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>While a common sentiment, I think this concept misses the entire purpose of war. The purpose of any war is to impose your will by force on another, and by exte
by Dalewyn 2y ago
>While a common sentiment, I think this concept misses the entire purpose of war. The purpose of any war is to impose your will by force on another, and by extension, prevent your enemy from imposing his.
More fundamentally, war is just another facet of diplomacy.
It's commonly said that diplomacy has failed when wars are waged, but actually wars are merely the act of last resort in diplomacy and diplomacy itself is perfectly fine.
- Retric 2y agoWar itself involves a great deal of diplomacy between those fighting, various allies of those fighting, neutral 3rd parties etc. Treatment of prisoners of war is probably the most obvious example of this. If you’re known to treat people who surrender well then you get more people willing to do so compared to a reputation as a country which will simply slaughter anyone captured. Sure it forces you to devote resources to caring for potentially millions of people, but that’s preferable to fighting millions of desperate people.