2 ms·

You never start a war to gain some bombed-to-shit factories or barren deserts, you start wars to gain control of valuable land with resources and more easily de

You never start a war to gain some bombed-to-shit factories or barren deserts, you start wars to gain control of valuable land with resources and more easily defensible borders, get control of lucrative trade routes, and gain workers(slaves) and natural resources for your own factories. Of course, it's much easier and cheaper these days to use your intelligence services to stage a coup in that country so that your corporations can get their bananas for free, or, planting fake WMD intelligence at the UN so you can justify going in guns blazing and your corporations can make money through weapons sales, oil extraction, logistics and reconstruction on the back of taxpayers and the intelligence services by running heroin to fund their black ops.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> you start wars to gain control of valuable land with resources and more easily defensible borders, get control of lucrative trade routes, and gain workers(slaves) and natural resources for your own factories In modern warfare, you don’t get these for free. If you’re trying to yoink from a fellow nation-state, you risk your own factories being bombed. If you’re up against a less sophisticated foe, you still sacrifice industrial production and diplomatic goodwill in excess of any base resource gains. It’s cheaper and more fruitful to trade for those goods than it is to steal them. (Coups are no exception. They disrupt the economy and jeopardise the security situation. Much simpler to trade with Tehran than try for a coup that doesn’t result in civil war or blowback.)
Kamq 3y ago
You're forgetting eliminating a potential threat. Which tends to have effects similar to what you've described. Land that isn't near a potential threat can be invested in much more heavily. Borders are easier to defend, etc. But improvement to existing resources tends to be more attractive to those with the most resources already.
labster 3y ago
Other sibling comments have answered this one better, but I’ll just add: one TSMC fab is worth more than the entire natural resources of some countries. And those “slaves” you mention are also called an insurgency, which is very expensive to deal with.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> you start wars to gain control of valuable land with resources and more easily defensible borders, get control of lucrative trade routes, and gain workers(slaves) and natural resources for your own factories In modern warfare, you don’t get these for free. If you’re trying to yoink from a fellow nation-state, you risk your own factories being bombed. If you’re up against a less sophisticated foe, you still sacrifice industrial production and diplomatic goodwill in excess of any base resource gains. It’s cheaper and more fruitful to trade for those goods than it is to steal them. (Coups are no exception. They disrupt the economy and jeopardise the security situation. Much simpler to trade with Tehran than try for a coup that doesn’t result in civil war or blowback.)

Kamq 3y ago

You're forgetting eliminating a potential threat. Which tends to have effects similar to what you've described. Land that isn't near a potential threat can be invested in much more heavily. Borders are easier to defend, etc. But improvement to existing resources tends to be more attractive to those with the most resources already.

labster 3y ago

Other sibling comments have answered this one better, but I’ll just add: one TSMC fab is worth more than the entire natural resources of some countries. And those “slaves” you mention are also called an insurgency, which is very expensive to deal with.