New Battle Lines (part I)
Vol 16: Where War is Going
This is the first in a multi-part post.
We are acquisitive, greedy, and pugnacious because our blood remembers millenniums through which our forebears had to chase and fight and kill in order to survive, and had to eat to their gastric capacity for fear they should not soon capture another feast. War is a nation’s way of eating. It promotes co-operation because it is the ultimate form of competition.
— The Lessons of History
We live in the most peaceful period in human history, but contrary to what you may think, we’ve been at war for a while now. We just haven’t acknowledged it yet.
I write this tongue in cheek, but there’s elements of truth to it. You may balk at such a statement, but that’s likely because you have a different definition of war. Unlike most other areas, definitional differences matter here, because they dictate what happens on the battlefield. If you don’t realize you’re on one, well then as you may imagine, there’s a lot that can go wrong.
As I’ve documented through multiple posts, I’ve been exploring various worldviews for over a year now to broaden my understanding of today’s State of Affairs. History has been one of the most useful teachers, and as the quote above illustrates, war is prominently featured throughout the texts I’ve consumed. As such, I’ve spent considerable time thinking about what the future of warfare looks like, in part because of how much it historically shaped the world we live in today, and also because my deep interest in technological progress made me realize that new technologies can, will, and have been weaponized.
What follows are some of the major takeaways I have on what war will look like.
Every period of peace has been met with a hubristic “War Won’t Work” sentiment
While some profess war’s death, others advocate for the opposite
These ‘others’ prepare for new types of warfare, looking to strike first
The rest of the world has to contend with what the future of warfare looks like. This means throwing out the old playbook, and figuring out new ones
“War Won’t Work”
When we live in periods of profound peace, it becomes easy to forget how quickly things can unravel. As I like to say, the past 80 years should never have happened. Because it’s never been this peaceful or cordial. This aberration has led to a societal Alzheimer's — we don't remember that human nature frequently leads to intense conflict.1
Today's military conflict is nearly nonexistent compared to prior centuries, which puts us in a similar dynamic as what life was like right before World War I. And that dynamic was one of ever increasingly complex strategic and diplomatic relationships amongst countries. These relationships became strained during disputes, and once conflict broke out, soon everyone had to answer the battle call, either out of desperation or obligation.
In the face of such conflict, the elites and ruling class suddenly had war on their minds, but to them it was not of inevitability, but impossibility. Everyone thought: “war won’t work.” I talked about this in Looking in the Dark (excuse the long excerpt, it’s important for context):
One of the many insights I've gotten from my worldview expansion has been the notion that seeing the future isn't an anomaly. In Lords of Finance, there are accounts of people in the early 1900s anticipating the future of industrialized warfare. It turns out that they were drowned out by the expert consensus among elites that such a thing was not improbable, but impossible. The quotes below capture this hubris:
So smug were the bankers and economists that they even allowed themselves to be convinced that the discipline of “sound money” itself would bring everyone to their senses and force an end to the war. On August 30, 1914, barely a month into the fighting, Charles Conant of the New York Times reported that the international banking community was very confident that there would not be the sort of “unlimited issue of paper [money] and its steady depreciation," which had wrought such inflationary havoc in previous wars. "Monetary science is better understood at the present time than in those days," declared the bankers confidently…
Sir Felix Schuster, chairman of the Union of London and Smith’s Bank, one of the City’s most prominent bankers, went confidently around telling everyone that the fighting would grind to a halt within six months — the interruption of trade would be too great…
John Maynard Keynes, then a thirty-one-year-old economics don at King’s College, Cambridge, who had made himself something of an overnight expert on war finance, announced to his friends in September 1914 that “he was quite certain that war could not last more than a year” because by then the liquid wealth of Europe that could be utilized to finance the war would be "used up," and he became quite angry at the stupidity of anyone who thought otherwise…
In November 1914, the Economist predicted that the war would be over in a few months. That same month, at a dinner party in Paris given in honor of the visiting British secretary of state for war, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, the French finance minister confidently proclaimed that the fighting would have to be over by July 1915 because the money would have run out…
And so as the financiers of Europe watched their continent slip toward Armageddon, its credit system collapsing onto itself, world stock markets closing their doors, and the gold standard grinding to a halt, they clung to the illusion that global commerce would be disrupted only briefly and the world would rapidly return to “business as usual…”
The experts seemed to have forgotten that among the first casualties of war is not only truth but also sound finance. None of the big wars of the previous century—for example, the Napoleonic Wars or the American Civil War—had been held back by a mere lack of gold. These had been fights to the death in which the belligerents had been willing to resort to everything and anything…
“History rhymes,” as I frequently write in my notes.
So much of what we see today is not new. The aforementioned sentiment seems like a strong candidate for some of the common cycles different societies experience, something I talked about at the beginning of last week’s post on the Maturization of Markets.
A lot of what we’re experiencing today isn’t really new, it’s just a new instance of what we’ve seen before. Changes happen, but the responses to the changes usually repeat.
The reason I bring this sentiment up, is because there’s another, lesser-known, but even more important dynamic that developed in World War I, and World War II, in the midst of the anti-war backdrop.
“War is a Biological Necessity”
In 1910, four years before World War I, Norman Angell published a book titled: The Great Illusion. Barbara Tuchman writes in The Guns of August:
By impressive examples and incontrovertible argument Angell showed that in the present financial and economic interdependence of nations, the victor would suffer equally with the vanquished; therefore war had become unprofitable; therefore no nation would be so foolish as to start one.
In another interesting lesson from history, we can see how influential works can quickly shape the minds of those who read them. The quotes from all the elites above are largely derivations of Angell’s argument.
At the same time The Great Illusion was published, German General von Bernhard wrote and published a different book: Germany and the Next War. This lesser-known work was to be as influential as Angell’s, but it took the opposite point of view. Three of its chapter titles, “The Right to Make War,” “The Duty to Make War,” and “World Power or Downfall,” sum up its thesis. From The Guns of August:
War, he stated, “is a biological necessity”; it is the carrying out among humankind of “the natural law, upon which all the laws of Nature rest, the law of the struggle for existence.” Nations, he said, must progress or decay; “there can be no standing still,” and Germany must choose “world power or downfall.”
Among the nations Germany “is in social-political respects at the head of all progress in culture” but is “compressed into narrow, unnatural limits.” She cannot attain her “great moral ends” without increased political power, an enlarged sphere of influence, and new territory. This increase in power, “befitting our importance,” and “which we are entitled to claim,” is a “political necessity” and “the first and foremost duty of the State.” In his own italics Bernhardi announced, “What we now wish to attain must be fought for,” and from here he galloped home to the finish line: “Conquest thus becomes a law of necessity.”
Having proved the “necessity” (the favorite word of German military thinkers), Bernhardi proceeded to method. Once the duty to make war is recognized the secondary duty, to make it successfully, follows. To be successful a state must begin war at the “most favorable moment” of its own choosing; it has “the acknowledged right … to secure the proud privilege of such initiative.” Offensive war thus becomes another “necessity” and a second conclusion inescapable: “It is incumbent on us … to act on the offensive and strike the first blow.”
Notice the stark contrast these quotes have compared to those in “War Won’t Work.” With this in mind, the onset of WWI makes much more sense.
Strike First, Strike Fast
Equally as important, Germany recognized how different industrialized warfare would look like, and it emphasized the importance of striking first accordingly. We attribute this strike-first mentality frequently to Nazi Germany, but blitzkrieg was very much adopted and embraced in WWI.2
That raises an important point about how technology Changes the Calculus, especially on the battlefield. I won’t go into extra details about how WWI warfare was different — there are other, better sources you can consult for this. What you need to know is that for the first time, war was fully industrialized. We suddenly saw the gatling gun, poison gas, and much more. These shifts were so sudden, that soldiers were riding horses while others were driving tanks.
Whenever these technological changes occur, the rest of the world needs to catch up, military generals included. This fits under the broader Flow of Technology concept I write about — specifically how technology originates, and then how it proliferates, and ultimately assimilates.
WWI showed us just how dangerous it can be for generals to use yesterday’s tactics in today’s battlefield. World War I is aptly referred to as a war of attrition; trench warfare illustrates just how costly it was to refuse to adopt new ways of fighting.
Countries that embrace new technologies are at a sizeable advantage, and war significantly amplifies that. World War II is an even better example: the US figured out fission first.
Back to the Future
Now that we understand what the last century looked like, let’s take a look at today.
To be continued…
Trying to change human nature is a Sisyphean task. I view that in a positive light overall, because instead of trying to change people’s behavior, we can focus on making tangible things that will help us overcome future challenges.
Though my understanding is blitzkrieg was much less successful in WWI.