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I thought meaning was pretty clear in OP but I can't understand what you're saying/asking. Perceived weakness entices aggressors of course, unless you think it

I thought meaning was pretty clear in OP but I can't understand what you're saying/asking. Perceived weakness entices aggressors of course, unless you think it's normal that states are picking fights they know they will lose. Rather than asking for citations of simple logical conclusions it might be better to try and throw out your idea of decent counterexamples. Like, you might say Hamas isn't fighting because of perceived weakness, and in a sense they know they will lose. You can explain this in the perceived weakness framework only if the real war is a PR war where you hope to get allies for the shooting war.

geysersam 3y ago
> Perceived weakness entices aggressors of course It's true of course. We don't even need to look at the world to know that it's true. There's a word for that, tautology. It's just not an effective description of the real world. It's a very useful idea for selling guns though.
- photonthug 3y ago
  No idea what you're getting at. If you admit this is pure logic and we don't need to look at the world then why ask for citations? If you have no faith in logic and also don't want to look at the world, what could anyone cite anyway? Honestly not sure how you think anyone can know anything
fmajid 3y ago
At some level Japan knew it would lose to the US in WW2, but the alternative of effectively surrender was too unpalatable to consider. Here's the analysis by a US Army historian: https://web.archive.org/web/20170830024001/http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pdffiles/PUB905.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170830024001/http://ssi.armywa...
- photonthug 3y ago
  I've heard that Yamamoto believed Japan could not win, but felt duty bound to serve anyway after it became clear the fight would happen with or without him. He seemed to also understand Pearl harbor would incite and not crush fighting spirit. First I've heard that leadership in general could have believed they would lose the fight they were starting. But politicians are weird, and I guess many of them would rather lose (elections, wars) rather than lose control (of parties, or countries). This has it's own kind of perverted logic but political thinking isn't military thinking
  - fmajid 3y ago
    You can’t really distinguish the two in this case, Tojo ran a military dictatorship and moderate politicians had been murdered to make way. We shouldn’t disregard the role racist ideology played, but that paper shows how the likelihood of honorable defeat was deemed preferable to ignominious surrender in Japan, and how ignorance of Japanese culture led the US to miscalculate when it imposed an oil embargo on the Japanese.

geysersam 3y ago

> Perceived weakness entices aggressors of course It's true of course. We don't even need to look at the world to know that it's true. There's a word for that, tautology. It's just not an effective description of the real world. It's a very useful idea for selling guns though.

photonthug 3y ago
No idea what you're getting at. If you admit this is pure logic and we don't need to look at the world then why ask for citations? If you have no faith in logic and also don't want to look at the world, what could anyone cite anyway? Honestly not sure how you think anyone can know anything

fmajid 3y ago

At some level Japan knew it would lose to the US in WW2, but the alternative of effectively surrender was too unpalatable to consider. Here's the analysis by a US Army historian: https://web.archive.org/web/20170830024001/http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pdffiles/PUB905.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170830024001/http://ssi.armywa...

photonthug 3y ago
I've heard that Yamamoto believed Japan could not win, but felt duty bound to serve anyway after it became clear the fight would happen with or without him. He seemed to also understand Pearl harbor would incite and not crush fighting spirit. First I've heard that leadership in general could have believed they would lose the fight they were starting. But politicians are weird, and I guess many of them would rather lose (elections, wars) rather than lose control (of parties, or countries). This has it's own kind of perverted logic but political thinking isn't military thinking
- fmajid 3y ago
  You can’t really distinguish the two in this case, Tojo ran a military dictatorship and moderate politicians had been murdered to make way. We shouldn’t disregard the role racist ideology played, but that paper shows how the likelihood of honorable defeat was deemed preferable to ignominious surrender in Japan, and how ignorance of Japanese culture led the US to miscalculate when it imposed an oil embargo on the Japanese.