1. Did China pre-opium wars do what you describe at the end here and make wars ritualized, inefficient?
2. How similar are modern day understanding of drones to this understanding of gas? Kinetic instead of chemical, but something seems off about a guy in Bethesda MD killing folks around the world with an xbox controller. What about Ukraine’s use of drones against a larger enemy?
1. Chinese history is pretty deep and I would be very hesitant to make any grand pronouncements about it. Sadly I would have to say I don't know because I don't have enough information on those wars.
My *impression* of a lot of Dynastic wars is that they are strongly but unconsciously ritualised. Stuff like Sun-Tzus art of war, which I have heard described by some as impractical and not actually that useful outside the behavioural boundaries of its period, or of the Aztek 'flower wars' which I take to be more like ritual sacrifices than free for alls, or of *some* quite tournament-esque early modern European wars leads me in that direction.
Leading me in the other direction is stuff like the insane scale and mass carnage of the Wars of Spanish Succession, the *other* very non-Tournament-esque early modern European wars.
Sorry this has gone a long way from your initial question about China and for a very mediocre response. More research needed!
2. I see drones as (currently) a new form of light artillery. I am sure they absolutely make killing easier. Research on the power-distance and abstraction of inflicting death producing less dissonance is common. Bayonet charges are one thing, rifle fire another, moving to a team-managed machine-gun seems to make it easier as each crewmember is only doing one fragment of the work. Out of sight artillery makes it easier and finally we have a dot on a screen and a button.
So they are similar in that they are a long-distance highly technical way that democracies like to wage war - complex but the meat bits far out of sight. And may well be highly invested in in technical democracies.
I would say the understanding is a bit different precisely because they are kinetic and gas is not. Haldane seems to think that you can scale gas warfare to achieve battlefield goals while actually killing way less people, just knocking them out or incapacitating them. So he thinks 'Haldanes War' would have way less graves at the end of it, I don't think the same is true of drone tech.
Two thoughts:
1. Did China pre-opium wars do what you describe at the end here and make wars ritualized, inefficient?
2. How similar are modern day understanding of drones to this understanding of gas? Kinetic instead of chemical, but something seems off about a guy in Bethesda MD killing folks around the world with an xbox controller. What about Ukraine’s use of drones against a larger enemy?
1. Chinese history is pretty deep and I would be very hesitant to make any grand pronouncements about it. Sadly I would have to say I don't know because I don't have enough information on those wars.
My *impression* of a lot of Dynastic wars is that they are strongly but unconsciously ritualised. Stuff like Sun-Tzus art of war, which I have heard described by some as impractical and not actually that useful outside the behavioural boundaries of its period, or of the Aztek 'flower wars' which I take to be more like ritual sacrifices than free for alls, or of *some* quite tournament-esque early modern European wars leads me in that direction.
Leading me in the other direction is stuff like the insane scale and mass carnage of the Wars of Spanish Succession, the *other* very non-Tournament-esque early modern European wars.
Sorry this has gone a long way from your initial question about China and for a very mediocre response. More research needed!
2. I see drones as (currently) a new form of light artillery. I am sure they absolutely make killing easier. Research on the power-distance and abstraction of inflicting death producing less dissonance is common. Bayonet charges are one thing, rifle fire another, moving to a team-managed machine-gun seems to make it easier as each crewmember is only doing one fragment of the work. Out of sight artillery makes it easier and finally we have a dot on a screen and a button.
So they are similar in that they are a long-distance highly technical way that democracies like to wage war - complex but the meat bits far out of sight. And may well be highly invested in in technical democracies.
I would say the understanding is a bit different precisely because they are kinetic and gas is not. Haldane seems to think that you can scale gas warfare to achieve battlefield goals while actually killing way less people, just knocking them out or incapacitating them. So he thinks 'Haldanes War' would have way less graves at the end of it, I don't think the same is true of drone tech.