19 ms·

War is in part an expression of technological competitive advantage. Nth generation weaponry is expensive because technology requires the best minds, materials

War is in part an expression of technological competitive advantage. Nth generation weaponry is expensive because technology requires the best minds, materials, and facilities that money can buy. But what if for the same money, or less, we could buy something even better? How much does peace cost? Has anybody ever costed it? For example, what could $2 trillion have bought in Iraq, Portland, or Jerusalem if it had been intelligently deployed for peace instead of war? I know there is no handbook for peace, whilst there is a whole military industrial complex for war. But what if smart people with budget built tools for peace? I’m not saying the design, engineering, and deployment of these tools would be easy, obvious, or quick. But what if smart people built them, and, once built, they could scale?

kukx 5y ago
Weapons are also tools for peace, an atomic bomb helped a lot in that regard.
- kybernetikos 5y ago
  I looked into this a few years back and the cost/benefit of the initial use of atomic weapons is not as cut and dried as many people believe. That's not really the topic here though. It's absolutely true that weapons can be tools for peace, but I don't think that is how the projects in Afghanistan and Iraq played out. Even with the best intentions the fact that it is a military operation planned by military leaders and staffed by trained military personnel means that you're going to get particular kinds of approaches. I think the suggestion is to approach these projects as an equivalently resouced mission with different aims and led by different people and to see if the balance of resources they would choose would be different.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    The US uses war to export its domestic issues abroad. War is the primary conduit and excuse for corporate welfare. Some of this goes into jobs. Occasionally - exceptionally, and less often than most people realise - some of it spins off into useful civilian tech. But most of it is just free money for nothing much to not very nice people. Some of whom use it to buy political influence. And some of whom use existing political influence to make sure they benefit from it personally. It's a perfect circle of corruption and moral decay built on foundations of death and terror.
    - kukx 5y ago
      Be careful with conspiracy theories. Some people get banned for them. While they are sometimes true (eg Watergate), usually they are not.
deadalus 5y ago
You need to trust the other party in order to have a shot at peace. There is no trust due to historical reasons. War also directly benefits a lot of people and industries so they would never want that.
snicker7 5y ago
The last 70 or so years have been the most peaceful in human history. How? The American military and economic hegemony. If you want peace, build more aircraft carriers.
- Epa095 5y ago
  Correlation causation
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    History. Human nature. The state as leviathan. Sometimes causation is correlated. When nukes came into play, the consequences of violating the peace became too much for any sane state to countenance. The US used nuclear superiority to take on the role of global leviathan. Despite missteps, it used its monopoly on violence as a very big stick that's allowed for a very lengthy peace. If certain idiot regimes keep playing stupid games, we're going to see what happens when the nuclear stick gets used, unfortunately. That might ensure a century or so of peace, if everything doesn't die.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  I think it's more likely that WW1 and WW2 collectively persuaded even the most thick-headed of western elites that great power conflicts are bad for everyone, even the winners. There's a reason why the french and the british were so reluctant to start WW2 - the first world war was completely devastating to their societies, and it didn't even improve their security, since Germany was able to relatively quickly rebuild and rearm.
- swarnie 5y ago
  > The last 70 or so years have been the most peaceful in human history. IRAQ WAR (2003-2011) WAR IN AFGHANISTAN (2001-PRESENT) GULF WAR (1990-1991) VIETNAM WAR (1959-1975) KOREAN WAR (1950-1953) This is ignoring an entire array of coups, rebellions, brutal suppressions and subjugations encompassing basically every country in South America The last 70 years have only seemed peaceful because your the one doing the genocide this time around. Most of the rest of the world would like you to chill.
veltas 5y ago
The defence industry already makes many tools for peace. A lot of effort goes into making tools to counteract opposing weaponry, much of which can be applied to defend civilians. But also weapons can defend civilians. The problem isn't having defence, it's how you use it.
ganzuul 5y ago
Violence is the last recourse of the incompetent.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Violence is the first recourse of the insane. Individuals who dedicate their lives to violence and aggression in the way that superpowers do are committed to institutions.
- bluepizza 5y ago
  You'd be surprised how many people don't care about this and are happy to be labeled incompetent, as long as they reach their goals.
dimitar 5y ago
Si vis pacem, para bellum Military budgets are peace spending. Wars begin when politicians think they can achieve goals easily using arms - see Germany's plans in the World Wars, Saddam's invasion of Iran, Russia's invasion of Ukraine after the 2013 revolution or most wars really. Having strong armed forces and military alliances are an insurance policy against being invaded.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  There isn't a linear relationship here. If our militaries were 50% weaker, we'd have thought twice before iraq 2 and we wouldn't be rattling the sabre at iran would we? So right now, for the US and allies, more preparing for war means more (pointless, wasteful) wars...
  - indymike 5y ago
    Taiwan would be gone, Korea unified under Kim Jong Un. The soviet union would not have fallen. The world would be radically different.
    - alasdair_ 5y ago
      Would the US actually get into a major conflict with China over Taiwan? I could see a skirmish, but Ukraine has made it clear that the US will not defend its (non-NATO) allies in the face of full scale warfare.
      - laverya 5y ago
        People talk about Trump destroying the US's reputation as an ally, but no one sane should have trusted the US to go to war for them after Ukraine. "If you give up your nukes, we'll protect you", we said. Until we decided it wasn't convenient to do so.
      - indymike 5y ago
        An invasion of Taiwan would result in World War III in about 5 minutes. Seeing Taiwan through the eyes of Eastern Europe would be a mistake. The stakes are well understood, and giving up Taiwan would destabilize Japan, Korea, Australia, Indonesia and India, not a single one of which is acceptable to the US.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Agreed, Korea became a proper country because it has recieved more aid than all of africa combined during the cold war
l5870uoo9y 5y ago
If you don’t have an army, you will get another’s.
cwp 5y ago
Well, it's not like nobody has ever thought of that before. The best we've been able to do is deterrence, which requires developing advanced weapons like aircraft carriers, stealth fighters and nukes. I know this isn't what you had in mind, but the world is about to find out what it's like to not have superpowers interfering in their affairs. The US doesn't really have any need for troops abroad: the Cold War is over, the War on Terror is over, and there's plenty of oil at home. Americans have noticed that depending on foreign manufacturing for key products like medicines and microchips isn't so great when trade is disrupted, and there are going to be a lot more disruptions without the US military to stabilize things. That's going to cause America to do more manufacturing at home and further disengage with the world. That's not exactly peace, but at least it's not war.
- curuinor 5y ago
  if you don't have hegemony, you have the balance of powers: if you don't have the balance of powers, you have hegemony. if we're getting out from hegemony we'll go into the balance of powers (you can sort of see this in the everyone-surrounding-the-prc's reaction to the prc: everyone gangs up together to balance out the putative new hegemon) you need total consensus down to the last man for pacifism to work. works great in groups of 10 people, not so much with groups of 2 billion: you need to credibly threaten the insane yelling person while making sure you're not the insane yelling person yourself
  - c048 5y ago
    Balance of power caused millennia of war in Europe. Forming a hegemony has lead to almost 80 years of peace. Large wars haven't been a thing since the dominance of the US and been pushed further and further to the periphery, especially since the end of the cold war.
    - curuinor 5y ago
      bismark and metternich and so on managed to run around and mostly keep a general european peace with the balance of powers for 80 years from the 1820s on. too bad it all went to shit - but current events are not incompatible with the assertion that it's all going to shit this decade...
koonsolo 5y ago
If you have something of value and you cannot protect it, someone will take it from you. That is just how the world works. So how will you protect yourself? You cannot just convert eveyone to zen buddhism. You will have to find a way to protect yourself, so you can say: here is the limit that you cannot cross. Peace can only exist when a powerful entity enforces it.
- stedaniels 5y ago
  That isn't "just how the world works", that's how a subset of people in the world behave.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Engineering-MD 5y ago
    Unfortunately it is a selected for behaviour. The fewer who do it, the higher the rewards.
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    Yes, the vast majority of people doesn't behave like that. Game theory is a discipline that studies the consequences of a even a small number of actors defecting norms that would otherwise be beneficial to everyone.
  - VortexDream 5y ago
    It's because of this subset that the world works the way it does. This subset is larger than you'd think and looking at countries beset with racial or ethnic or religious strife, it seems to me that nearly everybody has the potential for it. You are fortunate to likely live in a country where your existence isn't dependent on limited resources which have to be defended, so you can easily say "well, not everybody fights over resources or because they hate each other".
- cnorthwood 5y ago
  Sometimes people build things of value and want others to take it. For example, open source.
hulitu 5y ago
> But what if for the same money, or less, we could buy something even better? We don't want to buy, we want to own it. War means stealing from weaker countries. > How much does peace cost? Depends on the country. See eastern and central europe for some examples, north africa for others. > Has anybody ever costed it? No and the profitors don't want you to know.
feral 5y ago
>How much does peace cost? > Has anybody ever costed it? Depends on what you mean by 'tools' but I would say the Marshall plan, roughly $100B in today's money, would be a good example of this. Explicit investment to rebuild Europe after WW2. Some say this was because they learned it worked out badly to leave Germany broke and broken after WW1 (fertile ground for facism). Others might say it was because a prosperous Europe wouldn't be as likely to become communist. Either way I think it counts as an explicit mega investment in preventing war by peaceful means. They could have just decided to invest the money in weapons instead.
- VortexDream 5y ago
  The only reason why the Marshall plan worked is because there was a world war and nearly everybody in Europe decided "not again". Other countries have not made this experience and for them military conflict (or threat of conflict) is still a valid and legitimate way to protect their interests and expand their sphere of influence (see China and the South China sea). What worked in one place will not necessarily work elsewhere. In fact, I think it's already proven to not have worked in the case of China. Despite the amount of money flowing into the country over the past 2 decades, their ambition and their tension with their neighbors have only grown. They're on their way to becoming a military superpower as well.
  - cvwright 5y ago
    Or the billions wasted trying to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.
    - VortexDream 5y ago
      Definitely. Money isn't the solution to everything. It's necessary, but if there's no actual buy-in by the people and/or the ones in charge, it's like throwing money into a pit and setting it on fire.
dotancohen 5y ago
> I know there is no handbook for peace What does peace look like to you? Do people just stop fighting and start loving their neighbours? You mentioned Jerusalem. I'm Israeli, so I'm biased towards one side of the Jerusalem story but let me try to frame the other side of the story as to not play my biases. I probably won't be accurate because my propaganda is different from their propaganda. And I won't reply because this will otherwise turn into a flamewar real quick. Does peace mean to you that the Palestinians stop fighting for a state of their own? They just raise their hands, lay down their guns, and embrace Jewish rule? Should they accept your $2 trillion - the number that you stated to invest in the peace project - as reparations for loosing their olive groves, villages, and roads to Israeli settlers? Will that be enough for them to embrace no public transportation on Saturdays, even though their culture would have it be Fridays? Will that be enough to forgive the years that cousin Ahmad sat in an Israeli prison? Will that be enough to forget the eye or leg or life that cousin Mahmaud lost? And what of the five million people whose grandfathers either fled or were chased from Palestine in 1947? Should they accept some slice of the cash and relinquish their dream of returning to Palestine? Sure, some of them live in the US or Italy or the UK with their nice standard of living. But some of them live in refugee camps - to this day - in Lebanon and Syria and they have no rights in those countries. Under your peace plan, what becomes of a child in Yarmouk, whose family has been forbidden from education, health care, and most forms of work for three generations? Does he take that slice of $2 trillion and now buy a house in Syria? Forbidden to him. In the UK? He doesn't even qualify for a passport. In Palestine? Palestine has not enough land to quadruple its population. In Israel? To live under _their_ laws?!?!? What if Palestine and Israel are a single entity under this plan... does that make the situation easier or more difficult? In my opinion, some problems just cannot be solved with money.
- scoopertrooper 5y ago
  > Will that be enough for them to embrace no public transportation on Saturdays, even though their culture would have it be Fridays? Crazy idea. Jews drive/catch public transportation on Fridays, muslims drive/catch transportation on Saturdays, and the rest of us ride around everyday of the week, because in what world is any of this a good idea?
EMM_386 5y ago
> How much does peace cost? Has anybody ever costed it? In the end these are jobs programs, as you mention the infamous "military industrial complex". They become part of a nation's economic engine. The media will fret about deficit spending, healthcare, "socialists", inflation etc. when in reality there are bodies charged with ensuring that all remains sane .... at least on the monetary side (in the US, the Federal Reserve). Nobody needs a new fighter jet or submarine when a few nations have enough weapons to obliterate civilization 50 times over.

kukx 5y ago

Weapons are also tools for peace, an atomic bomb helped a lot in that regard.

kybernetikos 5y ago
I looked into this a few years back and the cost/benefit of the initial use of atomic weapons is not as cut and dried as many people believe. That's not really the topic here though. It's absolutely true that weapons can be tools for peace, but I don't think that is how the projects in Afghanistan and Iraq played out. Even with the best intentions the fact that it is a military operation planned by military leaders and staffed by trained military personnel means that you're going to get particular kinds of approaches. I think the suggestion is to approach these projects as an equivalently resouced mission with different aims and led by different people and to see if the balance of resources they would choose would be different.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  The US uses war to export its domestic issues abroad. War is the primary conduit and excuse for corporate welfare. Some of this goes into jobs. Occasionally - exceptionally, and less often than most people realise - some of it spins off into useful civilian tech. But most of it is just free money for nothing much to not very nice people. Some of whom use it to buy political influence. And some of whom use existing political influence to make sure they benefit from it personally. It's a perfect circle of corruption and moral decay built on foundations of death and terror.
  - kukx 5y ago
    Be careful with conspiracy theories. Some people get banned for them. While they are sometimes true (eg Watergate), usually they are not.

deadalus 5y ago

You need to trust the other party in order to have a shot at peace. There is no trust due to historical reasons. War also directly benefits a lot of people and industries so they would never want that.

snicker7 5y ago

The last 70 or so years have been the most peaceful in human history. How? The American military and economic hegemony. If you want peace, build more aircraft carriers.

Epa095 5y ago
Correlation causation
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  History. Human nature. The state as leviathan. Sometimes causation is correlated. When nukes came into play, the consequences of violating the peace became too much for any sane state to countenance. The US used nuclear superiority to take on the role of global leviathan. Despite missteps, it used its monopoly on violence as a very big stick that's allowed for a very lengthy peace. If certain idiot regimes keep playing stupid games, we're going to see what happens when the nuclear stick gets used, unfortunately. That might ensure a century or so of peace, if everything doesn't die.
pasabagi 5y ago
I think it's more likely that WW1 and WW2 collectively persuaded even the most thick-headed of western elites that great power conflicts are bad for everyone, even the winners. There's a reason why the french and the british were so reluctant to start WW2 - the first world war was completely devastating to their societies, and it didn't even improve their security, since Germany was able to relatively quickly rebuild and rearm.
swarnie 5y ago
> The last 70 or so years have been the most peaceful in human history. IRAQ WAR (2003-2011) WAR IN AFGHANISTAN (2001-PRESENT) GULF WAR (1990-1991) VIETNAM WAR (1959-1975) KOREAN WAR (1950-1953) This is ignoring an entire array of coups, rebellions, brutal suppressions and subjugations encompassing basically every country in South America The last 70 years have only seemed peaceful because your the one doing the genocide this time around. Most of the rest of the world would like you to chill.

veltas 5y ago

The defence industry already makes many tools for peace. A lot of effort goes into making tools to counteract opposing weaponry, much of which can be applied to defend civilians. But also weapons can defend civilians. The problem isn't having defence, it's how you use it.

ganzuul 5y ago

Violence is the last recourse of the incompetent.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Violence is the first recourse of the insane. Individuals who dedicate their lives to violence and aggression in the way that superpowers do are committed to institutions.
bluepizza 5y ago
You'd be surprised how many people don't care about this and are happy to be labeled incompetent, as long as they reach their goals.

dimitar 5y ago

Si vis pacem, para bellum Military budgets are peace spending. Wars begin when politicians think they can achieve goals easily using arms - see Germany's plans in the World Wars, Saddam's invasion of Iran, Russia's invasion of Ukraine after the 2013 revolution or most wars really. Having strong armed forces and military alliances are an insurance policy against being invaded.

LatteLazy 5y ago
There isn't a linear relationship here. If our militaries were 50% weaker, we'd have thought twice before iraq 2 and we wouldn't be rattling the sabre at iran would we? So right now, for the US and allies, more preparing for war means more (pointless, wasteful) wars...
- indymike 5y ago
  Taiwan would be gone, Korea unified under Kim Jong Un. The soviet union would not have fallen. The world would be radically different.
  - alasdair_ 5y ago
    Would the US actually get into a major conflict with China over Taiwan? I could see a skirmish, but Ukraine has made it clear that the US will not defend its (non-NATO) allies in the face of full scale warfare.
    - laverya 5y ago
      People talk about Trump destroying the US's reputation as an ally, but no one sane should have trusted the US to go to war for them after Ukraine. "If you give up your nukes, we'll protect you", we said. Until we decided it wasn't convenient to do so.
    - indymike 5y ago
      An invasion of Taiwan would result in World War III in about 5 minutes. Seeing Taiwan through the eyes of Eastern Europe would be a mistake. The stakes are well understood, and giving up Taiwan would destabilize Japan, Korea, Australia, Indonesia and India, not a single one of which is acceptable to the US.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

Agreed, Korea became a proper country because it has recieved more aid than all of africa combined during the cold war

l5870uoo9y 5y ago

If you don’t have an army, you will get another’s.

cwp 5y ago

Well, it's not like nobody has ever thought of that before. The best we've been able to do is deterrence, which requires developing advanced weapons like aircraft carriers, stealth fighters and nukes. I know this isn't what you had in mind, but the world is about to find out what it's like to not have superpowers interfering in their affairs. The US doesn't really have any need for troops abroad: the Cold War is over, the War on Terror is over, and there's plenty of oil at home. Americans have noticed that depending on foreign manufacturing for key products like medicines and microchips isn't so great when trade is disrupted, and there are going to be a lot more disruptions without the US military to stabilize things. That's going to cause America to do more manufacturing at home and further disengage with the world. That's not exactly peace, but at least it's not war.

curuinor 5y ago
if you don't have hegemony, you have the balance of powers: if you don't have the balance of powers, you have hegemony. if we're getting out from hegemony we'll go into the balance of powers (you can sort of see this in the everyone-surrounding-the-prc's reaction to the prc: everyone gangs up together to balance out the putative new hegemon) you need total consensus down to the last man for pacifism to work. works great in groups of 10 people, not so much with groups of 2 billion: you need to credibly threaten the insane yelling person while making sure you're not the insane yelling person yourself
- c048 5y ago
  Balance of power caused millennia of war in Europe. Forming a hegemony has lead to almost 80 years of peace. Large wars haven't been a thing since the dominance of the US and been pushed further and further to the periphery, especially since the end of the cold war.
  - curuinor 5y ago
    bismark and metternich and so on managed to run around and mostly keep a general european peace with the balance of powers for 80 years from the 1820s on. too bad it all went to shit - but current events are not incompatible with the assertion that it's all going to shit this decade...

koonsolo 5y ago

If you have something of value and you cannot protect it, someone will take it from you. That is just how the world works. So how will you protect yourself? You cannot just convert eveyone to zen buddhism. You will have to find a way to protect yourself, so you can say: here is the limit that you cannot cross. Peace can only exist when a powerful entity enforces it.

stedaniels 5y ago
That isn't "just how the world works", that's how a subset of people in the world behave.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Engineering-MD 5y ago
  Unfortunately it is a selected for behaviour. The fewer who do it, the higher the rewards.
- ithkuil 5y ago
  Yes, the vast majority of people doesn't behave like that. Game theory is a discipline that studies the consequences of a even a small number of actors defecting norms that would otherwise be beneficial to everyone.
- VortexDream 5y ago
  It's because of this subset that the world works the way it does. This subset is larger than you'd think and looking at countries beset with racial or ethnic or religious strife, it seems to me that nearly everybody has the potential for it. You are fortunate to likely live in a country where your existence isn't dependent on limited resources which have to be defended, so you can easily say "well, not everybody fights over resources or because they hate each other".
cnorthwood 5y ago
Sometimes people build things of value and want others to take it. For example, open source.

hulitu 5y ago

> But what if for the same money, or less, we could buy something even better? We don't want to buy, we want to own it. War means stealing from weaker countries. > How much does peace cost? Depends on the country. See eastern and central europe for some examples, north africa for others. > Has anybody ever costed it? No and the profitors don't want you to know.

feral 5y ago

>How much does peace cost? > Has anybody ever costed it? Depends on what you mean by 'tools' but I would say the Marshall plan, roughly $100B in today's money, would be a good example of this. Explicit investment to rebuild Europe after WW2. Some say this was because they learned it worked out badly to leave Germany broke and broken after WW1 (fertile ground for facism). Others might say it was because a prosperous Europe wouldn't be as likely to become communist. Either way I think it counts as an explicit mega investment in preventing war by peaceful means. They could have just decided to invest the money in weapons instead.

VortexDream 5y ago
The only reason why the Marshall plan worked is because there was a world war and nearly everybody in Europe decided "not again". Other countries have not made this experience and for them military conflict (or threat of conflict) is still a valid and legitimate way to protect their interests and expand their sphere of influence (see China and the South China sea). What worked in one place will not necessarily work elsewhere. In fact, I think it's already proven to not have worked in the case of China. Despite the amount of money flowing into the country over the past 2 decades, their ambition and their tension with their neighbors have only grown. They're on their way to becoming a military superpower as well.
- cvwright 5y ago
  Or the billions wasted trying to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.
  - VortexDream 5y ago
    Definitely. Money isn't the solution to everything. It's necessary, but if there's no actual buy-in by the people and/or the ones in charge, it's like throwing money into a pit and setting it on fire.

dotancohen 5y ago

> I know there is no handbook for peace What does peace look like to you? Do people just stop fighting and start loving their neighbours? You mentioned Jerusalem. I'm Israeli, so I'm biased towards one side of the Jerusalem story but let me try to frame the other side of the story as to not play my biases. I probably won't be accurate because my propaganda is different from their propaganda. And I won't reply because this will otherwise turn into a flamewar real quick. Does peace mean to you that the Palestinians stop fighting for a state of their own? They just raise their hands, lay down their guns, and embrace Jewish rule? Should they accept your $2 trillion - the number that you stated to invest in the peace project - as reparations for loosing their olive groves, villages, and roads to Israeli settlers? Will that be enough for them to embrace no public transportation on Saturdays, even though their culture would have it be Fridays? Will that be enough to forgive the years that cousin Ahmad sat in an Israeli prison? Will that be enough to forget the eye or leg or life that cousin Mahmaud lost? And what of the five million people whose grandfathers either fled or were chased from Palestine in 1947? Should they accept some slice of the cash and relinquish their dream of returning to Palestine? Sure, some of them live in the US or Italy or the UK with their nice standard of living. But some of them live in refugee camps - to this day - in Lebanon and Syria and they have no rights in those countries. Under your peace plan, what becomes of a child in Yarmouk, whose family has been forbidden from education, health care, and most forms of work for three generations? Does he take that slice of $2 trillion and now buy a house in Syria? Forbidden to him. In the UK? He doesn't even qualify for a passport. In Palestine? Palestine has not enough land to quadruple its population. In Israel? To live under _their_ laws?!?!? What if Palestine and Israel are a single entity under this plan... does that make the situation easier or more difficult? In my opinion, some problems just cannot be solved with money.

scoopertrooper 5y ago
> Will that be enough for them to embrace no public transportation on Saturdays, even though their culture would have it be Fridays? Crazy idea. Jews drive/catch public transportation on Fridays, muslims drive/catch transportation on Saturdays, and the rest of us ride around everyday of the week, because in what world is any of this a good idea?

EMM_386 5y ago

> How much does peace cost? Has anybody ever costed it? In the end these are jobs programs, as you mention the infamous "military industrial complex". They become part of a nation's economic engine. The media will fret about deficit spending, healthcare, "socialists", inflation etc. when in reality there are bodies charged with ensuring that all remains sane .... at least on the monetary side (in the US, the Federal Reserve). Nobody needs a new fighter jet or submarine when a few nations have enough weapons to obliterate civilization 50 times over.