Hacker News Reader

Comment by boplicity | Hacker News Reader

> But peace must be recognised as a luxury bought by the blood of others.

Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace. War is certainly one tool in that can cause (eventual) peace, but it is not the only one.

View on HN

Have a strong military and don't use it.

It has been shown time and time again, if you are weak, it will be taken advantage of.

It is far far far cheaper to spend the money to have a strong military, than to get into an actual shooting war with someone who thinks they can take advantage.

3-5% of GDP vs. all the death, destruction and reduction of GDP (50%?, 75%?, all of it).

Or use those resources to support all people across the world so they don't feel the need to resort to violence. Use it to investigate and reveal abusers (eg., oligarchs), to strengthen education and mechanisms of peaceful resolution.

Each generation must re-remember where we are at now--at the edge of self extinction. Lessons from a pre-nuclear age cannot guide us.

This may be a naive take, but it's something I've thought about a fair bit.

What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead")

But they've taken that money and waged war against people who you can hardly blame for feeling like maybe the West isn't so great. The harder you fight against "Terror" the stronger it gets.

Of course I've vastly oversimplified it, but it just seems like a tragically wasted opportunity.

> What if the USA had taken half its military budget over the last 20 or 30 years, a huge amount, and used that money to do good works around the world? Wouldn't that make it much harder for any state or non-state actor to organize an attack? (E.g. "You want us to hate America? But they just built the school my child attends... Maybe I'll support the guy who wants to open trade talks instead")

The easy rebuttal: they're using their schools to indoctrinate our kids into their culture. I mean... this is an argument that is already made today against similar programs instituted by several major global powers (e.g., China).

You can also easily make hay of the mere insinuation that much of the world is in a state where it "needs" to be helped by foreign powers--this is essentially one of the main justifications behind colonization.

No good deed goes unpunished. So it probably wouldn’t work. America already helped Africa with so much aide, but didn’t market the help nearly as much as China did, so it is already forgotten.

you forget / ignore another aspect of conflict: territorial disagreements or historical arguments. some countries or politicians may feel that area of other country supposed to belong to their country based on history or something but that other country is happy with how it is right now. and no amount of charity money or help will solve this.

as we have right now with Russia.

another aspect: EU is doing great job improving new member’s economy and standard of living but after 10 years or so people forget why their country is in better shape and take it for granted. or worse - some politicians might claim that without EU country would be even in better situation.

so.. I don’t think that spending money on random people will make them like you.

It would have been better for the US and the world as a whole if it adopted Keynes' Bancor proposal. What the world economy needs is balanced trade between nations.

"Have a strong military and don't use it."

Is that possible?

Part of the reason the U.S. military is effective is because we are constantly involved in some conflict somewhere.

Russia's military is an embarassment right now and it's obvious they are out of practice.

They are not out of practice, they were just/are in Syria etc.

They are out-gunned, because Ukraine is being helped by NATO.

Russia was robbed by Putin, and the military was casualty of this corruption.

Did they have a convoy of tanks in Syria? My understanding is that it was primarily air assault. That would seem to support the idea that practice is necessary for an effective military.

There is a common conspiracy theory that roughly every decade or so, the US needs to get into a conflict as a means of flexing it's military. Whether it's to showcase the military-industrial complex or keep others in line by sending a warning is up for debate (as it the idea itself).

1983 - Grenada

1991 - Gulf War

2001 - Operation Enduring Freedom

2009 - Troop surge in Afghanistan

This isn't a good argument. The US has friendly neighbors on its northern and southern borders. It has thousands of miles of ocean separating it from Russia or China (neither of which have any major military blue water transport capacity). We could defend the US homeland with a tiny fraction of our current bloated 700+B / yr budget. That money could be going to fix problems that affect the common citizen rather than enriching the shareholders of defense contractors. I don't buy this at all.

In theory, yes, and it has worked sometimes ( the EU). But as many agressors have shown time and again, you can't count on anything but brute power in the end. Neutrality ( Belgium), UN ( Ukraine), they don't work sufficiently well.

As a sibling comment says, Si vis pacem para bellum has withstood the test of time.

Of course the US wasting money having 10 aircraft carriers and 10 "mini" aircraft carriers ( the same size as other countries' 1-2 aircraft carriers) doesn't really fit into that and certainly isn't for defence.

Agreed with the thrust of your comment, but I want to pick a particular nit out of curiosity: how do you determine that the EU is the cause of European peace when it has only ever existed under the NATO security umbrella? (no doubt EU has strengthened cooperation within Europe, but how do you attribute peace to it rather than NATO?)

Because the EU in itself is a pact of no agression between european countries?

Before that it was a fuckfest, name a country in Europe who hasn't been invaded at some point in time by a neighbouring state

You missed the point. How do you know that it was membership in the EU and not membership in NATO that deterred aggression? NATO predates the EU by a long time and there hasn't been war between NATO members or military aggression by a non-NATO European country against a NATO European country. A non-aggression pact without NATO enforcement is easily broken.

I’m not OP, but I will offer my point of view:

NATO is only defence in military sense from external threats.

Internal relationships are much broader: trade, laws, internal politics, multi-country alignment towards same goals, even goal definition etc. there is european parliament where representatives from all member countries gather and discuss a lot of different topics. none of that provides NATO.

> Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace.

Totally agree. “The blood of others” can still flow in their veins. The point is it has to be staked. There is no evidenced system of peace that doesn’t contain a threat of violence. We’ve tried for decades with sanctions; they fail in everything other than degrading the enemy.

History became irrelevant after nuclear weapons. Words like 'enemy' are the real problem.

> "There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace."

There are but only if both sides agree to it. Once once side decides to use war, what will you stop them with?

QED war will be forever with us.

My point isn't that war won't happen, but that the actual work of preventing war is valuable (and hard), and often quite successful. It's just, we don't necessarily even notice it, because it does work. The work required to prevent war is often extremely difficult, which should be acknowledged. People tend to give credit just to the warriors, and not to the diplomats, politicians, community leaders, and organizers who work extremely hard to build a stable society. Credit goes to everyone, not just those who fight wars.

You need to stop them by preempting their decision to choose war. Well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy, happy people don't decide to make war. People who don't want to get shot at and killed, nor see their brothers and sons (and sisters and daughters) shot at and killed; people who are aware and educated of the horrors of war (not like Americans of the last 20 years while we made war in the Middle East) won't vote for or follow leaders who decide to make war. People currently living in poverty and squalor, if they're generously lifted out of those conditions rather than left behind and exploited, don't decide to make war. People make war because they believe it will improve their lives; if they don't believe this then they wouldn't.

It may be unrealistic, but the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances. The question is whether that cultural advancement will allow us to cut it off before technological advancement dooms us with easily accessible superweapons....

> Well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy, happy people don't decide to make war

I have not seen rigorous evidence for this.

> the appetite for war is waning as civilization advances

Agree with this.

I suppose I have not seen evidence of it either, only evidence of the converse: People lacking the basics on Maslow's hierarchy of needs have repeatedly made war in an attempt to get them. I suppose I could have been more careful in my choice of characteristics, I'm just suggesting that because we know about this incentive for violence, it seems prudent to attempt to remove it if your goal is peace.

and in some sense we right now observe failure of this proposal.

Russia was included in majority of international organizations; trade was increasing with Russia with hopes that they will start prospering and become less agressive than before. I think it was such sentiment especially from Germany and France, there were multiple cases of “we need to be friends with Russia, trade with it and everything will be great”.

what actually happened was that government of Russia took all those trade benefits, neglected their citizens and intentionally made them poor so they would be more depending on the government. everything was intentionally oppressive, abusive. how do you solve that?

It wanes as people advance in age :)

Seems like there have been a lot of well-fed, housed, clothed, educated, wealthy organized crime gangs throughout history. "Happy" is anyone's guess.

I'm not convinced you've found the cure for violence.

What is your explanation for Russia invading Ukraine?

As far as I can tell, it's a war for glory or destiny or power or something. Not food or shelter or school.

Russia wants access to some of the best farmland in the former USSR, mineral resources and the strategic benefit of unfettered access to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean? It's a war for resources Russia doesn't have and Putin thinks it needs, and a target for the Russian population to distract them from how shit things are.

Populists and authoritarians are supported by those at the bottom of the pile with little to lose. Russia's actions are very much related to food and housing and education and jobs.

Wealthy people with everything in the world still stomp on those around them chasing more power. Once you get rid of this thread of human behavior, then there can be peace.

> Blood is not the only way to achieve peace! There are non-violent ways to sustain and build peace.

Which ways? Which way all invaded countries in WWII, WWI and other wars before could choose to sustain peace? They wanted peace and they got war because stronger nation invaded them. So which way? International organizations? UN security council? Didn't stop invasion of Ukraine.

There is an old saying Si vis pacem, para bellum which means - If you want peace, prepare for war.

Well, technically speaking, war requires opposing sides. If there is no opposition (say, like the bloodless annexations before the start of the WW2, or the relatively recent annexation of Crimea), there is no war, isn't it? Of course, the consequence for the ceding party or parties may be worse than the alternative, but still - no war, i.e. peace preserved!

so.. you are saying that if you are attacked, don’t resist, and then there will be no conflict/war?

I hope you noticed that conflicts arise from an inability to form a consensus during peace time. For example, wars are often fought over land or water. If you can come up with an arrangement that makes owning specific plots of land or direct access to water irrelevant, then those shared resources no longer become sources of conflict.

One idea is the democratization of land, meaning that everyone owns all land equally. If everyone owns all land, then there is no reason to fight over who owns it. Of course, one must ensure that the benefits that ownership used to grant are broadly shared.

The democratization of land does not solve the problem that someone needs to have the right to work the land. It may be highly efficient for thousands of acres land to be worked by a single organization. This means there must be a method to delegate the process of working the land to a third party without giving them complete control over the land.

One approach is Georgism with a UBI. The land value tax is paid out as a dividend per person.

Blood is the only unilateral way to achieve peace. Your own viewpoint on the best way to move forward is irrelevant if your opponent doesn't want to play ball on your terms.

This mindset doesn't apply anymore. Nobody to wipe up the blood after total nuclear extinction. Nobody to imagine a future. Nobody to wish we made a different choice. Nobody left.

I’m sorry but there is a literal land war in Europe with plenty of Ukrainians imagining a future without Russia, wishing their neighbors had made different choices, still there. Still left.

This sort of hysterical nuclear naivety denying the continued existence of conventional war is best left to the 90s frankly.

You don't always get a choice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com