If we continue to pursue the ‘decapitation’ theory of warfare, or the ‘kingpin strategy,’ then I do not believe that goes in good places. So far this hasn’t been flipped around against the leadership of democracies so much, but how long will that last?
Can you explain this further? To me it seems to good from a humanitarian, utilitarian, and game theory perspective.
It seems worse to kill millions of rank-and-file soldiers than hundreds of generals/political leaders.
Those leaders are usually coercing the rank-and-file to fight in the first place by threatening their life or liberty. Furthermore, those leaders are usually the ones making the decision to go to war at all.
If you have the capability, you should punish the people imposing negative externalities on you, which sure includes the rank-and-file soldiers, but I think it’s better to model them like you model natural disasters. A lot of military training is spent teaching them to not think and just be a tool the higher-ups can use. They’re the real source of negative externalities here, so the appropriate people to punish.
I get how this kind of warfare changes the decision making process among the generals/political leaders, for example, it is difficult to elect politicians in Mexico that promise to get rid of the drug cartels (at least, difficult to elect them for more than a few days). And maybe this leads to more stupid suffering than WWI, but it seems really hard to be worse 10% of a generation getting conscripted and killed.
I expect the strategy to cause the effects of anti-American propaganda to skyrocket. Suppose that Russia decided to murder Zelenskiy. How likely would this action to cause the West to increase support of Ukraine and some countries of the Global South to disapprove Russian actions? And if we replace the counterfactual with the actual events of Israel vs Iran?
As for the drug cartels, however, attempting to support such a cartel would lead not just to a state adopting a mistaken policy, but also to having the cartel and the supporter participate in drug-related evils.
Can you explain this further? To me it seems to good from a humanitarian, utilitarian, and game theory perspective.
It seems worse to kill millions of rank-and-file soldiers than hundreds of generals/political leaders.
Those leaders are usually coercing the rank-and-file to fight in the first place by threatening their life or liberty. Furthermore, those leaders are usually the ones making the decision to go to war at all.
If you have the capability, you should punish the people imposing negative externalities on you, which sure includes the rank-and-file soldiers, but I think it’s better to model them like you model natural disasters. A lot of military training is spent teaching them to not think and just be a tool the higher-ups can use. They’re the real source of negative externalities here, so the appropriate people to punish.
I get how this kind of warfare changes the decision making process among the generals/political leaders, for example, it is difficult to elect politicians in Mexico that promise to get rid of the drug cartels (at least, difficult to elect them for more than a few days). And maybe this leads to more stupid suffering than WWI, but it seems really hard to be worse 10% of a generation getting conscripted and killed.
I expect the strategy to cause the effects of anti-American propaganda to skyrocket. Suppose that Russia decided to murder Zelenskiy. How likely would this action to cause the West to increase support of Ukraine and some countries of the Global South to disapprove Russian actions? And if we replace the counterfactual with the actual events of Israel vs Iran?
As for the drug cartels, however, attempting to support such a cartel would lead not just to a state adopting a mistaken policy, but also to having the cartel and the supporter participate in drug-related evils.
There are credible reasons to believe that they have attempted to do so more than once. Did you mean if they succeeded?