There is another complication here: What does "going to war" or "being
at war" mean? Clearly LARGE SCALE conflicts qould qualify as a "war,"
but what about smaller conflicts? We see history through the magnifying
lens of ideas, making "war" look like "LARGE SCALE" conflict. But
Hanson's thesis might be quite different if one looks at "near-wars" or
"small wars" between cultures that were decided relatively quickly, or
perhaps decided without actual bloodshed. I suspect that many "wars" are
actually not much different than peace, even if the leaders of opposing
countries "declare" that they are at war.
When these wars escalate to the point of HUGE conflicts, Hanson's thesis
may be more true. But small wars can PREVENT large scale conflicts if
they are settled before they become large scale conflicts; it's the
settling of them at a smaller scale that serves as evidence against
Hanson AND prevents history from noticing them at all..
Judy Evans wrote:
EY> However if you want to refute Hanson, start naming lasting EY> periods of peace in world history that resulted from indecisive EY> wars. Do that and his whole thesis crumbles. I thought somebody EY> might try to do that, or at least think of one exception. I can't EY> think of a historical situation that runs counter to Hanson's EY> thesis. Can you?
Almost certainly, given the time, someone here could. But then Hanson
or a Hanson follower would say either
but that was not an indecisive war; clearly X did beat Y; for Y never
attacked X after that war
or
but Y did attack X following that war, so, it didn't do it for a
whole one thousand years, my thesis stands.
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