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One reason is the change in the nature of the economy. In the past, if you defeated your enemy on the battlefield, you could easily cash in by looting enemy cities, selling enemy civilians in the slave markets and occupying valuable wheat fields and gold mines. Yet in the twenty-first century, only puny profits could be made that way. Today, the main economic assets consist of technical and institutional knowledge — and you cannot conquer knowledge through war. An organization such as ISIS may flourish by looting cities and oil wells in the Middle East — in 2014, ISIS seized more than $500 million from Iraqi banks and in 2015 made an additional $500 million from selling oil. But China and the U.S. are unlikely to start a war for a paltry billion. As for spending trillions of dollars on a war against the U.S., how could China repay these expenses and balance all the war damages and lost trade opportunities? Would the victorious People’s Liberation Army loot the riches of Silicon Valley? True, corporations such as Apple, Facebook and Google are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but you cannot seize these fortunes by force. There are no silicon mines in Silicon Valley.
A successful war could theoretically still bring huge profits by enabling the victor to rearrange the global trade system in its favor, as the U.S. did after its victory over Hitler. However, present-day military technology would make it extremely difficult to repeat this feat. By definition, profits large enough to make a global war worthwhile for the victor will also make it worthwhile for the loser to resort to weapons of mass destruction. The atom bomb has turned “victory” in a World War into collective suicide. It is no coincidence that since Hiroshima superpowers never fought one another directly, and engaged only in what (for them) were low-stake conflicts in which none was tempted to use nuclear weapons to avert defeat. Indeed, even attacking a second-rate nuclear power such as Iran or North Korea is an extremely unattractive proposition.
Read more Why Russia, U.S. and Israel Probably Won't Start a World War | TIME
A successful war could theoretically still bring huge profits by enabling the victor to rearrange the global trade system in its favor, as the U.S. did after its victory over Hitler. However, present-day military technology would make it extremely difficult to repeat this feat. By definition, profits large enough to make a global war worthwhile for the victor will also make it worthwhile for the loser to resort to weapons of mass destruction. The atom bomb has turned “victory” in a World War into collective suicide. It is no coincidence that since Hiroshima superpowers never fought one another directly, and engaged only in what (for them) were low-stake conflicts in which none was tempted to use nuclear weapons to avert defeat. Indeed, even attacking a second-rate nuclear power such as Iran or North Korea is an extremely unattractive proposition.
Read more Why Russia, U.S. and Israel Probably Won't Start a World War | TIME
