Several months ago, I wrote two essays on Russian grand strategy. (My apologies on never completing the nuclear one, an extremely necessary but far too grim subject for my taste.) In that series of essays, I made a few assertions I want to bring to your attention again in a more contemporary context. First, that wars’ result tends to confirm the strengths of the coalition arrayed against the main combatants before the war has even started. This is, in fact, not an assertion, but an iron law of warfare that still exists in chimpanzee warfare. See Strategy: A History, Chapter One, by Freedman if you disagree.
Second, that big global dustups tend to run in about 100 year cycles these days.
So, take a look around — got a big, hot war in the Ukraine slightly analogous to the Sino-Japanese war of the 1930s. Next, you got weird, unresolved shenanigans in the Middle East that have a weird reverse-appeasement type feel.
We’re quite possibly looking at the two opening battles of WWIII, right now.
Jerren
It’s hard for me to see these comflict as anything less than proto-WWIII. Instead of trying to sus out predictions for next week, I’m trying to wrap my head around what this means for next year, or next decade, not dissimilar from macro-economic trends.
A post-soviet-style collapse of the west seems likely, with much of humanity having it even worse (maybe not?) I see eventual nuclear war as a very real possibility though I think our fiction and experts depict it incorrectly. I don’t see how we avoid a pretty steep population collapse.
There is some evidence that this could really flip the script on global warming and I try to remember that the black death may have helped birth
the Renaissance. Maybe third order effects of drone warfare will eventually decentralize politics the way gunpowder rebirthed city-states? Or something new? Who knows?
I’m not great at parties (anymore) but I really enjoy reading this blog, so thank you everyone.
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It’s possible Donny Dove may truly earn that name. Israel, and Bibi, must be livid right about now. They have to be, “come on, already, declare war on Iran and start bombing away.”
But what if Trump doesn’t? He’s equivocating (2 weeks) which, despite his reasons for it, is a good thing.
I like David Feldman. I share many of his values and for certain his sentiment in most cases and this is one such case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkqHiGEiicA
Trump may be listening to reason right now. “Right now” is the operative condition and caveat.
As with all things, we’ll see.
Feral Finster
The West is betting that a nuclear war will be survivable for the People Who Matter, and further, that the Russian leadership doesn’t have the stones to do it.
“Don’t Look Up!” is most instructive.
bruce wilder
I would put the interval at 80 years, but yeah.
The world order put in place by the Second World War has had a good, long run and the generation that inherited command of that order do not understand the material basis or logic of that order. So, yeah, here we are. “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”
Purple Library Guy
I suppose it’s hard for any iteration of a system based on individual profit and selfishness to last very long. Because any given individual beneficiary of such a system has no selfish reason to make decisions that will maintain the system beyond their own current primacy in it. If you’re a feudal lord, at least you’re brought up to believe in continuation of your bloodline and stuff like that. But if you’re a capitalist oligarch, there’s nothing except momentary profits. Not only do you not functionally believe in anything else, you’re constantly told that you’re not SUPPOSED to believe in anything else. If anything, you’re flattered and told that your personal selfishness is the best possible thing for the world.
Unfortunately, these breakdowns don’t usually seem to mean the system actually ends, let alone gets replaced by anything better.
Jessica
“I suppose it’s hard for any iteration of a system based on individual profit and selfishness to last very long. ”
A westerner Tibetan Buddhist lama told me that the West won the cold war because its system was based on greed rather than envy (his take on the Soviet Union). But that it was a very close call because a system based on greed isn’t a good one. Just not quite as bad as one based on envy.
Jan Wiklund
Another iron law of great power warfare seems to be that wars are started by the great power that is at a disadvantage commercially. See Dale Copeland: Economic interdependence and war, 2015. At least that has been the case since 1790.
Ian Welsh
I wonder about that. I mean, does he deal with the Mongols, for example? Were they more powerful than the Northern Chinese on paper? I’m pretty sure they weren’t.
I think most theories don’t handle quantum revolutions in military methods/tech very well. We tend to associate that with industrial states, but it wasn’t always that way. The Chinese were more advanced than the Mongols, but they had shit horses, inferior soldiers, inferior discipline, inferior generals and inferior military tech compared to properly utilized horse archers (Temujin’s reforms were very significant. There’s horse archers before him, and horse archers after him.)
But their economy was vastly larger, their army was vastly larger and they’d been pushing the tribes around for quite a while. On paper, I suspect they were stronger and tht it’s 20-20 rearview vision to say the Mongols were stronger. (Indeed, Genghis refused to attack the capital more than once because he just didn’t have the forces.)
Could be wrong, though, and happy to admit it if I am.
Or is this a modern state thing, like Mearsheimer’s book on realist FP?
Iran’s an interesting case right now, because they have more advanced missiles and a military based around them+drones, while Israel is mostly using US kit based primarily on air superiority, a 90s doctrine. Has their been a mini-revolution?
GrimJim
Looks like Trump is finally going to get to drop a nuke, as he’s been itching to for so long.
Dropping it on Iran is just an excuse. Now, everyone will have to take him super cereal when he negotiates… because if you don’t let him win, and by win he means bigly, getting everything when you lose everything, then you, too, will get nuked…
What a shit timeline. No Cyberpunk author ever dreamed up anything this insane…
Curt Kastens
I have a lot of doubt that any B2 bombers were used in the attack on Iran. If even one would have been shot down let alone all 6 it would have been very embarrasing. I think that all the honest photgraphic evidence will confirm that all the damage to Irans nuclear sites was done by cruize measels, not the 15 ton bombs that the US says that it dropped. The damage from cruise missiles is consitent with the damage reported and why would the US risk bombers flying over Iran when even the 15 ton bunker buster bombs would have been entirely insuffecient to even cause damage to locations that far under granite.