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More wars, or less?

Morality Games

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Taking a long term view of humanity's 100,000+ history, in the last 50-100 years there has been abrupt transition into less war,with the remaining conflicts persisting in relatively small and isolated pockets of humanity. The Nuclear Age forced humans to act out their ambition and aggression toward each other through increasingly more discrete forms of conflict, mainly economics backed up by the simmering threat of violence. New technologies obviously play a large role in this, with the benefits of peaceful economic development far exceeding the potential gains of nuclear war.

However, populations are growing and Earth's economy driving resources are set to expire in a couple hundreds years. In a few decades, missile defense systems and tactical nukes will make nuclear war nowhere near the threat it used to be, which means ambition and aggression may come back bubbling over the veneer of civility.

I guess the thrust of the debate is -- will humanity's rapid technological development empower us to recycle our Earth-specific resources and farm the stars fast enough to outpace the ravenous demand of the world's billions for more resources right now? If the answer to that question is, 'no', then more wars seem inevitable at a glance.

No matter how different modern life is from the past, we still have the same genes as the people who existed in the 99,900 years prior to us.
 
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My guess is that we will see less wars of country fighting against country, and more in-fighting within countries and regions, due to the growing trend toward multiculturalism, without the melting pot effect.
 
My guess is that we will see less wars of country fighting against country, and more in-fighting within countries and regions, due to the growing trend toward multiculturalism, without the melting pot effect.

Agreed. True national scale warfare isn't really possible as long as the threat of nuclear "mutually assured destruction" continues to hang over everyone's heads.
 
Agreed. True national scale warfare isn't really possible as long as the threat of nuclear "mutually assured destruction" continues to hang over everyone's heads.

Plus the fact that we have collectively become adverse to a "take no prisoners" approach.
 
Plus the fact that we have collectively become adverse to a "take no prisoners" approach.

Well, we are. I get the distinct impression that the Chinese, Russians, and Indians don't feel quite the same way about it though. :lol:

Ever seen the aftermath of what Putin did to Chechnya ten years back?

Grozny-2000.jpg

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The Ruskies don't mess around. lol
 
Well, we are. I get the distinct impression that the Chinese, Russians, and Indians don't feel quite the same way about it though. :lol:

Ever seen the aftermath of what Putin did to Chechnya ten years back?

View attachment 67160928

View attachment 67160929

The Ruskies don't mess around. lol

To be fair they don't mess around because they are pretty bad at what they do. The photo is from the 1994-1995 battle in which Russia lost nearly 2,000 men killed and several hundred (many speculate it was thousands) wounded and was eventually repulsed from the province. In 2000-2001 they did slightly better with 400 killed along with 500-700 of their local levies benefiting from the collapse of the unified Chechen front. Resorting to massive bombardments and the use of SSM's was a result in part of the collapse of Russian military morale following the atrocious fighting in the 1994-1995 conflict and the necessity of deploying morale boosting firepower to improve the situation.
 
To be fair they don't mess around because they are pretty bad at what they do. The photo is from the 1994-1995 battle in which Russia lost nearly 2,000 men killed and several hundred (many speculate it was thousands) wounded and was eventually repulsed from the province. In 2000-2001 they did slightly better with 400 killed along with 500-700 of their local levies benefiting from the collapse of the unified Chechen front. Resorting to massive bombardments and the use of SSM's was a result in part of the collapse of Russian military morale following the atrocious fighting in the 1994-1995 conflict and the necessity of deploying morale boosting firepower to improve the situation.

Well, when you've got airborne munitions as unreliable as the Russian military's tend to be, sometimes massed artillery bombardment is all you've got left to turn to. :lol:
 
... the notion is that the protective influence of nukes is a transitory blip in human history because in decades or a century missile defense systems will be so advanced that they are basically irrelevant. I'm not asking whether war is going to come in 5 or 10 years. I'm asking if it will happen in 200-300 years, due to essential resources depleting and populations exploding ever and ever higher.

The idea that even intercontinental missiles will eventually be obsolete is a strange notion to generations who have lived their existence under the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, but so was the idea that humanity would eventually acquire the power to obliterate entire cities in an instant.
 
I don't think technology will be the final arbiter, to whatever extent it evolves. Such things would only tend to expedite the process of advancement, rather than fundamentally define it. We're more or less destined to become an enlightened species, given time and the avoidance of extinction. The enduring contentiousness of such issues as racism and sexism and the like are indicative of ongoing development, in the face of entrenched biases that were once assumed to be eternal. Every generation begins with the accumulated wisdom of its predecessor. It's a done deal, however distant the horizon seems.
 
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