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I've arrived at the opposite conclusion. The root cause of conflict is decentralized power, which is the prediction of realism. Conflict occurs because of secur

I've arrived at the opposite conclusion. The root cause of conflict is decentralized power, which is the prediction of realism. Conflict occurs because of security competition, but security competition is only possible when powers are equally matched and trapped in a Prisoner's Dilemma dynamic. You can sense check this by running through various historic eras. Consider the eras before any nation states, when power was at its most decentralized. That was also when conflict deaths were at their peak due to tribal warfare. Then move on to the era of kingdoms and then nation-states, and conflict deaths decrease because power centralization increases. Intra-national conflict goes to zero because of a monopoly on violence over that local geography, leaving only inter-national conflict in the structurally anarchic power vacuum. The peace of the 90s was because the United States was completely dominant and had no reason to do anything because it controlled everything. As the United States declines and power decentralization increases, moves such as denying China access to oil from Venezuela become actions that are deemed necessary in the new security environment. Or a clash between Thailand and Cambodia becomes a thing that can happen, because there is an absence of a big dog to lay down the law, as unjust as that law may be. The analogy would be a country with multiple privately owned police forces and no single power. You're going to get conflict. It's a structural phenomenon of how power vacuums work when you plop humans inside of them, and it has nothing to do with morality or markets.

hliyan 10mo ago
This is an excellent counterargument. I was stumped for a bit until I noticed that your argument introduces a new variable that changes the equation: number of conflict deaths. Theoretically, it is possible to have a system of perfect enslavement where the number of conflict deaths are zero. But in such a system, low conflict deaths are a poor proxy to quality of life.
maxerickson 10mo ago
In the last 100 years, we managed to prove that cooperation beats competition. Of course we do have competition, but where it has worked the best, it has been done in the context of cooperation, economic trade that follows norms and laws. Too bad we gave stupid people power.
- energy123 10mo ago
  This is the liberal view of security, yes, but in my opinion it's naive and it lacks explanatory power, for the reasons I gave in my previous post.
  - maxerickson 10mo ago
    But for example, Venezuelan oil is worth very little to China. It's literally stupid to use violence to prevent them from accessing it. Meanwhile it's sort of becoming very clear that Venezuela is about Cuba.
    - energy123 10mo ago
      It's worth little at its current flows, but this ignores the temporal dimension which is where stock is more important because the flows can be built up over time. Only 20%-30% of China's oil is secure, the rest suffers from the Malacca dilemma which is why the US focuses on naval power projection as part of its Pacific containment policy, a lesson they learned with the oil blockade against Japan in WW2. Oil is also not the only security dimension, the other dimension is to deny China a physical staging ground near to US territory for air, missiles or radar and SIGINT. Not a problem right now, but again these calculations need to involve the temporal dimension. If you believe there's a 25% chance of conflict over Taiwan, using the status quo of peace to justify decision-making is an "assume the best" doctrine which is a terrible security doctrine. This isn't to say that security calculations are the only factor involved in this Venezuela operation. It is one piece of it. It's also somewhat besides the point because I am discussing underlying causal mechanisms, not fixating on a specific conflict. As for how this relates to those mechanisms: the only reason these "security calculations" are even considered is because the US no longer holds a monopoly on world power. In the 1990s, it was a foregone conclusion. In that security, "cooperation" could occur. Then liberals osberve that cooperation and mistake it as the cause, when it's really the effect.
      - maxerickson 10mo ago
        The specifics do matter if your argument is that some actions are a complex response to something and then the specifics are that the actions are stupid and nearly random.
throwaway132448 10mo ago
The basis of this is flawed because the "peace" started several decades before the 90s, and completely neglects the role of Mutually Assured Destruction in creating that peace. If anything, America's position was detrimental to that peace because it allowed it to wage its own unilateral wars. This continues to be the case now. The main difference is that in the 90s, the opposition to Vietnam was still fresh enough in the average American mind. I suspect what we're seeing now is the effect of that memory fading.

hliyan 10mo ago

This is an excellent counterargument. I was stumped for a bit until I noticed that your argument introduces a new variable that changes the equation: number of conflict deaths. Theoretically, it is possible to have a system of perfect enslavement where the number of conflict deaths are zero. But in such a system, low conflict deaths are a poor proxy to quality of life.

maxerickson 10mo ago

In the last 100 years, we managed to prove that cooperation beats competition. Of course we do have competition, but where it has worked the best, it has been done in the context of cooperation, economic trade that follows norms and laws. Too bad we gave stupid people power.

energy123 10mo ago
This is the liberal view of security, yes, but in my opinion it's naive and it lacks explanatory power, for the reasons I gave in my previous post.
- maxerickson 10mo ago
  But for example, Venezuelan oil is worth very little to China. It's literally stupid to use violence to prevent them from accessing it. Meanwhile it's sort of becoming very clear that Venezuela is about Cuba.
  - energy123 10mo ago
    It's worth little at its current flows, but this ignores the temporal dimension which is where stock is more important because the flows can be built up over time. Only 20%-30% of China's oil is secure, the rest suffers from the Malacca dilemma which is why the US focuses on naval power projection as part of its Pacific containment policy, a lesson they learned with the oil blockade against Japan in WW2. Oil is also not the only security dimension, the other dimension is to deny China a physical staging ground near to US territory for air, missiles or radar and SIGINT. Not a problem right now, but again these calculations need to involve the temporal dimension. If you believe there's a 25% chance of conflict over Taiwan, using the status quo of peace to justify decision-making is an "assume the best" doctrine which is a terrible security doctrine. This isn't to say that security calculations are the only factor involved in this Venezuela operation. It is one piece of it. It's also somewhat besides the point because I am discussing underlying causal mechanisms, not fixating on a specific conflict. As for how this relates to those mechanisms: the only reason these "security calculations" are even considered is because the US no longer holds a monopoly on world power. In the 1990s, it was a foregone conclusion. In that security, "cooperation" could occur. Then liberals osberve that cooperation and mistake it as the cause, when it's really the effect.
    - maxerickson 10mo ago
      The specifics do matter if your argument is that some actions are a complex response to something and then the specifics are that the actions are stupid and nearly random.

throwaway132448 10mo ago

The basis of this is flawed because the "peace" started several decades before the 90s, and completely neglects the role of Mutually Assured Destruction in creating that peace. If anything, America's position was detrimental to that peace because it allowed it to wage its own unilateral wars. This continues to be the case now. The main difference is that in the 90s, the opposition to Vietnam was still fresh enough in the average American mind. I suspect what we're seeing now is the effect of that memory fading.