Quote from: K-Dog on Feb 09, 2024, 01:30 AMA despot starting a war would have to promise riches, and he would also have to believe there were riches to be gained, or he would know he had just started the process of executing himself.  Such a lie would be fatal after it was discovered that there were no riches to be gained.

Troubles in the homeland will demand full attention.  There will be no resources for foreign involvements.

Going to war comes from conflict over resources.  It's not so much a single despot wanting to be rich as it is 2 despots each wanting to expand their own sphere of control  fighting over border territory.  England and France for instance, who were nearly constantly at war throughout the middle ages.  The more of the farmland in France the King of England could control, the larger the population he could tax.  Vica versa true, if the King of France could beat the English king, he gets all of England to tax.

In our current situation, it's not about who can win more stuff to tax, but who can lose less.  The first thing is, the country has to hold together as a unified economic entity.  Once it breaks up, the individual regions are now in conflict with each other.  So, PRIOR to that happening, the King declares war on an external enemy.  This shiftsa the blame for the problems to the enemy, and it gives a reason for all the regions to hold together.  It becomes your Patriotic Duty as a citzen to defend your country from the evil aggressor who is causing all your problems.

This doesn't have to be true, and it isn't.  All TPTB have to do though is make it APPEAR to be true.  Thus the reason for False Flags.  Also the reason it's always necessary to have an "enemy" like the Chinese or Russians out there.  It provides the elite with someone else to blame.

Once the war begins, it doesn't matter what was used to kick it of, the assassination of an archduke or bombing of ships in a harbor, whatever.  The armies get called up, and now it's all about chain of command and following orders.  Which everyone in the professional class of the military is trained to do, and this holds the country together until they are losing control of the situation at home.  Then they sue for peace and the international war is over.

If one side has still held together politically, they may be able to reform and rebuild.  The loser gets chopped up, like Germany was split between the Ruskies and NATO.  In this case, neither side is likely to be able to hold together after the war, and the breakup into regions will begin.  There aren't very many regions that can be totally self supporting with a large population.  The question is who holds together best with least population loss, and it's hard to say what area that would be.

Here in Alaska, the population will definitely shrink, but it's already small.  Staying warm in the winter looks like a looming problem.  I'd expect the population to drop back to pre-industrial levels, maybe 100K people.  But there's only 600K here now.  What about say Ohio though?  Millions there now, how many before industrialization though?  Dunno.

RE