Indeed, our Earth’s Westphalian concept of sovereign states is the main thing propping up Somalia and North Korea. There was a time when any state that failed that badly would be casually conquered by a more successful neighbor.
I have to disagree here. First of all, North Korea has the world’s third largest army. Any state that tried to conquer it would have its hands full. Additionally, counterinsurgency warfare has become damn hard these days—consider the Soviet failure in Afghanistan during the 1980s. As Stalin observed, it takes a generation and a half to pacify a country and convert it to your ideology by force.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, conquering poorly defended land isn’t profitable any more; some time around World War I, conquest became far more trouble than it’s worth. Nobody wants Somalia, even if the rest of the world would be okay with someone marching an army into it. It’s just not worth anything. The British Empire, a more modern example of conquest for profit, never occupied Afghanistan. It would have cost far more to subdue the natives than it would ever produce in revenue. Today, far more wealth is created by Internet startups than could be stolen by a modern-day Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan.
To put the worthlessness of Somalia into perspective, here’s some numbers:
The GNP of Somalia is $2 billion.
The market capitalization of Amazon.com is $32 billion. Its revenue in 2008 was $19.1 billion, and its net income was $0.64 billion.
Bernie Madoff convinced people to invest at least $10 billion in a completely fraudulent stock fund, and reported $50 billion in bogus returns.
To put the worthlessness of Somalia into perspective, here’s some numbers:
The GNP of Somalia is $2 billion.
This is almost assuredly due to the lack of a sound institutional structure which is needed for a market economy to develop. An invading country may be able to bring this structure to Somalia.
One thing Somalia has going for it: ports. An inland neighbor would love to have ports, I’m sure.
This is almost assuredly due to the lack of a sound institutional structure which is needed for a market economy to develop. An invading country may be able to bring this structure to Somalia.
It’s worth noting that before Ethiopia invaded with tacit US permission*, Somalia was being incrementally conquered and pieced back together by the Islamic Courts Union. The impression of them I got early on, before the US media began to consider them dangerous for being Islamic and fell in line behind the Ethiopian invasion, is that they did a pretty good job of governing—and certainly a better job than either the warlords or the government the Ethiopian installed.
This is almost assuredly due to the lack of a sound institutional structure which is needed for a market economy to develop. An invading country may be able to bring this structure to Somalia.
Said institutional structure would probably have to involve very few Somalis; broken governments and broken cultures tend to go hand in hand. The current attempt to introduce “rule of law” in Afghanistan is failing miserably in the face of widespread corruption. For example, local judges frequently rule in favor of whomever provides the largest bribe.
One would probably have to use Stalin-esque levels of oppression in order to successfully install such institutions in a lawless land. In the distant past, most rulers had no problems with ordering a few good massacres to keep the local population in line; it’s much harder to get away with that today, although the leadership of countries like Syria and Sudan don’t seem to be suffering very much.
One would probably have to use Stalin-esque levels of oppression in order to successfully install such institutions in a lawless land. In the distant past, most rulers had no problems with ordering a few good massacres to keep the local population in line; it’s much harder to get away with that today, although the leadership of countries like Syria and Sudan don’t seem to be suffering very much
If the invading country can somehow manage to stay out of the public eye, they could oppress as much as they want. However, this is probably more random than anything, though if the invaders are “communist liberators” it might help—though their economic policies probably wouldn’t be any good. All things considered, you’re right if the conversion is by force.
Ideally, the conversion wouldn’t be by force in the strong sense of the word—military police to come in and enforce some law and order, but otherwise live and let live. For this to work, the invaded country must not have any major cultural or ideological conflicts with their invaders, along with some other conditions that we don’t know about. These conditions probably aren’t in place for any given invader, but it remains a possibility.
Yes, the problem of developing good institutions is vexing. I doubt anyone knows much about how to do it.
Ports certainly are valuable. Ethiopia doesn’t want to depend on the Eritrean ports. But it’s a lot cheaper to pay taxes for Djibouti to maintain order in its port than for Ethiopia to create order in a Somali port. And to create order on the roads. Also, it’s probably expensive to cross the Ogaden plateau. Which brings us to the Somali rebellion in Ogaden, which would surely escalate if Ethiopia annexed Somalia. Maybe if Ogaden gained independence, it could annex Somalia.
But mainly, it’s Ethiopia’s failure to claim the ports that makes me doubt their worth. I dispute Eliezer’s claim that anyone would care. But some sense of propriety, perhaps Westphalian, prevents other countries from recognizing Somaliland.
I’ve been doing a great deal of reading about Korea lately, and I’ve come to almost the opposite conclusion—that North Korea is a house of cards which resembles a cross between Iraq & East Germany.
It has a large army? Rations for it have been constantly cut and it is growing disaffected; as well, Iraq shows that a large army is just a target. It has 4 divisions of special ops? That practically refutes itself. It has a large airforce? But the recent defecting jet pilot (a remarkable occurrence itself, considering that pilots are supposed to be some of the most loyal and well-treated soldiers) apparently died because his plane had too little fuel due to systemic rationing & shortages.
Insurgency? By whom? Defector surveys show that while nostalgia for Il-Sung is still very strong (similar to Russian nostalgia for Stalin or Chinese for Mao), Jong-Il is disliked thanks to the ’90s famine, and his son seems to be even less popular. Further, did East Germany start endless insurgencies after unification? The wealth difference between South and North Korea seems to be even greater than between West and East Germany.
And so on. I’m starting to be persuaded that the only reason North Korea still exists is because South Korea failed to man up and relocate Seoul’s contents to Busan or somewhere much further south, and the US—which has effective sovereignty over the entire peninsula even excluding the use of nukes—doesn’t want to risk Seoul’s loss.
Yeah, it’s a shitty army, but, as you said, it can still fire artillery shells. :(
As for your example of East Germany, the unification of Germany was voluntary. I don’t think the average North Korean would be too happy to be conquered by, say, Japan. (And I don’t think the people in East Germany would have been happy to have found themselves becoming part of France.) And insurgents don’t have to be supporters of the previous regime; they could simply be out for themselves, or follow some other cause opposed to that of the occupying forces.
Mostly, though, invading North Korea just isn’t in anyone’s interest. There simply isn’t enough wealth to steal to make it worth the billions of dollars it would cost to send an army to invade and occupy it.
This is a great point. Conquering makes sense when natural resources are the main source of wealth in the world (think Spain and the gold & silver in the New World). It does not make sense when ideas are the main source of wealth, as they are now. Occasionally there are resources (oil) which are still worth a war, but much less often.
It’s not obvious that colonialism was ever profitable other than as means of grabbing natural resources (especially arable land) in conquered countries.
Colonialism was profitable to the colonists if they could get someone else to pay for the soldiers. But if the army was squeamish, it would have been such a drain on the mother country, it wouldn’t have stood for it.
“Convert to your ideology” is the key here, I think… It’s damn hard to wipe out a religion, especially those, such as some variants of Christianity and Islam, that push “your religion is the only thing that matters” up to 11. If all you care about is taking their money, I suppose you could emulate what the Mongols did in Russia and let the locals mostly govern themselves as long as they pay you your tribute.
it takes a generation and a half to pacify a country and convert it to your ideology by force.
then how did colonialism work?
While I would dispute that it necessarily takes a generation and a half to pacify all countries, it has become easier to organize and carry out insurrection in this technological era, with mobile phones and high explosives.
It would have cost far more to subdue the natives than it would ever produce in revenue.
Maybe on the successful Earths, mass genocide is considered morally acceptable in the case that the country involved is an obvious failure, such as north Korea. Let us assume here that the the people in such a “pro genocide” earth still value human lives as we do, but they act in accordance with the view that failed states present such a bad risk to the rest of the world that in certain cases genocide is morally acceptable or even required. Disclaimer: the author of this comment does not necessarily condone such action.
Or alternatively, perhaps the successful Earths have a global government that considers the cost of conquering and subduing failed states is worth the long term reduction in existential risk.
Maybe on the successful Earths, mass genocide is acceptable in the case that the country involved is an obvious failure, such as north Korea.
This is a confusion of terms: “acceptable” is a cost-benefit calculation, and the cost of genocide is determined by human nature, by how much we value lives, independent among the Earths in this construction. If a certain variant of Earth considers genocide acceptable, it points to an epic failure of rationality (possibly due to something along the lines of scope insensitivity), and so can’t be “successful”.
If a certain variant of Earth considers genocide acceptable, it points to an epic failure of rationality
consider the cost in terms of lives lost versus the benefit in terms of reduced existential risk. Suppose, for example, that North Korea demonstrated the ability and intent to develop and deploy a genetically engineered supervirus in order to kill the entire population of the world; in this case I would consider it morally acceptable to decimate the population of that country in order to deal with the problem, if that really was the only option.
Whether genocide of unsubduable failed states is morally acceptable depends, I think, on just how bad a risk they are to the rest of the world.
there may well be. My suggestion of a world government that really bites the bullet and goes in and sorts out failed states the long, hard way is such an option.
Other third options—or n’th options are probably available. But it should be noted that there are a lot of failed states in the world, and the cases of proven success fall into the categories I have given, as far as I can see. America and australia were examples of genocide working very well. Japan and germany were examples of invasion followed by high-cost, long term investment working.
Africa is a living testament that the “do nothing” approach is not a good one.
Why are you jumping to genocide instead of just killing the people making the evil virus? What do the people have to do with the failed state?
(Edit) Oh, I hadn’t travelled far enough up the tree to see CronoDAS’s post. Still, a well targeted mass-destruction seems simpler than killing everyone.
17 points? That is how much karma CronoDAS has earned from this comment (as of this writing). Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine comment, but 17 points? Maybe I should be more concerned about good comments with zero points, or stupid comments with two points, but this is one more observation leading me to question karma. If the community deems my comment a distraction, I apologize.
Sorry to pick on you CronoDAS, I’ll go look through your history and vote up some of your under-valued comments.
Or maybe I’m wrong to think 17 points inappropriate, maybe I should think more on why the community judged it so highly. And/or maybe lots more comments should earn this much karma.
Added: LW is inevitably changing. One can see it in the quantity and character of top level posts, and in how posts and comments earn karma. I suggest that someone make a top level post to discuss it.
I think the high rating of the comment is a reflection of the problem that Eliezer’s post was sub-par (especially taking into account that he’s, you know, brilliant). Voting up a (partial) rebuttal, even if it isn’t great on its own terms, is a reasonably polite way to express this.
(But I’m very new here—this is my fourth comment—so maybe I have no idea what the dynamic is.)
Yeah, the idea that a certain concept of states is what explains North Korea and Somalia is wrong. Seconding the point on North Korea: it can defend itself quite well, and it’s not just the size of the army.
Also, compare post-Westphalian but pre-WW2 with post-WW2 to see a difference in terms of conquering other countries and redrawing borders. The difference: a deal between the US and USSR, two countries with enough power to enforce a certain kind of stability in general, and with the collapse of Stalinism leading to an uptick in the exceptions (esp. Kosovo and Russia-Georgia stuff).
There are two other reasons why it’s harder to conquer countries now than then.
people are more squeamish now; using Nazi levels of brutality in putting down rebellions would attract consideral moral opprobrium
wealth now comes from highly skilled information workers, who must be at least partly free if they are to be productive; whereas in the past wealth came from farmland, raw materials, and unskilled labourers. The level of repression necessary to hold a territory (and people) against its will is likely to make the acquired terroritory unproductive.
I have to disagree here. First of all, North Korea has the world’s third largest army. Any state that tried to conquer it would have its hands full. Additionally, counterinsurgency warfare has become damn hard these days—consider the Soviet failure in Afghanistan during the 1980s. As Stalin observed, it takes a generation and a half to pacify a country and convert it to your ideology by force.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, conquering poorly defended land isn’t profitable any more; some time around World War I, conquest became far more trouble than it’s worth. Nobody wants Somalia, even if the rest of the world would be okay with someone marching an army into it. It’s just not worth anything. The British Empire, a more modern example of conquest for profit, never occupied Afghanistan. It would have cost far more to subdue the natives than it would ever produce in revenue. Today, far more wealth is created by Internet startups than could be stolen by a modern-day Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan.
To put the worthlessness of Somalia into perspective, here’s some numbers:
The GNP of Somalia is $2 billion.
The market capitalization of Amazon.com is $32 billion. Its revenue in 2008 was $19.1 billion, and its net income was $0.64 billion.
Bernie Madoff convinced people to invest at least $10 billion in a completely fraudulent stock fund, and reported $50 billion in bogus returns.
This is almost assuredly due to the lack of a sound institutional structure which is needed for a market economy to develop. An invading country may be able to bring this structure to Somalia.
One thing Somalia has going for it: ports. An inland neighbor would love to have ports, I’m sure.
It’s worth noting that before Ethiopia invaded with tacit US permission*, Somalia was being incrementally conquered and pieced back together by the Islamic Courts Union. The impression of them I got early on, before the US media began to consider them dangerous for being Islamic and fell in line behind the Ethiopian invasion, is that they did a pretty good job of governing—and certainly a better job than either the warlords or the government the Ethiopian installed.
Arguably a major fuckup by both parties
Said institutional structure would probably have to involve very few Somalis; broken governments and broken cultures tend to go hand in hand. The current attempt to introduce “rule of law” in Afghanistan is failing miserably in the face of widespread corruption. For example, local judges frequently rule in favor of whomever provides the largest bribe.
One would probably have to use Stalin-esque levels of oppression in order to successfully install such institutions in a lawless land. In the distant past, most rulers had no problems with ordering a few good massacres to keep the local population in line; it’s much harder to get away with that today, although the leadership of countries like Syria and Sudan don’t seem to be suffering very much.
If the invading country can somehow manage to stay out of the public eye, they could oppress as much as they want. However, this is probably more random than anything, though if the invaders are “communist liberators” it might help—though their economic policies probably wouldn’t be any good. All things considered, you’re right if the conversion is by force.
Ideally, the conversion wouldn’t be by force in the strong sense of the word—military police to come in and enforce some law and order, but otherwise live and let live. For this to work, the invaded country must not have any major cultural or ideological conflicts with their invaders, along with some other conditions that we don’t know about. These conditions probably aren’t in place for any given invader, but it remains a possibility.
Yes, the problem of developing good institutions is vexing. I doubt anyone knows much about how to do it.
Ports certainly are valuable. Ethiopia doesn’t want to depend on the Eritrean ports. But it’s a lot cheaper to pay taxes for Djibouti to maintain order in its port than for Ethiopia to create order in a Somali port. And to create order on the roads. Also, it’s probably expensive to cross the Ogaden plateau. Which brings us to the Somali rebellion in Ogaden, which would surely escalate if Ethiopia annexed Somalia. Maybe if Ogaden gained independence, it could annex Somalia.
But mainly, it’s Ethiopia’s failure to claim the ports that makes me doubt their worth. I dispute Eliezer’s claim that anyone would care. But some sense of propriety, perhaps Westphalian, prevents other countries from recognizing Somaliland.
I’ve been doing a great deal of reading about Korea lately, and I’ve come to almost the opposite conclusion—that North Korea is a house of cards which resembles a cross between Iraq & East Germany.
It has a large army? Rations for it have been constantly cut and it is growing disaffected; as well, Iraq shows that a large army is just a target. It has 4 divisions of special ops? That practically refutes itself. It has a large airforce? But the recent defecting jet pilot (a remarkable occurrence itself, considering that pilots are supposed to be some of the most loyal and well-treated soldiers) apparently died because his plane had too little fuel due to systemic rationing & shortages.
Insurgency? By whom? Defector surveys show that while nostalgia for Il-Sung is still very strong (similar to Russian nostalgia for Stalin or Chinese for Mao), Jong-Il is disliked thanks to the ’90s famine, and his son seems to be even less popular. Further, did East Germany start endless insurgencies after unification? The wealth difference between South and North Korea seems to be even greater than between West and East Germany.
And so on. I’m starting to be persuaded that the only reason North Korea still exists is because South Korea failed to man up and relocate Seoul’s contents to Busan or somewhere much further south, and the US—which has effective sovereignty over the entire peninsula even excluding the use of nukes—doesn’t want to risk Seoul’s loss.
Yeah, it’s a shitty army, but, as you said, it can still fire artillery shells. :(
As for your example of East Germany, the unification of Germany was voluntary. I don’t think the average North Korean would be too happy to be conquered by, say, Japan. (And I don’t think the people in East Germany would have been happy to have found themselves becoming part of France.) And insurgents don’t have to be supporters of the previous regime; they could simply be out for themselves, or follow some other cause opposed to that of the occupying forces.
Mostly, though, invading North Korea just isn’t in anyone’s interest. There simply isn’t enough wealth to steal to make it worth the billions of dollars it would cost to send an army to invade and occupy it.
This is a great point. Conquering makes sense when natural resources are the main source of wealth in the world (think Spain and the gold & silver in the New World). It does not make sense when ideas are the main source of wealth, as they are now. Occasionally there are resources (oil) which are still worth a war, but much less often.
it takes a generation and a half to pacify a country and convert it to your ideology by force.
then how did colonialism work? it worked because the new war isn’t the same as the old war. see: war in the era of squeamishness by the war nerd.
It’s not obvious that colonialism was ever profitable other than as means of grabbing natural resources (especially arable land) in conquered countries.
Colonialism was profitable to the colonists if they could get someone else to pay for the soldiers. But if the army was squeamish, it would have been such a drain on the mother country, it wouldn’t have stood for it.
“Convert to your ideology” is the key here, I think… It’s damn hard to wipe out a religion, especially those, such as some variants of Christianity and Islam, that push “your religion is the only thing that matters” up to 11. If all you care about is taking their money, I suppose you could emulate what the Mongols did in Russia and let the locals mostly govern themselves as long as they pay you your tribute.
While I would dispute that it necessarily takes a generation and a half to pacify all countries, it has become easier to organize and carry out insurrection in this technological era, with mobile phones and high explosives.
Maybe on the successful Earths, mass genocide is considered morally acceptable in the case that the country involved is an obvious failure, such as north Korea. Let us assume here that the the people in such a “pro genocide” earth still value human lives as we do, but they act in accordance with the view that failed states present such a bad risk to the rest of the world that in certain cases genocide is morally acceptable or even required. Disclaimer: the author of this comment does not necessarily condone such action.
Or alternatively, perhaps the successful Earths have a global government that considers the cost of conquering and subduing failed states is worth the long term reduction in existential risk.
This is a confusion of terms: “acceptable” is a cost-benefit calculation, and the cost of genocide is determined by human nature, by how much we value lives, independent among the Earths in this construction. If a certain variant of Earth considers genocide acceptable, it points to an epic failure of rationality (possibly due to something along the lines of scope insensitivity), and so can’t be “successful”.
consider the cost in terms of lives lost versus the benefit in terms of reduced existential risk. Suppose, for example, that North Korea demonstrated the ability and intent to develop and deploy a genetically engineered supervirus in order to kill the entire population of the world; in this case I would consider it morally acceptable to decimate the population of that country in order to deal with the problem, if that really was the only option.
Whether genocide of unsubduable failed states is morally acceptable depends, I think, on just how bad a risk they are to the rest of the world.
I bet there is a third option, especially if you plan for disaster in advance.
there may well be. My suggestion of a world government that really bites the bullet and goes in and sorts out failed states the long, hard way is such an option.
Other third options—or n’th options are probably available. But it should be noted that there are a lot of failed states in the world, and the cases of proven success fall into the categories I have given, as far as I can see. America and australia were examples of genocide working very well. Japan and germany were examples of invasion followed by high-cost, long term investment working.
Africa is a living testament that the “do nothing” approach is not a good one.
Why are you jumping to genocide instead of just killing the people making the evil virus? What do the people have to do with the failed state?
(Edit) Oh, I hadn’t travelled far enough up the tree to see CronoDAS’s post. Still, a well targeted mass-destruction seems simpler than killing everyone.
17 points? That is how much karma CronoDAS has earned from this comment (as of this writing). Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine comment, but 17 points? Maybe I should be more concerned about good comments with zero points, or stupid comments with two points, but this is one more observation leading me to question karma. If the community deems my comment a distraction, I apologize.
Sorry to pick on you CronoDAS, I’ll go look through your history and vote up some of your under-valued comments.
Or maybe I’m wrong to think 17 points inappropriate, maybe I should think more on why the community judged it so highly. And/or maybe lots more comments should earn this much karma.
Added: LW is inevitably changing. One can see it in the quantity and character of top level posts, and in how posts and comments earn karma. I suggest that someone make a top level post to discuss it.
I think the high rating of the comment is a reflection of the problem that Eliezer’s post was sub-par (especially taking into account that he’s, you know, brilliant). Voting up a (partial) rebuttal, even if it isn’t great on its own terms, is a reasonably polite way to express this.
(But I’m very new here—this is my fourth comment—so maybe I have no idea what the dynamic is.)
I’m surprised, too...
Yeah, the idea that a certain concept of states is what explains North Korea and Somalia is wrong. Seconding the point on North Korea: it can defend itself quite well, and it’s not just the size of the army. Also, compare post-Westphalian but pre-WW2 with post-WW2 to see a difference in terms of conquering other countries and redrawing borders. The difference: a deal between the US and USSR, two countries with enough power to enforce a certain kind of stability in general, and with the collapse of Stalinism leading to an uptick in the exceptions (esp. Kosovo and Russia-Georgia stuff).
There are two other reasons why it’s harder to conquer countries now than then.
people are more squeamish now; using Nazi levels of brutality in putting down rebellions would attract consideral moral opprobrium
wealth now comes from highly skilled information workers, who must be at least partly free if they are to be productive; whereas in the past wealth came from farmland, raw materials, and unskilled labourers. The level of repression necessary to hold a territory (and people) against its will is likely to make the acquired terroritory unproductive.
People know now. People are watching in real time (or almost), and so it’s more difficult to rationalize that no one will ever find out.