reprint of "The Evolving Nature of Warfare"

As I was back reprinting something else from 2009 I noticed this article and the name caught my eye. I thought it was well written and true and thought because of a "New?" Cold War starting with Russia regarding Syria and Ukraine this might be a helpful thing to read today too.

The evolving nature of warfare

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The evolving nature of warfare

The following comes from my observations of world events. I cannot quantify whether this is true or not. It simply appears that it is.

When nations become nuclear powers they join a club which has as a basic rule, "We have nuclear weapons but we know that to actually use them against any nation could spark the end of life on earth sooner or later. So, since we cannot engage in warfare amongst ourselves therefore war can only be on an espionage and economic level and through media propaganda. In the end it is only a war of ideas and economics that will decide who wins and who loses".

But in this age where in some ways corporations now collectively have more power than all nations combined economically, where does military might come into the picture other than as police actions to maintain international order. In this state of affairs I submit that there can only be police actions and never really wars when nuclear powers are involved.

Therefore the only real wars to the death then can be between non-nuclear powers engaged in a life or death struggle. But as soon as one of them also becomes a nuclear power no military wars will be fought but only police actions.

Since this appears to be true worldwide then it appears to be in the interest of all relatively stable nations to become nuclear powers as soon as possible so no one will attack them and wipe them off the map.

One could project this sort of "moving towards nonviolence" caused by nuclear weapons since 1945 and envision wars based upon computer games, for example, witnessed by all sort of like football or soccer games worldwide now to help decide disagreements sort of like single combat between the leaders of nations or areas or tribes to decide wars sometimes fought in the distant past.

The real danger with all this is unstable nations like North Korea or the instability that Iran appears to be entering into now. If a government doesn't actually support the will of the people all these complicated rules governing nuclear weapons become like a world filled with nations playing Russian roulette with nuclear weapons.

This world filled with 100 nations filled with nuclear weapons is obviously unacceptable because someone eventually will make a mistake and bring down within a day the whole house of cards and leave many nations smoking craters.

If you know anything about the laws of probability it is not if but when?