I am Joe Blog’s Left Ventricle

War is universally a bad thing. On this, all agree.

However, once shooting has begun, there’s usually two main ways a war can go. The bad guys can win, or the good guys can win. Obviously, you can’t just let the bad guys win, they’ll fuck everything up.

But how do you tell the good guys from the bad? Why is it so difficult lately, and why was it so easy back in say, world war II?

Well, the real answer is “It was never easy. The ethics of war haven’t changed much in thousands of years - but in the last century public perception of war has been revolutionised.”

World War One, in one paragraph

A bosnian Serb shot and killed an Austrian/Hungarian prince and princess in Sarajevo. Austria-Hungary demanded Serbia act against the [terrorist organisation] that the assassin was a member of. Serbia did not comply, and Austria-Hungary declared war. Russia moved to support their allies the Serbs. Germany, allied to Austria-Hungary, saw this one coming and invaded France, then allied to Russia, in an attempt to get ahead of the other side. England, then allied to France, was obligated to move in and help. Germany invaded france via Belgium, bringing them briefly into the war. The war fell into a deadlock of trench warfare, with mass produced machine guns and artillery giving such a heavy advantage to entrenched defense that neither side could gain any advantage by attacking. Germany attempted to bleed the then-superpower British Empire dry by spreading conflict to all corners of the british empire - and therefore the globe, making this a truly World war. Eventually, the combination of attrition, new technology (notably tanks and combined air-ground assault methods), and the arrival of more than a million US troops on the western front caused Germany and Austria-Hungary to collapse and surrender.

Hang on a minute, I hear you say… weren’t Germany the bad guys in that war? Is James making it out like they were an innocent bystander obligated by alliance treaty to join in the “fun”?

Lesson one in the ethics of war: There are no innocent bystanders who are holding guns. If you’re shooting people, you’re guilty.

World War Two, in one paragraph

Germany was decimated by WWI and the treaty which followed, which caused it financial ruin, especially when combined with the great depression of the 1930’s. In germany between the wars, there rose to power a very strong and authoritarian figure who obtained and held popular support by taking a hard line against the German people’s various apparent (economic) oppressors - including restrictive foreign treaties, a lack of available land in Germany and a wealthy ethnic group who seemed relatively immune to the economic depression. A heavy militarisation of Germany followed, and a series of bullying land-grabs from neighbours, which culminated in the eventual blatant invasion of Poland. Meanwhile, the Japanese emperor, egged on by his generals, decided to rule all of Asia and started by invading China. After Germany’s early successes, Italy leaped on the bandwagon and screwed up a lot in Africa, spreading the war there. Japan destroyed most of the US pacific fleet in a surprise attack on Perl Harbour, and the US joined the war. Hitler then screwed up twice - once by declaring war on the USA because they were bothering his dubious allies the Japanese, and a second time by invading Russia, which is never a good idea. A general shit-blizzard followed, but the end result was mostly the US crushing Japan in the pacific and Germany on the western front, while Russia smashed Germany flat on the eastern front. War ended in Europe with the fall of Berlin to the Russians, while the pacific dragged on until the US bombed every major Japanese city flat and deployed two tiny nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hang on a minute I hear you say… is James a an anti-semitic neo-Nazi who blames economic opression of Germany for WWII?

Lesson two of the ethics of war: Don’t oppress people and expect them to accept it. They wont.

Lesson three of the ethics of war: Don’t leave evil dictators in power and expect everything to be okay.

What happened to lesson one though? If Germany and Japan are so obviously guilty, weren’t the Allies simply the Good Guys?

Well, yes and no. You see, war is a messy, messy motherfucker. While Germany probably murdered around 15-20 million civilians, they also lost around 2 million civilians to bombing and russian ground forces. Japan inflicted around 7 million civilian casualties in china lone, but American bombing of their cities, including the only use of nuclear weapons in anger in history killed perhaps 600,000 civilians. World war two stained pretty well everyone’s hands black with dried blood and put both sides deep into ethical grey, if not black areas.

The Cold War, in one paragraph

At the end of the world war II, the USA and every other allied country bar one liberated the nations their armies were standing upon, even including West Germany and Japan. The exception was Russia, which, terrifyingly, kept every nation its armies were in physical control of, including East Germany and virtually all of Eastern Europe. This indicated a clear ideological division in the allies which spread into a series of global political machinations known as the Cold War. Both sides avoided direct conflict with the other due to mutually assured nuclear destruction, but both manipulated other nations to their viewpoint using politics, economics, finance, bribery, assassination, terrorism, espionage, sex drugs and rock’n'roll. The non-nuclear cold war continued as an unabated conventional warfare arms race, with the USSR maintaining a much larger and more powerful standing army, and the USA spending consistently more resources on research from about the 60’s onwards, while maintaining a huge margin of superiority (in quality and number both) of nuclear weapons. In the late 1980’s, the USSR was economically bankrupt due mostly to its overlarge military and largely collapsed. with Russia ceding control of Eastern Europe and withdrawing from most international activity, while simultaneously switching to a system of capitalism and demoracy rather than socialism and totalitarianism. The cold war continues to this day, but its importance on both the global political scene and the actions of the US is slipping.

Lesson four of the ethics of war: The enemy of my enemy might still be my enemy.

What does all of this historical war and politics bullshit have to do with the US, and today?

Back to history for a moment. Let’s say…
It’s word war one, only the US never joins in for some reason. Maybe they just like peace (there was a strong anti-war and anti-intervention movement in the US at the time.) WWI would continue for longer, and the costs to Europe would be far higher. Its possible that without US intervention, Germany may have continued to hold Belgium and parts of France right up until the start of WWII, giving the allies an early handicap.

Or it’s world war two, only the US never joins in. Maybe Japan never attacks perl harbour, and within the US the anti-war movement holds sway over public opinion. Well, to start with, this blog, written in 2007 would now be written in Japanese, and would probably praise the Emperor of Greater Japan and the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Either Germany & Italy or Russia would still be in posession of all of mainland Europe and possibly the middle east and north Africa. It’s even likely that eventually Britain would have fallen to whichever power held control over Europe.

Or the cold war happened but the US sat silent. Well again the USSR would have invaded and conquered europe, and probably proceeded to do the same with the rest of the world, except maybe China. No democracy or capitalist nation would be safe. Except the US.

Or the cold war happened and the US didn’t do as much. Well, maybe the US held off the USSR from taking down europe by threatening nuclear war in the event of an invasion. But then, they would have to prevent the USSR from taking out the middle east too - the democratic and capitalist world depends on that oil! Well, maybe just asia and africa would have fallen under the totalitarian hammer. The fact is, almost all of the world’s disadvantaged nations today are nations which pursued a policy of economic isolationism in the past - be it due to reasons of totalitarianism, socialism or even isolationist communism. There would simply be more suffering in the world on the day the USSR collapsed. Or maybe the USSR would have never collapsed, and the overwhelming majority of the world’s population would be living in poverty with no freedoms and no change on the horison.

Well, that’s all in the past. They can stop interfering now can’t they?

Well, let’s examine that for moment. Let’s say the next US president announces a firm and strict policy of “no further international military intervention.” We can expect the following steps to occur:

1. China invades taiwan. Probably not the same day. Give it a week - maybe a month!

2. War breaks out between israel and all of its neighbours, backed by Iran. It’s going to be vicious and close-fought, but with the backing of Iran and no further aid from the US, you can expect Israel to be wiped of the map within the year. Israel probably deploys its secret nuclear weapons, but this wont stop the millions of armed fundamentalists from sweeping over their borders. Zionism becomes an anti-islamic terrorist movement.

3. Meanwhile, Iran invades Iraq. Iraq, fragmented and alone, falling apart with the withdrawal of all foreign troops, falls almost immediately under Iranian control.

4. North Korea invades South Korea. After a pretty one-sided and short war, Korea becomes a united communist, totalitarian hellhole. There is now a _lot_ you can’t do in a Daewoo.

5. Europe watches all of this. A great deal of discsussion between european powers occurs about what should be done.

6. Dictators and totalitarian governments worldwide begin sizing up their neighbours. Welcome to the new world order. Watch your back - the weak will be short lived.

If any of the above is even remotely surprising to you, you have some reading to do. The above is my opinion on what would happen based on what I know. What do you know? Is your predictive model different? How and why? What - you don’t have a prediction? Then why do you want the US to stop interfering in global affairs?

Lesson five of the ethics of war: Most of the time, if the good guys stay at home and do nothing, the situation will only get worse.

In the modern age, the average citizen of the average democracy is given the opportunity to influence their government’s decisions. With this opportunity, with this privelege comes the logical need, and some might say the ethical obligation to educate ourselves about what is really going on, and the actual ramifications of acting in one way or the other - or indeed of not acting at all.

[Editor's note. No, James does not condone anti-semitism, or indeed any avoidable non-consenting violence between human beings. If you somehow managed to read that into this blog post, you should read it again with your own prejudices disabled. To find out how to disable your prejudices, open Microsoft Windows Help Assistant, and click on the Insecurity tab]