Fundamentally wrong mental model, in my opinion. (but upvoted for presenting a well structured one!)
As if saying: “We shouldn’t put people in prison because it raises the cost of murder and increases demand to murder.”
Violence is a wildfire, not an auction market. Quantity of violence is zero absent a catalyst, once the catalyst is provided it goes up exponentially until it reaches some saturation point at which point it runs out of fuel and collapses again to zero.
Supply and Demand for violence form a positive feedback loop. (+ an activation barrier to get started and a cliff back to nothing at the end, dunno what proper terms would be here)
The measures that can be taken are to raise the cost of starting a war(make the catalyst more expensive) or end the war FAST(overwhelming force on one side).
Half the reason Putin is doing this is because he wasn’t slapped hard the first time he went invading Georgia(cheaper catalyst in the future). Arguably, the main reason he felt safe invading Georgia is because the US trampled over international law when they invaded Iraq and lost the moral bully pulpit needed to mobilize the EU for sanctions.
The other half of the reason is he thought Ukraine would fold immediately(he thought he had overwhelming force).
The murder example is actually perfect. A lot of murder is revenge killing. A lot of it is essentially feuding going back decades(you killed my uncle, I’ll kill your son etc). Same goes for war. France and Germany had a tit for tat war every few decades relationship for centuries.
The way to break that cycle is by monopolizing violence.
And it actually does break the cycle in that it removes the immediate popular causes for revenge killing or revanchist war. (Not to say that new causes cannot lead to war again, but the relationship between France and Germany is qualitatively different than it was in the last 80 year span of peace between their countries.)
Fundamentally wrong mental model, in my opinion. (but upvoted for presenting a well structured one!)
As if saying: “We shouldn’t put people in prison because it raises the cost of murder and increases demand to murder.”
Violence is a wildfire, not an auction market. Quantity of violence is zero absent a catalyst, once the catalyst is provided it goes up exponentially until it reaches some saturation point at which point it runs out of fuel and collapses again to zero.
Supply and Demand for violence form a positive feedback loop. (+ an activation barrier to get started and a cliff back to nothing at the end, dunno what proper terms would be here)
The measures that can be taken are to raise the cost of starting a war(make the catalyst more expensive) or end the war FAST(overwhelming force on one side).
Half the reason Putin is doing this is because he wasn’t slapped hard the first time he went invading Georgia(cheaper catalyst in the future). Arguably, the main reason he felt safe invading Georgia is because the US trampled over international law when they invaded Iraq and lost the moral bully pulpit needed to mobilize the EU for sanctions.
The other half of the reason is he thought Ukraine would fold immediately(he thought he had overwhelming force).
The murder example is actually perfect. A lot of murder is revenge killing. A lot of it is essentially feuding going back decades(you killed my uncle, I’ll kill your son etc). Same goes for war. France and Germany had a tit for tat war every few decades relationship for centuries.
The way to break that cycle is by monopolizing violence.
And it actually does break the cycle in that it removes the immediate popular causes for revenge killing or revanchist war. (Not to say that new causes cannot lead to war again, but the relationship between France and Germany is qualitatively different than it was in the last 80 year span of peace between their countries.)