A theoretical article on war

[sigatoka]

The link for the article http://www.iae.csic.es/polarization/cordoba06/slantchev.pdf its a pdf file.

I thought it was a very nice article which doenst rely on informational assymetries or things of that kind and assuming rational actors on both sides. On this site and many others the problem is that a lot of times one sees very simplistic explainations of war, boiling it down to "bad" and "good", "intelligent" and "irrational". I think that posting good theoretical articles like the above that are not political and having discussions around it could improve understanding and be a good source of interaction for the members.

 

[niaz]

Very interesting indeed. The author has tried to breakdown every varaible and derived an empirical equution. It reminds me of Marshal Foch (?) among others who calculated the destruction of the enemy based on number bullets per square metre.

Regrettably, war once started does not always end predictably. The authors have given examples of many wars but what about Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Let us also not forget Lebenon, when a suicide bombers killed 200 US soldiers, consequently US pulled out her forces.

IMO Von Clauswitz was the best theorist ever. Hon Keyseroze is in a better position and would like to hear his comments on this.

 

[sigatoka]

Very interesting indeed. The author has tried to breakdown every varaible and derived an empirical equution.

Regrettably, war once started does not always end predictably. The authors have given examples of many wars but what about Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Let us also not forget Lebenon, when a suicide bombers killed 200 US soldiers, consequently US pulled out her forces.

IMO Von Clauswitz was the best theorist ever. Hon Keyseroze is in a better position and would like to hear his comments on this.

The reason why I particularly liked the article was because it illustrates a possibilty of war arising where both parties are rational, fully informed about the prize being fought for, fully informed about their respective cababilities. The reason I think that this is important is frequently we believe (or rather a lot of people believe) that wars can only arise due to one side basing their decision to go to war on incorrect information (whether about their respective capabilities) or the value of the prize at stake. The importance of this article is that stripping away the "fog of war" and the associated information assymetries, war can still arise.

In relation to information assymetry in the article (i cant quite remember the author) the authors refer to another paper where one party has access to private information that only by acting on it they are most likely to gain benefit from it. This also I think is a very important consideration in wars, in world war 2 maybe France would have been more concessionary if they had known the actual strength of Germany's panzer divisions (or more likely attempted to emulate the tactics or devise counter-measures which means that Germany would have little incentive to pass this information on to France to extract peaceful concessions).

While I dont doubt the calibre of past military experts, the primary weakness of theirs is their overwhelming reliance on empirical (and past military events) from which they devise advice. While undoubteldly important, the current theoretical work is complementary and allows for the development of very general and "true" in all circumstances advice (where the conditions of the model are met) and the models are then judged according to how well they fit the facts from past wars and ultimately how well they predict future events (and then are modified for deficiencies).