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The fascinating thing is that the "well the bad guys could form an army" argument sounds logical, but really isn't. You can't secretly recruit and train several

The fascinating thing is that the "well the bad guys could form an army" argument sounds logical, but really isn't. You can't secretly recruit and train several 100,000 people. The closest we've ever come to seeing this happen in real time was probably with German rearmament in the 20s and 30s, and they were telegraphing for decades what they were doing. It does however raise the other problem - if people are willing to stand by and ignore obviously bad actors skirting closer and closer to the line, you'll have at some point a fairly big problem, and it depends on how long you waited. That is the bigger problem of global demilitarization - the fact that non-action in the face of a violation usually plays better to a domestic audience than actually doing something. (This is a pattern that has and will play out repeatedly. That's the actual question that needs answering)

fastball 5y ago
Alas with modern warfare you don't need 100k people in order to curb-stomp the unmilitarized competition. I am certain the US for instance could easily make nukes with no other country knowing about it, and that's with all the people in the US who would scream that from the rooftops if they knew. Or you could get even more creative: make a virus in a lab, develop a vaccine / cure, vaccinate your population, release the virus. We don't even know if COVID-19 came from a Wuhan lab and even if it did it seems incredibly unlikely it was developed as a weapon. Imagine the secrecy that would be involved by a country doing so deliberately. Between nukes / bioweapons / chemical weapons / drones / etc, a country could definitely achieve a huge edge before any other country knew what was happening. It's not 1920 anymore.
- groby_b 5y ago
  You don't "easily make nukes". They require an incredibly large industrial infrastructure to support them. And it's worth pointing out that bioweapons are not a problem that can be fixed with a standing army. (Again, not touching the fact that a BSL4 lab specializing in weaponized agents is not something that just escapes notice). And I'm terribly sorry, but the idea that you can vaccinate an entire population without anybody noticing is just flat out ridiculous.
  - fastball 5y ago
    > You don't "easily make nukes". I didn't say anyone can, I said the US can. Even if the US "demilitarized", we could definitely still easily make nukes. > And it's worth pointing out that bioweapons are not a problem that can be fixed with a standing army. I never said standing army, I was clear about using demilitarized/militarized. You could use cyber security as another example – a country with a standing army is of course not going to help against a cyber offensive. However a country with cyber defenses... > but the idea that you can vaccinate an entire population without anybody noticing is just flat out ridiculous. The US vaccinates its population against the flu every year.
azernik 5y ago
Germany is actually a very illustrative example. They started remilitarization in earnest in 1933, Britain and France started around 1936, and those few years of head start let Germany trounce everyone around for the first few years of WWII despite their inferior industrial base.
- groby_b 5y ago
  That's ignoring the Free Corps, though. There was a lot of staffing up via paramilitaries. (Sort of like piling all your armies into Australia in Risk ;) And I think it's worth calling out that Britain and France deliberately slowed down as a result of appeasement policies, not because they missed that Germany was rearming. That's what I meant in the GP post when I said "people willing to stand by and ignore obviously bad actors"
  - azernik 5y ago
    The Freikorps were not a useful force for conflict with peer states. The long-lead-time rearmament that Germany started early was gearing up industry and producing equipment. The Weimar efforts at deniable weapons development was nowhere near the open military work of Britain or France.

fastball 5y ago

Alas with modern warfare you don't need 100k people in order to curb-stomp the unmilitarized competition. I am certain the US for instance could easily make nukes with no other country knowing about it, and that's with all the people in the US who would scream that from the rooftops if they knew. Or you could get even more creative: make a virus in a lab, develop a vaccine / cure, vaccinate your population, release the virus. We don't even know if COVID-19 came from a Wuhan lab and even if it did it seems incredibly unlikely it was developed as a weapon. Imagine the secrecy that would be involved by a country doing so deliberately. Between nukes / bioweapons / chemical weapons / drones / etc, a country could definitely achieve a huge edge before any other country knew what was happening. It's not 1920 anymore.

groby_b 5y ago
You don't "easily make nukes". They require an incredibly large industrial infrastructure to support them. And it's worth pointing out that bioweapons are not a problem that can be fixed with a standing army. (Again, not touching the fact that a BSL4 lab specializing in weaponized agents is not something that just escapes notice). And I'm terribly sorry, but the idea that you can vaccinate an entire population without anybody noticing is just flat out ridiculous.
- fastball 5y ago
  > You don't "easily make nukes". I didn't say anyone can, I said the US can. Even if the US "demilitarized", we could definitely still easily make nukes. > And it's worth pointing out that bioweapons are not a problem that can be fixed with a standing army. I never said standing army, I was clear about using demilitarized/militarized. You could use cyber security as another example – a country with a standing army is of course not going to help against a cyber offensive. However a country with cyber defenses... > but the idea that you can vaccinate an entire population without anybody noticing is just flat out ridiculous. The US vaccinates its population against the flu every year.

azernik 5y ago

Germany is actually a very illustrative example. They started remilitarization in earnest in 1933, Britain and France started around 1936, and those few years of head start let Germany trounce everyone around for the first few years of WWII despite their inferior industrial base.

groby_b 5y ago
That's ignoring the Free Corps, though. There was a lot of staffing up via paramilitaries. (Sort of like piling all your armies into Australia in Risk ;) And I think it's worth calling out that Britain and France deliberately slowed down as a result of appeasement policies, not because they missed that Germany was rearming. That's what I meant in the GP post when I said "people willing to stand by and ignore obviously bad actors"
- azernik 5y ago
  The Freikorps were not a useful force for conflict with peer states. The long-lead-time rearmament that Germany started early was gearing up industry and producing equipment. The Weimar efforts at deniable weapons development was nowhere near the open military work of Britain or France.