These questions have been bothering me for a while. All the answers I come up with seem demonstrably wrong.
Realpolitik is a total nonstarter. But idealpolitik doesn’t really work either. Obviously the leadership doesn’t believe in some ideal. So are they just opportunists, doing what they think will put them ahead? It seems too monolithic for that, too group-thinky. If they were opportunistic, there would be more variety, with innovators trying to find a flavor that works better for them. I am puzzled how that ends up being unanimous stupidity. Maybe there is something lumpy about it, and people are afraid to depart too far from the dominant thinking? That might make sense, if the result wasn't embarrassing failure , after debacle, after humiliation.
I guess the only conjecture left is that opportunistic leaders are highly constrained within a narrow range of negative sum alternatives imposed on them by... popular support and defense contractor lobbyists?
But this also seems nuts. At some point, Charlie Brown has to stop trying to kick the football.
I think you’re spot on that leaders of countries are constrained by negative sum (in the long run) or even zero sum (in the short and maybe medium run) preferences of specific interest groups that enable their power. In a country like Russia, Putin is either constrained by the military and private forces and the broad electorate. The electorate has a long history of seeking revolution as a means of change so he must comply at some level with their zero-sum preferences otherwise it might mean a brutal death or ousting for himself. He basically exchanged a deal with Oligarchs to guarantee their zero sum preferences in exchange for support of his power I think few decades ago.
I wonder how that deal stays or was ever stable. The oligarchs could back a coup if they thought that Putin had reneged on their bargain, but that is a pretty risky strategy. If put in every gets to the point where he doesn’t think he needs them, the bargain will be modified unilaterally.
If you're not willing to fight then someone else can take everything.
"But that wrath, too, is driven by Idealpolitik — Western support for universal human rights plus global Muslim solidarity."
Universal Human Rights is an attempt to escape the nastier implications of Realpolitik, which of course could find genocide a correct action in certain instances.
Jews especially pushed Universal Human Rights after WWII (and before) because they thought it would protect them as rootless cosmopolitans often targeted by majorities. It just sucks that they also decided to conquer an ethno-state on land occupied by a billion hostile low IQs with oil.
Muslim solidarity makes sense. Why shouldn't we genocide the Muslims? They contribute nothing to existence with their low IQs. We pay them a ton of money for oil under their feet that we have to develop the technology to dig out of the ground for them. And they are still a pain. Why not cut out the middle man? Just kill em all and take the oil.
Isn't that what the Nazi's would do? Isn't that what we did to the Native Americans?
Without Muslim solidarity, we might just do that. That was after all how the west controlled the oil for a long time (getting the Muslims to kill each other).
"Due to the land’s sacrosanct character"
If the Jews gave the Palestinians money they would just fritter it away and come asking for more. Isn't that the actual story in large part anyway!
Most low IQs can't build anything so its always in there interests to be parasites.
"it’s hard to see how they’d even begin to respond"
There is a lot written about this. It's hard to see how the west's actions didn't agitate this. Sponsoring a hostile coup in Ukraine in 2014 and then arming them to the teeth was the last straw.
I think we all agree that if the US could have led a coup in Russia just as they did in Ukraine (and countless other places) they would have and have been actively trying.
In the 1990s before Putin we supported a drunk that shelled his own parliament and helped him get re-elected (fraudulently) while the country got looted.
"In a world of Realpolitik, Russians never would have invaded Ukraine; why try to beat the West when you can join it?"
The west could have stayed out of Ukrainian politics and not expanded NATO.
"Before the war, they could just as easily have defined the West as “their friend,” placated a few Western scruples, and ended the Ukraine conflict before it started."
Didn't they? I seem to remember them dissolving their empire voluntarily and then trying to make peace for about 30 years.
It's well known that Putin offered a white peace a month into the war and the US/Britain instructed Zelensky to reject it.
"U.S.-China"
The United States doesn't feel the Chinese government should exist. It wishes to overthrow the Chinese government, and failing that it wishes to "contain" China by not letting it get to strong.
The Chinese government does think it should exist and doesn't want to get interfered with and kneecapped by a hostile power.
"China would cultivate global good will"
Is it possible to cultivate good will with the west? Or does the very existence of the CCP fundamentally mean conflict? Would we ever just LEAVE THEM ALONE if they didn't adopt our governance system?
I think Bryan will have some trouble understanding military conflict, because he is an avowed pacifist and any pacifist state would likely be conquered by its neighbors, who would then pursue a non-pacifist policy.
This isn't really a rebuttal. Morals aside, I think Bryan's contention is that most wars are mutually deleterious, and therefore most wars can't be explained in terms of rational self-interest, and I think this is probably right. There is, rationally, a >0 optimal degree of militarism, but I would say most countries historically have a positive bias in their estimation of when it's worth it to go to war (and the probability that they'll win). It's much more common for countries to go to war when it turns out not to be worth it than to not go to war when it turns out war would've been worth it.
If I were to posit a systematic flaw in human psychology, it's that we evolved in conditions where the payoffs to victory were high and the costs in victory were low. Pre-modern battles had notoriously lopsided casualties, and fertility rates for the conquered were enormous over the vanquished.
In modern war everyone dies.
The main problem is that "everyone dies" can be a threat.
"Give into my demands or everyone dies!"
"You gave in to my demands, well here are some more demands. Give in or everyone dies!"
Every time you surrender an inch, another inch can be demanded.
It's just flat out difficult to figure out when you should push back and when you should give.
That's an interesting point to make about buying out an area. I wonder what the process would look like if a state bought up a ton of land in another state, then said "Oh... we are going to govern this now because it belongs to us." Usually governments are a little touchy about that, saying some version of "you are really just renting the land from us; we get to make the rules for it and it doesn't leave our control." Yet that generally applies to individuals, so it would be interesting to see how it applies to other states, who typically treat things like embassies and military bases as functional parts of the home country, under its governance.
What would happen if the USA just bought all the real estate in Taiwan, then claimed that it was now USA territory, and then sold the land back under mortgage to the Taiwanese? Interesting thought experiment... first notion is that the Chinese government would claim that the USA didn't have the ability to buy the land because it belonged to China who didn't grant that kind of sale.
I was replying to “ I wonder what the process would look like if a state bought up a ton of land in another state, then said "Oh... we are going to govern this now because it belongs to us."”
I think embassies get treated as special cases. It's not like country x can buy land anywhere in country y and declare it part of their embassy.
The reasons for geopolitical conflict today would be at least as weird to the Martian, as historical conflicts over esoteric issues like the doctrine of transubstantiation are to us today.
Palestinians aren’t fighting “over land they consider sacred” in Gaza; you’ld have to be talking (as they do) about all of Israel. And it is not even so much that they want the land for themselves. Consider how attached to that land Arabs were before 1880: not noticeably. It is that they passionately, idealistically want the Jews out, preferably dead. If you don’t take Islam seriously it just looks like Iago-like unmotivated malice.
(And if you do, it looks like deity-commanded malice. But that’s the opinion of a non-Muslim.)
This is not to say that they would tolerate Christians either, or other religions. But their contempt for Jews is unique.
According to Caplan, the difference between real- and idealpolitik seems to be the goal which is pursued. If you value land and wealth and human lives, you do realpolitik. If you value ideology and religion and status, you do idealpolitik. Neither of these terms is a precise description of a countries values though. Naturally, countries would like to get it all and priorities are shifting around all the time. A conflict can arise over any of those things and any conflict may escalate as they sacrifice the least valuable things, if that is money or human lives or whatever. "Why do you fight?" "Because it seemed to be the best option given our values."
The mistake here is to reduce the behavior of two countries to a very simple model of "wants land" or "is holy". Such models have little predictive power because of the big gap to reality's complexity. Only when a war is over and people don't care that much about the details anymore, then we may simplify it to a narrative like "tried to make country great again".
I'm surprised you didn't tie this idea in with 'The Myth of the Rational Voter.' The reason foreign policy is driven by emotion and idealism rather than realpolitik is because politicians ultimately answer to voters, who don't judge foreign policy rationally for the same reason they don't judge other policies rationally: the benefits of doing so in the voting booth are negligible.
This doesn't necessarily explain it for non-democracies, but even most non-democratic governments are largely dependent on the ascent of the public.
One of the sides might be inclined to accept a buyout -- if they had anywhere else to go. But they are not citizens of any other country nor are there comparable lands to acquire with whatever buyout price they received.
Why would anyone care about them being 'coethnics?' Most Arabs are not Arab ethno-nationalists? Most Arabs probably care far more about nationality or regional identity than Arab racial brotherhood or whatever. Your obsession with racial solidarity is not universal, I'm sorry to tell you.
Palestinian people and refugees are not trash. These are human beings who are in a tough spot. Hamas is trash.
Descendants of Palestinian refugees are not given full rights in their host countries. They’re not allowed to freely sell their labor and acquire housing. What chance do they have of finding success and stability under the circumstances?
Niggers have full right to sell their labor and acquire housing (civil rights). How has it availed them? Especially surrounded by their co-ethnics. Detroit is a shithole even with massive subsidies. South Africa can't keep the lights on.
The US military declares everyone below 83 IQ worthless even to dig trenches and absorb bullets. That's at least half of the third world.
If each Palestinian received the buyout price of an average acre of land in Israel, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't be able to find somewhere else in the Middle East to buy an acre of similar or better quality.
That's not the point. As I understand it, other countries in the Middle East will not accept Palestinian immigrants. They are not free to sell their land in Gaza or the West Bank and move to Egypt, for example.
They don't accept them now, but in Bryan's thought experiment, there would have been no violence, only commercial transactions. The same situation would have been unlikely to obtain.
> they fighting over land that both sides see as “sacred.
Israel is fighting for individual rights. Thats rationally sacred. Israel is basically Western, not basically religious. Hamas is fighting to kill Jews, not for land.
If it was based solely on human rights, then could the Palestinians buy the land from the Israelis and they could all move to the US? This would avoid conflict while allowing the Israelis' humanity to be protected by another "Western" state.
Humanity is the free will moral choice to focused mind reason. The West is defined by that choice and thus has a moral right to victory over its military enemies. Anybody can choose reason. Non-Westerners must pay for their choice to evade reason, either at their own hands or by the West.
"Why do men fight? They fight for food. And not only food. Sometimes there must be a beverage."--Woody Allen
These questions have been bothering me for a while. All the answers I come up with seem demonstrably wrong.
Realpolitik is a total nonstarter. But idealpolitik doesn’t really work either. Obviously the leadership doesn’t believe in some ideal. So are they just opportunists, doing what they think will put them ahead? It seems too monolithic for that, too group-thinky. If they were opportunistic, there would be more variety, with innovators trying to find a flavor that works better for them. I am puzzled how that ends up being unanimous stupidity. Maybe there is something lumpy about it, and people are afraid to depart too far from the dominant thinking? That might make sense, if the result wasn't embarrassing failure , after debacle, after humiliation.
I guess the only conjecture left is that opportunistic leaders are highly constrained within a narrow range of negative sum alternatives imposed on them by... popular support and defense contractor lobbyists?
But this also seems nuts. At some point, Charlie Brown has to stop trying to kick the football.
I think you’re spot on that leaders of countries are constrained by negative sum (in the long run) or even zero sum (in the short and maybe medium run) preferences of specific interest groups that enable their power. In a country like Russia, Putin is either constrained by the military and private forces and the broad electorate. The electorate has a long history of seeking revolution as a means of change so he must comply at some level with their zero-sum preferences otherwise it might mean a brutal death or ousting for himself. He basically exchanged a deal with Oligarchs to guarantee their zero sum preferences in exchange for support of his power I think few decades ago.
I wonder how that deal stays or was ever stable. The oligarchs could back a coup if they thought that Putin had reneged on their bargain, but that is a pretty risky strategy. If put in every gets to the point where he doesn’t think he needs them, the bargain will be modified unilaterally.
Or, "Humans, why do you fight?"
If you're not willing to fight then someone else can take everything.
"But that wrath, too, is driven by Idealpolitik — Western support for universal human rights plus global Muslim solidarity."
Universal Human Rights is an attempt to escape the nastier implications of Realpolitik, which of course could find genocide a correct action in certain instances.
Jews especially pushed Universal Human Rights after WWII (and before) because they thought it would protect them as rootless cosmopolitans often targeted by majorities. It just sucks that they also decided to conquer an ethno-state on land occupied by a billion hostile low IQs with oil.
Muslim solidarity makes sense. Why shouldn't we genocide the Muslims? They contribute nothing to existence with their low IQs. We pay them a ton of money for oil under their feet that we have to develop the technology to dig out of the ground for them. And they are still a pain. Why not cut out the middle man? Just kill em all and take the oil.
Isn't that what the Nazi's would do? Isn't that what we did to the Native Americans?
Without Muslim solidarity, we might just do that. That was after all how the west controlled the oil for a long time (getting the Muslims to kill each other).
"Due to the land’s sacrosanct character"
If the Jews gave the Palestinians money they would just fritter it away and come asking for more. Isn't that the actual story in large part anyway!
Most low IQs can't build anything so its always in there interests to be parasites.
"it’s hard to see how they’d even begin to respond"
There is a lot written about this. It's hard to see how the west's actions didn't agitate this. Sponsoring a hostile coup in Ukraine in 2014 and then arming them to the teeth was the last straw.
I think we all agree that if the US could have led a coup in Russia just as they did in Ukraine (and countless other places) they would have and have been actively trying.
In the 1990s before Putin we supported a drunk that shelled his own parliament and helped him get re-elected (fraudulently) while the country got looted.
"In a world of Realpolitik, Russians never would have invaded Ukraine; why try to beat the West when you can join it?"
The west could have stayed out of Ukrainian politics and not expanded NATO.
"Before the war, they could just as easily have defined the West as “their friend,” placated a few Western scruples, and ended the Ukraine conflict before it started."
Didn't they? I seem to remember them dissolving their empire voluntarily and then trying to make peace for about 30 years.
It's well known that Putin offered a white peace a month into the war and the US/Britain instructed Zelensky to reject it.
"U.S.-China"
The United States doesn't feel the Chinese government should exist. It wishes to overthrow the Chinese government, and failing that it wishes to "contain" China by not letting it get to strong.
The Chinese government does think it should exist and doesn't want to get interfered with and kneecapped by a hostile power.
"China would cultivate global good will"
Is it possible to cultivate good will with the west? Or does the very existence of the CCP fundamentally mean conflict? Would we ever just LEAVE THEM ALONE if they didn't adopt our governance system?
I think Bryan will have some trouble understanding military conflict, because he is an avowed pacifist and any pacifist state would likely be conquered by its neighbors, who would then pursue a non-pacifist policy.
This isn't really a rebuttal. Morals aside, I think Bryan's contention is that most wars are mutually deleterious, and therefore most wars can't be explained in terms of rational self-interest, and I think this is probably right. There is, rationally, a >0 optimal degree of militarism, but I would say most countries historically have a positive bias in their estimation of when it's worth it to go to war (and the probability that they'll win). It's much more common for countries to go to war when it turns out not to be worth it than to not go to war when it turns out war would've been worth it.
That's fair.
If I were to posit a systematic flaw in human psychology, it's that we evolved in conditions where the payoffs to victory were high and the costs in victory were low. Pre-modern battles had notoriously lopsided casualties, and fertility rates for the conquered were enormous over the vanquished.
In modern war everyone dies.
The main problem is that "everyone dies" can be a threat.
"Give into my demands or everyone dies!"
"You gave in to my demands, well here are some more demands. Give in or everyone dies!"
Every time you surrender an inch, another inch can be demanded.
It's just flat out difficult to figure out when you should push back and when you should give.
That's an interesting point to make about buying out an area. I wonder what the process would look like if a state bought up a ton of land in another state, then said "Oh... we are going to govern this now because it belongs to us." Usually governments are a little touchy about that, saying some version of "you are really just renting the land from us; we get to make the rules for it and it doesn't leave our control." Yet that generally applies to individuals, so it would be interesting to see how it applies to other states, who typically treat things like embassies and military bases as functional parts of the home country, under its governance.
What would happen if the USA just bought all the real estate in Taiwan, then claimed that it was now USA territory, and then sold the land back under mortgage to the Taiwanese? Interesting thought experiment... first notion is that the Chinese government would claim that the USA didn't have the ability to buy the land because it belonged to China who didn't grant that kind of sale.
If they really owned the land, they could evict everyone that didn’t buy into their scheme. But can they buy the roads?
Are you referring to the Taiwan example? If so, yes, the USA would have to buy all the government owned land as well to make the idea work.
I was replying to “ I wonder what the process would look like if a state bought up a ton of land in another state, then said "Oh... we are going to govern this now because it belongs to us."”
I think embassies get treated as special cases. It's not like country x can buy land anywhere in country y and declare it part of their embassy.
The reasons for geopolitical conflict today would be at least as weird to the Martian, as historical conflicts over esoteric issues like the doctrine of transubstantiation are to us today.
Palestinians aren’t fighting “over land they consider sacred” in Gaza; you’ld have to be talking (as they do) about all of Israel. And it is not even so much that they want the land for themselves. Consider how attached to that land Arabs were before 1880: not noticeably. It is that they passionately, idealistically want the Jews out, preferably dead. If you don’t take Islam seriously it just looks like Iago-like unmotivated malice.
(And if you do, it looks like deity-commanded malice. But that’s the opinion of a non-Muslim.)
This is not to say that they would tolerate Christians either, or other religions. But their contempt for Jews is unique.
According to Caplan, the difference between real- and idealpolitik seems to be the goal which is pursued. If you value land and wealth and human lives, you do realpolitik. If you value ideology and religion and status, you do idealpolitik. Neither of these terms is a precise description of a countries values though. Naturally, countries would like to get it all and priorities are shifting around all the time. A conflict can arise over any of those things and any conflict may escalate as they sacrifice the least valuable things, if that is money or human lives or whatever. "Why do you fight?" "Because it seemed to be the best option given our values."
The mistake here is to reduce the behavior of two countries to a very simple model of "wants land" or "is holy". Such models have little predictive power because of the big gap to reality's complexity. Only when a war is over and people don't care that much about the details anymore, then we may simplify it to a narrative like "tried to make country great again".
Bryan's in the Idealpolitik fight of his life for his Realpolitik
I'm surprised you didn't tie this idea in with 'The Myth of the Rational Voter.' The reason foreign policy is driven by emotion and idealism rather than realpolitik is because politicians ultimately answer to voters, who don't judge foreign policy rationally for the same reason they don't judge other policies rationally: the benefits of doing so in the voting booth are negligible.
This doesn't necessarily explain it for non-democracies, but even most non-democratic governments are largely dependent on the ascent of the public.
One of the sides might be inclined to accept a buyout -- if they had anywhere else to go. But they are not citizens of any other country nor are there comparable lands to acquire with whatever buyout price they received.
Cue Bryan’s plug for open borders...
It's telling that their co-ethnics don't even want them. Trash knows trash.
https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/palestinians-in-your-country-what
If the Jews gave them money they would just piss it away and come back asking for more.
Why would anyone care about them being 'coethnics?' Most Arabs are not Arab ethno-nationalists? Most Arabs probably care far more about nationality or regional identity than Arab racial brotherhood or whatever. Your obsession with racial solidarity is not universal, I'm sorry to tell you.
Palestinian people and refugees are not trash. These are human beings who are in a tough spot. Hamas is trash.
Descendants of Palestinian refugees are not given full rights in their host countries. They’re not allowed to freely sell their labor and acquire housing. What chance do they have of finding success and stability under the circumstances?
Niggers have full right to sell their labor and acquire housing (civil rights). How has it availed them? Especially surrounded by their co-ethnics. Detroit is a shithole even with massive subsidies. South Africa can't keep the lights on.
The US military declares everyone below 83 IQ worthless even to dig trenches and absorb bullets. That's at least half of the third world.
If each Palestinian received the buyout price of an average acre of land in Israel, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't be able to find somewhere else in the Middle East to buy an acre of similar or better quality.
But they would still be the owners, and they don't know how to make use of their property. So when they fail they would be back to complain again.
That's not the point. As I understand it, other countries in the Middle East will not accept Palestinian immigrants. They are not free to sell their land in Gaza or the West Bank and move to Egypt, for example.
They don't accept them now, but in Bryan's thought experiment, there would have been no violence, only commercial transactions. The same situation would have been unlikely to obtain.
Many countries will accept immigrants who have capital to invest.
> they fighting over land that both sides see as “sacred.
Israel is fighting for individual rights. Thats rationally sacred. Israel is basically Western, not basically religious. Hamas is fighting to kill Jews, not for land.
If it was based solely on human rights, then could the Palestinians buy the land from the Israelis and they could all move to the US? This would avoid conflict while allowing the Israelis' humanity to be protected by another "Western" state.
Humanity is the free will moral choice to focused mind reason. The West is defined by that choice and thus has a moral right to victory over its military enemies. Anybody can choose reason. Non-Westerners must pay for their choice to evade reason, either at their own hands or by the West.