For the rest, the people not worrying about invasions by US/UK/Allies live in those countries, I expect.

I'm not sure I'd call that an invasion, it was a 3 week assualt on the border in response to Vietnam deciding to go overthrow and occupy Cambodia and Laos, both of whom were supported by China.

There's not enough room in the comments to write down the last 50 years of US and allies boots on ground adventures bringing "peace" to the world.

It's going to be to kill people, this time around.

The winners are going to want the resources -- and maybe a select subset of the losing populations, if opportunity provides.

> What's the point of war in the modern world?

The point of war today is the same as it was throughout history - wealth.

> Some kind of weird power play that results in a takeover but is not disruptive enough to damage what was taken.

That's the best scenario. Where concessions are made to avoid wars.

> Something more like Russia taking Crimea and less like Germany invading Poland.

Well Germany first took rhineland, sudetenland and austria before invading poland. Not saying we are going to escalate to ww2 levels, but in war, just like in life, it's baby steps before we really start to get going.

I would think any modern war would be very different and less bloody than we're used to.

A war like no other?

Trying to catch the north off guard again, Jeff Davis?

For oil?

I would like to think you are right, and I agree to a point. Engagements like Crimea and Georgia played out as they did because a much larger foe essentially bullied a smaller country and took what it wanted but stopped just short of making the smaller country think it was fighting for its life. The smaller country knows it cannot win so it must swallow its pride and take the loss, to go all in on a less that total invasion would be suicide against Russia. If you look at the situation in Yemen you can see the end game of a much more powerful country going close to all in against a much weaker foe (and Saudi Arabia is holding back). Mass starvation, woman and children dying for the simple reason that Saudi Arabia has blockaded the delivery of food. The world just sits and watches, occasionally sending a stern tweet. Look at what the US did to Iraq, ~250,000+ dead to date. Whenever it is a superpower pitted against a smaller nation it will likely play out as you say, but we are still talking of suffering on a massive scale.

China operates on decades long plans, is it possible that if they thought that securing the entire South China sea was worth it in the long run that they would be willing to go to war over it? I see nothing that makes me thing they would not be willing to decimate Vietnam and the Philippines to do so. Would the united states be willing to go to war against China for the benefits of Vietnam or the Philippines. They have forced a million Uighur's into camps and we shrug so probably not. That would change if China went after Japan. What if the current trade war escalated to the point it was causing serious harm to China's economy, would they go to war?

A war with China would potentially be a war to end all wars (again), especially if it pulled in Russia, Japan and others. Furthermore, the victor of a war between China and the United states would lay claim to being known as the dominant power on earth, able to enforce its will to greatly enhance its economy in much the same way the US did after WW II. If China thought it could win, they would be able to essentially force their way of life on vast sections of the world. It also allows the victor to claim the moon and mars in the long term, a massive advantage in the next few decades.

We unfortunately live in a very precarious world that most of us on this site don't have to see the worst of due to the simple act of winning a geographic birth lottery.

Why must war be about gain? Many conflicts in the Middle East seek to reduce standards of living to feed radicalism.

Yes, the parent reads as "Homo economicus contemplates folly of war".

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