Conquest vs. War War vs. Conquest

Whatever your views on the most recent Iraq War, as far as wars go, it was pretty tame, and not all that many people killed. (Don’t misunderstand me: one person killed is too many! I certainly mean no disrespect for anyone killed senselessly.) Mostly because the civilised world has decided that killing people is uncivilised. Good for us.

Of course, there are still a great many people who don’t live in places that I would consider ‘civilised’. It’s all perspective, of course. When you get right down to it, someone who digs wells in rural Africa has more in common with me than we don’t have in common. A big un-commonality is that this well digger is much more likely to experience war firsthand than I am. He lives in an area that values life differently than I do. People may not LIKE killing any more, but enough seem to accept it that it’s a problem. Until these places attain what we like to call ‘civilisation’, war will continue to haunt them.

African War Lords aren’t about to lob ICBMs at the USA or Canada. The fact that they’re willing to go to war doesn’t really scare me.

So who is willing to go to war that does scare me?

I’m sure that geo politicians might argue with me, but the world’s civilisation is divided up into a few blocks: North America, ‘Old’ Europe, ‘New’ Europe’, the Islamic World, India, China, Japan and the Koreas. It’s not a complete picture, however, I think it’ll serve my purpose.

Now, certainly we don’t need to fear ICBMs from North America. If it comes to that, civilisation as I know it is gone. Old Europe has a lot in common with us, I doubt France is ever going to actually attack us. New Europe is still adjusting to our civilisation. It seems pretty unlikely they’d attack us.

So that leaves Asia. I honestly don’t know enough about India to say they’re antagonistic towards the USA or not. They’ve got a lot of people. They’re a democracy, they seem to have free market economy. I think they’d like to be civilised like us, but it’s a lot of effort getting everyone moving in the same direction. Going to war doesn’t seem likely.

I know Japan has been forbidden certain military hardware because of WW2. I have no way of knowing if they’re capable of attacking anyone. I’d assume ‘no’ since Sony and Toyota are such big companies, attacking the people who buy their stuff doesn’t help anyone.

So we’re down to China and North Korea. (I suppose I’ll lump South Korea in with Japan. Not very fair of me, but I’m just writing here, not trying to win the Nobel prize.) We’re certainly used to thinking of Communists as evil. I’m one of those people who would like communism to work: it seems like a great idea where everyone’s equal and people put forth all their effort, and are provided with everything they need. Of course, I also realise that if it was going to work, it would have worked by now. Communism and human nature simply aren’t compatible. There might yet be a mechanism to implement communism, but I don’t know what it is. Since communists are ‘evil’, it’s easy to assume they’ll attack us.

But WHY would they attack us? Japan attacked the USA during WW2 simply to prevent the Americans from stopping their empire. I guess that’s why China/Korea would attack us: just to keep us from stopping them from doing whatever they want to do in Asia.

Would that work? Wiping Canada/USA off the map isn’t easy. We’re big nations with spread out population. Even without a missile shield, it would take a lot of effort to ‘nuke us’. Invasion would be virtually impossible, especially if attacking us is an effort to divert us from a real target.

Even if we were ‘neutralised’, what could the bad guys target? Japan? Korea? India? Taiwan/Republic of China? These ARE civilised nations. Would a civilised nation simply accept being invaded? They’re mostly service/manufacturing economies. Does China want to take over all the call centres in India? Do the North Koreans think that taking over Nintendo by force, they can run it better?

They could try to skip the ‘civilised’ countries and move on to some nations that are resource rich. But modern mining/pumping techniques are efficient uses of high technology. It will take years for Iraq to recover from the damage caused by a small war with the USA, and that’s with the USA’s vast resources rebuilding it!

If Korea were to take over an oil/mineral rich nation, they’d probably have to rebuild all the equipment from scratch. How long would that take? Can they possibly retain control over the country while they do that?

War, in the ‘civilised world’, is expensive. It’s not just about seizing farm land and natural resources any more. It’s about controlling the people you’ve invaded.

Indeed, this may be why WW2 failed for the Axis, the Soviets failed in the cold war. If Americans try to control the Iraqis, that’s why they’ll fail. If the Americans succeed, it’s because they’ve given the Iraqis what they want.

If the ‘bad guys’ want to go to war with a civilised nation, they’ll have to give them what they want. This is why Rome worked: they brought civilisation itself with them. That’s why the USA/Canada could grow to encompass so much of North America: they offered people something they wanted.  ¶ 11:24 AM