At 03:34 PM 6/19/2007, Dr. Core wrote:
Now the question is: is this just coincidental of the way the past 60
years had played out? Or there's something in human history that made
1945 a historical divide? That this is the natural pattern for the
next few centuries, even in the post-MAD (mutually assured
destruction) era? Now with Russia and China preparing to play bad
guys in Cold War II, maybe you won't believe me. But I still want to
hypothesize that "classical wars are over".
I think they are, because...well, there's just no point to fighting
that way anymore. Our tech is sufficiently advanced that we do battle
now in courts and the marketplace, leaving armed conflicts on any
scale the last refuge of the desperate and the incompetant (nope, no
comment on the current U.S. administration here, nosiree...). The use
of force is sometimes warranted and advisable (the U.S. invasion of
Afghanistan after 9/11, for example), but apart from that...well,
why? Why would we ever go to war with China? There's just no point.
And why would China wage armed conflict on anyone? The whole country
has historically been very insular, and I'm not seeing much reason
why that would change (and ye gads, they're already managing more
than a billion people; why take on the headache of the rest of the world?).
The more I see in life the more I realize that there's just no profit
in large-scale armed conflict anymore. We have better things to do,
and going to war costs a fortune. So why bother? Better to just buy
out anything that bothers you, and let the undeveloped nations of the
world continue to squabble amongst themselves. It isn't *right*, but
I can't really see any reason why a developed nation would do any differently.
So why is that the case? I think the main reason is civilian
technology. Not military technology as Gundam fans like to believe.
Sure, nukes and ICBM has a major impact (MAD), but I think they had a
lesser effect than plain boring communication and transportation
technology. TV, cell phone (with photo/video capture), 747,
satellites, and also credit cards, Google, YouTube. So yes I guess I
am a fan of globalization now,
I don't know if I'd say I'm a fan, necessarily, but...well, it does
lead to stability. The fight's gone out of Europe, Russia's bankrupt,
China has its own problems to deal with, and the hot issues in the
U.S. are political corruption, energy sources, and terrorism. If
globalization is the price for a world without large-scale conflict,
I can hardly call it a bad thing. We need to do better, mind, but
even still we're heading in the right direction.
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