Interest in nuclear weapons has faded a lot since the Cold War. These days, the possibility of nuclear confrontation between major powers isn’t treated terribly seriously, because the costs of such an exchange would be too horrible to contemplate. And, anyway, both the Russians and the US have been reducing their nuclear arsenals, right? Instead, concerns lay much more around nuclear terrorism, on the assumption that terrorists can’t be deterred by the threat of destruction.
However, amongst the small group of academics who are examining the issue, there’s a pair who are putting together some interesting, and rather disturbing conclusions. Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, two American academics, argue that in a military confrontation with China, the USA has the ability to destroy the Chinese long-range arsenal, if it strikes first. Therefore, if it came to it, an American president may be sorely tempted to try such a strike; as they argue in a recent presentation (follow the link for video), such a strike was precisely what the USA planned for against the Soviets during the 1950s, when the nuclear balance between the USA and the Soviet union was roughly analogous to the situation now.
It’s worth noting that other experts in the area (including the owner of the blog I’ve linked to, Jeffery Lewis) don’t accept Lieber and Press’s conclusions. For one thing, while a strike may well have a good chance of taking out all the missiles that could reach the US, that still leaves the Chinese with plenty that could reach Japan and Korea and the more than 50,000 American troops there - not to mention, of course the millions of Koreans and Japanese who might not be entirely happy with the US government pursuing a strategy that left their populations vulnerable to complete annihilation…
In any case, some thoroughly depressing reading and listening material on the leadup to Anzac Day.
In any case, the US would have to consider the response of the Russians who would be unlikely to take kindly to mass death being rained on their next door neighbours in the form of 5 megaton hydrogen bombs.
If fact, Katz, it’s more likely that Russia would make the first strike on China given their history of prior dealings.
Why ER?
China is about to become Russia’s most lucrative market for its own oil and the ME oil soon to be piped from Iraq, via Iran through Russia to the East.
China and Russia have an enormous coincidence of interests.
If you read the article in detail, it’s not 5 megaton metropolis-busters (funnily enough, only the Chinese bother with those any more), it’s 500 kiloton jobbies, aimed at fairly remote missile sites. It’s even possible that they’ll use low-yield nukes, dropped very accurately, to do the job. In this case, the civilian casualties are only moderately horrendous (that is, comparable to what the US was prepared to do to the citizens of Iraq with conventional air strikes) rather than the multi-million casualties you might assume.
Which makes it all the more plausible that some hyper-macho US President might be prepared to risk it.
What w2ould be the reasson fot the US getting into a nuclear war with China? Short of there being a four sheets to the wind nutter in the White House, I can’t see how either side would be so stupid.
The two guys referred to reckon that the confluence of an emerging superpower (China) and a declining one (the USA) has led to confrontations on a regular basis. They accept that things might be different this time around, but there’s no reason to be sure.
The obvious flashpoint is Taiwan, but there’s a number of other hypothetical possibilities.
The scenario they propose is this:
In a crisis over Taiwan (or whatever) the US makes a first strike against Chinese nukes with small nukes to take out their capability to strike the US (to a 94% probability, which is less than I’d want if I lived in LA). This has Chinese causalities in the thousands as most of these missiles are in remote areas. This means that America is free to use nukes with no threat of retaliation against the US. However, as Robert points out, Japan, Korea and Taiwan would still be in range of the Chinese nukes to a very high probability.
So what does the US gain from such a scenario? Merely that they would be able to nuke (utterly destroy) Chinese cities while American regional allies are assured of highly destructive retaliation. Is this really a gain for anyone?
I wonder if somewhere in a German museum there is a study by German “experts” from around about, say, the late ’30s, arguing that the Germans could “take out” the UK’s entire air force provided they struck first?
Any military strategy founded on this kind of thinking is the kind of mad gambling which only a completely crazy person would consider. One likes to hope that US generals would oppose such a plan if their leader were ever to suggest it.
“Is this really a gain for anyone?”
Yes - the Taiwanese.
Under this scenario, the Chinese presumably started the war by attacking Taiwan or bombarding it with missiles.
However, after the American strike on their nuclear forces, the Chinese leadership now have to ponder whether they really want to continue or escalate the war, when they have no ability to directly threaten the US.
Unless they’re totally barking mad, they begin peace talks.
The “hyper-macho US President”, as Robert calls him (or her - Hillary’s playing the macho card at the moment) has just ended the war and saved countless Taiwanese lives.
SG:
Some German experts probably did argue that, though the Luftwaffe never had the capability for this and never spent much time thinking about it. Many, many British experts did argue something similar, though they tended to worry about sudden strikes on London and/or critical infrastructure targets: the “fabled knock-out blow” which has been obsessing me these past few years …
… exactly Brett, the fabled knock-out blow on which only crazy people plan their wars. This sounds like exactly that sort of crazy talk.
Fmark: consider this scenario. The US uses its conventional weapons to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. China says “stop interfering or else”, and starts fuelling up its ICBMs.
What these guys argue is that the USA has a feasible military option to deal with such a threat - nuke their ICBMs. The USA could do it with a reasonably high chance of success, with less civilian casualties than you might think. Like I said, that ignores Japan and Korea, let alone Taiwan, but that’s what their case is.
By the way, these guys don’t claim that this is a good situation; in fact, they’re quite alarmed by it. As I understand them, they suspect the world would be a safer place if the Chinese built up their nuclear arsenal, and its survivability, until the US first strike scenario was no longer possible.
According to Wikipedia (which seems to offer a sober enough assessment)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Nuclear_weapons
since 2000 China has developed and deployed some solid-fuelled, MIRV, ICBMs which put the lie to assessments made by Keir Lieber and Daryl Press.
In any case I detect a touch of the “Modest Proposals” in their article.
Katz: ah, but they don’t have nearly enough of them yet. According to Lieber and Press, these missiles, in the numbers they presently have, are also vulnerable - essentially, a nuclear airburst (at a high enough altitude to prevent fallout) will blow these things to smithereens over a very wide radius - a relatively unprotected missile on a truck is far more vulnerable than one in a silo.
Watch their presentation if you have time.
Hardly. With an estimated one million Taiwanese living on the mainland and Taiwan being China’s largest investor, any conflict is a disaster for all concerned. Even China has understood this, and has softened its rhetoric and policy (in some areas) towards Taiwan (the current situation in Paraguay shows the limits of China’s willingness to compromise). In any case, apart from not seeing any reason why the US would need to use nuclear weapons to strike Taiwan (the 7th fleet alone i.e. the navy, has greater air power than the PLAAF) this whole thing is war porn and the kind of discussion that comes around every few years when other countries get a lot of media attention.
SG:
Yes, it’s all crazy talk, but some future historian is going to have a field day with it!
BTW, I should have said ‘fabled “knock-out blow”‘ not ‘”fabled knock-out blow”‘. Gah.
Is the assumption then, that the US would be willing to see China destroy its neighbours? Because unless this the case, a first strike merely has the effect of replacing the mutually assured retaliation/destruction relationship between China-US with a mutually assured retaliation/destruction triangle between China-Japan/Korea-US. Furthermore, this would raise the stakes such that tactical nuclear strikes on each-others forces is probable. How is this a gain for the US?
This seems to further confirm what I suspected, that the main risk of nuclear weapon use is the US deciding to use them.
Do the Chinese have nuclear armed submarines?
Would the Chinese waive US debts?
yeah, sure, the US could swiftly take out China with their superior whatever-power. sounds like some good ol’Cold War style propaganda.
Wow, a nuclear war started because of…ennui.
How droll.
What’s this? Have the US surrendered the field completely. Have some faith in General Petraeus, Katz. While there’s boots on the ground, there’s hope.
The answers to all these questions can be found via this nuclear war sim tour-de-force.
In my experience Russia can usually nail China with a bomber wave followed by a long range sub strike on Tokyo and Seoul from Kamchatka to rack up the megadeaths without opening their silos and compromising missile defense on the Archangelsk-Astrakhan axis.
The classic aphorism uttered by General Thomas Power, commander of the US Strategic Air Command, in 1960 is as true now as it was then:
(Just replace ‘Russian’ with ‘Chinese’.)
[quoted in Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon]
Not many people realise how much US (or any nuclear armed country) plans its military capacity around nuclear weapons.
Alot of the premier weapons in America’s arsenal today like cruise missiles, or stealth bombers were never really meant to be used with conventional weapons. They were invented to deliver a knockout “first strike” to win a nuclear war. Cruise missiles were meant to carry nuclear warheads in underneath Soviet radar systems. The US airforce used to think the idea of putting a conventional warhead in a cruise missile was crazy. The B1 bomber was designed to do the same thing. The B2 Stealth Bomber was invented to carry nuclear weapons deep into Soviet territory undetected and deliver a nuclear knockout first strike. This was billions and billions of dollars and the major effort of the US airforce dedicated to finding a way of upsetting the balance of mutually assured destruction and let America deliver a successful first strike. The way these weapons are used today would seem strange and wasteful to their original designers.
We feel that the use of nuclear weapons is absolutely abhorent and no sane nation would use them first. The US military and Russian military simply don’t think that way. They have spent their entire careers working out how to deliver and use nuclear weapons and are much more comfortable with their use than the public imagines. That’s why people talk about using nuclear bunker busters to knock out Iran’s nuclear program. For alot of people in the US government/military there is nothing unacceptable about nukes. They’ve trained and planned to use them their whole professional lives.
Like, bunker busters, albeit non-nuclear, were a huge success against Al-Quaeda, weren’t they? But I suppose that’s why they’re thinking of the nuclear option. Its moments like these, despite my lack of belief, I feel like saying God help us.And now we’ve got Hillary trying to prove she’s got more balls than the blokes, if you’ll excuse the vernacular. So, God help us!
Might be worth taking another look at this link considering the news released today by the ever-trustworthy Busheviks:
http://www.counterpunch.com/dae04182008.html
(CONPLAN 8022: Inside Bush’s Nuclear War Plan
Stratcom is the Main Threat to Peace on the Korea Peninsula
By KO YOUNG-DAE)
A taste: Moreover, based on the NPR, the Bush administration has formulated a nuclear war strategy plan with North Korea and Iran as the main targets, thereby making the Korean Peninsula the most dangerous region in the world, with the US nuclear weapons playing a part in military strategy.
This nuclear war plan is called CONPLAN 8022, which combines five regional theatres into a single unit and articulates the idea of a global strike, where by the US can strike at any region within one hour.
The whole thing is an academic exercise in it’s purest form. All the political and economic structures in all countries would be in such a mess that nothing after the event would look like it was before. No one would care which political structure was marked as the winner and which as the looser, all that would matter it which bits of the planet could be settled. If your still alive pray you back the right war lord because that is what it will all be about.
Sent a link to an old retired USAF friend who spent well over 30 years as a nuclear strike planner. This person thinks that these gentlemen are basically pulling one contingency out of a large number of them and using it to obtain some attention.
Nothing wrong with that in any way, of course.
What caused my compatriot some giggles about regarding their thesis was that it ignores something rather important. The US does not require use of nuclear weapons to disable the PRC nuclear capability. They can do it with conventional weapons and there is nothing the PRC can do about that yet. This person further pointed out that in nuclear planning terms, the PRC capability long range is the one thing the USA would not touch unless the Chinese were actually about to launch it. To do so before hand would signal that the war was becoming total, whereas both would want it to remain limited (as Korea and Vietnam both were). So doing so would be precisely the wrong tactic. In this person’s personal opinion, what they would go after (with conventional weapons) would be the PLA’s nuclear armed medium range missile systems which could destroy their regional allies plus Taiwan, if used.
In this person’s words, ‘you’d aim to decouple the long range forces from the medium by destroying the latter. It passes a message to the Chinese that they have been left with their long range forces (which are actually more vulnerable) to allow them political room to manouver. This keeps the impetus for nuclear escalate under control. Any conventional PRC attacks destroying US medium range nuclear assets in-region would also be accepted by the USA: such a move exposes PRC conventional assets to destruction and the USA has sufficient depth of nuclear systems not to be concerned about losing what we have in-region. Essentially, both sides would be using conventional actions to de-escalate the nuclear situation’
This person went on ‘in any case, the PLA’s strategic rocket forces are not yet capable of destroying the USA even if we cannot attrit them in the post-boost phases. It actually takes a certain number of weapons destroying a specific set of US targets to cause the USA to collapse as a social and political entity. Only the Russians have this capability.’
This person also stated that this was a game with its own rules and consistent internal logic, which all the nuclear powers except Pakistan and North Korea formally agree on. The entire aim of these discussions and meetings (which have been going on since the very early 60s) is to prevent ambiguity, surprises or misconceived actions.
Obviously, that is a good thing.
MarkL
Canberra
Given that we have had nuclear weapons since the 50’s and given that we have had several wars since the 50’s it stands to reason that MarkL’s friend not the academics speaks the truth.
Meh, apart from stuff like Able Archer.
MarkL: interesting comment.
That said, I don’t think I’d be wanting to take a punt on destroying the entire Chinese MRBM force with conventional weaponry…
Furthermore, the idea of “causing the USA to collapse” may be true, but is meaningless. Remember, one weapon landing on a major city results in a few million deaths (Chinese missiles have 4 MT metropolis-killers on them, apparently). For a US President to take the risk of this happening, the alternatives would have to be pretty dire.
Robert.
Semi-agreed. I am no nuclear strike planner, but the one thing has always struck me about that issue in discussions with my retired friend is that the logic is different.
That person’s comment regarding the SRBM and MRBM that the PLA has aimed at Taiwan is that there are three layers of significance and policy influence in the act of attriting them. The first is that they can be attacked (which has implications for the ICBM force as well) indicating vulnerabilities in the PLAAF and PLA air defence ground environment. The second is that while the attacks are conventional, they do not have to stay that way, which reduces the chance of the PLA going nuclear. The third is that a precise (the words ‘precisely graduated’ were used) degree of technological ‘edge’ is revealed, again limiting the PLA escalation options.
The Chinese have a real problem with using old, inaccurate ‘city busters’. Such use denies them the ability to graduate a nuclear exchange. They cannot hit US ICBM fields. So their only message is to hit a city, causing massive civilian casualties. And they cannot hit enough US cities to collapse their society. But the US response would be massive, certainly collapsing their society.
Therefore they will not hit a US city with those weapons. They will hit a Japanese or Australian city. This is, of course, precisely the reasoning behind the old Soviet BARRICADE concept, which was pretty much the same thing.
I found strike planners to be a funny bunch, endlessly working through contingency plans in innumerable permutations. In their world, loss of a few US cities (anything below 10 MD or ‘megadeaths’) is literally nothing but a data point. The only bottom line they have is that where the USA as a polity ceases to exist. Theirs is a very stark world. The funny thing is, it is their senior politicians who control that attitude, which focusses on national survival in a nuclear exchange.
This is what so worries them about the leakage of nuclear capabilities to non-rational and non-state actors. The USSR was rational. The present Iranian government is semi-rational. Hizb’allah is not.
We live in interesting times.
MarkL
Canberra
At present, it’s clearly not in Chinese interests to attempt to seek to fight a limited nuclear war with the US.
Their interests clearly lie in the direction of the kind of peace which has allowed their country to become an economic and financial giant.
If US decisionmakers perceive that their country is losing that game with little prospect of retrieving the situation by peaceful means, then the US may well be tempted to seek to attrite Chinese capabilities with some sort of limited strike of the kind discussed.
Yet all the meantime, the Chinese are adding to their megadeath capability by building more MIRVs on movable platforms.
This has the makings of a classic situation of asymmetry. The Chinese have thusfar foresworn afforts to attempt to build a nuclear capability to engage in the graduated, calibrated exchange being discussed. For the Chinese it would appear that it is a matter of all or nothing.
And as time passes, the Chinese nuclear “all” grows more formidable.
Thus, time is running short for the US to expect acceptable losses from the kind of strategy being discussed.
If the US are going to do it, they’d better do it soon.
Hmm. Confrontation between our biggest trading partener and our (supposedly) greatest ally.
We would be in a pickle wouldn’t we?
Even the beginning of a new cold war between these two powers would see us having to choose sides. Not saying it’s gonna happen……….just saying, that’s all.
Of course, if you had asked anyone in 1910 about the possibility of European nations turning on each other in all out warfare they would have said “Preposterous!! Free trade has intermeshed our economies to the extent that such a war is impossible.”
But less than five years later…….
Katz - both the PRC and USA are rational players at this game. The idea that the USA is going to attack the PRC on the grounds you discuss is illogical at best.
The situation has been and remains (decreasingly) assymetric in the favour of the USA. It is developing into the classic symmetry we saw between the USA and USSR by 1970. Both the present assymetric state and future symmetric states are stable - because both sides are rational. Neither side is particularly worried by the others nuclear capability because both are rational players.
This is the classic case of capabilities vs intentions. In say, 1980, both teh USA and USSR had the capability to destroy each other - sowhat they focussed on most of allw as each other’s intentions. And they began a series of confidence building measures (CBM) to make sure that intentions could be read without ambiguity. Hence the strange internal logics of the ‘nuclear war-fighting planning world’.
Should a non-state actor such as AQ get hold of a nuclear weapon, there is no doubt about their intentions - they would use it. So people look at their capability.
The jokers in the pack are the semi-rational powers such as Iran and Syria. We cannot tell what their intentions might be, but they are neither fully rational or willing to ‘earn the respect and cooperation’ of the nuclear powers as India has done. SO both their capabilities and intentions are ambiguous.
This is a recipe for disaster, especially when such countries actively sponsor and employ irrational (indeed near-uncontrollable) non-state proxies such as Hizb’allah.
This is what makes the development of nuclear weapons by such powers a profoundly destabilising idea.
BTW, we have a bet going. Those with the appropriate knowledge assess that the chance of a so-called terrorist nuke (NOT delivered by SRBM) being used within 8 years is >50% (I’ll not discuss the actual assessed %). The top 3 targets are assessed to be London, Paris and Rome.
The strategies being discussed by ALL the major nuclear powers are, of course, all of them - that is what contingency planning is for.
MarkL
Canberra
I agree MarkL.
That’s why I used the word “if” (twice!) rather than the word “because”.
I believe that the kind of modelling embodied in the work under discussion is therefore little more than and expensive version of Second Life.
US taxpayers should feel cheated by the money wasted on it.
I agree that the USA and the PRC are rational players.
It is worth noting though that the symetric balance between the USA and the USSR was different in nature to the USA’s relationship with the PRC. The two opposing superpowers did not interact with each other economically - the economics of the world was split in two between eastern and western blocs. Not so with America and China today. Trade flows back and forth between them and while this might seem to make war less likely still, that was the way Europe looked just before WW1.
The growing economic strength of China causes some concern in the US. It’s enormous capacity for cheap production has hurt many US industries.
The US is a diminishing giant while China is a rising superpower. Will the old top dog bow out without a fight? The British empire went to war to prove that it was still number one and that it still owned North America. But they lost……..
War before WWI would have looked unlikely if you only looked at trade figures and ignored pretty much everything else: Germany’s desire for a place in the sun, French revanchism, Austria-Hungary’s proximity to the Balkan powderkeg, British fear of Germany’s naval buildup, everybody’s piling up of armaments. The possibility of a war with Germany was an extremely common topic of discussion in British newspapers, journals, books, etc before 1914, so much so that humorists like PG Wodehouse, AA Milne and Heath Robinson parodied it. The same is true of the other European powers.
The argument that international trade was so great that countries would not go to war with each other is often attributed to Norman Angell, but in fact he only argued that it wasn’t in a nation’s interests to go to war with its major trading partners, not that they wouldn’t do so.
While I’m here, yes, Britain lost the American colonies (bar Canada), but it kept expanding its empire for another 140 years or so after 1783, and managed to see off Napoleon, the Kaiser and (just) Hitler. Whether that made it ’still number one’ or not I don’t know, but as the Pax Britannica only began a couple of decades after the American Revolutionary War, I’d say so.
Sorry, historical analogies based on bad history just get on my pip …
Good. Then we agree that a high level of economic interdependence does not preclude the possibility of war.
If the possibility of war with Germany was widely discussed in Britain before 1914, not all historical figures think that it was taken all that seriously by many. The fact that humorists of the day got a giggle out of it lends weight to that. You are proving my point.
Keynes - who lived through those times - demonstrated the extent of economic interdependence inside Europe in 1914 and also wrote of the “naively contented” inhabitant of London: “But most of all, he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous and avoidable. The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to this paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, and appeared to excercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life”
Perhaps the observations made by Keynes during those times were inaccurate - but until it is proven to me that he was wrong then I will continue to assume he was accurately recording what he saw.
Or has he passed down “bad history”?
Norman Angell - The great illusion - 1913: “that military power is socially and economically futile, and can have no relation to the prosperity of the people excercising it; that it is impossible for one nation to seize by force the wealth or trade of another - to enrich itself by subjugating, or imposing it’s will by force on another, that in short; war, even when victorious, can no longer achieve those aims for which people strive”
I think people can be forgiven for thinking that he said that nations would no longer go to war with major trading parteners - especially because of the bit where he says that it’s impossible to ransack the goodies of another country by force.
He certainly casts great doubt on the likelyhood of wars continuing to break out from the time of his writing.
Sadly, he was wrong. Sucky as it is, nations will probably always go to war to acquire one anothers resources. George Dubya no longer felt like buying oil from Saddam so he decided to just take it ( methinks anyhow - but the way that’s going, Angell’s hypothises may just prove to have some truth in it)
G
One major difference in calculations about major war between 1914 and today is that in 1914 there was a widely held consensus of decision-makers on both sides that any war would be brief and victorious. Cost/benefit analysis tended to favour war.
Today, while there are nuclear war modellers who like to imagine a brief, cheap and containable nuclear exchange between the US and the PRC, I am fairly confident that most sensible people on both sides suspect strongly that any nuclear exchange between the US and the PRC, while perhaps brief, would be truly horrible in its consequencces for everyone, both winner and loser.
Thus, the historical parallel between 1914 and today falls down because rational actors in 1914 tended to plump for war between great powers, whereas rational actors today tend to avoid war between nuclear powers if at all possible.
Yes, you can be forgiven for thinking that — as I said, it’s a common mistake, and one I used to make myself. But Angell was arguing that nations didn’t gain from war, not that they didn’t believe that they could — that’s why he called his book The Great Illusion and that’s why he wrote the book, to try to convince them otherwise.
I’m doing a PhD on which revolves around a specific aspect of the British public’s anticipation of war between 1908 and 1941 — viz., their anticipation of aerial war. Doesn’t mean you should just take my word for it but I don’t think we should derail this thread with this debate. So if you’re interested, drop me a line at http://airminded.org/contact/ and
“would be truly horrible in its consequencces for everyone, both winner and loser.”
indeed, Katz.
Oops! ‘… and we can take it from there’, was what I meant to say.
Shame that type of thinking hasn’t been superannuated for minor wars, too. If Rumsfeld and friends hadn’t been so mistaken about the brevity and triumph of their war against Iraq, half a million people would still be alive today are who tragically, of course, are not.
I wonder what the Pentagon models for a war against Iran conclude. Cost-benefit wise.
I imagine that few of those models include occupation of Iranian territory.
I imagine that many of them include the word “surgical”.
I reckon they might too, Katz. And I bet the initial sortie will actually look as near surgical as these things can be.
I then wonder how surgical things will remain though, after Iran takes offense at its shiny nuclear facilities being destroyed and the US is then forced to widen the application zone to quell the maelstrom that is unleashed against merchant shipping in the Straits of Hormuz. But I suppose that type of extended planning is too much within the hypothetical realm for a such reality based mob as the OSP to bother with.
Cheers Brett. I don’t think it would derail this thread though since much of the discussion is about whether or not the US and PRC would go to war and I was pointing out that everything I had heard suggests large numbers of pre-1914 British at least did not think that there was any real possibility of their world coming down around their ears through “the war to end all wars”.
To tell the truth, I didn’t know who Norman Angell was until you brought his name up. He definately seems to be saying though, that he considers war - if not impossible - to be very (and increasingly) unlikely. I will have to read the entire book. Perhaps his veiw held much sway with “naively contended” Londoners. I have also heard it qouted, from 1911 apparantly, that: “international finance has become so interdependent and so interwoven with trade and industry that…..political and military power can in reality do nothing”. I don’t know who supposedly wrote that, perhaps you can tell me?
JM Keynes however, was quite certain that they did not see it coming until it was too late.
I would not be surprised if the public’s anticipation of air warfare was rather higher after WW1 than in the years before it when such a thing had not previously occured.
But your area of study sounds interesting. I might drop you a line, thanks for the invite.
cheers
Yes, the Straits are the critical issue here. If the war between Iran an dthe US turns hot, the US will have to try to deny Iranians access to those narrow, crowded, turbulent, vital waters. This will require an enormous garrison of military personnel — big fat targets for attrition of morale and the will to fight.
The clock is the biggest enemy of the US.
“international finance has become so interdependent and so interwoven with trade and industry that…..political and military power can in reality do nothing”.
Angell again.
No worries, and sorry for my grumpy tone!
According to google, that last quote you mention is usually attributed to Angell as well, but it also appears in a New York Times interview with Angell from 1913, but there appears to be the words of the journalist: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E07E1D6143FE633A25756C1A9609C946296D6CF A fuller quote concludes ‘[…] political and military power, therefore, can in reality can do nothing for trade’, which changes the meaning significantly. Also in that article is another bit from the journalist:
Most of the article is Angell’s words, though, and it gives a good flavour of his style. All the way through he is indeed trying to attack the idea that war is profitable. I haven’t got his pre-WWI book, but I do have a sort of expanded edition from 1938, which supposedly includes the bulk of the pre-war book unaltered. It doesn’t seem to me that he ever tackles the question of whether war is impossible or even increasingly unlikely, in fact the whole thing is a plea for people to think rationally about war for a change, to question their assumptions that you can make your country richer by invading another.
Incidentally, Angell won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1933/index.html
Think this got eaten by the spaminator, so trying again with less links:
No worries, and sorry for my grumpy tone!
According to google, that last quote you mention is usually attributed to Angell as well, but it also appears in a New York Times interview with Angell from 1913, but there appears to be the words of the journalist: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E07E1D6143FE633A25756C1A9609C946296D6CF A fuller quote concludes ‘[…] political and military power, therefore, can in reality can do nothing for trade’, which changes the meaning significantly. Also in that article is another bit from the journalist:
Most of the article is Angell’s words, though, and it gives a good flavour of his style. All the way through he is indeed trying to attack the idea that war is profitable. I haven’t got his pre-WWI book, but I do have a sort of expanded edition from 1938, which supposedly includes the bulk of the pre-war book unaltered. It doesn’t seem to me that he ever tackles the question of whether war is impossible or even increasingly unlikely, in fact the whole thing is a plea for people to think rationally about war for a change, to question their assumptions that you can make your country richer by invading another.
Cheers brett and Fmark.
The reason Keynes observation in ‘The economic consequences of the peace’ struck a chord with me is that I can see something of a similar nature occurring where I live.
My town (the general region in fact) is one of the major hubs of the resource boom. Unemployment is low and wages (in the industry jobs) are relatively high. People with skills such as boilermakers, sparkies etc can just about name their price. But it wasn’t always this way and won’t be forever.
Thing is, anyone under the age of about 34 has never known any different. In speaking to them, it is astonishing just how many of them believe that the current situation will just go on and on forever. But I am just old enough to recall that previous to this boom, there was a long, slow period here with sluggish growth and few jobs. The towns population dropped fairly dramatically while I was in high school as people left to try and find work. I remember being told by the co-ordinator of a course I was put through by a local job seeker agency that there was 400 applicants for every existing job at the time. Many people under 40 here have no memory of that, they only know being able to pick and choose jobs as it suits them.
It’s human nature to become habituated to our surroundings and start to assume that the current state will be permanent, even though we should know better. But then, I guess that only comes with hindsight. So that’s what I was banging on about.
cheers again