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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30108 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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When we send a soldier to die in war, for no other reason than that it retains a territorial claim with economic benefit, we are making a transaction of human life for “communal wellbeing”. And this is common in history, including nearly all Catholic countries.

Literally no one, including today, sees territorial claims as being maintained solely or primarily for economic benefit.

Have you heard of guano islands? The sugar trade? Colonial possessions? The whole history of European war in the colonial era is mixed with fighting other nations for territorial claims wherein the territory has economic benefit and nothing else. Russia today is preparing for war in the arctic involving its territorial resources, and China over fishing areas.

Are you? Or do you actually think Russia is invading Ukraine to get a few more scheckles?

In the end, the question of geopolitical dominance for someone who isn't race essentialist or heavily religious or something like that rests on the economic benefits of being the local hegemon, and the disadvantages of being a fractured gas station. I don't think anyone in the Kremlin who matters really believes physical genocide of Russians is in the cards, so that leaves submission and destitution.

While this may or may not apply to Russia, there's several dictators who could easily negotiate an agreement with the west, of yielding power for what would be untold riches (compared to what they have now), but prefer to be kings of the ashes. Money isn't everything.

The argument rests on the widespread occurrence of war over purely economic territorial claims. It does not rest on every territorial claim involving purely economic motives.

I'll go out on a limb and say even the wars that we see as "purely economic" in retrospect, were justified on other grounds to people fighting them at the time.

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