by Victor Davis Hanson
This article is noteworthy (despite some inaccuracies) for it's warning of the possibility of conventional warfare in this half-century. Such warnings have become rare (a dangerous trend) and the few thus deserve raised attention.
Sven Ortmann
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His warning could be somewhat stronger, though. I find Hansons assertion, that military technology has become too expensive, rendering large-scale battles a near impossibility, to be particularly doubtful. He could have made more of an effort to debunk this straight away.
ReplyDeleteAbove all money is just a paper with a number on it. In fact most of the "money" that fuels todays economies, does not materially exist anyway, it is merely an assumption to accomodate the system, such as all the money "wiped" from stock exchanges recently. The practical costs of producing even the most advanced military hardware are next to nil compared to the ressources sucked up by modern civilian consumption for every-day life.
And of course these perceived hindrances came up in history before, such as during the Middle Ages and early Modern Age, such as in Italy, where the city-states turned to corporate warfare, a popular theme of Macchiavellis "Il Principe". Yet those events were followed by million-men armies and much more complex weaonry centuries afterwards.
It is really strange, that todays societies and political leaderships see warnings of conventional military engagements largely as fear-mongering, yet the same does not apply to seeing terrorists and other threats to modern society virtually everywhere, including the internet, air-travel etc.