- 17 Sep 2019 04:55
#15034335
These are my thoughts on wars breaking out in Europe.
As a student of military history I have a lot of knowledge of the history of wars. As an American I have no expert knowledge about the details of the current culture in Europe.
However, I don’t fear wars in Europe, because —
1] Who has benefited from starting a war since 1850; yes, 1850? Since 1850 the nation who started a war has almost always lost it. It has been worse since 2000. So, what national leader would go against this trend to start an unnecessary war?
2] Since 1945 the world has had “The Nuclear Pax {peace}”. Two nations in Europe have nuclear weapons and will use them to avoid being destroyed. The UN frowns on nations that invade their neighbors. Wars are bad for business unless the business is an arms maker. Germany can’t sell its cars into either nation that is at war.
3] It is very much in the interest of the larger nations as a group to make sure that no nation starts a war and benefits from it. It is so nice to have the “General Peace” [whatever its cause is] that the larger nations should not let the idea get going that invading your neighbors to steal some of their territory or stuff is a winning plan.
4] Yes, many think that the US invaded Iraq in 2003 to steal its oil. But, that didn’t work out so well, did it? It is my non-expert opinion that buying the oil would have cost less than trying to steal it.
5] WWI and WWII demonstrated that modern wars consume ammo and ammo like weapons {tanks, planes, etc} so fast that it is not possible to steal enough after you win to repay the bills you ran it during the war. This is totally different from war before 1800. Then wars didn’t consume stuff for the most part. Mostly the stuff was laying around in good shape on the battlefield after the battle was over.
. . . Also, Iraq shows us another problem with wars to steal stuff in modern times. This is that the IED is cheap and makes it hard to occupy a nation after you win the battles of the invasion. If the occupying nation goes to mass executions to put down the resistance that is using the IEDs then that looks like war crimes and likely will result in the US coming to set things “right”. Or so it seems to me.
So, I conclude that going to war in Europe is a dumb idea and that the leaders of all the nations know that. So, this is just brought up to scare people with a threat that is impossible to actually see happen. Feel free to show me how I’m wrong about this.
PS . If the Troubles in N. Ireland start up again, so what? The number of UK citizens who die now per year for lack of timely, sufficient medical care due to austerity is far higher than the body count of the worst year of the old Troubles. It may even be lower per capita than the body count from mass shootings in America. America is totally willing to live with that body count to be able to keep their AR-15s and AK-47s, etc.
. . . I'm not saying it doesn't matter; I'm saying that austerity is killing more now, so it is a trade off. And this is assuming that the Troubles start over at about the same intensity as before. And, this is not a sure thing, but the deaths from austerity are going on now. Not to mention suicides in nations like Greece and Spain.
.
As a student of military history I have a lot of knowledge of the history of wars. As an American I have no expert knowledge about the details of the current culture in Europe.
However, I don’t fear wars in Europe, because —
1] Who has benefited from starting a war since 1850; yes, 1850? Since 1850 the nation who started a war has almost always lost it. It has been worse since 2000. So, what national leader would go against this trend to start an unnecessary war?
2] Since 1945 the world has had “The Nuclear Pax {peace}”. Two nations in Europe have nuclear weapons and will use them to avoid being destroyed. The UN frowns on nations that invade their neighbors. Wars are bad for business unless the business is an arms maker. Germany can’t sell its cars into either nation that is at war.
3] It is very much in the interest of the larger nations as a group to make sure that no nation starts a war and benefits from it. It is so nice to have the “General Peace” [whatever its cause is] that the larger nations should not let the idea get going that invading your neighbors to steal some of their territory or stuff is a winning plan.
4] Yes, many think that the US invaded Iraq in 2003 to steal its oil. But, that didn’t work out so well, did it? It is my non-expert opinion that buying the oil would have cost less than trying to steal it.
5] WWI and WWII demonstrated that modern wars consume ammo and ammo like weapons {tanks, planes, etc} so fast that it is not possible to steal enough after you win to repay the bills you ran it during the war. This is totally different from war before 1800. Then wars didn’t consume stuff for the most part. Mostly the stuff was laying around in good shape on the battlefield after the battle was over.
. . . Also, Iraq shows us another problem with wars to steal stuff in modern times. This is that the IED is cheap and makes it hard to occupy a nation after you win the battles of the invasion. If the occupying nation goes to mass executions to put down the resistance that is using the IEDs then that looks like war crimes and likely will result in the US coming to set things “right”. Or so it seems to me.
So, I conclude that going to war in Europe is a dumb idea and that the leaders of all the nations know that. So, this is just brought up to scare people with a threat that is impossible to actually see happen. Feel free to show me how I’m wrong about this.
PS . If the Troubles in N. Ireland start up again, so what? The number of UK citizens who die now per year for lack of timely, sufficient medical care due to austerity is far higher than the body count of the worst year of the old Troubles. It may even be lower per capita than the body count from mass shootings in America. America is totally willing to live with that body count to be able to keep their AR-15s and AK-47s, etc.
. . . I'm not saying it doesn't matter; I'm saying that austerity is killing more now, so it is a trade off. And this is assuming that the Troubles start over at about the same intensity as before. And, this is not a sure thing, but the deaths from austerity are going on now. Not to mention suicides in nations like Greece and Spain.
.