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Comment by oroup | Hacker News Reader

Diplomacy works _because_ you have the means to defend yourself. If they can fight and you can’t, why will they bother talking to you?

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I think diplomacy itself can help gear a country to defend itself by creating powerful allies who will come in a time of need.

At the same time, I do not think there is any justification for war or harming others non-defensively.

The amount of money and human power we piss away with wars and conflict is so sad. Humans are the most advanced and capable complex adaptive systems in the world. Why waste such a precious resource?

Stupidly flippant but likely somewhat accurate answer: x-thousand years of tribal evolution.

With all our intelligence we're still programmed to behave in particular ways, and it takes a lot of effort to even try to break out of it, and that's only possible if you're aware of it - which most people aren't.

Hmm, I think you are correct, and from my perspective, speaking to the idea of human heuristics and biases.

Ironically, I think societies and cultures need long periods of peace (not in an extreme sense, but rather enough peace to allow for safer conflict) to have the time and ability to introspect on their heuristics and biases, as well as integrate other people's perspectives.

Having something to lose, makes it a lot more likely to bring you to reason.

It takes seconds to destroy what it took decades to build.

If someone is pointing a mortar at your house, you want to get rid of the mortar, but you also want to keep your house, so it's likely that you will look for ways to remove the mortar, that don't include it being fired.

Run me through Australia's strategic outlook if the US decides to invade us. Or if they decide Australia needs to go and starts supporting one of our neighbors in fighting us.

Why are you talking about Australia fighting the US? Aren't the subs against China?

1) The subs are certainly not for fighting China. By the time they're delivered, assuming all else equal, China will be in a position to ignore them. People are talking about deliveries in the 2050s vs a country that can basically build an entire economy in a few decades; it'll never work out in our favour. And we can't afford to be in a war with an Asian power under any circumstances anyway, we'd probably be better off surrendering immediately rather than fighting back against China if the US's deterrence fails. Ironically we'd probably end up with better infrastructure.

Fighting China with those submarines is a similar idea to fighting the US with those same subs. The plan is not to do that. It won't work out well for us.

2) Keep going with your thought, you haven't gone far enough. If diplomacy works because you have the means to defend yourself, why aren't we fighting the US? We can't possibly defend ourselves from them, and realistically we'd probably struggle to annoy them if they attacked us via a proxy war. And yet there is no realistic scenario where they fight us. Why is that, hm?

Here’s my view of why countries don’t attack each other: The downside for the attacker has to be larger than the upside, that’s when diplomacy becomes interesting. The downside doesn’t just have to be the defense of the attacked country but also the relation with other countries. The US won’t invade Australia because they wouldn’t gain much, compared to the loss of trust by other countries. Defense from china is more important than from the US for Australia, because the “public stage” deterrent is smaller for china than the US. That’s why you need to increase the deterrent by increasing your defense capabilities. You can correct me if you disagree though.

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