[Previous] | Home | [Next]
Take two abstract countries, and take it for granted each wants to destroy and dominate the other. They're at war. Ignore concerns like other pro-peace countries putting pressure for a truce. Now, for the goal of winning the war, why might these two countries take a truce? Well, they must think a temporary reprieve will help them more than their enemy. But if they both think that, one of them is wrong, and should have declined the truce and continued the war. And thus, with sufficiently good intelligence info, there would never be any truces.

Optionally, some people might think a truce is good for the world, because it will be better for the world if both countries have some time to prosper and create without constantly destroying stuff. But in any truce for that reason, one country is sacrificing its own war aims, and hurting its chance of winning, for the good of the world. And if that country thinks its winning the war is very important to the fate of the world, because its values are good, and the rival countries values are bad, then this kind of truce is incoherent. Sure, you get to prosper, but so too does the enemy grow stronger.

And countries are analogous to rival worldviews. Oh! And this only applies in the limit of taking your own side seriously.

Another point is, if it's say capitalists and commies, truces help capitalists, cause they have a better economy and stuff -- in peace they prosper a lot, and commies don't. Hence consistent commies should not accept peace. Nor should consistent Islamofacists. They'll only accept peace if they're confused enough to think they're the ones with the dynamic, productive society, and the capitalists are the ones on the verge of collapse, or something like that.

Elliot Temple on August 27, 2003

Messages

Want to discuss this? Join my forum.

(Due to multi-year, sustained harassment from David Deutsch and his fans, commenting here requires an account. Accounts are not publicly available. Discussion info.)