Path: utzoo!yunexus!ists!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: convex!uiucuxc!muse!cash@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (Peter Cash)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Eastern Europe
Message-ID: <11499@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 17 Nov 89 06:56:51 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbnews.11499
References: <11431@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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From: convex!uiucuxc!muse!cash@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (Peter Cash)

In article <11431@cbnews.ATT.COM denbeste@BBN.COM (Steven Den Beste)
writes:

>What we now think of as France and what we now think of as Germany have
>been at war or almost war for most of the last 400 years. Does anyone think
>that the French army will ever cross the West German border in anger again?
>Equally, 180 years ago the U.S. and what we know know as Great Britain were
>at war. Will the U.S. and the Brits ever shoot at each other again? It
>doesn't seem likely.

>Such wars in each case would bankrupt both nations because of the
>extraordinarily large (from a historical perspective) economic ties between
>them. If we can establish such economic ties between the U.S.S.R./Eastern
>Europe and the West during that 30-50 years, then by the time that a
>buildup becomes possible again it won't be desirable any more.

> ...I claim that with sufficient
>interdependency between two nations a war becomes much less likely because
>attacking the other would be literal economic suicide.

Ah, those who do not remember history...

Steven, precisely these reasons were often cited to prove that a major war
was unthinkable...just before the First World War.  (See, for example,
Barbara Tuchman's _The Guns of August_.) It was argued that the world was
simply too interdependent, too closely knit economically, for a war to be
thinkable.  A major war would bankrupt its participants, and therefore
would not be fought.  (And besides, people were much too *civilized* for
that kind of thing nowadays.)

Of course,a the irony is that this reasoning was *almost* correct: the
First World War *was* suicidal, it *did* bankrupt its participants, it
killed off the best and brightest of an entire civilization. WW I was a
social, cultural, economic and political disaster that can only be compared
to historical disasters such as the Great Plague in the twelfth century.  

The problems is that an element of the irrational seems to enter into
history: sometimes people do crazy things.  Sometimes countries do crazy
things. 

And if you think that it can't happend again... Remember the Falklands?
Remember one of the more civilized nations of the Earth loosing its cool
and going to war over a flock of *sheep*?

The best protection against a future war is to realize that it is very
likely to happen again.  So keep your eyes open and your powder dry.
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             |  The fleshe is bruckle, the Feynd is slee --  |
Peter Cash   |        timor mortis conturbat me!             |    cash@convex
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