War creates Peace

Miscellaneous General
1

People are irritating.

I have a guy claiming that war creates peace. Now, I know war and peace are contradictory terms.

He seems to be under the impression that we cannot have peace without war, or rather that, to obtain peace, we must have war.

He seems terribly obsessed with the Nazi conquest whenever I debate with him. He almost always uses it in his arguments as some end-all statement that no one can disprove. For example:

Person A: I know that you are advocating war. War is violence. Therefore you are advocating violence. Violence is not sensible. We cannot sustain a society built on bones. You still haven’t shown me any reason that the human race cannot go beyond the struggle of the jungle and live in a civilized manner.

Person B: Fighting in a war and having a violent personal life are completely different. You called me a violent person, which happens to be untrue. I feel like I have thoroughly illustrated the nature of our predicament. We can live in a civilized manner, but not without war.

Me: War is Peace, right?

Him: Sometimes you have to kill weeds to grow lawn grass. Does that mean killing plants is growing plants?

Me: Honestly, did the United States have problems with the Middle East prior to the creation of Israel or even up until the 1960’s? Even further, maybe the Middle East has been so distrustful of the West since Britain, for example, tried to take over Afghanistan in the early 20th Century, which was further supplemented by American fuck-uppery in the whole region? If the United States were so concerned over protecting themselves, wouldn’t it make sense to build a strong defense instead of spreading its army over the entire world?

Person B: War creates peace.

Me: Good lord. You truly are a violent individual. How did war create peace for Germany after WWI? Economic destruction, the rise of a dictator, a second world war?

Him: If war didn’t stop Nazi conquest, what did? That is just one example of hundreds. The freedom you enjoy right now was achieved through war, for another example. Germany was sanctioned heavily after World War I for being the instigator of it. What about the Allied nations?

– I pasted an article from here to show him how non-interventionists dealt with World War 2. I thought it was pretty solid but he ignored it. –

Him: That’s lovely. Now tell me your answer to my question. Did war stop Nazi conquest?

I feel like saying “Obviously” yet that would naturally make him feel right. I need to show him that war is not peace, and that war can not create peace, yet I don’t know how to.

I really need to stop getting myself into these situations.

2

did warring stop warring? well, warring is warring, perhaps the fella has just noted that wars can end?

‘did the allies war against the nazi’s stop the nazi’s war against the allies’. is really what he is asking you.

you need to point out that the nazi’s war against the allies stopped the peace of the allies.(such as it was)

also it must be said there are two kinds of peace. civilized peace of people respecting each others property in a fee and civil society. and the peace of desolation

3

it’s hard to argue with him on that point because in one sense he’s right. All it takes for evil to succeed is good men to do nothing. However He may have that point on his side he’s still wrong in the whole argument: It’s governments that make war and not free societies. There’s never peace in tyranny and it would be a far cry to call FDR’s US a nontyrannical regime. WW2 was a war of banks and tyrants, his argument that there couldn’t be peace unless the “good guys” fought it, is only true in so far that there were no “good guys.” It was just us vs them, and there’s still no peace today as our tyranny beat their tyranny.

4

Is this Universal Mind? Here is a lovely zinger to throw at him. Scholars tend to agree that WWI brought about the Nazi party. If WWI wasn’t fought then it is possible that the Nazi conquest wouldn’t of happened. Therefore peace could of prevented the war.

5

Ding ding ding.

6

That is why I stopped talking at that forum. He is a petulant child.

7

“I really need to stop getting myself into these situations.”[H]

“War is the health of the state” - Historian Randolph Bourne.

“War IS the state” - onebornfree.

Regards, onebornfree.

8

Oh I know, but there are others that aren’t as foolish as him. For example, I’m doing fairly well against a guy advocating we all turn over to the Venus Project (from Zeitgeist) and abolish money. At least he’s a bit honest in his beliefs.

There aren’t many forums I go to where I can debate in this fashion so Dreamviews will have to do…for now. Unless there were swaths of fools coming over to these forums, I’d be much more active here.

9

Anyway, I replied with:

You’re forgetting something.

When you assert that “war creates peace,” you need to look at both sides of the coin. Sure, applying the statement one side of the equation will give you desirable results, but what about the other side? It’s like a mathematical equation.

So when you say “war creates peace,” and apply it to the Nazi’s, look at the other side. Did the Nazi conquest create peace for the Allied forces? They were in a fairly peaceful state before the conquest. The statement “war creates peace” is false if you apply it to everyone.

Not to mention that peace wasn’t exactly created since we replaced their tyranny with our own.

And most agree that if World War I wasn’t fought (which is pretty much what lead to the rise of Nazism), there would have been no Nazi conquest (as I stated before, I think). Therefore, it would be more honest to say that peace would’ve prevented war.

10

Wars can resolve issues.

11

Wars can ‘resolve’ many things, but the price of victory or defeat will ensure either more conflict down the road, or Roman-like cultural and economic annihilation. In a sense the statement, “War creates Peace”, is not strictly incorrect if you consider that peace almost always follows warfare. However, the nature of the peace is the issue as I interpret it. Just think of the Treaty of Versailles, the American conquering of Japan (the Philippines too) and the obliteration of Germany in the 40s, for instance. ‘Peace’ came at a heavy human and cultural cost to those defeated societies.

Even better, think of the peace offered to the countries of eastern and central europe after the second world war, Soviet enslavement!

Modern warfare is one of the many odious developments of the French Revolution; a murderous free-for-all where women and children, homes and businesses are acceptable targets because they are part of the ‘enemy class’, the ‘wrong race’, the ‘wrong religion’, in the ‘wrong place and time’, or best of all nowadays, merely ‘unavoidable collateral damage’. At least in the past, as von Mises himself put it, were “soldier’s wars”. Two armies would meet and duke it out in the countryside following highly ritualised and structured combat manoeuvres and one side would eventually achieve victory. And thanks to the code of chivalry, heavy financial and personal penalties could be imposed on soldiers who violated the tenets of moral decency. It was still a violent destructive business, absolutely, but it was by in large confined to empty land outside of towns and cities.

Anyone who advocates war today likely doesn’t understand the human, cultural and economic costs involved or is simply a sociopath. The military itself is not inherently evil, but those who wield it like a toy, are.

12

Andrew, I operate under the premise that war is inevitable. Therefore, I do not worry that war begets war. In my mind, humans beget war. In my mind, peace will always be temporary. In fact, peace requires more of an explanation to me than war does. War resolves issues. But there will always be new issues. War is just a temporary solution to a permanent problem. But it’s a relatively effective solution under certain circumstances.

13

What is the problem? State officials quarreling for territory and using their peasantry resources to fight it out for them?

I see a bigger “problem” in the state ↔ citizen relationship, which if non-existent, wouldn’t enable the state to fight in the way of state ↔ citizen v. citizen <—> state.

If you want to expand your property by violent means, go ahead and try. It’s 99% of the time not worth it unless you have nothing to lose. By having nothing to lose, that includes the peasant lives the state cares not a tear about.

14

If the problem is the state then clearly all we need to do is get rid of the state and then there should be peace. I say you give it a shot.

15

Indeed. [:)]

As a mental exercise, think whether you’d be a willing soldier to be shipped overseas and fight other people to death, people who were also compelled to do it for some abstract organization… you may be earning a living, but unless you’re at the top and relatively away from the battle field, you have way more to lose (your life) than the mediocre paycheck you might receive if you make it out alive.

War is crazy unprofitable, what have you to win by putting bullets into people’s chests, and getting bullets yourself? Retaliation always makes it a lose-lose game, and if there’s anyone who wins, it’s someone who didn’t spend any of their own resources in it, but rather stole the lives and capital from others from the beginning, like a chicken hawk bureaucrat, the catholic church, whoever it may be.

16

Like I said, give it a shot, we’ll find out if you’re right.

17

Are you a strict empiricist, bloom? You should know by now that even if it came to be true in the future that war would become obsolete in an anarchic society, that alone wouldn’t validate or invalidate these a-priori theories of mine and others. So that’s a non-comment in my eyes! Unless you can show praxeologically why would someone prefer to be shipped overseas to kill or be killed, and how could that be brought about voluntarily, it’s irrelevant what does or does not end up happening! (though that would indeed cast some doubt over the theory and application of its premises to reality)

Post-fact justifications of reality are always flawed in some way since you can’t identify every single factor in infinite circumstances… even more so in social sciences where more controlled experiments can’t be made.

18

Indeed I am. I don’t care what praxeology says, if you get your free society and war still exists, you will be wrong in my eyes. It’s also possible that you will be right. In my mind, your theories will either be validated or invalidated by experience.

I understand your desire to maintain a worldview no matter how applicable it may or may not be to real experience, but that is a desire that you and I don’t share. At least not on issues like this.

“it’s irrelevant what does or does not end up happening”

This is all that matters to me.

19

It’s ok, sorry for being so condescending then. You must have heard a lot of this seemingly BS epistemology talk already… lol

20

I’ve heard it, and I appreciate it. But I’m still a jiujitsu fighter at heart. I believe a fight truly tests the two fighters and whoever walks away alive is the better fighter. In the same way, I believe theories require tests to see if they can adequately explain and predict the outcomes of, in this case, public policy.

You say that without a state, there will be no war. You might be right. Let’s find out. But, if things don’t go the way you think they will, I will be convinced that your theory was wrong even if you aren’t.