Generational Dynamics World View

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-06-2020, 10:43 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Sounds like that quote is mistaking the Japanese army for the Japanese military, or perhaps you are omitting relevant context.  The army didn't understand naval warfare, and Yamamoto went along with it against his better judgement - the same way, say, the Russian foreign office under a less careful leader might misunderstand nuclear warfare, and the Strategic Rocket Forces might launch against their better judgement.  The bottom line is that nuclear war could still happen, even if you think it's irrational.

Starting a nuclear exchange would go well beyond a mistake to irrationality.  The Japanese command authority’s decision to make war on America could possibly be ‘only’ a mistake if you count their misjudgment of American character a mistake.

I don’t see the Japanese winning the war in the Pacific if America put their full weight into the conflict.  I have never read that they so anticipated.  Therefore, they had to have anticipated a negotiated peace.  That implies the misjudgment.

Agreed, the Japanese national command authority had to deal with both the army and the navy, who had vastly different ideas of how to fight the war.  This could have had something to do with the decision that was made.

(05-06-2020, 10:43 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: WWI was not a crisis war for many of the participants.  How is it relevant?  I don't know, you brought it up.

Someone said “David is wrong because Crisis wars are not driven by rationality in the first place.”  So I asked if World War I was rational, or if the rational individual alliances created an irrational possibility of conflict.  Technically, if you are a purist, World War I might not be held to be a crisis war, but it swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck.  I thought it a question worth asking.

If crisis wars are not driven by rationality, exactly what are they driven by?  Two better examples would be the US Revolution and US Civil War.  

Was the Continental Congress being irrational when they though they could win the war and so declared independence?  (It actually happened, you know.)  

Was the south being irrational when they though they could win the Civil War and thus remain independent?  (They might have been irrational in provoking the war instead of trying for a peaceful separation, but that wasn’t how things were done back then.  Keeping, bearing and actually using arms was glorified, which could be considered irrational by modern standards.)  

Both are at least classic crisis wars.