COVID-19 is the climax to this 4T

[freivolk]

(04-08-2020, 02:51 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(04-08-2020, 08:57 AM)freivolk Wrote: Partly for that, mostly because the time, where you could win a war by mobilising milions of cheap rifle-men, are gone.  Modern armies are capiital-intensive, even rag-tag guerilla groups (Syriia!) seems to have an upper limit. Second, the potential gains are mostly not worth the risks and costs (Example Iraq or Eastern Ukraine). And third, over a ccertain level, there iis stiil a chance, that nukes will fly.

War was capital intensive in the late medieval cycle, though, and the Wars of the Roses still occurred.  I grant it would include fewer people.  I don't know if it would result in fewer casualties.

Potential gains not being worth the costs, maybe, though Russia didn't see that as a problem for seizing Crimea.  There's definitely a chance that nukes will fly, and that would affect the approach to war.  I'm not sure if it would prevent it.  John Xenakis considers nuclear war a certainty.

I think it might be great if the necessary destruction could happen without war, but I'd like to get a bech could tter handle on the mechanism.

The medival example don´t really fit. I would it more compare it to the mass armies o the Roman Republic,which could lose 80000 man in a battle and shrug it off, and the high-tech legions of Augustus, which in the end were to valubale to get wasted in germanic swamps.
I simply see no foreign battlefields, were the USA would sacrifice hundered thousands of lives
On the other side, 2 of Americas 3 crisis wars were civil wars.