Game theoretic thinking about wars (wars are bad, but not fighting would provide incentive for invasions, what would be worse) is extremely common, but completely at odds with historical experience—history consists of “wars to end all wars”, “wars to punish aggressors” and alikes, not a single of them actually worked at stopping future wars. On the other hand just giving in, like many did to Romans, or Mongols, not too infrequently led to centuries of peace.
I haven’t seen a single shred of evidence for game theoretic interpretation of wars.
Much of modern political science of conflict consists of testing game-theoretic models against evidence… either of the APSR or AJPS has dozens of such articles over the last decade. I actually wrote a thesis on game-theoretic models of war, so I have references if you’d like them.
Either way, we don’t even have to conceptualize this as game theory (though explicit use of game theory may have prevented nuclear war—see Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict and his Nobel citation). Empires appear to frequently fight as a demonstration of their strength, if nothing else. Might that be why “giving in” to the Romans was followed by peace: other tribes could see that future wars would be met not by complacency but with force?
Giving in to the Romans or Mongols worked because they had no interest in harming your population. They would have wanted taxes and levies (of soldiers), and these are reasonable things to negotiate in exchange for peace and protection inside a big empire.
On the other hand, giving in to e.g. a Nazi invasion is very foolish if you have reason to think they’re going to kill one third of your men, take another third as slave labor, and starve the last third to death. (These were the actual German plans for Poland and Ukraine, which they didn’t have time to carry out due to the failure of their war on the Eastern front.)
Were the US, Canada, etc. wrong to enter the European fronts of WW2 for game theoretical reasons?
Hard evidence for it being? It’s quite easy to see that peaceful Nazi conquests like Austria and Denmark had it far better than those that fought back like Poland and Soviet Union.
What reason is there to think that the Nazis would have treated a country like Poland differently if it surrendered without resisting? They made clear their view of the rights of Poles (none) and the purpose of the invasion (replacement of the Polish population with German settlers) for a while before the invasion. At least some of the actual plans and directives for this had been drafted before the invasion as well. I could give you references if you like, but unfortunately I’ve loaned away one of my main sources, a book called The Wages of Destruction. I’ll have to see if I can find an ebook copy if you want specific refs.
In brief, a country that wants to offer better terms to enemies who surrender will publicize this fact and offer good terms of surrender. Germany didn’t do this, instead they publicized their leadership’s view on races and human rights and might makes right. Why not believe they meant what they said?
Exactly. For ‘racial’ reasons alone, Austrians and Danes would get an easier deal than Poles or Ukrainians.
Also, while I find your (taw) posting here and at your blog enlightening, I cannot help but feel you ignore that history teaches us only partial derivatives.
True, Denmark got a sweet deal, but your only comparison is ceteris paribus. We do not know the result if every single country subject to Nazi aggression had chosen to yield. The result may definitely have been less lenient for the Danes.
Finally, I believe it’s commonly accepted that Hitler intended to attack the Soviet Union no matter what, and that he did not expect UK and France to actually go to war over Poland.
The Soviet Union ended up worse off than it would have been under Nazi rule? Possible, but certainly not guaranteed from the evidence. I suspect Austria and Denmark’s similarity to Germany and the relative absence of the demographics that Hitler targeted may have played a role.
Perhaps nations fight back precisely because they have more to lose.
I haven’t seen a single shred of evidence for game theoretic interpretation of wars.
Don’t the Mongol tactics fit brilliantly into game theory?
Razing and killing utterly the first resisting city is a bad outcome for the Mongol conquerors, but ″pour encourager les autres″, it leads to subsequent substantial gains as the next city on the list decides to ‘defect’ and surrender immediately rather than ‘cooperate’ and get burned, even if the cities had collectively resisted to the last man the Mongols might’ve been stopped before they got too far.1
It maps pretty well onto the Prisoner’s Dilemma, I think—the Mongol’s announced commitments put each city into a situation where its optimal outcome (surrendering peacefully) leads to a global suboptimum (China under Mongol rule).
history consists of “wars to end all wars”, [but] not a single of them actually worked at stopping future wars. On the other hand just giving in, like many did to Romans, or Mongols [emphasis mine], not too infrequently led to centuries of peace.
Although the Mongols did take as captives individuals with certain artisanal skills (saddlemaking might be one such IIRC) such individuals only ever made up a tiny fraction of the population of a besieged city. The rest were usually killed (and the city burned) when the city stopped fighting at least when the Mongols were operating in Europe (I don’t know about Mongolian operations in Asia) because the Mongols had learned from experience that most European city-dwellers could not adapt to nomadic life. (European nomads might have fared better, but there might not have been any nomads in Europe aside from the invading Mongols).
So, giving in to the Mongols was often a very bad idea.
ADDED. I hereby retract part of what I wrote above, namely, “because the Mongols had learned from experience that most European city-dwellers could not adapt to nomadic life”. I no longer have an opinion on the considerations that led the Mongols sometimes to kill the inhabitants of a captured city. Moreover, I retract my final sentence, “So, giving in to the Mongols was often a very bad idea.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my history books make a specific point of mentioning that Mongol treatment of captured cities was incredibly brutal when the city had resisted, and that cities that immediately surrendered were treated very well; which is what taw is saying with ‘just giving in’.
gwern, I amended my coment (grandparent of this comment) so that now our comments no longer contradict each other. For those reading via the comment feed, here is gwern’s comment again:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my history books make a specific point of mentioning that Mongol treatment of captured cities was incredibly brutal when the city had resisted, and that cities that immediately surrendered were treated very well; which is what taw is saying with ‘just giving in’.
Giving into the Mongols worked out very well for the Russians, at least in the intermediate run. They were left alone to rule themselves for the most part as long as they paid their taxes. (In the long run, areas ruled by the Mongols ended up relatively backward when compared to the rest of Europe.)
Well, there is one interesting incident regarding Mongols and city dwellers and nomadism:
Chinggis Khan promulgated a legal code that was enforced by a special police force. Much of the code was aimed at putting an end to the divisions and quarrels that had so long occupied the Mongols. Grazing lands were systematically allotted to different tribes, and harsh penalties were established for rustling livestock or stealing horses. On the advice of his Chinese counselors, Chinggis Khan resisted the temptation to turn the cultivated lands of north China into a vast grazing area, which of course would have meant the destruction of tens of millions of peasants. Instead he ordered that the farmers be regularly taxed to support his courts and future military expeditions.
history consists of “wars to end all wars”, “wars to punish aggressors” and alikes, not a single of them actually worked at stopping future wars. On the other hand just giving in, like many did to Romans, or Mongols, not too infrequently led to centuries of peace.
How do “wars to stop the invaders looting your stuff, killing most of your menfolk, raping your women and eating your lifestock” fit in here?
You have a strange idea of ‘just’ if it doesn’t include a nation defending itself from attack (war) ever.
Oh please, everyone war in history was two nations both “just defending themselves” or having an otherwise good excuse and invader stories are as reliable as the ticking clock of torture stories.
What usually happens is that elites of one country want to get some concessions from elites of other country, and the common people in both suffer. Their vast suffering counts for nothing compared to the slightest one of the elites, of course.
Oh please, everyone war in history was two nations both “just defending themselves” or having an otherwise good excuse and invader stories are as reliable as the ticking clock of torture stories.
No they didn’t. Some just wanted to take over stuff and said as much.
What usually happens is that elites of one country want to get some concessions from elites of other country, and the common people in both suffer. Their vast suffering counts for nothing compared to the slightest one of the elites, of course.
You have changed from everyone to usually. You also completely neglect the fact that the inhabitants of invaded countries are not always treated particularly well. By ‘not treated particularly well’ I mean they are killed, raped, taken as slaves or generally left destitute.
Invasions are not happy events for the populous, even when you do not put up a fight. Especially if you are not the same colour as the conqueror. Prevent them if it is convenient to do so.
Although I find your cynicism appealing the position you have taken in support of your is untenable. You don’t need to kill all the enemy soldiers for “War’s are never about justice” to be victorious here.
No they didn’t. Some just wanted to take over stuff and said as much.
Indeed, and this should be stressed. The Mongols and the army of Alexander the Great are both examples of this. So are the various religion-fueled wars between Christian empires and Islamic empires. Hitler was another would-be conqueror who didn’t make his ambitions much of a secret. Napoleon, too, was an invading conqueror; I don’t know what arguments he made to justify his invasions of the rest of Europe, but he certainly acted like a conqueror.
We usually think of the Romans as conquerors, but they didn’t think of themselves that way. In their writings, they almost always described their wars as defensive conflicts, much like the U.S. has.
Game theoretic thinking about wars (wars are bad, but not fighting would provide incentive for invasions, what would be worse) is extremely common, but completely at odds with historical experience—history consists of “wars to end all wars”, “wars to punish aggressors” and alikes, not a single of them actually worked at stopping future wars. On the other hand just giving in, like many did to Romans, or Mongols, not too infrequently led to centuries of peace.
I haven’t seen a single shred of evidence for game theoretic interpretation of wars.
Much of modern political science of conflict consists of testing game-theoretic models against evidence… either of the APSR or AJPS has dozens of such articles over the last decade. I actually wrote a thesis on game-theoretic models of war, so I have references if you’d like them.
Either way, we don’t even have to conceptualize this as game theory (though explicit use of game theory may have prevented nuclear war—see Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict and his Nobel citation). Empires appear to frequently fight as a demonstration of their strength, if nothing else. Might that be why “giving in” to the Romans was followed by peace: other tribes could see that future wars would be met not by complacency but with force?
Giving in to the Romans or Mongols worked because they had no interest in harming your population. They would have wanted taxes and levies (of soldiers), and these are reasonable things to negotiate in exchange for peace and protection inside a big empire.
On the other hand, giving in to e.g. a Nazi invasion is very foolish if you have reason to think they’re going to kill one third of your men, take another third as slave labor, and starve the last third to death. (These were the actual German plans for Poland and Ukraine, which they didn’t have time to carry out due to the failure of their war on the Eastern front.)
Were the US, Canada, etc. wrong to enter the European fronts of WW2 for game theoretical reasons?
Hard evidence for it being? It’s quite easy to see that peaceful Nazi conquests like Austria and Denmark had it far better than those that fought back like Poland and Soviet Union.
What reason is there to think that the Nazis would have treated a country like Poland differently if it surrendered without resisting? They made clear their view of the rights of Poles (none) and the purpose of the invasion (replacement of the Polish population with German settlers) for a while before the invasion. At least some of the actual plans and directives for this had been drafted before the invasion as well. I could give you references if you like, but unfortunately I’ve loaned away one of my main sources, a book called The Wages of Destruction. I’ll have to see if I can find an ebook copy if you want specific refs.
In brief, a country that wants to offer better terms to enemies who surrender will publicize this fact and offer good terms of surrender. Germany didn’t do this, instead they publicized their leadership’s view on races and human rights and might makes right. Why not believe they meant what they said?
Why not believe they meant what they said?
Exactly. For ‘racial’ reasons alone, Austrians and Danes would get an easier deal than Poles or Ukrainians.
Also, while I find your (taw) posting here and at your blog enlightening, I cannot help but feel you ignore that history teaches us only partial derivatives.
True, Denmark got a sweet deal, but your only comparison is ceteris paribus. We do not know the result if every single country subject to Nazi aggression had chosen to yield. The result may definitely have been less lenient for the Danes.
Finally, I believe it’s commonly accepted that Hitler intended to attack the Soviet Union no matter what, and that he did not expect UK and France to actually go to war over Poland.
The Soviet Union ended up worse off than it would have been under Nazi rule? Possible, but certainly not guaranteed from the evidence. I suspect Austria and Denmark’s similarity to Germany and the relative absence of the demographics that Hitler targeted may have played a role.
Perhaps nations fight back precisely because they have more to lose.
While I’m commenting here...
Don’t the Mongol tactics fit brilliantly into game theory?
Razing and killing utterly the first resisting city is a bad outcome for the Mongol conquerors, but ″pour encourager les autres″, it leads to subsequent substantial gains as the next city on the list decides to ‘defect’ and surrender immediately rather than ‘cooperate’ and get burned, even if the cities had collectively resisted to the last man the Mongols might’ve been stopped before they got too far.1
It maps pretty well onto the Prisoner’s Dilemma, I think—the Mongol’s announced commitments put each city into a situation where its optimal outcome (surrendering peacefully) leads to a global suboptimum (China under Mongol rule).
Not really, you can write a just-so game theoretic story for everything, that doesn’t mean it’s true.
There were too many instances of countries not only resisting Mongols against really bad odds, but also of more ridiculous actions like killing Mongol envoys for no apparent reason, even when Mongols weren’t trying to invade. I’ve never seen anyone using game theory to even make testable retrodictions for historical actions with any success.
Although the Mongols did take as captives individuals with certain artisanal skills (saddlemaking might be one such IIRC) such individuals only ever made up a tiny fraction of the population of a besieged city. The rest were usually killed (and the city burned) when the city stopped fighting at least when the Mongols were operating in Europe (I don’t know about Mongolian operations in Asia) because the Mongols had learned from experience that most European city-dwellers could not adapt to nomadic life. (European nomads might have fared better, but there might not have been any nomads in Europe aside from the invading Mongols).
So, giving in to the Mongols was often a very bad idea.
ADDED. I hereby retract part of what I wrote above, namely, “because the Mongols had learned from experience that most European city-dwellers could not adapt to nomadic life”. I no longer have an opinion on the considerations that led the Mongols sometimes to kill the inhabitants of a captured city. Moreover, I retract my final sentence, “So, giving in to the Mongols was often a very bad idea.”
I’ll try to be more careful in the future :)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my history books make a specific point of mentioning that Mongol treatment of captured cities was incredibly brutal when the city had resisted, and that cities that immediately surrendered were treated very well; which is what taw is saying with ‘just giving in’.
gwern, I amended my coment (grandparent of this comment) so that now our comments no longer contradict each other. For those reading via the comment feed, here is gwern’s comment again:
This is what I remember learning a well and a cursory google search appears to confirm it.
Giving into the Mongols worked out very well for the Russians, at least in the intermediate run. They were left alone to rule themselves for the most part as long as they paid their taxes. (In the long run, areas ruled by the Mongols ended up relatively backward when compared to the rest of Europe.)
Well, there is one interesting incident regarding Mongols and city dwellers and nomadism:
(http://history-world.org/mongol_empire.htm)
How do “wars to stop the invaders looting your stuff, killing most of your menfolk, raping your women and eating your lifestock” fit in here?
You have a strange idea of ‘just’ if it doesn’t include a nation defending itself from attack (war) ever.
Also, if the aggressor is killing all of your population, then it will be their genetic descendants enjoying those centuries of peace, and not yours.
Oh please, everyone war in history was two nations both “just defending themselves” or having an otherwise good excuse and invader stories are as reliable as the ticking clock of torture stories.
What usually happens is that elites of one country want to get some concessions from elites of other country, and the common people in both suffer. Their vast suffering counts for nothing compared to the slightest one of the elites, of course.
No they didn’t. Some just wanted to take over stuff and said as much.
You have changed from everyone to usually. You also completely neglect the fact that the inhabitants of invaded countries are not always treated particularly well. By ‘not treated particularly well’ I mean they are killed, raped, taken as slaves or generally left destitute.
Invasions are not happy events for the populous, even when you do not put up a fight. Especially if you are not the same colour as the conqueror. Prevent them if it is convenient to do so.
Although I find your cynicism appealing the position you have taken in support of your is untenable. You don’t need to kill all the enemy soldiers for “War’s are never about justice” to be victorious here.
Indeed, and this should be stressed. The Mongols and the army of Alexander the Great are both examples of this. So are the various religion-fueled wars between Christian empires and Islamic empires. Hitler was another would-be conqueror who didn’t make his ambitions much of a secret. Napoleon, too, was an invading conqueror; I don’t know what arguments he made to justify his invasions of the rest of Europe, but he certainly acted like a conqueror.
We usually think of the Romans as conquerors, but they didn’t think of themselves that way. In their writings, they almost always described their wars as defensive conflicts, much like the U.S. has.