Patrick Lancaster is one of the few people who do journalism on the ground in the Donbass region. He shows clear shell damage to civilian targets and interviews people and they say that they are being shelled by Ukrainians.
Even if we were to take that as 100% truth, how would it make Ukraine the instagator? Russia invaded the Donbas region years ago and there has been an ongoing shooting war (albeit a largely stalemated one) ever since. But Russia is still responsible for starting the war.
The current war did not start in a vacuum. Who backed the Maidan revolution in 2014? Who backed the regime change that just happened in Pakistan? Who keeps fighting for regime changes all over the Middle East leading to the deaths of millions? Who is going to be held accountable for all that needless loss of life?
It's an unfortunate, but sometimes necessary, waste. The world isn't a nice place, a fact that most of us in the West can happily ignore most of the time.
This comment is at negative 4, apparently a number of people don't agree that war is a waste.
The labor that went to make the ship was wasted, the pollution caused by manufacturing was a needless waste, the materials could have been used for another less wasteful purpose. And unless the ship is raised and recycled, it will just rust in oblivion on the bottom of the black sea.
I should have said dimensions instead of sides. I was not implying equality. But he loss of lives even to the production of war machines and their ultimate destruction is waste of the earth, of humanity and our collective time.
Even the effort spent on this conversation is a waste perpetrated by Putin, in no way should this statement be taken as an insult against you. That is not my intent. The waste of war is a cascading fractal.
Inexpensive autonomous weapons of war are here. The cost to kill for less than a $1 a soul is within everyone's reach.
The war in the Ukraine will have larger implications than WWI or the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Furthermore, for each piece of equipment lost, resources will be allocated to replace it, and then some. And many other countries have decided to increase their military budgets as a result of this conflict.
Think of it as a unfortunate and probably necessary side-effect of life.
Lack of war requires consistency and coherency between all parties to the degree they see themselves as 'one' (politically, economically, etc.) and have the same goals and needs, and are in agreement on how to fulfill them - or an overarching authority to enforce behavior.
For example, Civil war generally happens when an existing entity starts splitting into different political factions because the existing group can no longer agree on goals, needs, and how to fulfill them. Think of this like an animal getting cancer, where the animal is a country. When the countries central authority (think immune system) no longer is strong enough to suppress/control dissent.
War between countries happens when one country sees more benefit capturing/conquering/etc. another country than not. Like an animal killing or eating another animal for food, or territory, or just because.
In any real environment that is constantly changing, it is very difficult to have any sizable group that is consistent, happy, and has the same identity enough that they'll all individually sacrifice when necessary to make the larger group still work. Trying to do it globally with the current human condition would not be pretty.
This is especially true when you consider that all individual members within a group are susceptible to individual pathologies themselves.
Depending on how you define these groups, either we're talking individual countries, collections of countries/allied coalitions, or individual sub-states.
Almost always, some combination of 1) the group expends massive energy removing/silencing dissent, or 2) the group expends massive energy changing, with who benefits constantly changing too. Occasionally, 3) political-social identity aligns well and everyone sees it as a property of their reality, so #1 or #2 aren't necessary (very much). All existing large countries spend a lot of time and treasure on #1 though.
Think of it like the bodies immune system, with #3 being 'a very clean environment'.
So either you end up with a large political entity which wields significant power within it's borders (or is blessed with a very consistent and happy socio-economic identity for a time) to crush dissent, or has a lot of socio-economic 'churn', which rises or falls together (ahem, USSR, CCP, USA, EU, etc.), or many small ones.
Either way, these entities MUST push/pull/defend their interests - which fundamentally always don't align perfectly with others due to their varying socio-economic states and resources - including wars from time to time. The alternative is starvation from a competitor. The only alternative would be to have a larger authoritarian capability which enforces the lack of war and stasis on these various fronts. Drawing an analogy of a world like that to a zoo isn't hard.
That larger authoritarian capability would fundamentally need to be more powerful than any single actor or coalition of actors, or eventually it would be removed or overthrown via war.
'World Peace' is not just a pipe dream, it's a fantasy that it is ever anything we'd want - it would require global stasis, enforced by some kind of extreme global authoritarianism that would keep the 'have nots' in the have-not pile, and the have's in the have pile forever. Or everyone to always be happy with each other, even if that means some of them starve to death due to lack of resources (extreme brainwashing?).
World War sucks too of course, since too rapid change, churn, and turmoil sucks for everyone with massive blood spilled and treasure lost probably far in excess of what normally would occur in a bit more peaceful set of changes. It would be the natural equivalent of a massive famine or the like.
> 'World Peace' is not just a pipe dream, it's a fantasy that it is ever anything we'd want - it would require global stasis, enforced by some kind of extreme global authoritarianism that would keep the 'have nots' in the have-not pile, and the have's in the have pile forever. Or everyone to always be happy with each other, even if that means some of them starve to death due to lack of resources (extreme brainwashing?).
I really do not follow your argument.
Turning it around world peace requires authoritarian enforcement of global inequality.
The argument as presented is a very depressing outlook on humanity. My personal experience is the exact opposite. Wars (and other social chaos) are organised by a small minority. The vast overwhelming majority of us want peace
and how do you propose to identify and eliminate that small minority exactly?
Near as I can tell, every system creates a small minority that drives it, and near as I can tell it’s a fundamental requirement of all human organizational systems for them to be effective.
The scale we are at, everything happens through systems of some kind.
The small number of folks involved are either de jure (by rule) or de facto (in fact) the ones who make the actual decisions required for the organization to respond, move forward, act.
If this is true, then ‘the small number of people organizing the social chaos’ are fundamental to the entire system. Removing them may change things for a time, but not for very long, and may (often if you look at the historic of revolutions) replace them with even worse.
I don’t think it’s depressing, any more than recognizing that zebras get eaten by leopards.
Not recognizing or avoiding it just leads to further chaos and damage. It would not help anyone (including zebras or leopards) to put guards out on the Serengeti to ‘enforce the peace’ for instance. At least not for very long.
