Wars and rumors of war....

Interesting read from the NY Times. I cannot agree with the entire premise but I don't question the nature of interstate conflict is evolving.

War Really Is Going Out of Style

By JOSHUA S. GOLDSTEIN and STEVEN PINKER

… The invasion of Iraq was the most recent example of an all-out war between two national armies. And it could very well be the last one.

The idea that war is obsolescent may seem preposterously utopian. Aren’t we facing an endless war on terror, a clash of civilizations, the menace of nuclear rogue states? Isn’t war in our genes, something that will always be with us?

The theory that war is becoming passé gained traction in the late 1980s, when scholars noticed some curious nonevents. World War III, a nuclear Armageddon, was once considered inevitable, but didn’t happed. Nor had any wars between great powers occurred since the Korean War. European nations, which for centuries had fought each other at the drop of a hat, had not done so for four decades.

World War III, a nuclear Armageddon? I remember when Reagan challenged the Soviets on the land, air and sea and said communism was destined for the ash heap of history. You know he was right about that. And that having a strong America makes people not want to challenge us. I wonder is there is a pattern there.

…“War” is a fuzzy category, shading from global conflagrations to neighborhood turf battles, so the organizations that track the frequency and damage of war over time need a precise yardstick. A common definition picks out armed conflicts that cause at least 1,000 battle deaths in a year — soldiers and civilians killed by war violence, excluding the difficult-to-quantify indirect deaths resulting from hunger and disease. “Interstate wars” are those fought between national armies and have historically been the deadliest.

These prototypical wars have become increasingly rare, and the world hasn’t seen one since the three-week invasion of Iraq in 2003. The lopsided five-day clash between Russia and Georgia in 2008 misses the threshold, as do sporadic clashes between North and South Korea or Thailand and Cambodia.

Countries remain armed and hostile, so war is hardly impossible. But where would a new interstate war plausibly erupt? Robert Gates, the former secretary of defense, said this year that “any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.”

Mr Gates similar things were said in 1945 at the dawn of the nuclear age. And after Gulf War I. Sorry, the old thing still keeps coming back. I don’t argue large deployments will become less frequent but they will occur.

Chinese leaders would deserve a similar workup if they blew off the very basis of their legitimacy, namely trade-based prosperity, by starting a war. (China has not fought a battle in 23 years.)…

No but they are building up for a reason, to dominate the far east and challenge our control of the sea lanes.

…Neither North nor South Korea could win a war at an acceptable cost…

Wrong on Korea. This is not 1950 and South Korea can handle a conventional attack from the North. And the idiots in the North do have a primitive nuclear weapon it is more than counterbalanced by nuclear subs the US Navy has off the coast at all times. We used to have a Lance missile battalion with a special weapons unit attached. Somewhat Orwellian but the threat of a nuclear holocaust north of the DMZ ended the Korean War in 53 and has kept a peace since then. Kinda like MAD did with the Soviet Union for a half century.

As the political scientist John Mueller has pointed out, today’s civil wars are closer to organized crime than traditional war. Armed militias — really gangs of thugs — monopolize resources like cocaine in Colombia or coltan in Congo, or terrorize the locals into paying tribute to religious fanatics, as in Somalia, Nigeria and the Philippines.

…Why is war in decline? For one thing, it no longer pays. For centuries, wars reallocated huge territories, as empires were agglomerated or dismantled and states wiped off the map. But since shortly after World War II, virtually no borders have changed by force, and no member of the United Nations has disappeared through conquest …

War also declines as prosperity and trade rise. Historically, wealth came from land and conquest was profitable. Today, wealth comes from trade, and war only hurts. When leaders’ power depends on delivering economic growth, and when a country’s government becomes richer and stronger than its warlords, war loses its appeal.

Kinda like Israeli/Arab trade.

Perhaps the deepest cause of the waning of war is a growing repugnance toward institutionalized violence. Brutal customs that were commonplace for millennia have been largely abolished: cannibalism, human sacrifice, heretic-burning, chattel slavery, punitive mutilation, sadistic executions. Could war really be going the way of slave auctions? Nothing in our nature rules it out. True, we still harbor demons like greed, dominance, revenge and self-deception. But we also have faculties that inhibit them, like self-control, empathy, reason and a sense of fairness. We will always have the capacity to kill one another in large numbers, but with effort we can safeguard the norms and institutions that have made war increasingly repugnant.

I wonder where they get this. I don’t argue a lot of the “brutal customs” mentioned have declined immensely over the centuries. A great deal of the credit is technology showing us these barbaric acts and rousing international will and force against it. Apartheid in South Africa comes to mind. However you can in certain African nations you can still openly buy humans. Several of the 3rd world dictatorships use torture and “sadistic executions” not to mention the rise of extreme groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt hasn’t been a step forward. If you want an opinion of the empathy and fairness of these groups you may want to ask the women who have been raped in Cairo recently (including western reporters) or witnesses to stoning in Iran.

I believe it was written in the Bible “There will be wars and rumors of war till the end of time…” I don’t question the methods of war have evolved over the century. Large draftee armies have been replaced by smaller, better trained volunteer forces. Instead of deploying corps or armies to a country we send in Special Forces teams or reinforced battalions now. But war is far from obsolete or going out of style. If you want an opinion on that please ask the Israeli’s or the people in Taiwan.