It is good actually that you can’t do these things. Most people don’t support threatening nuclear war on the other empire in order to extract favourable deals for your empire.
My impression is that very often the threats of nuclear war are what’s public, and the backroom deals to actually avoid those are what’s secret. This seems remarkably optimistic because while nuclear war specifically might not be something anyone wants (and it’s questionable too; see how many Russian politicians seem to think that bragging about nuking the West will make them more popular and do so as part of their propaganda), other kinds of war absolutely can be. There was a lot of support for war post 9/11, for example. So if anything I fear that the opposite would happen—with everything in the open where everyone has always to worry about not losing face, and no room to secretly say “no ok I was just kidding let’s find a deal” you’d get more war, not less.
and the backroom deals to actually avoid those are what’s secret.
Agree
with everything in the open where everyone has always to worry about not losing face, and no room to secretly say “no ok I was just kidding let’s find a deal” you’d get more war, not less.
I’m not seeing the connection from no private room to more war.
You are right that leaders (and diplomats) will have to be more honest about what they actually believe to both the public and to leaders of other countries.
I’m not seeing the connection from no private room to more war.
I think in practice people seem to reward “strength” very often and that would encourage leaders to keep acting as aggressively as many do now on the world stage, but also without the secret channels to actually defuse the resulting tensions. Hence the stuff that is said openly could end up mattering more and be taken more seriously, because it’s now the only channel.
More data backing your claim would be nice. Namely that a majority of US or Chinese population would support risking nuclear war on the other population, just to get slightly better living standards for themselves.
Also I’m impressed how pessimistic a claim this is, and I thought I was already quite pessimistic about human nature.
Namely that a majority of US or Chinese population would support risking nuclear war on the other population, just to get slightly better living standards for themselves.
I don’t know about nuclear war, though I would remind you of the worrying amount of “nuclear winter wouldn’t be so bad” takes when tensions were a bit higher with Russia due to the Ukraine war. But obviously throughout history massive popular pro-war and interventionist movements have existed, even for blatantly braindead choices (see: Italy throwing itself into WW1 in 1915 after having managed to stay out, or for a more recent examples, support for the Afghanistan war after 9/11).
I don’t think nuclear war would ever happen because someone actively wants to just push a button and go full Armageddon on the other side. The risk is more that you progressively slide through various steps of escalation until one side starts feeling so existentially threatened that they start using nuclear weapons, and from there things escalate even further until a mix of panic and fog of war triggers the catastrophe. And each of those steps can at the time seem reasonable and rational, given limited knowledge. Besides, my point isn’t that people would want this necessarily out of nowhere, but that limiting secrecy does nothing to prevent politicians from still being hawkish and short-sighted and riling up their voting base with misleading or false information; it only prevents them from having an easier out later.
Okay. I agree some people genuinely want to mass murder the other side just to get slightly more resources. I just want more data that this would actually be a majority.
I think de-escalating would also be easier when people of both countries have high level of visibility into what people of the other country are feeling and why.
I think people of both countries would be able to understand psychology of people of the other country to an extent that was not really possible before in history. Simply because of how much data you have about personal lives of everyone.
Okay. I agree some people genuinely want to mass murder the other side just to get slightly more resources. I just want more data that this would actually be a majority.
Why do you put the onus on proving that there is one rule about it being a majority? We know it happens. It’s hard to say for stuff like the Nazis because technically the people only voted for some guy who was certainly very gung-ho about militarism and about the need for Germany to expand, but then the matter was basically taken out of their hands, and it was at best a plurality to begin with...
Yes, obviously there is no one case I can present to say “here’s a situation where at least 50%+1 of the population genuinely was in favour of war”. Neither can you prove that this has never happened. All we know is that some people do express favour for war; sometimes there are even mass movements in favour of it, depending on circumstances; and it would be somewhat odd if by some strange hidden law of social dynamics that fraction could never exceed 50%, despite having definitely been significant in various occasions we can refer to.
I think de-escalating would also be easier when people of both countries have high level of visibility into what people of the other country are feeling and why.
I don’t think that’s achieved just by “no more secrecy” though. Understanding how another country’s population feels isn’t a matter of that information being concealed, but hard to measure and aggregate.
My impression is that very often the threats of nuclear war are what’s public, and the backroom deals to actually avoid those are what’s secret. This seems remarkably optimistic because while nuclear war specifically might not be something anyone wants (and it’s questionable too; see how many Russian politicians seem to think that bragging about nuking the West will make them more popular and do so as part of their propaganda), other kinds of war absolutely can be. There was a lot of support for war post 9/11, for example. So if anything I fear that the opposite would happen—with everything in the open where everyone has always to worry about not losing face, and no room to secretly say “no ok I was just kidding let’s find a deal” you’d get more war, not less.
Agree
I’m not seeing the connection from no private room to more war.
You are right that leaders (and diplomats) will have to be more honest about what they actually believe to both the public and to leaders of other countries.
I think in practice people seem to reward “strength” very often and that would encourage leaders to keep acting as aggressively as many do now on the world stage, but also without the secret channels to actually defuse the resulting tensions. Hence the stuff that is said openly could end up mattering more and be taken more seriously, because it’s now the only channel.
More data backing your claim would be nice. Namely that a majority of US or Chinese population would support risking nuclear war on the other population, just to get slightly better living standards for themselves.
Also I’m impressed how pessimistic a claim this is, and I thought I was already quite pessimistic about human nature.
I don’t know about nuclear war, though I would remind you of the worrying amount of “nuclear winter wouldn’t be so bad” takes when tensions were a bit higher with Russia due to the Ukraine war. But obviously throughout history massive popular pro-war and interventionist movements have existed, even for blatantly braindead choices (see: Italy throwing itself into WW1 in 1915 after having managed to stay out, or for a more recent examples, support for the Afghanistan war after 9/11).
I don’t think nuclear war would ever happen because someone actively wants to just push a button and go full Armageddon on the other side. The risk is more that you progressively slide through various steps of escalation until one side starts feeling so existentially threatened that they start using nuclear weapons, and from there things escalate even further until a mix of panic and fog of war triggers the catastrophe. And each of those steps can at the time seem reasonable and rational, given limited knowledge. Besides, my point isn’t that people would want this necessarily out of nowhere, but that limiting secrecy does nothing to prevent politicians from still being hawkish and short-sighted and riling up their voting base with misleading or false information; it only prevents them from having an easier out later.
Okay. I agree some people genuinely want to mass murder the other side just to get slightly more resources. I just want more data that this would actually be a majority.
I think de-escalating would also be easier when people of both countries have high level of visibility into what people of the other country are feeling and why.
I think people of both countries would be able to understand psychology of people of the other country to an extent that was not really possible before in history. Simply because of how much data you have about personal lives of everyone.
Why do you put the onus on proving that there is one rule about it being a majority? We know it happens. It’s hard to say for stuff like the Nazis because technically the people only voted for some guy who was certainly very gung-ho about militarism and about the need for Germany to expand, but then the matter was basically taken out of their hands, and it was at best a plurality to begin with...
Yes, obviously there is no one case I can present to say “here’s a situation where at least 50%+1 of the population genuinely was in favour of war”. Neither can you prove that this has never happened. All we know is that some people do express favour for war; sometimes there are even mass movements in favour of it, depending on circumstances; and it would be somewhat odd if by some strange hidden law of social dynamics that fraction could never exceed 50%, despite having definitely been significant in various occasions we can refer to.
Anyway at the very least we seem to have evidence that over 50% of Israelis believe the current war in Gaza is appropriate or even not harsh enough. That’s a bit of evidence.
I don’t think that’s achieved just by “no more secrecy” though. Understanding how another country’s population feels isn’t a matter of that information being concealed, but hard to measure and aggregate.