Sunday, February 01, 2004

Induction

Perfidy Responds

Commenting on Winds of Change, I was unnecessarily opaque with the “argues inductively” statement. I wrote:

Telenko argues inductively for the elimination of the other, where the permissible degree of otherness is inversely proportional to the capability of weapons.

Let me supply the underlying thinking. I’d like to note that I do not imply that Trent is directly arguing that we should commit genocide; this is why I use the term inductive.

An inductive proof is a weak form of mathematical proof. You prove a base case, then prove that it holds true for a successor to the base. You might then conclude that it holds true for _all_ cases (a bit more definition can be had at http://scom.hud.ac.uk/scomtlm/book/node125.html).

It is imperative that I note I am not well-read in military science. My co-blogger Buckethead is; with any luck he’ll chime in at some point. I just work with the facts I have.

We are discussing the notion of a _survival_ war with Islamic radicals and their support network. There are two avenues by which danger can arrive on our shores: First, by the projection of conventional force. Second, by the use of weapons of mass destruction.

Conventional force is a conceivable survival threat, but only in the very long term. Radical islamic economies would have to develop to the point where they could compete with western economies, if conventional war is to be attempted. Certain tenets of radical islam make its competitiveness in this area highly unlikely (anti-woman, dictatorial, corrupt). It is possible that a huge _decline_ in western capabilities coupled with best-case rise in Islamic cultures might one day yield conventional military capabilities that could harm us, but I find it pretty unlikely.

WMD: Chemical won’t do any significant damage. Nuclear is bad, but localized. Biological is the scariest, theoretically.

An isolated nuclear attack (a bomb in a city) is not a survival-level problem. If such an attack is committed the retribution will be terrible. The US will not allow a radical islamic state to achieve substantial missile capability; a MAD rerun is not likely to occur.

Biological weapons are quite terrifying. I really don’t know what the state of the art is; I will simply assume that it’s bad, and it’s going to get a lot worse.

Trent believes (or I perceive him to believe) that deliberate action now is necessary to assure or increase the safety level of our culture. Both the urgency of that action and the severity of its effects are coupled to the nature of WMD—because WMD can cause so much damage, there are certain forms of freedom of thought and action that we have greatly reduced tolerance for. I do not use the word “freedom” here in anything other than its strictest literal sense; freedom here is referring to activites that are more or less psychotic and evil.

The inductive part of this comes together as weapon power increases. The imminence and capability of the WMD threat to our culture increases over time. In order to maintain some perceived level of safety, we must engage tighter and tighter control over the freedoms of other cultures, and over individuals. As WMD technology improves, the resources required to marshal and deliver such an attack become within the capabilities of smaller and smaller groups.

Thus, the use of oppressive force to counter technology-driven WMD is, over the long run, likely to fail unless increasingly rigid control and suppression of opposition is executed.

Circling back around to the beginning, what this means is that using force to counter hate and prevent hate’s access to WMD will require ever more effort and severity over time. We will place those resources efficiently, which means focusing on those cultures that are most different (least understandable, least trustworthy). The farthest extents of those target cultures will be eliminated over time; they will be evolved, via forceful methods to be closer to our own. Simultaneously, as reduction of the overt cultural enemy is performed, two things happen. First, the targets become progressive more difficult to identify (smaller clusters, too similar to “us"). Second, repressive forces will necessarily produce some level of backlash. These “internal” forces can become exceedingly dangerous.

At some point it gets hard to tell the difference between friend and foe.

I hope that’s shed a little light on my thinking. It’s not that I disagree, necessarily, with Trent’s position that a hard pre-emptive strike can “teach a lesson”. It can, and it will probably succeed on some levels. I remain more concerned over the long run with the evolution of technology.

I also remain convinced that a maximally successful, peaceful, and reasonably honorable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis will substantially reduce tensions and hatred in the Islamic world, thereby reducing danger to us. I hope I’m not wrong about this; otherwise, the problem is going to be very tough.

As far as the phrase “elimination of the other” goes, it didn’t come from a book—it just came out that way when I wrote that comment. I hope my use of the phrase is clearer, now.

On a related topic: If Israel were directly attacked by conventional military force today, wouldn’t the US step in and defend her? I am quite sure we would, as would a good chunk of the rest of the world.

As far as I know, in the six day war, the US did _not_ intervene. US forces were repositioned to express neutrality. The Liberty incident may have clouded the situation. Why, during this engagement, was US support of Israel not a _given_?


Posted by Ross on 02/01/04 at 05:41 AM
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