While Ukraine has overwhelmingly won the English propaganda war, it's not clear that this holds in other languages. Most of the world's pop live in countries that are neutral or Russia-supporting, even now.
While true in numbers of countries supporting sanctions on Russia, they account for a small fraction of the world economic power. Even China and India, while at times flaunting sanctions because who cannot turn down discounted oil, has kept themselves sidelined otherwise. The sanctions are not as damaging outwardly as hoped, but they are definitely hurting Russia.
Ukraine need not “win” over the entire world, but it has won in the the most important arena that has the economic and military power to aid them. And even if there are countries who do not outwardly support them at the UN, it is a cautionary tale about being the next target for such a brutal military venture.
For the better or the worse, the era of war is coming to an end. In the nuclear age, either we will conquer war, or it will conquer us.
How to conquer war? By focusing on that small fraction of humanity who are responsible for wars, violent men. Not this or that collection of particular violent men who are currently causing some problem somewhere, but violent men in general as a class of human beings. We end them, or they will end us.
Meaning no disrespect, but this author, like so many others, is looking backwards in to history, not forward in to the future. The patterns of the long past are no longer sustainable, so one way or another, those patterns will end.
War is a biological phenomenon of the human species and we've seen dozens of wars now in which nuclear weapons played no role at all. The reason we go with history as our guide is that we have *evidence* of the past, including all the times that someone declared war was going to be a thing of the past now. There is no end of history, just history.
War is overwhelmingly a biological phenomena of the _male gender_ of the human species. Not exclusively, but to an overwhelming degree. This is true of personal violence also. It's true of male mammals generally.
Are you proposing that we can keep large arsenals of nuclear weapons around forever, and they will never be used? If yes, that is an enormous claim. If no, then it would wise of us to not pretend that it can't happen, and deal with the threat as best we can.
Yes, we have evidence from the past, which tells us that things change. That's what happened at Hiroshima, our environment changed dramatically, and to survive we are required to adapt to the new situation which we have created. If we keep having wars, sooner or later one of them will spin out of control, and then things will change again quite dramatically.
Generals are advised not to fight the last war. That's what I'm advising too. We now are required to fight the next war, the war against war. Winning that war is not optional, unless we can accept the collapse of the modern world as an acceptable outcome.
The above article is very intelligent and informed. But it's not referencing the future, but the past.
As a place to start, we could stop calling war and violence _human_ biology. I'm happy to agree that violence is (overwhelmingly, but not exclusively) a function of male mammal biology.
That fact that you bring up biology is very useful, because that makes it very unlikely that any social construct such as religion, philosophy, ideology, law etc can solve the problem of male violence. More on that here:
Excellent piece - thanks for posting!
Thank you.
Bravo, Mick.
Excellent, waiting for the 3rd piece!
While Ukraine has overwhelmingly won the English propaganda war, it's not clear that this holds in other languages. Most of the world's pop live in countries that are neutral or Russia-supporting, even now.
This is a good point. And only a small percentage of the world's nations are part of the sanctions regime.
While true in numbers of countries supporting sanctions on Russia, they account for a small fraction of the world economic power. Even China and India, while at times flaunting sanctions because who cannot turn down discounted oil, has kept themselves sidelined otherwise. The sanctions are not as damaging outwardly as hoped, but they are definitely hurting Russia.
Ukraine need not “win” over the entire world, but it has won in the the most important arena that has the economic and military power to aid them. And even if there are countries who do not outwardly support them at the UN, it is a cautionary tale about being the next target for such a brutal military venture.
For the better or the worse, the era of war is coming to an end. In the nuclear age, either we will conquer war, or it will conquer us.
How to conquer war? By focusing on that small fraction of humanity who are responsible for wars, violent men. Not this or that collection of particular violent men who are currently causing some problem somewhere, but violent men in general as a class of human beings. We end them, or they will end us.
Meaning no disrespect, but this author, like so many others, is looking backwards in to history, not forward in to the future. The patterns of the long past are no longer sustainable, so one way or another, those patterns will end.
War is a biological phenomenon of the human species and we've seen dozens of wars now in which nuclear weapons played no role at all. The reason we go with history as our guide is that we have *evidence* of the past, including all the times that someone declared war was going to be a thing of the past now. There is no end of history, just history.
I see your blog is about the history of war. Cool. We may have a lot to talk about.
Thanks for your reply Matt.
War is overwhelmingly a biological phenomena of the _male gender_ of the human species. Not exclusively, but to an overwhelming degree. This is true of personal violence also. It's true of male mammals generally.
Are you proposing that we can keep large arsenals of nuclear weapons around forever, and they will never be used? If yes, that is an enormous claim. If no, then it would wise of us to not pretend that it can't happen, and deal with the threat as best we can.
Yes, we have evidence from the past, which tells us that things change. That's what happened at Hiroshima, our environment changed dramatically, and to survive we are required to adapt to the new situation which we have created. If we keep having wars, sooner or later one of them will spin out of control, and then things will change again quite dramatically.
Generals are advised not to fight the last war. That's what I'm advising too. We now are required to fight the next war, the war against war. Winning that war is not optional, unless we can accept the collapse of the modern world as an acceptable outcome.
The above article is very intelligent and informed. But it's not referencing the future, but the past.
Thanks for your reply. Can you explain how you intend to undo human biology?
As a place to start, we could stop calling war and violence _human_ biology. I'm happy to agree that violence is (overwhelmingly, but not exclusively) a function of male mammal biology.
That fact that you bring up biology is very useful, because that makes it very unlikely that any social construct such as religion, philosophy, ideology, law etc can solve the problem of male violence. More on that here:
https://www.tannytalk.com/p/world-peace-is-possible-part-4