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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31379 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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Perhaps it’s a technology thing. Declarations of war made more sense when war involved marching 250k men armies in fields or packing 5M men in trains towards the enemy. It’s really not clear when a “war” starts when you can chuck hypersonic missiles at some select targets once in a while

I don't think it's about technology. Even Putin called his Ukraine war a “special military operation” and it was pretty much a classical war involving large numbers of boots on the ground invading enemy territory.

Perhaps it’s a technology thing

It's probably also an accountability thing. For democracies like America it can be very damaging to have your name on a political boondoggle like a war. Arguably, voting for the Iraq War is what cost Hillary the Presidency. So it's easier to just let the President stretch his powers to wage what are effectively wars.

For other states a declaration of war would have to be withdrawn in a negotiated or imposed peace which may cause the regime to incur political costs it just doesn't want to deal with.

Arguably, voting for the Iraq War is what cost Hillary the Presidency.

please elaborate

Did she press Congress to declare war in old pre-UN style?

She was a senator, and Bush asked Congress for authorization (which totes wasn't a declaration of war, though) to invade Iraq. She voted in favor.

Declaring wars is for peer nations.

By contrast, empires ‘conduct police action’, as they claim the entire world as their own sovereign territory (aspirationally or otherwise).

I think you're right about the technology aspect, but I sometimes worry that we've normalized lethal force (literal in-flight ballistic missiles) as sub-casus belli because the (expensive!) technology exists to block those attacks, and that Peace In Our Timeniks believe that actually hitting back in these sorts of cases is the dreaded "escalation", rather than inaction normalizing escalating attacks everywhere.

There's an effortpost to be made on how the Iron Dome is, from a geopolitical standpoint, the most counterproductive technology of the past few decades.

I’d be interested, too. Judging by this graph there was no shortage of rocket attacks before the Dome went up. There are surges in later years, but how do we know they aren’t more about availability?

There's an effortpost to be made on how the Iron Dome is, from a geopolitical standpoint, the most counterproductive technology of the past few decades.

I would be interested to see that. My read is that (at least from a US or NATO perspective) the Iron Dome is hugely effective in preventing an accidental hot war between Israel and Iran.

Turns out stacking DEF and taking feats in riposte has no value if you can't prove you were attacked in the first place. All you get is a bloody sword, pristine armor and a dying lvl 1 goblin claiming it was just walking by.

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