We are about to enter a new phase whereas manpower and capital (above a certain minimum) will no longer be the deciding factors, but rather, who has access to a reasonably good AI tech and a concealed factory for producing bio-weapons, and willingness to use them, of course.
I'm actually surprised this hasn't happened yet...
The blueprint is Dune author Frank Herberts lessor known work, The White Plague (1982).
Of course, it's fiction, but the technology required is, if not already developed, about to be. Perhaps not in the same way as the book (whereas men are carries of a plague that only kills women and threatens to end humanity) but nevertheless, the idea isn't that far-fetched, one could dig up bodies n the permafrost and culture the Spanish Flu and release it...obviously anthrax can't be that hard to make as we saw in post-911 attack, etc.
The Demon in the Freezer author Richard Preston talked about (this is decades ago) how his friends, as a hobby, were creating new viruses all the time. What a man in a lab could do previously in a year an AI can already do now in minutes. It will not be long before someone creates something as least as bad as small pox or anthrax or the Spanish Flu, this is axiomatic as they could just stick to making what nature has already provided.
What AI and drone technology allow is a small force to multiply itself by a factor of 10 or 100 thousand, perhaps more. How many men can US brigade kill in day (sans nuclear)? Even if it's 10s of thousands, a small group of people with the right bio-weapon and a few thousand (or even a few hundred) drones could wipe out most of New York or Los Angeles in a few hours work (granted it might take a few weeks before everyone is dead, but the result is the same).
I'm curious, David, why do you think Ukraine hasn't unleashed a bio-weapon in Moscow?
They don't have access to one?
The world would turn against them if they did?
Morality and ethics?
In The White Plague the protagonist unleashes the weapon in England, Ireland, and Libya and demands the world governments instruct those countries to send all citizens of those nations back home and then let the plague run its course. Of course, it's fiction, so things go sideways, but the idea in principle seems sound.
I mean, logical. If you want Russia to end the war, seems like killling off a million citizens out to do the trick as long as you can back up your next threat, i.e. if you don't pull out your troops, next attack will kill 10 million....
I never understood the idea of "War Crimes" in that, if your defending your home, seems like all bets are off.
It's like the little birdie analogy you've used in your libertarian talks, i.e. the little birdie is willing to fight to the death to defend it's territory with a no-holds-barred strategy. "We're both gonna die if you attack, so think twice, bigger bird."
Ultimately I think this is the only way a libertarian or anarchist or any type of new country based not on geography but ideals is going to be able to form and survive, it must have a weapon so dangerous and so unstoppable, the big countries must respect it.
Heinlien taught me this in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The gravity well of earth meant that the moon citizens could simply hurl boulders and they'd turn into WMD.
One, there's not a shortage of suicidal warriors in the world, unfortunately.
Two, the beautify of drone or remote deployement is that you could be 2000 miles away when the lighter than air micro-organisms float into the air and disperse across a city.
Yes, and you don't think that's a good feature if you're trying to bring an aggressor nation to its knees?
Also, what you might have written is "some" microbes tend to spead.
Many don't, such as anthrax and malaria, as examples.
Also, some are so potent (ebola for example) that while very contagious, they don't spread because the victim (bleeding out of every orifce) is so obviously sick and so quickly disabled, the microbe doesn't have much chance to spread.
Small pox is contagious, but less so than the flu, so how a defensive state (or a terrorist) might design a bio-weapon would depend on their goals (and access to material, of course).
The thing with AI being able to iterate massive numbers of molecules is that is going to be used to make designer drugs, imaginably, some will be amazingly helpful and good, but others will be hell unleashed if used to do evil...
Perhaps easier to make, but harder to disperse and would have different effects.
As examples:
The amount of bio-material needed to effectively do the same damage would weigh signifigantly less.
It would have a longer effective potentcy (as least as far as I know, perhaps there's examples I don't know about).
The fear and terror factor would probably (maybe not) be higher.
One thing I was surprised about with the post 9-11 antrax attacks was how much property damage and loss there was due to the fact that the anthrax spores last a very long time and are extremely durable, i.e. the buildings had to be closed down for long periods and weren't easily made safe.
Not sure if there are chemical agents that do the same type of thing.
Perhaps both would be used for maximal effect.
What continues to surprise me is that these methods/agents aren't used more often -- I mean, if you're a murderous terrorist, or whatever, or a nation-state (or wannabe nation-state) it seems the most cost effective defense (or act of terrorism) would be to use these methods.
Are the components really that hard to obtain? Or is there just a lack of imagination out there?
I'm not sure there's such a divide between the British and American model. By continental European standards the British army has always been risibly small, and required vast expansion for the world wars; and local militias used to be a significant part of the armed forces (and in a sense, with the Territorial Army, still are).
Undeniable that efficiency was always secondary to a desire for the British army to have interests identical to those of the ruling class, though. I recently found out that even as late as the early twentieth century an officer's salary wasn't sufficient to allow you to marry and have children, unless you had another source of income.
You wrote, "Russia started the war with an enormous stockpile of equipment and ammunition inherited from the USSR, but if the war continues long enough to exhaust that stockpile and for Ukraine’s supporters to shift their economies towards military production it is hard to see how Russia can win."
Well, it looks like Russia has won. Why? Maybe they're more motivated because the wolf is at their door. The United States and Europe face no real threat from Russia.
What was the GDP of Vietnam and Afghanistan (both of which the US had to leave in a hurry to the forces it was fighting for a decade or so), compared to the US?
Unfortunately, I cannot share your optimism with regard to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Partly because I don't think that "nation" is a good abstraction here and neither is "victory". If victory is understood as achieving the stated objectives, then neither side is likely to achieve it any time soon. The stated objectives of the Russian government are entirely nonsensical, so the war was lost the moment Putin made his speech outlining the objectives of the "Special Military Operation". However, the stated objectives of Ukraine's government, while in theory achievable, are also immensely ambitious: regaining control of all territory controlled prior to 2013 (including Crimea, that is), exacting reparations from Russia commeasurable with the damage caused and a trial and conviction of Russia's leadership and military for the war crimes that they committed.
In the past year and a half, the war has been hugely "labor intensive": both sides are losing people on a scale not seen since WW2. The bottlenecks for both sides are people and artillery shells (not a particularly high-tech product). While it is true that Ukraine's backers are -- especially in the long run -- able to produce more shells than Russia (although delivering them safely to the fighting forces is no trivial matter either), the latter won't be running out of them for quite some time. Regarding people, both sides are in a tight spot, because they are experiencing the third demographic echo of WW2 (the current generation of military-age men is missing the great-grandchildren of those who perished in WW2, a staggering number of people). The two sides are addressing the problem in different ways: Ukraine's government closed its borders to all men between 18 and 65 years of age wishing to leave Ukraine and engaged in aggressive conscription. Since the defense of the Ukrainian homeland is reasonably popular and the government's approval ratings are reasonably high, they can get away with it, at least for a while, though it is clearly burning through their political capital. Russia's government is far more cautious in this regard, because it relies much more on its abilty to violently suppress any opposition and much less on popular support; they are (quite justifiably) afraid of the 1917 scenario, so they do let people out and they recruit their cannon fodder in the poorest parts of the country and in the penitentiary system. The casualties on both sides are huge and while Ukraine probably does have some advantage due to better weaponry, better motivated fighters and better intelligence, it is not dramatic. Almost certainly not better than 2:1 and likely not better than 1.6:1. They keep their losses a secret and probably for good reasons. Now, whether Ukraine's backers are willing to fight for the control over all of Ukraine "to the last Ukrainian" is an important and interesting question, but the longer it drags on with such high casualties, the less popular it will become both within and outside of Ukraine.
The populations of both countries have already lost in the sense that no outcome of the war can possibly make the vast majority of them better off than they were before it. Russia has been cut off from large and important parts of international trade and finance and these lost ties cannot be quickly rebuilt even in the case of a complete Ukrainian victory as defined above (which is the condition of lifting the sanctions) and since that is unlikely anytime soon, the sanctions will likely remain in place, hurting the prospects of economic growth, but not really threatening the regime (see North Korea, which is a far more extreme case; Russians won't suffer similar hardships). Ukraine's already crumbling civilian infrastructure has been further devastated by the war. The loss of labor due to death and injury in the war has also been substantial. The confiscated Russian assets will probably mostly go towards paying Ukraine's sovereign debt to its creditors and what remains will hardly compensate the devastating damage of the war. Forcing Russia to pay substantial reparations over a long period of time is an even trickier prospect. In case the current Russian regime survives the war, they just won't pay. How to overthrow it is not obvious, but in case of any serious challenge to it, considerably damaging its hold on power, there is a very real possibility of a disintegration of the Russian Federation. If that happens, forcing a sufficiently large number of former RF regions to pay tribute is a daunting task. There is a big temptation to outsource it to some centralized entity, but that is precisely how the strong and dangerous Russian state came into being from its humble origins as the principality of Moscow: the Golden Horde (under Ozbek Khan) chose them to collect tribute from all of territories of Rus and Ivan I (Kalita) happily took up the task, creating a culture of deception and hoarding of militarily useful resources that characterizes the Russian state to this day. A Russian state held together for the purpose of exacting a tribute from all of Russia's population for the benefit of Ukraine's reconstruction is a surefire recipe of (re-)creating a dangerous leviathan with all the necessary tools for threatening its neighbors, very much including Ukraine. In short, rebuilding Ukraine by taxing Russia might well be beyond the realm of feasibility. So Ukraine will probably stay the poorest country in Europe for several generations to come.
To conclude, I think that this war is going to drag on for many months and possibly years as a high-intensity conflict and then feeze to a stalemate that neither side can consider a victory with low-level hostilities continuing for decades. The damage done to both countries will be devastating (worse for Ukraine, but bad enough for Russia) and even the rest of the world will be perceivably worse off for it.
P.S. How does Adam Smith's model explain the defeat of the US military by the Taliban?
I think your definition of Ukrainian victory combines what they actually want — their pre-2014 borders — with what they say they want but will be willing to abandon for peace.
So far as the outcome of the Afghan war, I prefer Kipling's explanation:
Well, "pre-2014 borders" is not an easily attainable military and political objective, as it is not the pre-2014 status quo, when Ukraine had in fact limited sovereignty over Crimea, with Russia's Black Sea Fleet stationed there on a permanent basis. It has been there since 1783 with one brief interrpution between 1855 and 1870 (as a result of the Crimean War). In 2014, it has been revealed that most of Crimea's state apparatus, including both enforcers and bureaucrats, are disloyal to the Ukrainian state; most kept their ranks and offices when Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation. So, in order to "restore" control over Crimea, Ukraine will need to dislodge the Black Sea Fleet and install a completely new state apparatus, mostly recruited from outside of Crimea (there are Crimeans that are loyal to Ukraine and both capable and willing to rule on Kiev's behalf, but there probably aren't enough of them).
It's not easily attainable but it is more easily attainable than that plus everything else Ukraine says it wants, which was my point. It is what happens if Ukraine unambiguously wins the military conflict.
Ukraine has also stated that it plans to forcibly expel hundreds of civilian thousands of Russians that have moved to Crimea since 2014.
Again, I ask if the people of Donbass and Crimea want to be "liberated". The answer would probably be no if it was bloodless and definitely no if its bloody.
Well, people usually side with the victorious, so what people "want" is quite malleable and changes even retroactively. There is no easy and fair way of drawing just borders (I would say that no borders are just). Both the Russian and the Ukrainian states are pretty nasty, but in different ways. Reasonable young people are leaving both countries for greener pastures.
On the global stage it's a meaningless conflict between two failed oligarchic states. There is little reason to believe that Kiev or Moscow could provide significantly better lives to anyone on the ground. The #1 best outcome for all members of both sides is for the war to stop on pretty much any terms. Non-decision makers can posture on this but its telling that draconian conscription and criminal mercenary armies are the only way to get people to fight.
As I'm not a Russian citizen I focus on what role my nation can have in ending the conflict. It seems obvious that demanding reasonable negotiations as a condition of support is just common sense (if you want peoples lives to get better, not if you are playing the war for domestic political reasons or want to boost Lockheeds bottom line).
You are correct that "get the fuck out and to the EU" is what any smart person is doing. It is currently illegal for adult Ukrainian males to do so.
The obvious solution, that unfortunately the stakeholders don't have an incentive for, is to just sign a peace deal. Not a frozen conflict, but an actual peace deal.
If territory is to be ceded to Russia it should be done permanately and formally. Most of the area behind Russian lines today voted 90%+ for Yanacovich, Ukraine should just let it go.
The formal end of war could begin the process of rebuilding and re-investment for both sides.
With the formal end of the war the justification for the sanctions regime would also end for anything besides advanced military equipment. I consider sanctions to largely be an ineffective evil whose primary purpose is to make civilians suffer so that men who don't want to fight feel like they are "doing something".
This seems like a deal that Russia would take, so it's really just the Ukrainian's. In order to get the Ukrainian's to take it they need to realistically understand that they will be cut off if they don't.
Well, that would be essentially a defeat for Ukraine and a huge victory for Putin's regime. Which won't even result in lasting peace, because it basically would set a precedent that borders can be successfully changed by military force in aggressive wars of conquest. There would be no reason to expect that it would be the end of Putin's ambition in conquering Ukraine. So there would be no benefit to the Ukrainian state over a cease-fire in which they do not formally recognize any Russian conquest and some very clear disadvantages. Thus, the Ukrainian government has no reason to agree to such a humiliating peace deal, which will almost surely result in them losing power in either an upcoming election or even before that in a popular uprising. So this won't happen.
A Cyprus-style cease-fire is a far more attractive solution, because it will stop the massive destruction and bloodshed, but neither side is very motivated to respect it, so even that will probably result in low-level hostilities continuing for a long-long time.
"Well, that would be essentially a defeat for Ukraine"
In what way? How are the lives of Ukrainians going to improve from continuing the war in this manner? What objective are they trying to achieve and how would these actions achieve that objective?
"huge victory for Putin's regime"
Hundreds of thousands of Russians are dead. The occupied parts of Ukraine are destroyed. The economy is in tatters. Recently an armed force threaten to overthrow him. Some victory.
"Which won't even result in lasting peace, because it basically would set a precedent that borders can be successfully changed by military force in aggressive wars of conquest."
Most people don't want to change borders by conquest. It's a bloody messy business with huge risks and usually little reward. We live in a world of MAD between great powers.
The precedent I would really like to establish is that we stop sponsoring color revolutions around the world and trying to stir up conflict.
"There would be no reason to expect that it would be the end of Putin's ambition in conquering Ukraine."
I mean there would be plenty of reasons. I can't 100% guarantee you anything, but nobody can do that about anything.
I know that taking the Russian parts of Ukraine out of Ukraine substantially reduces the argument for Russian intervention and also makes Ukraine a more politically sound state.
But maybe destroying Donbass and Crimea, killing a few million people, forcefully expelling hundreds of thousands of Russian civilians from Crimea (state Ukrainian policy goal), and purging the Russian language and culture while trying to incorporate millions of hostile Russian ethnics into your country will work better.
"So there would be no benefit to the Ukrainian state over a cease-fire in which they do not formally recognize any Russian conquest and some very clear disadvantages. "
If the United States says it will end their support if Ukraine doesn't agree to our demands, then they have every incentive to agree. Without our support things will get much worse for them.
"so even that will probably result in low-level hostilities continuing for a long-long time."
Hence why we should get a real peace deal and not an armistace.
I don't think "killing a few million people" is a plausible result of the war, short of Russia going nuclear. Do you have a justification for that or was it demagoguery?
"Most people don't want to change borders by conquest."
But some do, as just demonstrated. Putin may regret it now, although he hasn't said so, but if so that's because the conquest turned out to be more difficult than expected.
Your proposal gives Putin what he wanted, although at a higher cost than he expected, which looks like a reason to continue trying to recreate greater Russia, which is what Putin has said he wants. The Baltics are a lot weaker than Ukraine was.
I think "millions of deaths" is a realistic figure for the cost of retaking Donbass and Crimea. In addition you would probably have to destroy most of the civilian infrastructure. I think it unlikely that the people involved in that effort would see themselves as being "liberated".
Realistically though, it's not clear Ukraine could sustain those loses. Zelensky recently had to suspend all military recruitment because they are down to having jeeps full of men grab people off the street to use as canon fodder. Not a good look and very unpopular.
I'll believe Putin wants to conquer the world when I see it. Ukraine was an area with many Russians that underwent a violent foreign backed coup and was being tracked towards joining an explicitly anti-Russian alliance. Hitler didn't wait 20 years to start a regional conflict and then immediately offer a white peace a month in.
The Baltics are part of NATO. So far the only country to attack NATO is Ukraine (Nordstream bombing).
"Military casualties alone so far are half a million or more already."
That figure is for killed or wounded, with killed a fraction of the total. So where do you get your millions of dead?
"I'll believe Putin wants to conquer the world when I see it."
I said nothing about conquering the world. He has said that he wants to reestablish greater Russia, which requires the annexation of a good deal of territory that was Russian at some time in the past and no longer is.
"Ukraine was an area with many Russians"
Russian speakers. The Baltics have a lot of Russian speakers too.
I assume your "white peace" means Russia holding on to the territory they have just seized. I'm not sure Hitler wouldn't have agreed to peace with the UK after he conquered France if the UK had been interested.
"So far the only country to attack NATO is Ukraine (Nordstream bombing)."
I think, there are many things conflated in your argument. As I have written in my original comment, the "nation" is the wrong abstraction here. Different population groups and governments have different preferences and different incentives.
There is currently no evidence that the Russian government would honor any peace agreement; after all, they have agreed in December 1994 to guarantee Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up the Soviet nukes that happened to be on Ukrainian territory. That lasted less than 20 years. OTOH, there is some evidence that if they can get away with conquest, they will attempt more. This is clearly not in the interest of most of Russia's population, but it is in the interest of the Russian government because they traditionally measure Russia's national security with a ruler on the map; the further away from Moscow the potential adversary can launch their invasion, the more secure Russia (in reality: their power over Russia) is.
I also think that your model of Ukraine is inaccurate. There is no well-defined "Russian part" and having a preference for the Russian language does not imply a strong preference for being ruled from Moscow. Also, to a large extent this *is* a proxy war in which the decisions of Ukraine's government are heavily influenced (to say the least) by their American patrons on whose support they critically depend both politically and militarily.
Giving up nukes was dumb, though in fairness they couldn't even fire them anyway (they didn't have the keys).
It seems likely to me that had we not supported the 2014 coup or engaged in the rapid expansion of an anti-Russian alliance that perhaps nothing would have happened to Ukraine. Certainly keeping out of it would have been worth a shot.
When historians write the histories later they aren't going to have the same biases as people in the moment with an ax to grind.
> It seems likely to me that had we not supported the 2014 coup or engaged in the rapid expansion of an anti-Russian alliance that perhaps nothing would have happened to Ukraine.
NATO expansion was driven by the newly liberated Eastern European countries, not by the West.
Well, certainly the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia with the subsequent recognition of independence of Kosovo in 2008 set a very bad precedent, to a large extent foreshadowing what happened between Russia and Ukraine. It certainly put an end to any illusion of a rules-based international order being respected and enforced by the international community (whatever it is). However, the US government stopped short of allowing Kosovo to join Albania, whereas Putin's regime annexed Crimea 24 hours after recognizing its independence from Ukraine. Had they created a nominally independent client state similar to Kosovo in Crimea, they probably would have gotten away with it with much fewer sanctions and much less international support for Ukraine. I suspect that the reason they didn't do it that way is because they calculated that there is a high chance of Ukraine's government (which at that point was in a constitutional crisis) just agreeing to it and the rest of Ukraine joining NATO in a speedy fashion. Hence, they annexed Crimea and fueled a civil war in two eastern provinces, making sure that they have an ongoing territorial dispute with Ukraine which is a more reliable way of preventing it from joining NATO. As I have written elsewhere, Russian military tradition measures Russia's national security with a ruler on the map: the farther away is the starting point of a potential invasion from Moscow, the more secure Russia is. One cannot even say that it is entirely nonsensical, given the historical experience.
The Azeri-Armenian conflict has been festering at various levels of intensity since 1988 and is far from being over. Right now, Azerbaijan has an upper hand, but they agreed to a ceasefire that leaves substantial parts of their claimed (and internationally recognized) territory outside of their control. There is no reason to believe that they are going to respect that agreement indefinitely and the Armenian side is perfectly aware of that. Currently, Armenia's government maneuvered itself into a position where Russia is their only ally able and willing to provide meaningful military support and that is very problematic given the experience of the Ukrainian conflict. On the other hand, the Armenian population of Karabakh has good reasons to believe that they are going to be subjected to cruel, unjust and arbitrary treatment by Azerbaijani authorities up to and including murder and forced expulsion, should the latter establish control over their homeland, so they are very motivated to fight till the last man standing, which the Azerbaijani side is much less willing to do. So this conflict will also drag on indefinitely, ensuring lasting poverty and insecurity for generations of Armenians.
Well, they went farther than anyone so far, post WW2: annexing another state's territory in a war of aggression is so far unprecedented, especially against a state with which they had a binding agreement guaranteeing their territorial integrity. The closest thing to this was Turkey's occupation of Northern Cyprus, but even there they didn't go as far as annexing it; they merely created a client state that they (and noone else) recognized as independent.
There is also the simple problem that all military procurement is wildly overpriced, so having a higher GDP doesn't necessarily mean being able to produce more shells. It can all just go to middle mens bottom line.
<i> But the moment that an artificer, a smith, a carpenter, or a weaver, for example, quits his workhouse, the sole source of his revenue is completely dried up. </i>
At least the smith goes to war, along his peer artificers and customer-farmers, to defend his life time investment in the smithy, the foundry, the mill... and of course the yeoman farmer goes to defend his own specific home and fields as well as the general "country". The militia turns out collectively, to defend property, owned individually. Property. The "Pursuit of Happiness" as Jefferson's draft Declaration was amended from "property". "Land", in the Henry George sense of the term. Real Estate. Fixed assets.
Probably other earlier philosophers, maybe even Adam Smith in passages not quoted, have extended this argument, but I encountered it from Clayton Cramer. This contemporary historian made the argument, during the Michael Bellesiles fraud, that in the English and Colonial American era a three-legged stool of concepts were structured into the notions of "citizenship". One leg was privately owning weapons: longbows to muskets to rifles -- along with duty of community drill in the commons to establish competency, confidence, and cooperation. Another leg was voting: defined very generally. Voting on leaders, voting during jury trials, subscribing" or signing-on to community projects like drainage ditches or roads. And voting rights and militia membership were linked, on the third part of the structure: to owning Property.
Not everybody owned Land or a mill/press/foundry. A "journeyman" artificer might make a sufficient living with a few materials and only the "tools of his trade" in a ruck sack. Tinkers and peddlers and teachers and preachers; jewelers and scriveners and smiths or carpenter journeymen who eventually intend to, but have not yet, settled down, too young yet to root themselves in land and buildings and "real property".
Historically though, Europeans have been suspicious, sometimes violently so, of those who practice an itinerant, peripatetic, trade. There was too a vicious circle established. Identifiable groups were prohibited from owning Land or owning Weapons, consequently individuals in the target group tended to develop a community of itinerant craftsmen, and soon enough took nearly a monopoly on their trades. Jewish jewelers. Romany tinkers. Arab peddlers. Unfairly, the group and the traveling tradesmen were thought to be unreliable, prone to flee trouble rather than confront it. Run from battle rather than stand in opposition. And if that disfavored group can't be expected or trusted to take up arms in the common defense, why let them buy land or vote? Entirely circular, and very very common.
The old Romans, and the Colonial Army under Washington, partly broke out of the circle with a promise to the landless young, healthy, and hungry "journeymen" of their eras. Join the Army, for low pay and chance of painful death, and when we win and if you survive, you'll be awarded your own land, carry home your service weapon to defend it with, and vote about whether or not the nation (and your sons) will participate in the next war. The promise was, in ancient times and modern, imperfectly fulfilled. But even partially implemented it structured that hree-legged stool of land, weapon, and vote that government legitimacy depended on.
The claim has subsided into subtext in discussions, more recently, about voting rights for Women, and rights to lifelong medical treatment for veterans, and qualifications of "gentle" civilians to own weapons. (Weapons of self-defense? Weapons of War?) I think, though, it's useful to bring the 3-part notion into the forefront. Do equal rights for woman include the equal duty to subject themselves to a draft? Can an interstate truck driver, licensed to carry in her home state, carry the weapon registered to her in her home state, and use it in another different and more restrictive state in defense of herself, her rig (valued at more than some homes) and cargo (ditto)? If a female truck driver is not allowed one of Sam Colt's "equalizers" is the profession skewed, if not closed, against her? Is the claimed disparity between mens' and womens' pay at all correlated to state gun laws affecting their respective choices of (dangerous) jobs? Or even just willingness to take on (riskier) night shift, higher pay, schedules? Do the preferences given veterans for employment in state and federal civil service jobs (a property right to a paycheck nearly comparable to owning land, after all) discriminate against women and religious pacifists?
And back to the topic, what do we think of Russian use of mercenary forces, apparently just as unreliable in this century as the 14th? What of the draft, including drafting old veterans of what's conventionally retirement age? Where are the Russian female soldiers in this tale? (Or, Ukranian, for that matter?) Quite a bit of what I think of as "war" has not been happening in this conflict. I wonder if the whole thing is more of a show, a potlatch, destroying wealth to gain prestige, somehow. And what does classical economics tell of THAT ritual?
Anyhow, thanks David, for reminding me I need to read more Smith and perhaps a bit less Heinlein.
> Where are the Russian female soldiers in this tale? (Or, Ukranian, for that matter?)
Neither country drafts women, and the madness that causes people to act as if the believe that women are just as good at being soldiers as men has not yet infected either country.
According to Samuel Johnson, 'On the Bravery of the English Common Soldier', the English soldiers were braver because they tended to be from the civilian 'jack of all trades, master of none' and were used to making do.
I think the Ukrainian army is mostly militias in the sense in which the US army in wartime was — amateur soldiers drafted. One of Smith's points that I didn't quote was that a militia army in a long war became a professional army, since after a year or two the soldiers were no longer amateurs.
We are about to enter a new phase whereas manpower and capital (above a certain minimum) will no longer be the deciding factors, but rather, who has access to a reasonably good AI tech and a concealed factory for producing bio-weapons, and willingness to use them, of course.
I'm actually surprised this hasn't happened yet...
The blueprint is Dune author Frank Herberts lessor known work, The White Plague (1982).
Of course, it's fiction, but the technology required is, if not already developed, about to be. Perhaps not in the same way as the book (whereas men are carries of a plague that only kills women and threatens to end humanity) but nevertheless, the idea isn't that far-fetched, one could dig up bodies n the permafrost and culture the Spanish Flu and release it...obviously anthrax can't be that hard to make as we saw in post-911 attack, etc.
The Demon in the Freezer author Richard Preston talked about (this is decades ago) how his friends, as a hobby, were creating new viruses all the time. What a man in a lab could do previously in a year an AI can already do now in minutes. It will not be long before someone creates something as least as bad as small pox or anthrax or the Spanish Flu, this is axiomatic as they could just stick to making what nature has already provided.
What AI and drone technology allow is a small force to multiply itself by a factor of 10 or 100 thousand, perhaps more. How many men can US brigade kill in day (sans nuclear)? Even if it's 10s of thousands, a small group of people with the right bio-weapon and a few thousand (or even a few hundred) drones could wipe out most of New York or Los Angeles in a few hours work (granted it might take a few weeks before everyone is dead, but the result is the same).
I'm curious, David, why do you think Ukraine hasn't unleashed a bio-weapon in Moscow?
They don't have access to one?
The world would turn against them if they did?
Morality and ethics?
In The White Plague the protagonist unleashes the weapon in England, Ireland, and Libya and demands the world governments instruct those countries to send all citizens of those nations back home and then let the plague run its course. Of course, it's fiction, so things go sideways, but the idea in principle seems sound.
I mean, logical. If you want Russia to end the war, seems like killling off a million citizens out to do the trick as long as you can back up your next threat, i.e. if you don't pull out your troops, next attack will kill 10 million....
I never understood the idea of "War Crimes" in that, if your defending your home, seems like all bets are off.
It's like the little birdie analogy you've used in your libertarian talks, i.e. the little birdie is willing to fight to the death to defend it's territory with a no-holds-barred strategy. "We're both gonna die if you attack, so think twice, bigger bird."
Ultimately I think this is the only way a libertarian or anarchist or any type of new country based not on geography but ideals is going to be able to form and survive, it must have a weapon so dangerous and so unstoppable, the big countries must respect it.
Heinlien taught me this in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The gravity well of earth meant that the moon citizens could simply hurl boulders and they'd turn into WMD.
The main problem with bioweapons is keeping your own people from getting killed.
Well, two comments:
One, there's not a shortage of suicidal warriors in the world, unfortunately.
Two, the beautify of drone or remote deployement is that you could be 2000 miles away when the lighter than air micro-organisms float into the air and disperse across a city.
Microbes tend to spread.
Yes, and you don't think that's a good feature if you're trying to bring an aggressor nation to its knees?
Also, what you might have written is "some" microbes tend to spead.
Many don't, such as anthrax and malaria, as examples.
Also, some are so potent (ebola for example) that while very contagious, they don't spread because the victim (bleeding out of every orifce) is so obviously sick and so quickly disabled, the microbe doesn't have much chance to spread.
Small pox is contagious, but less so than the flu, so how a defensive state (or a terrorist) might design a bio-weapon would depend on their goals (and access to material, of course).
The thing with AI being able to iterate massive numbers of molecules is that is going to be used to make designer drugs, imaginably, some will be amazingly helpful and good, but others will be hell unleashed if used to do evil...
> Also, what you might have written is "some" microbes tend to spead.
> Many don't, such as anthrax and malaria, as examples.
At which point you might as well use chemical weapons, which are easier to make.
Perhaps easier to make, but harder to disperse and would have different effects.
As examples:
The amount of bio-material needed to effectively do the same damage would weigh signifigantly less.
It would have a longer effective potentcy (as least as far as I know, perhaps there's examples I don't know about).
The fear and terror factor would probably (maybe not) be higher.
One thing I was surprised about with the post 9-11 antrax attacks was how much property damage and loss there was due to the fact that the anthrax spores last a very long time and are extremely durable, i.e. the buildings had to be closed down for long periods and weren't easily made safe.
Not sure if there are chemical agents that do the same type of thing.
Perhaps both would be used for maximal effect.
What continues to surprise me is that these methods/agents aren't used more often -- I mean, if you're a murderous terrorist, or whatever, or a nation-state (or wannabe nation-state) it seems the most cost effective defense (or act of terrorism) would be to use these methods.
Are the components really that hard to obtain? Or is there just a lack of imagination out there?
I'm not sure there's such a divide between the British and American model. By continental European standards the British army has always been risibly small, and required vast expansion for the world wars; and local militias used to be a significant part of the armed forces (and in a sense, with the Territorial Army, still are).
Undeniable that efficiency was always secondary to a desire for the British army to have interests identical to those of the ruling class, though. I recently found out that even as late as the early twentieth century an officer's salary wasn't sufficient to allow you to marry and have children, unless you had another source of income.
Partly the army was small because the navy, also linked to the gentry, was large.
You wrote, "Russia started the war with an enormous stockpile of equipment and ammunition inherited from the USSR, but if the war continues long enough to exhaust that stockpile and for Ukraine’s supporters to shift their economies towards military production it is hard to see how Russia can win."
Well, it looks like Russia has won. Why? Maybe they're more motivated because the wolf is at their door. The United States and Europe face no real threat from Russia.
What was the GDP of Vietnam and Afghanistan (both of which the US had to leave in a hurry to the forces it was fighting for a decade or so), compared to the US?
Unfortunately, I cannot share your optimism with regard to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Partly because I don't think that "nation" is a good abstraction here and neither is "victory". If victory is understood as achieving the stated objectives, then neither side is likely to achieve it any time soon. The stated objectives of the Russian government are entirely nonsensical, so the war was lost the moment Putin made his speech outlining the objectives of the "Special Military Operation". However, the stated objectives of Ukraine's government, while in theory achievable, are also immensely ambitious: regaining control of all territory controlled prior to 2013 (including Crimea, that is), exacting reparations from Russia commeasurable with the damage caused and a trial and conviction of Russia's leadership and military for the war crimes that they committed.
In the past year and a half, the war has been hugely "labor intensive": both sides are losing people on a scale not seen since WW2. The bottlenecks for both sides are people and artillery shells (not a particularly high-tech product). While it is true that Ukraine's backers are -- especially in the long run -- able to produce more shells than Russia (although delivering them safely to the fighting forces is no trivial matter either), the latter won't be running out of them for quite some time. Regarding people, both sides are in a tight spot, because they are experiencing the third demographic echo of WW2 (the current generation of military-age men is missing the great-grandchildren of those who perished in WW2, a staggering number of people). The two sides are addressing the problem in different ways: Ukraine's government closed its borders to all men between 18 and 65 years of age wishing to leave Ukraine and engaged in aggressive conscription. Since the defense of the Ukrainian homeland is reasonably popular and the government's approval ratings are reasonably high, they can get away with it, at least for a while, though it is clearly burning through their political capital. Russia's government is far more cautious in this regard, because it relies much more on its abilty to violently suppress any opposition and much less on popular support; they are (quite justifiably) afraid of the 1917 scenario, so they do let people out and they recruit their cannon fodder in the poorest parts of the country and in the penitentiary system. The casualties on both sides are huge and while Ukraine probably does have some advantage due to better weaponry, better motivated fighters and better intelligence, it is not dramatic. Almost certainly not better than 2:1 and likely not better than 1.6:1. They keep their losses a secret and probably for good reasons. Now, whether Ukraine's backers are willing to fight for the control over all of Ukraine "to the last Ukrainian" is an important and interesting question, but the longer it drags on with such high casualties, the less popular it will become both within and outside of Ukraine.
The populations of both countries have already lost in the sense that no outcome of the war can possibly make the vast majority of them better off than they were before it. Russia has been cut off from large and important parts of international trade and finance and these lost ties cannot be quickly rebuilt even in the case of a complete Ukrainian victory as defined above (which is the condition of lifting the sanctions) and since that is unlikely anytime soon, the sanctions will likely remain in place, hurting the prospects of economic growth, but not really threatening the regime (see North Korea, which is a far more extreme case; Russians won't suffer similar hardships). Ukraine's already crumbling civilian infrastructure has been further devastated by the war. The loss of labor due to death and injury in the war has also been substantial. The confiscated Russian assets will probably mostly go towards paying Ukraine's sovereign debt to its creditors and what remains will hardly compensate the devastating damage of the war. Forcing Russia to pay substantial reparations over a long period of time is an even trickier prospect. In case the current Russian regime survives the war, they just won't pay. How to overthrow it is not obvious, but in case of any serious challenge to it, considerably damaging its hold on power, there is a very real possibility of a disintegration of the Russian Federation. If that happens, forcing a sufficiently large number of former RF regions to pay tribute is a daunting task. There is a big temptation to outsource it to some centralized entity, but that is precisely how the strong and dangerous Russian state came into being from its humble origins as the principality of Moscow: the Golden Horde (under Ozbek Khan) chose them to collect tribute from all of territories of Rus and Ivan I (Kalita) happily took up the task, creating a culture of deception and hoarding of militarily useful resources that characterizes the Russian state to this day. A Russian state held together for the purpose of exacting a tribute from all of Russia's population for the benefit of Ukraine's reconstruction is a surefire recipe of (re-)creating a dangerous leviathan with all the necessary tools for threatening its neighbors, very much including Ukraine. In short, rebuilding Ukraine by taxing Russia might well be beyond the realm of feasibility. So Ukraine will probably stay the poorest country in Europe for several generations to come.
To conclude, I think that this war is going to drag on for many months and possibly years as a high-intensity conflict and then feeze to a stalemate that neither side can consider a victory with low-level hostilities continuing for decades. The damage done to both countries will be devastating (worse for Ukraine, but bad enough for Russia) and even the rest of the world will be perceivably worse off for it.
P.S. How does Adam Smith's model explain the defeat of the US military by the Taliban?
I think your definition of Ukrainian victory combines what they actually want — their pre-2014 borders — with what they say they want but will be willing to abandon for peace.
So far as the outcome of the Afghan war, I prefer Kipling's explanation:
https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_arith.htm
Well, "pre-2014 borders" is not an easily attainable military and political objective, as it is not the pre-2014 status quo, when Ukraine had in fact limited sovereignty over Crimea, with Russia's Black Sea Fleet stationed there on a permanent basis. It has been there since 1783 with one brief interrpution between 1855 and 1870 (as a result of the Crimean War). In 2014, it has been revealed that most of Crimea's state apparatus, including both enforcers and bureaucrats, are disloyal to the Ukrainian state; most kept their ranks and offices when Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation. So, in order to "restore" control over Crimea, Ukraine will need to dislodge the Black Sea Fleet and install a completely new state apparatus, mostly recruited from outside of Crimea (there are Crimeans that are loyal to Ukraine and both capable and willing to rule on Kiev's behalf, but there probably aren't enough of them).
It's not easily attainable but it is more easily attainable than that plus everything else Ukraine says it wants, which was my point. It is what happens if Ukraine unambiguously wins the military conflict.
Ukraine has also stated that it plans to forcibly expel hundreds of civilian thousands of Russians that have moved to Crimea since 2014.
Again, I ask if the people of Donbass and Crimea want to be "liberated". The answer would probably be no if it was bloodless and definitely no if its bloody.
Well, people usually side with the victorious, so what people "want" is quite malleable and changes even retroactively. There is no easy and fair way of drawing just borders (I would say that no borders are just). Both the Russian and the Ukrainian states are pretty nasty, but in different ways. Reasonable young people are leaving both countries for greener pastures.
On the global stage it's a meaningless conflict between two failed oligarchic states. There is little reason to believe that Kiev or Moscow could provide significantly better lives to anyone on the ground. The #1 best outcome for all members of both sides is for the war to stop on pretty much any terms. Non-decision makers can posture on this but its telling that draconian conscription and criminal mercenary armies are the only way to get people to fight.
As I'm not a Russian citizen I focus on what role my nation can have in ending the conflict. It seems obvious that demanding reasonable negotiations as a condition of support is just common sense (if you want peoples lives to get better, not if you are playing the war for domestic political reasons or want to boost Lockheeds bottom line).
You are correct that "get the fuck out and to the EU" is what any smart person is doing. It is currently illegal for adult Ukrainian males to do so.
The obvious solution, that unfortunately the stakeholders don't have an incentive for, is to just sign a peace deal. Not a frozen conflict, but an actual peace deal.
If territory is to be ceded to Russia it should be done permanately and formally. Most of the area behind Russian lines today voted 90%+ for Yanacovich, Ukraine should just let it go.
The formal end of war could begin the process of rebuilding and re-investment for both sides.
With the formal end of the war the justification for the sanctions regime would also end for anything besides advanced military equipment. I consider sanctions to largely be an ineffective evil whose primary purpose is to make civilians suffer so that men who don't want to fight feel like they are "doing something".
This seems like a deal that Russia would take, so it's really just the Ukrainian's. In order to get the Ukrainian's to take it they need to realistically understand that they will be cut off if they don't.
Well, that would be essentially a defeat for Ukraine and a huge victory for Putin's regime. Which won't even result in lasting peace, because it basically would set a precedent that borders can be successfully changed by military force in aggressive wars of conquest. There would be no reason to expect that it would be the end of Putin's ambition in conquering Ukraine. So there would be no benefit to the Ukrainian state over a cease-fire in which they do not formally recognize any Russian conquest and some very clear disadvantages. Thus, the Ukrainian government has no reason to agree to such a humiliating peace deal, which will almost surely result in them losing power in either an upcoming election or even before that in a popular uprising. So this won't happen.
A Cyprus-style cease-fire is a far more attractive solution, because it will stop the massive destruction and bloodshed, but neither side is very motivated to respect it, so even that will probably result in low-level hostilities continuing for a long-long time.
"Well, that would be essentially a defeat for Ukraine"
In what way? How are the lives of Ukrainians going to improve from continuing the war in this manner? What objective are they trying to achieve and how would these actions achieve that objective?
"huge victory for Putin's regime"
Hundreds of thousands of Russians are dead. The occupied parts of Ukraine are destroyed. The economy is in tatters. Recently an armed force threaten to overthrow him. Some victory.
"Which won't even result in lasting peace, because it basically would set a precedent that borders can be successfully changed by military force in aggressive wars of conquest."
Most people don't want to change borders by conquest. It's a bloody messy business with huge risks and usually little reward. We live in a world of MAD between great powers.
The precedent I would really like to establish is that we stop sponsoring color revolutions around the world and trying to stir up conflict.
"There would be no reason to expect that it would be the end of Putin's ambition in conquering Ukraine."
I mean there would be plenty of reasons. I can't 100% guarantee you anything, but nobody can do that about anything.
I know that taking the Russian parts of Ukraine out of Ukraine substantially reduces the argument for Russian intervention and also makes Ukraine a more politically sound state.
But maybe destroying Donbass and Crimea, killing a few million people, forcefully expelling hundreds of thousands of Russian civilians from Crimea (state Ukrainian policy goal), and purging the Russian language and culture while trying to incorporate millions of hostile Russian ethnics into your country will work better.
"So there would be no benefit to the Ukrainian state over a cease-fire in which they do not formally recognize any Russian conquest and some very clear disadvantages. "
If the United States says it will end their support if Ukraine doesn't agree to our demands, then they have every incentive to agree. Without our support things will get much worse for them.
"so even that will probably result in low-level hostilities continuing for a long-long time."
Hence why we should get a real peace deal and not an armistace.
I don't think "killing a few million people" is a plausible result of the war, short of Russia going nuclear. Do you have a justification for that or was it demagoguery?
"Most people don't want to change borders by conquest."
But some do, as just demonstrated. Putin may regret it now, although he hasn't said so, but if so that's because the conquest turned out to be more difficult than expected.
Your proposal gives Putin what he wanted, although at a higher cost than he expected, which looks like a reason to continue trying to recreate greater Russia, which is what Putin has said he wants. The Baltics are a lot weaker than Ukraine was.
Military casualties alone so far are half a million or more already.
Since the counter offensive began Ukraine has retaken the following at great cost.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2x2H-fbIAE11uc?format=jpg&name=large
I think "millions of deaths" is a realistic figure for the cost of retaking Donbass and Crimea. In addition you would probably have to destroy most of the civilian infrastructure. I think it unlikely that the people involved in that effort would see themselves as being "liberated".
Realistically though, it's not clear Ukraine could sustain those loses. Zelensky recently had to suspend all military recruitment because they are down to having jeeps full of men grab people off the street to use as canon fodder. Not a good look and very unpopular.
I'll believe Putin wants to conquer the world when I see it. Ukraine was an area with many Russians that underwent a violent foreign backed coup and was being tracked towards joining an explicitly anti-Russian alliance. Hitler didn't wait 20 years to start a regional conflict and then immediately offer a white peace a month in.
The Baltics are part of NATO. So far the only country to attack NATO is Ukraine (Nordstream bombing).
"Military casualties alone so far are half a million or more already."
That figure is for killed or wounded, with killed a fraction of the total. So where do you get your millions of dead?
"I'll believe Putin wants to conquer the world when I see it."
I said nothing about conquering the world. He has said that he wants to reestablish greater Russia, which requires the annexation of a good deal of territory that was Russian at some time in the past and no longer is.
"Ukraine was an area with many Russians"
Russian speakers. The Baltics have a lot of Russian speakers too.
I assume your "white peace" means Russia holding on to the territory they have just seized. I'm not sure Hitler wouldn't have agreed to peace with the UK after he conquered France if the UK had been interested.
"So far the only country to attack NATO is Ukraine (Nordstream bombing)."
It is still unclear who did that.
I think, there are many things conflated in your argument. As I have written in my original comment, the "nation" is the wrong abstraction here. Different population groups and governments have different preferences and different incentives.
There is currently no evidence that the Russian government would honor any peace agreement; after all, they have agreed in December 1994 to guarantee Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up the Soviet nukes that happened to be on Ukrainian territory. That lasted less than 20 years. OTOH, there is some evidence that if they can get away with conquest, they will attempt more. This is clearly not in the interest of most of Russia's population, but it is in the interest of the Russian government because they traditionally measure Russia's national security with a ruler on the map; the further away from Moscow the potential adversary can launch their invasion, the more secure Russia (in reality: their power over Russia) is.
I also think that your model of Ukraine is inaccurate. There is no well-defined "Russian part" and having a preference for the Russian language does not imply a strong preference for being ruled from Moscow. Also, to a large extent this *is* a proxy war in which the decisions of Ukraine's government are heavily influenced (to say the least) by their American patrons on whose support they critically depend both politically and militarily.
Giving up nukes was dumb, though in fairness they couldn't even fire them anyway (they didn't have the keys).
It seems likely to me that had we not supported the 2014 coup or engaged in the rapid expansion of an anti-Russian alliance that perhaps nothing would have happened to Ukraine. Certainly keeping out of it would have been worth a shot.
When historians write the histories later they aren't going to have the same biases as people in the moment with an ax to grind.
They couldn't fire them instantly but they had the physical bombs. Could it have been that difficult to replace the keyed control system?
> It seems likely to me that had we not supported the 2014 coup or engaged in the rapid expansion of an anti-Russian alliance that perhaps nothing would have happened to Ukraine.
NATO expansion was driven by the newly liberated Eastern European countries, not by the West.
Well, certainly the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia with the subsequent recognition of independence of Kosovo in 2008 set a very bad precedent, to a large extent foreshadowing what happened between Russia and Ukraine. It certainly put an end to any illusion of a rules-based international order being respected and enforced by the international community (whatever it is). However, the US government stopped short of allowing Kosovo to join Albania, whereas Putin's regime annexed Crimea 24 hours after recognizing its independence from Ukraine. Had they created a nominally independent client state similar to Kosovo in Crimea, they probably would have gotten away with it with much fewer sanctions and much less international support for Ukraine. I suspect that the reason they didn't do it that way is because they calculated that there is a high chance of Ukraine's government (which at that point was in a constitutional crisis) just agreeing to it and the rest of Ukraine joining NATO in a speedy fashion. Hence, they annexed Crimea and fueled a civil war in two eastern provinces, making sure that they have an ongoing territorial dispute with Ukraine which is a more reliable way of preventing it from joining NATO. As I have written elsewhere, Russian military tradition measures Russia's national security with a ruler on the map: the farther away is the starting point of a potential invasion from Moscow, the more secure Russia is. One cannot even say that it is entirely nonsensical, given the historical experience.
The Azeri-Armenian conflict has been festering at various levels of intensity since 1988 and is far from being over. Right now, Azerbaijan has an upper hand, but they agreed to a ceasefire that leaves substantial parts of their claimed (and internationally recognized) territory outside of their control. There is no reason to believe that they are going to respect that agreement indefinitely and the Armenian side is perfectly aware of that. Currently, Armenia's government maneuvered itself into a position where Russia is their only ally able and willing to provide meaningful military support and that is very problematic given the experience of the Ukrainian conflict. On the other hand, the Armenian population of Karabakh has good reasons to believe that they are going to be subjected to cruel, unjust and arbitrary treatment by Azerbaijani authorities up to and including murder and forced expulsion, should the latter establish control over their homeland, so they are very motivated to fight till the last man standing, which the Azerbaijani side is much less willing to do. So this conflict will also drag on indefinitely, ensuring lasting poverty and insecurity for generations of Armenians.
Well, they went farther than anyone so far, post WW2: annexing another state's territory in a war of aggression is so far unprecedented, especially against a state with which they had a binding agreement guaranteeing their territorial integrity. The closest thing to this was Turkey's occupation of Northern Cyprus, but even there they didn't go as far as annexing it; they merely created a client state that they (and noone else) recognized as independent.
> While it is true that Ukraine's backers are -- especially in the long run -- able to produce more shells than Russia
On the other hand, the United States has a tendency to lose interest in wars that drag out too long.
There is also the simple problem that all military procurement is wildly overpriced, so having a higher GDP doesn't necessarily mean being able to produce more shells. It can all just go to middle mens bottom line.
Although Russia also has a version of this problem, with the corruption being a lot more brazen.
Except the war on drugs...
<i> But the moment that an artificer, a smith, a carpenter, or a weaver, for example, quits his workhouse, the sole source of his revenue is completely dried up. </i>
At least the smith goes to war, along his peer artificers and customer-farmers, to defend his life time investment in the smithy, the foundry, the mill... and of course the yeoman farmer goes to defend his own specific home and fields as well as the general "country". The militia turns out collectively, to defend property, owned individually. Property. The "Pursuit of Happiness" as Jefferson's draft Declaration was amended from "property". "Land", in the Henry George sense of the term. Real Estate. Fixed assets.
Probably other earlier philosophers, maybe even Adam Smith in passages not quoted, have extended this argument, but I encountered it from Clayton Cramer. This contemporary historian made the argument, during the Michael Bellesiles fraud, that in the English and Colonial American era a three-legged stool of concepts were structured into the notions of "citizenship". One leg was privately owning weapons: longbows to muskets to rifles -- along with duty of community drill in the commons to establish competency, confidence, and cooperation. Another leg was voting: defined very generally. Voting on leaders, voting during jury trials, subscribing" or signing-on to community projects like drainage ditches or roads. And voting rights and militia membership were linked, on the third part of the structure: to owning Property.
Not everybody owned Land or a mill/press/foundry. A "journeyman" artificer might make a sufficient living with a few materials and only the "tools of his trade" in a ruck sack. Tinkers and peddlers and teachers and preachers; jewelers and scriveners and smiths or carpenter journeymen who eventually intend to, but have not yet, settled down, too young yet to root themselves in land and buildings and "real property".
Historically though, Europeans have been suspicious, sometimes violently so, of those who practice an itinerant, peripatetic, trade. There was too a vicious circle established. Identifiable groups were prohibited from owning Land or owning Weapons, consequently individuals in the target group tended to develop a community of itinerant craftsmen, and soon enough took nearly a monopoly on their trades. Jewish jewelers. Romany tinkers. Arab peddlers. Unfairly, the group and the traveling tradesmen were thought to be unreliable, prone to flee trouble rather than confront it. Run from battle rather than stand in opposition. And if that disfavored group can't be expected or trusted to take up arms in the common defense, why let them buy land or vote? Entirely circular, and very very common.
The old Romans, and the Colonial Army under Washington, partly broke out of the circle with a promise to the landless young, healthy, and hungry "journeymen" of their eras. Join the Army, for low pay and chance of painful death, and when we win and if you survive, you'll be awarded your own land, carry home your service weapon to defend it with, and vote about whether or not the nation (and your sons) will participate in the next war. The promise was, in ancient times and modern, imperfectly fulfilled. But even partially implemented it structured that hree-legged stool of land, weapon, and vote that government legitimacy depended on.
The claim has subsided into subtext in discussions, more recently, about voting rights for Women, and rights to lifelong medical treatment for veterans, and qualifications of "gentle" civilians to own weapons. (Weapons of self-defense? Weapons of War?) I think, though, it's useful to bring the 3-part notion into the forefront. Do equal rights for woman include the equal duty to subject themselves to a draft? Can an interstate truck driver, licensed to carry in her home state, carry the weapon registered to her in her home state, and use it in another different and more restrictive state in defense of herself, her rig (valued at more than some homes) and cargo (ditto)? If a female truck driver is not allowed one of Sam Colt's "equalizers" is the profession skewed, if not closed, against her? Is the claimed disparity between mens' and womens' pay at all correlated to state gun laws affecting their respective choices of (dangerous) jobs? Or even just willingness to take on (riskier) night shift, higher pay, schedules? Do the preferences given veterans for employment in state and federal civil service jobs (a property right to a paycheck nearly comparable to owning land, after all) discriminate against women and religious pacifists?
And back to the topic, what do we think of Russian use of mercenary forces, apparently just as unreliable in this century as the 14th? What of the draft, including drafting old veterans of what's conventionally retirement age? Where are the Russian female soldiers in this tale? (Or, Ukranian, for that matter?) Quite a bit of what I think of as "war" has not been happening in this conflict. I wonder if the whole thing is more of a show, a potlatch, destroying wealth to gain prestige, somehow. And what does classical economics tell of THAT ritual?
Anyhow, thanks David, for reminding me I need to read more Smith and perhaps a bit less Heinlein.
> Where are the Russian female soldiers in this tale? (Or, Ukranian, for that matter?)
Neither country drafts women, and the madness that causes people to act as if the believe that women are just as good at being soldiers as men has not yet infected either country.
According to Samuel Johnson, 'On the Bravery of the English Common Soldier', the English soldiers were braver because they tended to be from the civilian 'jack of all trades, master of none' and were used to making do.
Re firearms aiding civilization - that's really interesting.
Russian military is made up of multiple militias.
I think the Ukrainian army is mostly militias in the sense in which the US army in wartime was — amateur soldiers drafted. One of Smith's points that I didn't quote was that a militia army in a long war became a professional army, since after a year or two the soldiers were no longer amateurs.