For a future without war, if that's possible, look to the Rhine

[dArKeR]

By J. Bradford DeLong

The saddest of the books on my office bookshelf is an old one published nearly a century ago: Norman Angell's The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power in Nations to Their Economic and Social Advantage, which tried to prove that military conquest was obsolete.

Angell's argument was simple: In all prolonged modern industrial wars, everybody loses. Losers lose the most, but winners are also worse off than if peace had been maintained. Many fathers, sons and husbands are dead, and so are many mothers, wives and daughters. Much wealth has been blown up. Much architecture has been turned into rubble. Confiscation damages the rule of law on which modern industrial prosperity rests. The most that even the winners can say is that they are little losers rather than big losers. Modern industrial war is, as the computer in the 1983 movie War Games put it, a very strange game: "The only winning move is not to play."

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/05/25/2003156905

[Karenina]

1. Excellent!

Thanx!!

[Bruce McAuley]

2. Thank you, Thank you!

This is the reality we must envision, and soon, when the war machine screws up SO bad the world rises up as one and says, "NO MORE!".
Our models are there, we just need to USE them.

Bruce