Is it an oversimplification to say that practically all modern wars are simply about state power and influence, material, economical and political? Has there ever really been a war in the past 200 years fought for genuine ideological, moral or romantic reasons, like so many still believe? I'm feeling increasingly cynical over this.
It's both. Wars are waged under strategic premises by humans, who are inevitably affected by romantic and ideological biases.
>>18538507I feel that's how a population as a whole reacts to a war, and how governments spin wars.As a romanticised or ideological crusade. But it always ends up being a chess game for strategic influence against competitors. Most wars now for instance seem like stepping-stone actions to curb the influences of major, larger powers far away from where the battles take place. A sort of modern Great Game.
>>18538515That definitely happens, but what ultimately moves this Great Game isn't money or material possessions, it's glory and a name in the history books
AA made the point the great game never ended it only shifted to be more all encompassing and the new meta, since the advent of mutual destruction, has become political and economical warfare.Unfortunately the West is run by shitlibs who simultaneously want to ideologically colonize the world but cannot overcome the contradiction of imposing liberalism an ideological set of prior based around not imposing oneself.
>>18538497All terrorist wars effectively break this because:1. Terrorists are not state actors.2. Terrorists tend to fight for ideological reasons. Even if, for the majority of the war, they suffer horrifically lopsided defeats
>>18538518You don't think the two are mutually exclusive now? Wars are fought purely for materialism, glory and fame is an afterthought.
What are you even on about? All political actors have practical concerns, but we are living in by far the most ideological period in human history. It started with the Reformation and really kicked into full gear with the French Revolution; it's just people killing each other over ideas all the time now, and mostly very stupid ones.
>>18538521But one could argue all of the terrorist wars had ulterior motives, including disrupting the balance of power in the Middle East which could be a threat to western interests. We must remember that many of the terrorist insurgencies in places like Iraq and Syria were a direct consequence of American regime change wars, and Syria itself became a regime change war, ironically won by a group once decreed to be terrorists.
>>18538528>in by far the most ideological period in human history.I don't think we are. I think the Cold War was proof enough itself that idealism is dead. The same rivalries and spheres of power rivalries that infected the capitalist west soon revealed itself in the communist east which was exploited by the west to bring down the USSR. The two states had different economic and political structures, but deep down their reasonings for fighting across the world stemmed from power interests and not the lofty ideals of western democracy versus soviet socialism.
>>18538526No, human nature remains the same. Materialism is just a mean to an end, you need resources to build an army. And I am pretty sure if you actually look at most modern wars, they are an overwhelming net negative for the finances of the states that are involved.
>>18538497Civil wars are ideological.
>>18538497I'm cynical about ideology, but a lot of people emphasize geopolitics and competition over resources, while I still think internal political "contradictions" (not to sound too commie about it but yeah) are a more important driver of wars as governments externalize their problems. Like trying to compensate for flagging economic growth via military spending + attempting to foster domestic unity. The Russian economy for example never really recovered from the 2007/2008 global financial crisis (or only in some areas, like construction and consumer retail, Amazon-type stuff), but annexing Crimea gave the Kremlin a major boost domestically. Basically if the idea that Russia catching up to the West is no longer realistic (like it was in the 2000s when there was rapid growth), then they restructure the ideology to be like "we never wanted to catch up to the West!" (because the West is fake and gay and going in the wrong direction), and also you can fuck up the people nearby who are trying to be their allies (Ukraine).Don't think the Iran war is inseperable from what the Trump administration believes its doing domestically. They're very well aware that the world's impression of the U.S. is that it's an empire in decline, which has domestic political implications, and so they want create this image of America being strong and unified. Trump wants a "win" because we need a win to have a glorious Victory Arch which will be this symbol we all worship. Trump does know how to pull back because he realizes that going too far might blow up this aura he's trying to create, because it's all about aura and vibes with these fucking people. He can still miscalculate and screw it up though.
Or maybe another way of putting it, is that societies compete with each other. The ones which are better able to develop the "forces of production" will out-compete the ones which do not, and the losers risk being conquered / subordinated / or forced to play second-fiddle to the more productive and stronger ones. However, societies don't willingly allow this to happen to themselves, so they try to strike a balance internationally, or enter into conflict, or alternatively they try to reform or overthrow their own domestic institutions which are standing in the way of developing their economy. You probably don't get the Chinese revolution happening the way it did without the Qing Empire collapsing while getting carved up by foreigners like pumpkin pie, and really accelerated by the Japanese invasion in the 1930s.
The American Civil War
>>18538875And the world wars
??? All wars are about state power and influence, material and economic reasons. Ideology and morality are simply propaganda used to justify it to the plebs, who are usually too disinterested in matters of state to care if there is no reason to emotionally invest in the conflict. The American Civil War is a perfect example. The realpolitik is that the South feared political irrelevance with the ascendancy of Lincoln, a president from a new, anti-slavery political party, elected with exclusively abolitionist votes. Shortly after he was sworn in , the first states seceded from the Union. The war was plainly about trying to preserve the Union by any means necessary. However, it was extremely unpopular in the North, and there were riots when Lincoln instituted a draft. So he created a propaganda campaign to shift the focus to slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation was a devious bit of propaganda. It didn't actually end slavery, it just stated that all slaves in the CONFEDERACY were to be set free. So Northern soldiers didn't have to worry about the abolition issue back home, and could feel like liberators freeing southern slaves, which would cause chaos for the Confederacy, which now had to worry about slave revolts since the slaves there now had a real reason to aid the Union in taking down their masters. But all that wasn't how the common man thought about it, it was about being a hero and a liberator.
