6 ms·

I have a theory that offensive weaponry advancements produce peace, while defensive advancements produce war. If you're in a castle, it's easier to send armies

I have a theory that offensive weaponry advancements produce peace, while defensive advancements produce war. If you're in a castle, it's easier to send armies around, knowing that you'll be safe. But if there are nukes and ICBMs, just stick with the status quo. Any validity to this theory?

mettamage 6y ago
Armchair general here, I've never been in any war. The biggest highlight of my general career was tower defence rushing unsuspecting human players in Warcraft 3 with orcs. With that said: I think that whenever a human or organization has a stable situation with their current affairs, they can afford to take more risk. Attacking weapons don't necessarily make a situation stable, they simply give an edge when you have them. However, when you're the only one that has them and are stable enough, then you might be able to annihilate entire civilizations (e.g. the Aztecs versus a few hundred Spanish people). But when more people have them, then they can point them at you, making your own situation more unstable if you provoke those people.
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  But this assumes the enemy is not knowledgable/simple, which is no longer the case.
watwut 6y ago
All wanna be conquerors build and used offensive weaponry and produced war. Including Hitler. Plus practically, it is more off weaponry in general used for both offensive and defensive purposes based on strategic goals. > If you're in a castle, it's easier to send armies around, knowing that you'll be safe. I do not think that is how it worked historically.
redis_mlc 6y ago
> Any validity to this theory? If by defensive you mean isolationist, both WW1 and WW2 were started because of US isolationism, and ended when the US became offensive and occupied Europe and Japan. (In fact, both German and Japanese officials who previously travelled to the US thought of us as uncultured and decadent.) Post-WW2 with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, rational nuclear powers don't attack each other. However, the CCP and Islam are ideologies that believe they can win against the West. Xi is doubling their nuclear weapon count from 200 to 400, and nuclear technology is proliferating throughout the Islamic world. Both have deep-rooted insecurities over being behind the West, but at the same time show remarkable aggression. That's a very volatile combination, and both are ok with huge "acceptable losses." Mao started a cold war against the US in the 1950s, which the US never took seriously until now, "Hide our strength, bide our time." And Xi is using Mao's playbook. Instead of large kinetic wars, the CCP has adopted numerous alternative strategies: - BRI debt traps to build ports, or buying existing ports - Thousand Talents program - academic donations to buy influence - cataloging and spying on Western officials from city to federal levels (ie. FengFeng) - "corona vaccine" diplomacy - world's largest naval fleet - diverting Himalayan headland water from India, Pakistan and other countries in the region to China.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  >If by defensive you mean isolationist, both WW1 and WW2 were started because of US isolationism, and ended when the US became offensive and occupied Europe and Japan This is a truly impressive level of American exceptionalism. Wars only start if we let them, and then stop when we take an interest. >However, the CCP and Islam are ideologies that believe they can win against the West. Xi is doubling their nuclear weapon count from 200 to 400, and nuclear technology is proliferating throughout the Islamic world. Pakistan is the only Islamic nuclear power with no other country actively attempting to become one. Iran's "program" has always been overblown, and at best would not enable an offensive war. Meanwhile, China's doubling should take into account the US's 6000 weapons, 3000 active, and I think still growing. China's program is still primarily defensive as well. >Mao started a cold war against the US in the 1950s, which the US never took seriously until now, "Hide our strength, bide our time." And Xi is using Mao's playbook. The US refused to acknowledge China's existence until the 70's, and are the ones that barred most of the world from trading with China. Even in the Korean War, the United States invaded before China got involved. Much of the rest of your post is also drawn straight from US propaganda. Other countries do things out of their own self interest, not out of some desire to attack America.
  - robin21 6y ago
    > Wars only start if we let them, and then stop when we take an interest. The US wasn't always a powerful military force. It became this way after WWII. So no, it wasn't the case then, but yes, it is pretty much the case today. Every country knows that they cannot win a traditional war against the US - so the OPs point is correct here. It's just lucky that the US is not imperialistic. Imagine if China was the most powerful militarily. > China As reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_relations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_... There was certainly a cold war between the two nations via other conflicts. If it's a question of who was the initial aggressor, that's hard to say because there was no direct conflict.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jeffreyrogers 6y ago
I think it is the other way around. Cavalry could beat pretty much any group of non-cavalry unless they had a massive numerical advantage, so castles/walled settlements were the way to defend against that, but they only arose by necessity. Carol Quigley's theory is that technology changes the balance of power, sometimes favoring centralized power other times favoring decentralized power. Cavalry/knights/castles favored centralized power because equipping knights with armor and feeding their horses required a lot of peasants. The invention of cheap firearms led to the masses having more power (and around this time democracy began to spread). Then tanks, ICBMs, aircraft, submarines, etc. centralized power again, where we remain today, although that may be changing with cheapish drones and semi-successful insurgency tactics.
- Balero 6y ago
  Cavalry could absolutely not beat 'any group of non-cavalry'. Cavalry was a very specilised, powerful and effective tool. But the real world wasn't what the English guy said in Braveheart ("We have the heavy cavalry, we win"). Many knights fought on foot as well. Cavalry could not break many infantry formations. You were safe in a square. Cavalry was great at harassing supply lines in raids, and importantly running down fleeing infantry. This is all purely a European perspective, steepe cavalry was very different, but many of their benefits were at a larger scale than a single battle. Generally the whole thing is too complicated to draw some simple conclusion from. War is, and always has been complicated and messey, not a game of chess.
  - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    Cavalry dominated the middle ages except in mountainous areas until artillery became prominent. Yes, cavalry could be defeated, but all things being equal it was far superior.
bluGill 6y ago
If you could build a caste (Expensive, even if you use slave labor) that also meant you had the ability to hire and train knights. In fact most castles were built because the king (who often wasn't very powerful, thus the need to make these deals) offered you rule over some area of land in exchange for raising those knights. The Castle was built as a place to live on your land so you could keep it. If there was a peasant revolt the castle meant they couldn't do anything about you, while your army could leave anytime the peasants were busy elsewhere to harass them. Thus the castle enabled war as you said, but the castle generally came after raising the army in the first place.

mettamage 6y ago

Armchair general here, I've never been in any war. The biggest highlight of my general career was tower defence rushing unsuspecting human players in Warcraft 3 with orcs. With that said: I think that whenever a human or organization has a stable situation with their current affairs, they can afford to take more risk. Attacking weapons don't necessarily make a situation stable, they simply give an edge when you have them. However, when you're the only one that has them and are stable enough, then you might be able to annihilate entire civilizations (e.g. the Aztecs versus a few hundred Spanish people). But when more people have them, then they can point them at you, making your own situation more unstable if you provoke those people.

vagrantJin 6y ago
But this assumes the enemy is not knowledgable/simple, which is no longer the case.

watwut 6y ago

All wanna be conquerors build and used offensive weaponry and produced war. Including Hitler. Plus practically, it is more off weaponry in general used for both offensive and defensive purposes based on strategic goals. > If you're in a castle, it's easier to send armies around, knowing that you'll be safe. I do not think that is how it worked historically.

redis_mlc 6y ago

> Any validity to this theory? If by defensive you mean isolationist, both WW1 and WW2 were started because of US isolationism, and ended when the US became offensive and occupied Europe and Japan. (In fact, both German and Japanese officials who previously travelled to the US thought of us as uncultured and decadent.) Post-WW2 with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, rational nuclear powers don't attack each other. However, the CCP and Islam are ideologies that believe they can win against the West. Xi is doubling their nuclear weapon count from 200 to 400, and nuclear technology is proliferating throughout the Islamic world. Both have deep-rooted insecurities over being behind the West, but at the same time show remarkable aggression. That's a very volatile combination, and both are ok with huge "acceptable losses." Mao started a cold war against the US in the 1950s, which the US never took seriously until now, "Hide our strength, bide our time." And Xi is using Mao's playbook. Instead of large kinetic wars, the CCP has adopted numerous alternative strategies: - BRI debt traps to build ports, or buying existing ports - Thousand Talents program - academic donations to buy influence - cataloging and spying on Western officials from city to federal levels (ie. FengFeng) - "corona vaccine" diplomacy - world's largest naval fleet - diverting Himalayan headland water from India, Pakistan and other countries in the region to China.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
>If by defensive you mean isolationist, both WW1 and WW2 were started because of US isolationism, and ended when the US became offensive and occupied Europe and Japan This is a truly impressive level of American exceptionalism. Wars only start if we let them, and then stop when we take an interest. >However, the CCP and Islam are ideologies that believe they can win against the West. Xi is doubling their nuclear weapon count from 200 to 400, and nuclear technology is proliferating throughout the Islamic world. Pakistan is the only Islamic nuclear power with no other country actively attempting to become one. Iran's "program" has always been overblown, and at best would not enable an offensive war. Meanwhile, China's doubling should take into account the US's 6000 weapons, 3000 active, and I think still growing. China's program is still primarily defensive as well. >Mao started a cold war against the US in the 1950s, which the US never took seriously until now, "Hide our strength, bide our time." And Xi is using Mao's playbook. The US refused to acknowledge China's existence until the 70's, and are the ones that barred most of the world from trading with China. Even in the Korean War, the United States invaded before China got involved. Much of the rest of your post is also drawn straight from US propaganda. Other countries do things out of their own self interest, not out of some desire to attack America.
- robin21 6y ago
  > Wars only start if we let them, and then stop when we take an interest. The US wasn't always a powerful military force. It became this way after WWII. So no, it wasn't the case then, but yes, it is pretty much the case today. Every country knows that they cannot win a traditional war against the US - so the OPs point is correct here. It's just lucky that the US is not imperialistic. Imagine if China was the most powerful militarily. > China As reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_relations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_... There was certainly a cold war between the two nations via other conflicts. If it's a question of who was the initial aggressor, that's hard to say because there was no direct conflict.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jeffreyrogers 6y ago

I think it is the other way around. Cavalry could beat pretty much any group of non-cavalry unless they had a massive numerical advantage, so castles/walled settlements were the way to defend against that, but they only arose by necessity. Carol Quigley's theory is that technology changes the balance of power, sometimes favoring centralized power other times favoring decentralized power. Cavalry/knights/castles favored centralized power because equipping knights with armor and feeding their horses required a lot of peasants. The invention of cheap firearms led to the masses having more power (and around this time democracy began to spread). Then tanks, ICBMs, aircraft, submarines, etc. centralized power again, where we remain today, although that may be changing with cheapish drones and semi-successful insurgency tactics.

Balero 6y ago
Cavalry could absolutely not beat 'any group of non-cavalry'. Cavalry was a very specilised, powerful and effective tool. But the real world wasn't what the English guy said in Braveheart ("We have the heavy cavalry, we win"). Many knights fought on foot as well. Cavalry could not break many infantry formations. You were safe in a square. Cavalry was great at harassing supply lines in raids, and importantly running down fleeing infantry. This is all purely a European perspective, steepe cavalry was very different, but many of their benefits were at a larger scale than a single battle. Generally the whole thing is too complicated to draw some simple conclusion from. War is, and always has been complicated and messey, not a game of chess.
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  Cavalry dominated the middle ages except in mountainous areas until artillery became prominent. Yes, cavalry could be defeated, but all things being equal it was far superior.

bluGill 6y ago

If you could build a caste (Expensive, even if you use slave labor) that also meant you had the ability to hire and train knights. In fact most castles were built because the king (who often wasn't very powerful, thus the need to make these deals) offered you rule over some area of land in exchange for raising those knights. The Castle was built as a place to live on your land so you could keep it. If there was a peasant revolt the castle meant they couldn't do anything about you, while your army could leave anytime the peasants were busy elsewhere to harass them. Thus the castle enabled war as you said, but the castle generally came after raising the army in the first place.