The beginning of my Extinction series. The Death, Truth, and Extinction series will when completed become the core to what I’m calling The Eschatologist’s Handbook. I’m skipping around a bit and writing all three series at the same time as I go through the materials so that I make sure I write them well.
A premise of this post is that wars are more likely when people are less horrified by the idea of them. I’m not sure how true that is, and I’d be interested to read an explicit argument for it.
I assume there’s some correlation, but I also expect that to some extent war follows from game theory like “if we look unwilling to go to war, our enemies will push us until we push back, so we’d better be willing”.
Relevant questions: how popular were various wars (and escalations, I guess) when they happened; among the public at large and/or among decision makers? Can we identify historical situations that seem likely to lead to war, gauge the popularity of war, and check whether war happened?
Another unstated premise is that World War 1 and 2 are “typical”. Braumoeller’s study of war (discussed here) indicates that World War 1 and 2 were aberrations, and that the average war is far more limited than the sort of total society vs. society conflict that you had in the World Wars.
It’s true that “war hasn’t forgotten about us”, but it’s also important to note that most wars do not escalate into global conflict between coalitions of industrialized powers. Given that war may very well be inevitable, it might be more fruitful to look at the conditions of escalation. What causes military conflicts to escalate into global conflict? How can we build off-ramps so that when nations come to blows, there is a way for them to de-escalate?
These are sufficiently good questions that I want to research them and I’ll get back to you.