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:
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.
one possible argument for the most voted option could that humanity has been domesticated even further by another century of hyper-consumer capitalism, making most people unwilling and/or incapable of the necessary violence for a total-war. reactionaries constantly weep over the decreased levels of testosterone and lifting ability of males.
another could the different kinds of battlefields 21st-century tech allows. not sure if you follow John Robb, but he got interesting analyses about cyberwar, signaling wars, and drone warfare. most people, on the other hand, would hardly recognize political destabilization, online social unrest and flamed bots as war proper.
p.s. Glenn Hubbard emereti dean of columbia business school with a phD in econ from Harvard basically did say that. just google your question---nation mag has an article on it among others.
i'm not sure any economists said that---i think Cheney and Bush said that--though they may have had staff with econ degrees who said it as well. i think Nordhaus (econ noble last year) projected these wars would cost billions or even trillions $; but i guess it could be viewed as a charitable, tax deductible donation.
The significance of nation-states is that the re-ordering of the world along a new set of criteria (nationality/ethnicity/religion) resulted in widespread conflict. All the high/fat conflicts in Rosen's chart can be attributed to a trend towards the formation of contiguous areas consisting of people who self-identify with one another (i.e. nations). The nation-state in its simplest form is a nation that can collectively defend itself against aggression, thereby becoming an independent state. Nation-states replaced city-states, kingdoms, and empires. The sorting was mostly complete by 1945.
My point about industrialization is not so much about destructive power as it is about the capacity to sustain a war effort. Economies win total war. Industrialized economies have unparalleled capacity.
Iraq invading Kuwait might have been profitable if others did not get involved. We also had some economists telling us the second Iraq war would pay for itself. Leaders may delude themselves, but people usually don't.
War used to be good for the glory of the leaders (for the winners, anyway) -- but bad for both populations. This was (perhaps) not widely understood. Also, wealth was harder to create, so stealing the wealth of others was one of the only feasible strategies to enrichment.
In the modern world, we (the general population) better understand that it is vastly easier and more productive to create new wealth, than to try to acquire it through violence. (Crime, in general, doesn't pay -- on average.) The general net loss to even the winning populations is more widely understood. And finally, typical citizens now have vastly greater political power (e.g., via democracies) than they used to. It is much harder for modern leaders to glorify themselves at the expense of their own populations.
This doesn't eliminate the possibility of mistakes. But many prior wars began for "logical" reasons, where the aggressors were actually making a rational calculation that the outcome was likely to be of benefit to them. (They may have been wrong, but they believed it at the time, especially at the onset of the war.) That rational, enthusiastic calculation in favor of war is much, much harder to do in modern times.
So the argument for reduced future global war deaths is: without economic (or glory) reasons for war, you're left with a baseline of "mistakes", which results in far less war than in previous historical eras.
War has been very destructive all along, both before and after industry. And this fact has long been widely known. I'm not understanding the relevance of nation-states for war death rates.
I think people tend to ignore a variety of base rates in terms of scaling their estimates.
From the graph in your last post, it seems like the typical total war death rate since the Industrial Revolution has been very roughly 10-20 per 100K.
In the US, the cancer mortality rate is 150-200 per 100K.
For automobile accidents, it is about 10.
For firearms deaths, it is about 12.
So it might be interesting to try polling people based on their estimate of the relative death rates. E.g., will the worldwide death rate from war be more or less than the US death rate from firearms/automobile accidents. Will the death rate from war be 1/10, 1/4, 1/2, equal, 2X, 4X, or 10X the cancer death rate.
To predict a big deviation from the simple historical trend, one needs some sort of basis in theory.
Robin, I think you are too quick to dismiss views that differ from your own.
My views are based on a GIANT deviation in the history of civilization that played out between around 1776 and exactly 1945. Before 1776 there was arguably zero nation-states and at most a handful. Industrialization was in its infancy. After WWII the world was divided into well-defined nation-states and war-making capacity was massively skewed towards industrial nation-states.
Besides a world divided into well-defined nation-states, the other legacy of WWII was a clear understanding that total war between industrial nation-states is prolonged and costly. The destruction is not unrecoverable but it is massive. I don't think it takes rare rationality to understand this, the understanding is widespread.
In terms of war, the situation since 1945 has mostly trended in a positive direction on the industrialization and nation-state dimensions especially with the breakup of the Soviet Union.
From my perspective, focusing on pre-1945 war data is mindless. The transition between 1776 and 1945 has many useful lessons but none of the data is relevant in predicting the likelihood of future war. Predicting war based on Max Rosen's chart smells of numerology to me given the industrial nation-state dominated world order I've tried to describe. Perhaps my explanation is really bad or I have some kind of mental defect. I'm guessing you believe its the latter.
There is a book that takes a direct shot at explaining causes of war: War in Human Civilization, by Azar Gat.
It covers from hunter-gatherers to the present, and diligently tries to bring different discipline's perspectives to bear throughout. I recently started reading it on the grounds of its good reputation, and I am hoping it will provide a locally-causal path of inquiry to compare with the cyclic one from Turchin. I was not able to find any substantial criticism of it, despite searching directly for rebuttals or criticism of the book and author.
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.
I've already asked about that, and no they don't have such a belief.
one possible argument for the most voted option could that humanity has been domesticated even further by another century of hyper-consumer capitalism, making most people unwilling and/or incapable of the necessary violence for a total-war. reactionaries constantly weep over the decreased levels of testosterone and lifting ability of males.
another could the different kinds of battlefields 21st-century tech allows. not sure if you follow John Robb, but he got interesting analyses about cyberwar, signaling wars, and drone warfare. most people, on the other hand, would hardly recognize political destabilization, online social unrest and flamed bots as war proper.
p.s. Glenn Hubbard emereti dean of columbia business school with a phD in econ from Harvard basically did say that. just google your question---nation mag has an article on it among others.
i'm not sure any economists said that---i think Cheney and Bush said that--though they may have had staff with econ degrees who said it as well. i think Nordhaus (econ noble last year) projected these wars would cost billions or even trillions $; but i guess it could be viewed as a charitable, tax deductible donation.
Poll results might also be explained by widespread belief in soon-to-be-AGI among your followers - maybe do a follow-up?
Which economists said the Iraq war would pay for itself?
The significance of nation-states is that the re-ordering of the world along a new set of criteria (nationality/ethnicity/religion) resulted in widespread conflict. All the high/fat conflicts in Rosen's chart can be attributed to a trend towards the formation of contiguous areas consisting of people who self-identify with one another (i.e. nations). The nation-state in its simplest form is a nation that can collectively defend itself against aggression, thereby becoming an independent state. Nation-states replaced city-states, kingdoms, and empires. The sorting was mostly complete by 1945.
My point about industrialization is not so much about destructive power as it is about the capacity to sustain a war effort. Economies win total war. Industrialized economies have unparalleled capacity.
Iraq invading Kuwait might have been profitable if others did not get involved. We also had some economists telling us the second Iraq war would pay for itself. Leaders may delude themselves, but people usually don't.
War used to be good for the glory of the leaders (for the winners, anyway) -- but bad for both populations. This was (perhaps) not widely understood. Also, wealth was harder to create, so stealing the wealth of others was one of the only feasible strategies to enrichment.
In the modern world, we (the general population) better understand that it is vastly easier and more productive to create new wealth, than to try to acquire it through violence. (Crime, in general, doesn't pay -- on average.) The general net loss to even the winning populations is more widely understood. And finally, typical citizens now have vastly greater political power (e.g., via democracies) than they used to. It is much harder for modern leaders to glorify themselves at the expense of their own populations.
This doesn't eliminate the possibility of mistakes. But many prior wars began for "logical" reasons, where the aggressors were actually making a rational calculation that the outcome was likely to be of benefit to them. (They may have been wrong, but they believed it at the time, especially at the onset of the war.) That rational, enthusiastic calculation in favor of war is much, much harder to do in modern times.
So the argument for reduced future global war deaths is: without economic (or glory) reasons for war, you're left with a baseline of "mistakes", which results in far less war than in previous historical eras.
War has been very destructive all along, both before and after industry. And this fact has long been widely known. I'm not understanding the relevance of nation-states for war death rates.
This is a good point. Pre-1945 it was not common knowledge that war was destructive for both sides in most cases. Now it is.
I think people tend to ignore a variety of base rates in terms of scaling their estimates.
From the graph in your last post, it seems like the typical total war death rate since the Industrial Revolution has been very roughly 10-20 per 100K.
In the US, the cancer mortality rate is 150-200 per 100K.
For automobile accidents, it is about 10.
For firearms deaths, it is about 12.
So it might be interesting to try polling people based on their estimate of the relative death rates. E.g., will the worldwide death rate from war be more or less than the US death rate from firearms/automobile accidents. Will the death rate from war be 1/10, 1/4, 1/2, equal, 2X, 4X, or 10X the cancer death rate.
To predict a big deviation from the simple historical trend, one needs some sort of basis in theory.
Robin, I think you are too quick to dismiss views that differ from your own.
My views are based on a GIANT deviation in the history of civilization that played out between around 1776 and exactly 1945. Before 1776 there was arguably zero nation-states and at most a handful. Industrialization was in its infancy. After WWII the world was divided into well-defined nation-states and war-making capacity was massively skewed towards industrial nation-states.
Besides a world divided into well-defined nation-states, the other legacy of WWII was a clear understanding that total war between industrial nation-states is prolonged and costly. The destruction is not unrecoverable but it is massive. I don't think it takes rare rationality to understand this, the understanding is widespread.
In terms of war, the situation since 1945 has mostly trended in a positive direction on the industrialization and nation-state dimensions especially with the breakup of the Soviet Union.
From my perspective, focusing on pre-1945 war data is mindless. The transition between 1776 and 1945 has many useful lessons but none of the data is relevant in predicting the likelihood of future war. Predicting war based on Max Rosen's chart smells of numerology to me given the industrial nation-state dominated world order I've tried to describe. Perhaps my explanation is really bad or I have some kind of mental defect. I'm guessing you believe its the latter.
There is a book that takes a direct shot at explaining causes of war: War in Human Civilization, by Azar Gat.
It covers from hunter-gatherers to the present, and diligently tries to bring different discipline's perspectives to bear throughout. I recently started reading it on the grounds of its good reputation, and I am hoping it will provide a locally-causal path of inquiry to compare with the cyclic one from Turchin. I was not able to find any substantial criticism of it, despite searching directly for rebuttals or criticism of the book and author.