"Those who have studied the past should not be surprised. The most contested subjects in human history have arguably not been land or fortunes, but symbols, ideas, beliefs, and possibilities" I read a lot of history and I'm quite sure it was mostly about land
For example, I'm from Israel. Two hundred hundred moons ago, I was involved in a civil peace initiative. The point was for citizens to discuss this unofficial peace document so that it could form the basis of an official one at some point... Peace agreements are "war by other means" par excellence.
Anyway... this conflict is most definitely about land. What made this specific initiative ballsy was the fact that it included maps and took on land issues directly. This also meant that only extreme peaceniks from either side would go anywhere near the project.
What where our discussions about? Narratives. What were our disagreements about? Narratives. What compromises did we fail to make? Narratives. What happened. What it means. What proverbial schoolchildren should be taught. What symbolic steps must be taken to in recognition of the correct narrative.
BTW... active fighters were involved in this initiative. Israeli soldiers and palestinian militants. A lot of them. They even had their own groups. Disavowing violence was not a precondition to participating. Disavowing violence rarely came up as a demand or request by participants. People could, often, understand and live with past and future violence. Disavowing narratives and symbolism was constantly demanded as a precondition to everything.
Hostile, competing narratives and symbols are a deep essense of conflict. They aren't just caused by conflict. They don't just cause conflict. They are conflict.
I'm also irish, and the story of northern ireland is also proof of this idea.
I said mostly. We will find a lot of examples following this ideas, narratives, symbols the author mentiones in modern time but also earlier (30years war, crusades etc.). But until the industrial evolution, state income was basically taxes on land(in coin but also in big part in kind) and this was mostly fought over. I don't disagree with you, I just think the author has the balance the wrong way around
The Israeli conflict is only about land by default. Because if one or the other gives up, they have nowhere to live. Everything else is money and the stories we tell ourselves and they tell themselves around procuring more of it. Money and power.
If you put the existential threat part aside (which we should have after +70 years with all of our neighbors having fractured countries) the Israeli/Palestinian story is as pathetic as it gets being solely a money and power grab. And to think we still sends our sons and daughters to die for said grabbers of money and power under the guise of symbolism and idealism speaking it as we’re still a fresh new country.
It's also about politicians and people in power, staying in power by keeping conflicts alive. For example, Netanyahu regularly bombing some important Hamas person in Gaza and Hamas then firing rockets, was good for Netanyahu's and the Hamas leaders' popularity (as far as I've understood).
> only about land by default
Hmm, I think to a somewhat large part, the conflicts are ways for the people in power to stay in power.
What do you mean with "by default"?
Have a look at The Dictators Handbok btw and try to see the world from the perspective of someone like Netanyahu or the Hamas leaders. How can they increase/keep their power and wealth, using the conflicts as tools.
It's also tribalism ... Many things at the same time going on?
I think we are saying the same here. Yes it’s 100% about keeping the conflict alive and thereby keeping your reins on power.
By default I mean that before modern times, in the past, when the country was young it was about survival and hence about land and all the ideology and history stories we had around it. But those times have passed. Today we are a power house in the Middle East to be reckoned with. For now almost the last country standing with a functioning (funny I know) government in the area. We are not fighting for land. Our neighbors are powerless to give us another 1973. And yet we cling to the same stories and send our sons and daughters to do the dirty deeds of our (and their) politicians so they could keep their reins on power.
The marketplace of ideas is won not by conflict but by merit. In other words you can’t force people to have a narrative about something, you have to provide the superior narrative. The issue we’re facing right now, globally, is the inability to debate ideas on their merits. The microcosm of that can be seen in your peace talks example; the other side is trying to force their narrative onto the opposing side. That’s not how debates work.
Is the current Russo-Ukrainian war about ideology or about land? With the same facts, you could analyze it as both. Arguing for land, it's clear that Russia wants control of Ukrainian land, not least Crimea (which hosts Russia's main Black Sea naval base), but also as much of Ukraine it can get its hands on (see the recent decision to annex every oblast Russia was occupying). But you could also argue that it's about ideology: resisting NATO encroachment on Russia, or Russia's denial of the existence of Ukrainians who aren't "really" Russians, or general east-versus-west/democracy-versus-autocracy/etc. ideologies.
This is about a war that is currently ongoing, where even lay people are likely to be cognizant of the various causes and theories of the war. Applying this same analysis for wars that happened 500 years ago is more difficult, especially since knowledge of the particulars is likely to be filtered via people who favor one theory over another.
FWIW, I'm generally in the camp that most wars are waged for the primary purpose of controlling more land, with the reason for doing so largely boiling down to some form of "naked territorial aggression"--including the current Russo-Ukrainian War as well as recent conflicts like the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
That one was just a lie. It has zero to do with nato.
It is ideologically against westernization of countries around Russia against their souverenity and for making them authoritarian puppet states responding to Kremlin.
But encroachment by NATO thing is nonsense. It frames Russia as vicrim od nato, but that is not what it in reality was. Even nato enlarging was because countries actively seemed membership, pushed pleaded pressed. Because they have seen nato as only available protection.
Sorry I don't comment on Russo-Ukrainian war online as I want to avoid to get the discussion into a flamewar.
"Applying this same analysis for wars that happened 500 years ago is more difficult" Yes it is and there a still colored discussions about this e.g. consider the Roman expansion in into Greece. There is a camp which argues it was (initally) a defensive move to counter a pact between Macedonia and Selecuid kingdom against Egypt (Green at al), which would distribute the power in eastern Mediterranean against Rome. The other side argues Rome was just build to expand endlessly and it was aggressive move. Here I'm slightly on the first side, as I think Rome wanted to consolidate after the Punic Wars. But after the inital wars the following wars were clearly landgrabs, which provided with Rome with rich areable land in the east.
Anyway I argue, to wage war up until to modern times you needed control land as this paid your military, in rome were talking about 50% of state income, most from landtax. And this created the initative to wage war of said reason (we are getting into interstate anarchy theory see. e.g. Eckstein or Waltz).
1) We maintain our current diversity of thought, race, views, and all other things - but we have an infinite and homogeneous world that stretches out, in identical fashion, in every direction endlessly.
2) We have the world the same as we're in, but everybody is literally identical. To the point that we're effectively 8 billion twins with an identical upbringing.
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In which scenario do you think there would be less war? To me this feels nearly like a rhetorical question, but it may well be that we simply see things very differently!
ok i guess I'll have to admit/adress some errors in this case.
1. Malthus is still cited(and applies I think) a lot in historical papers when discussing preindustrial societies and that was the mindset I was in when I wrote the comment.
2. I didn't really consider "endless" in the scenario present. In an endless world you you' ll get infinite wars. Whereas in an finite world you get finite wars so the "endless" we world will always more wars then the finite.
