Quote from: RE on Feb 09, 2024, 01:36 PM

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.

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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.

RE

Your argument appears to be that future events will follow historical precedent.  That is a strong argument.  I can only refute it by pointing out that conditions are not at all the same.

When Hitler marched into the Soviet Union it was to get resources.  He needed oil and there was a chance he could get it.  Had he known that he was going to have to shoot himself while the women of Berlin were being raped in only a few short years, I doubt Hitler would have invaded Russia.  But then, he was Hitler, a crazy MOFO, and this is a point really not worth arguing.

In a world of nuclear weapons nobody is going to steal oil.  Had Hitler got Russian oil he would not have needed millions of dollars worth of equipment to steal it.  He would have needed simple pumpjacks, pipe, tanker trucks, and rail cars.  Now the theft would have to go miles deep in the ground using equipment an order of magnitude more refined.  Infrastructure would take months to set up.  And before theft could begin, a nuclear strike would take out the pumps.

Anybody who starts a major war is going to exhaust domestic resources and gain nothing.  Then they will find themselves with a loaded gun in a bunker having to do themselves in.  Anybody who would help them earns the same fate.  They are doomed to fail as soon as they start the war.  Support for a war will be difficult to find.  Failure will be evident from the start.  Classically a scorched earth policy is when a country burns crops and ruins machinery an advancing enemy could steal.  The enemy must then retreat or starve.  In resource wars there is no reason to scorch the earth, the earth is already pre-scorched to begin with.  There is nothing to steal, and no way to get anything back to the homeland if there was.  That would take oil the world no longer has in a resource war.

Trouble becomes local.  Without oil, foreign resources become unobtainable.  Your example of France and England is between two countries separated by twenty miles of water.  In those days the channel was easily crossed because wood for boats was common as was the skill to use it.  Horses and carts could haul booty.

Once collapse gets rolling England and France could find themselves more separated than they were in the 15th century.  No horses and no carts.

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