Big War Remains Possible
The following poll suggests that a majority of my Twitter followers think war will decline; in the next 80 years we won’t see a 15 year period with a war death rate above the median level we’ve see over the last four centuries:
What is the highest rate of war deaths (averaged over 15yr period, as in graph from link above) the world will see by 2100? Below yr 2000 level, median level seen over last 400 yrs, world wars level, or even higher?
— Robin Hanson (@robinhanson) July 24, 2019
To predict a big deviation from the simple historical trend, one needs some sort of basis in theory. Alas, the theory arguments that I’ve heard re war optimism seem quite inadequate. I thus suspect much wishful thinking here.
For example, some say the world economy today is too interdependent for war. But interdependent economies have long gone to war. Consider the world wars in Europe, or the American civil war. Some say that we don’t risk war because it is very destructive of complex fragile physical capital and infrastructure. But while such capital was indeed destroyed during the world wars, the places most hurt rebounded quickly, as they had good institutional and human capital.
Some note that international alliances make war less likely between alliance partners. But they make war more likely between alliances. Some suggest that better info tells us more about rivals today, and so we are less likely to misjudge rival abilities and motives. But there still seems plenty of room for errors here as “brinkmanship” is a key dynamic. Also, this doesn’t prevent powers from investing in war abilities to gain advantages via credible threats of war.
Some point to a reduced willingness by winners to gain concrete advantages via the ancient strategies of raping and enslaving losers, and demanding great tribute. But we still manage to find many other motives for war, and there’s no fundamental obstacles to reviving ancient strategies; tribute is still quite feasible, as is slavery. Also, the peak war periods so far have been associated with ideology battles, and we still have plenty of those.
Some say nuclear weapons have made small wars harder. But that is only between pairs of nations both of which have nukes, which isn’t most nation pairs. Pairs of nations with nukes can still fight big wars, there are more such pairs today than before, over 80 years there’s plenty of time for some pair to pick a fight, and nuke wars casualties may be enormous.
I suspect that many are relying on modern propaganda on our moral superiority over our ancestors. But while we mostly count humans of the mid twentieth century as morally superior to humans from prior centuries, that was the period of peak war mortality.
I also suspect that many are drawing conclusions about war from long term trends regarding other forms of violence, as in slavery, crime, and personal relations, as well as from apparently lower public tolerance for war deaths and overall apparent disapproval and reluctance regarding war. But just before World War I we had also seen such trends:
Then, as now, Europe had lived through a long period of relative peace, … rapid progress … had given humanity a sense of shared interests that precluded war, … world leaders scarcely believed a global conflagration was possible. (more)
The world is vast, eighty years is a long time, and the number of possible global social & diplomatic scenarios over such period is vast. So it seems crazy to base predictions on future war rates on inside view calculations from particular current stances, deals, or inclinations. The raw historical record, and its large long-term fluctuations, should weigh heavily on our minds.
From Empire to Nation-State: Explaining Wars in the Modern World, 1816–2001
Andreas Wimmer, Brian MinFirst Published December 1, 2006
AbstractThe existing quantitative literature on war takes the independent nation-state as the self-evident unit of analysis and largely excludes other political types from consideration. In contrast, the authors argue that the change in the institutional form of states is itself a major cause for war. The rise of empires and the global spread of the nation-state are the most important institutional transformations in the modern age. To test this hypothesis, the authors introduce a new data set that records the outbreak of war in fixed geographic territories from 1816 to 2001, independent of the political entity in control of a territory. Analysis of this data set demonstrates that wars are much more likely during and because of these two transformations. For the transformation to the modern nation-state, the authors confirm this hypothesis further with logit regressions that control for variables that have been robustly significant in previous research. The results provide support for the main mechanisms that explain this time dependency. Modern nation-states are ruled in the name of a nationally defined people, in contrast to empires, which govern to spread a faith across the world, to bring civilization to backward people, or to advance the world revolutionary cause. The institution of the nation-state thus introduces incentives for political elites to privilege members of the national majority over ethnic minorities, and for minority elites to mobilize against such political discrimination. The resulting power struggles over the ethno-national character of the state may escalate into civil wars. Interstate wars can result from attempts to protect co-nationals who are politically excluded in neighboring states. The reported research thus provides a corrective to mainstream approaches, which exclude ethnic and nationalist politics as factors that would help understanding the dynamics of war.
I'd need some stronger evidence to be convinced that we domesticated that much more in the last 70 years than in the previous 500. I don't see how new war tech makes war much less likely.