Quote:
Originally Posted by willx
Actually, no, it would be like your neighbour and you having a fundamental disagreement about the boundaries of where your property ends and you both bringing in a bunch of lawyers to resolve the issue.
As I said before, War is a dispute resolution mechanism between states
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Sometimes, yes. Sometimes two sides of a dispute both sincerely believe that, say, a particular piece of territory belongs to
them. It's not just a pretext, both sides really do believe it. And when war erupts out of such a situation, then it is a dispute resolution mechanism.
Sometimes, though, war is just about a powerful charismatic leader or state having the stronger military, and deciding that it's going to be used to just flatout steal land and territory that they
know legally belongs to another state.
Napolean, Stalin, Genghis Khan... none of these men were under the delusion that they were taking territory that didn't rightfully belong to other nations. They just took that territory because they had the stronger military at the time,
period. So yes, it was just outright thievery at the national level (which is called "annexation").
As for the idea that war is good for the economy... It is, up to a point. Specifically, it can cause a spike in the manufacturing sector. War means you need more weapons and more armor being built. Good for smithies in the middle ages. Good for tank manufacturers during WW II.
The economic benefits of
perpetual war is very dubious to me, though. For one thing, such a system would depend on two sides being almost perfectly matched - Otherwise, one side simply
wins (insomuch as you can win in war, anyway), and thus the war ends. Maintaining such a stalemate indefinitely is almost impossible. Keep in mind that the people fighting in a war are like the Hero of this anime - They want to
win, period. In other words, they want to destroy the enemy and end the war. They don't want to be doing this forever.
And even in a perfect stalemate, at some point the civilian population on both sides are just going to get sick of it and want it to end so that the steadily rising casualty counts stop. Just look at how tired modern America is of the Iraq war/occupation.