Many complain on negativism in HN comments, but how in the world can a sane person express anything positive when there's a hell-bent will in conjunction with the "next war"?
Are you under the impression that humanity could reach a state where there is never another major war?
I don't know how one would reach that conclusion, least of all a Major at the nation's leading military educational institute. Nothing "hell-bent" about it.
People were starting to think that way at the "end of history" period between the Cold War and 9/11. At that time the major powers were not involved in wars, and it was believed that regional ones could be "solved" like Yugoslavia.
9/11 was a huge success for Bin Laden's goal of restarting a forever war, though.
That is the question worth focusing all the available energy and enthusiasm that is always somewhere else, but never at the humankind's worst problem.
I think the answer could arise from a widely growing understanding of
a) the methods of mass manipulation. Without manipulation, or outright mass hypnosis, no dictator is possible;
b) the whole structure of power, and the fact that there are numerous barriers to filter out all non-psychopaths along the way to the top, with multiple checkpoints where an ever increasing degree of corruption and depravity must be demonstrated to the controllers.
Where there are simians, there is war. The more primitive the society, the bloodier and more total the war is. I wish our problem were psychopaths in power, but the truth is we are a tribal and fearful species and war is in our genes. It's as certain as a sunrise as long as there are humans.
This is the goto excuse, or mantra if you will, deeply programmed into people by those who need cannon fodder to protect heaps of loot robbed from said fodder.
"We". "War is in our genes".
Start with "me". Do I need war? Do I want war?
Do I have something that differentiates me from a simian?
To bear a reasoning mind, and have a heart that is capable of love, and still to appeal to the animal foundation is a total betrayal of everything that makes you not just yet another animal.
I don't want or need war, but I won't deny to having felt tribal impulses before. I won't deny culture and groups are different from individuals. Idealism is fine until it starts interfering with reality.
I consider myself an optimist, but given that the US has been in 229 wars over it's 249 years since founding, it seems highly unlikely that there wouldn't be a "next war".
Not every country or tribe has been engaged in near continuous violence for over two centuries. That isn't simply "fighting many wars" it's being "existentially bound to warfare." The US is peculiar. It's the nation born of a continent-wide campaign of genocide and plunder. It's the only Western nation that couldn't give up slavery without a civil war. It's the only nation to wage nuclear war, and did so primarily against civilians. It's (for the time being) the world's only superpower, with a military orders of magnitude larger than any other. It put the right to shoot people into its Constitution because its founders wanted a government that normalized regular revolutionary violence as a civic principle.
The US is weirdly attached to violence and war in ways you only tend to find in modern dictatorships or the empires of old.
I appreciate this comment, and agree with it in some respects, but some of these specifics are demonstrably false.
> It's the nation born of a continent-wide campaign of genocide and plunder
Hard to see how that description doesn't apply to most of the New World. Mexico and Peru were founded on bones of conquered and plundered empires. First Nations in Canada suffered much the same as their counterparts in the US.
> It's the only Western nation that couldn't give up slavery without a civil war.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to say this is literally false, but the implication that every other nation gave up slavery willingly and without violence certainly is (see Haiti, for a particularly bloody example)
That's fair criticism. The US isn't that unique in terms of colonialist expansion in the New World and I honestly forgot about Haiti. I just knew that Britain managed to end slavery without a war but I forgot about Haiti and its uprising.
I mean we can start by gesturing at the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, heck England and France had a 100 years war, that was just one of their wars.
And I don't remember the US starting either WW1 or WW2 in fact if I remember that was the Germans and the French and the Russians and the English again.
I mean then you've got the Muslim conquests which do the match the description you're giving the US.
In fact theres only been a brief period of time from near the end of the Cold War till recently where every state wasn't preparing to engage in or having recently prosecuted a war, and there's considerable evidence that Europe didn't have to do that because the US was carrying all of NATO on its back.
So what is unique about the US right now apart from the fact that Pax Americana facilitated the most peaceful period in human history even considering the few wars that were fought?
My point is that war is the worst thing that humans can engage in, and that the prevailing sentiment is that constant war is an immutable status-quo, and hence it's okay, there's nothing we can do except downvoting those fucking negativists.
I think the folks disagreeing with you maybe haven't spent much time in war. Almost certainly some in harsh skirmishes, but I reckon a few Nam, Korea and WWII vets would at least entertain your position on the subject. Pretty much every meta variation of terror has surfaced or has the potential to surface in war. Parts of Ukraine, I think, easily represent hell on Earth, for both sides.
Edit: I will go a bit further..
I consider Military the greatest power on Earth. It's sacred, necessary. But those who abuse its power commit, in my view, the greatest of sins. I don't mean the soldiers who fight, but those making the decisions of who they fight. The soldiers do their job, often willingly. And they are the ones who face the consequences. To betray them by corruption is the ultimate betrayal. War is a power that, I think, should be reserved for situations with no other option. Mercenaries not considered.
Sorry for the personal question, but are you a military vet? Because from the way you seem to respect soldiers yet abhor war, it sure does seem that you are.
Only family, friends, and family and friends of the world yet unmet. No. I am not a vet. I've endured episodes of parochial dispute resulting in brutal combat, but always had a home to retire to at the end of the day. Having a functional imagination, general fealty to reality and a wide ear for the reports of others, I can easily surmise the amplified and sustained version of my own exposure. I also love what I love, and know the curse of losing it indefinitely. War pretty much promises an abundance of that. Many vets fester their whole lives in guilt, wishing it was they, not the other (a friend, an innocent) that was lost. I could spiral downward, but shouldn't.
Humans are a tough bunch. We rationalize some fairly insane shit. I've met folks subjected to things that would break me, and they just carry on. I think my perspective on the matter is starkly different from most vets. Where they shrug it off and move along, I sulk and brood. I think I am impervious to being a vet. I'd improbably make it so far. When I enlisted for the Navy, as young uneducated man, weeks passed, and I called several times each week. "we don't know yet" they'd say. And I'd call again. And on the final call, I asked, "when can I start?" they replied "You can't, but I'll put you on the phone now with the Marines..". I put down the phone. I've wondered at times if that was a mistake, and I think for what I might have contributed to good folks it might have been, but with my exceedingly compromised (by design?) view of geopolitics, I don't regret my choice.
What I can say with sincerity: Military is a sacred power, the bulwark comprising of enlisted soldiers. What each of them seek, or whatever the impetus for enlistment, those that wield them would be wise to hesitate when endeavoring to exploit them.
Things that are worse than war, a wildly incomplete list, in no particular order:
Pogroms; slavery; totalitarian dictatorship; theocracy; intentional mass starvation; mass organ harvesting; mass forced relocation; anarchy; failing to respond to unprovoked violence; restricting freedom instead of defeating the adversary.
What do you think happens in war? Clean fighting from side to side?
You really think the massive amounts of death and destruction aren’t top ten? What do you think happens to the local population when an invading force arrives? You should go and read about the rape of Nanking. And just read about what happened in wars before the modern era.
Your concern is reasonable but misdirected. This article is a publication of the "Modern War Institute", a research organization at West Point, the US Army military academy; it is literally their job to anticipate and plan for the next war, whatever it may happen to be. Deciding whether those plans ought to be used is a completely different responsibility.
