For a long time, the general trend of history has been to gravitate towards larger and larger geopolitical entities, exerting a homogenizing influence on humanity. Where the human race used to be defined by thousands of different tribes, different cultural worlds, now we are defined by a mere few hundred states. Even a modestly-sized modern state can encompass more territory (and almost certainly more human beings) than the most expansive empires at the dawn of history.
It’s easy to see why this happened, from a security perspective. (Not to say that it was the only factor in consideration.) Simply put, all other things being equal, you are more physically secure as the citizen of a large empire than you are as the citizen of a small tribe. A hundred small tribes can be conquered piecemeal, while a state banded together from them all is much more difficult to subjugate. There were countervailing factors that might limit the extent of how beneficial it was to grow so large (it is not so easy to enforce your rule across large swathes of territory), but these countervailing factors were diminished by technology. And, at the same time, technology made it ever more beneficial to join together with a larger empire. Before the popularization of gunpowder and effective battlefield medicine, you could more certainly rely on skill at arms, knowledge of the terrain, or sickness to curb an expansive empire’s appetite. These are certainly still factors in war, but not nearly as much as they used to be. The point, though, is that the general trend has been that political unions have become, over the ages, much more appealing. And when you look at the given rationale behind historical political unions, preventing war and providing for a better defense are usually pretty high up on the list of reasons in favor.
This trend has been going on for so long that it’s almost as if it’s been bred into us. “Unity” is now more than just a means to a better defense, it’s an idea with vague positive connotations that is seen as an end in itself. Indeed, the idea of “unity” is now more than simply practical – it’s baked into numerous branches of ideology and spirituality with the name “universalism”, so much so that it’s almost odd for us to contemplate a non-universalist idea. The idea of unity has gained so much momentum that we seem to not have noticed that our original reasons for it barely exist anymore – that, indeed, some of our original reasoning behind unity now seems to dictate that it would be better to abandon our mega-states and exist as smaller political entities.
Consider the advent of nuclear weapons. The concept of “unity” had been going strong for centuries, at this point, so much so that the world after WW2 was completely under the sway of two massive empires with populations and territory unparalleled in history, the Russian and American empires. The Russian empire was in the grips of a heavy-handed universalist dogma that compelled it to spread its form of government across the globe and collect all converted territories into one massive political entity called the Soviet Union. The American empire was a bit less dogmatic about its own universalist ideology (liberal democratic capitalism), and didn’t insist on collecting all converts into one political entity on the map, but it seems obvious that Washington’s political authority, no matter what the map said, actually extended far beyond the borders of the United States itself.
Into this situation was introduced a new weapon so destructive that international politics, for fifty years, became a question of ensuring that it saw minimal use. We are all familiar with the arrangement reached – both the Russian and American empires vowed that if any portion of their extensive territories suffered a nuclear attack at the hands of the other, the leadership would escalate the situation so that both parties would be completely destroyed. And, in reality, at the height of the cold war, any nuclear weapon, detonated anywhere, by any political entity, probably would have ignited mutually assured destruction.
This, given the situation, was a good way to prevent the use of nuclear weapons: Ensure that their use had such a high cost that even the irrational would pause to use them. It did have a flaw – the more nations that obtained nuclear weapons, the higher the chance that a non-American, non-Russian political actor might use them, and thus drive the world towards Armageddon. Preventing the use of all nuclear technology whatsoever was unlikely, however, considering its potential benefits (peaceful power generation.) So the American and Russian empires, under the guise of internationalism, came up with a reasonable bargain for non-nuclear states: promise to never obtain nuclear weapons, and we will share civilian nuclear technology with you.
We lived out the cold war without either side launching any nukes, and the non-proliferation treaty has been (mostly) successful, so it’s assumed that what we did was enough. And with the Soviet Union gone, we seem to be at much less risk for total annihilation. But the risk of nuclear weapons hasn’t disappeared – the political situation has merely changed. Nuclear weapons are as destructive as ever, if not more so. And it’s worth considering the security implications for the constituent states of the two empires that were the main players of the Cold War.
First off, it’s worth wondering whether or not the strategy of mutually assured destruction really was all that effective, or if we were just lucky. We know now that there were several occasions where the nukes were almost launched, including one situation during the Cuban missile crisis where the judgment of one Soviet naval officer was all that stood between us and nuclear holocaust. If we really wanted to prevent nuclear annihilation, was it really best to have most of the nukes stockpiled in the hands of two massive empires in the grips of competing universalist ideologies? Was that really the most effective way to ensure the safety of the citizens? If the point of unity is defense, given the reality of nuclear weapons, is the best bet really to be the part of a massive empire that, in the event of a nuclear attack, is likely to be the target of thousands of nuclear weapons? Wouldn’t it actually be much better to live in a smaller, non-affiliated state? In fact, wouldn’t the best bet be to live in a smaller, non-affiliated state with nuclear weapons of its own? That way you would have a nuclear deterrent against conventional warfare, but in the event that the Soviet Union and the US did go to war, you wouldn’t necessarily be a target of nuclear strikes. It’s interesting that the US arranged economic and political pressure to prevent exactly this sort of political entity from emerging.
But even assuming that the Soviet Union’s satellite states and America’s protectorates did not exist – even assuming that the Cold War involved ONLY the USA and Russia as defined as political entities on the map – was it really in your best defense to be a member of one of those states? A lot of the political antagonism between the US and the USSR came from ideological differences. In the US, the main advocates of liberal democratic capitalism tended to be northeastern industrialists and their attendant political hangers-on. Consider, for a moment, if every state of the US, in addition to its own national guard conventional forces, had its own nuclear arsenal. Put yourself in the shoes of, let’s say, Wyoming. You’ve got a few hundred nukes of your own. You’re not actually all that concerned with the USSR invading, because you doubt they will bear the political cost of all their largest cities being annihilated simply to capture your territory. However, you are shackled to an imperial system where the most strident voices seem intent on antagonizing the Soviets. If a war does start, despite you not really caring for the imperial anti-communist slant, you’ll be vaporized along with the rest of them. At that point, isn’t unity a distinct disadvantage? And this holds true not just for the US. Under any large geopolitical system, nuclear weapons make unity neutral at best, in terms of maintaining territorial integrity and preventing outside political subjugation. In reality, unity would probably be a negative, because in reality large political systems tend to draw their leadership caste from a limited geographical area, meaning that shackling yourself to that system would shackle you to their ideological wars and get you vaporized on their whims. It is much better to strike out on your own and serve your own interests. It doesn’t matter how small the political entities are that you break the US up to, in fact. They could be very small – city-state small – but as long as they had their hands on enough nuclear weapons to nuke a few Soviet cities, the political cost of conquering them would be much higher than the benefits.
You might object, and say that defense is about much more than simple territorial integrity. Nuclear weapons might make very small nations punch above their weight level in terms of defending their territory, but unity still offers the benefits of a strong conventional military, and a strong conventional military is key to international influence. But what, exactly, is the nature of the influence a strong conventional military buys you in the modern era, with the responsibility of territorial integrity being held by nukes?
Can it gain you new territory? For the most part, no. A conventional military cannot gain you territory held by a nuclear-powered state, and most likely the political cost of conquering new territory will be too high, particularly if the non-nuclear state is closely allied with a nuclear state. New territory tends to be tenuous if militarily conquered, unless the occupants of the conquered territory are ethnically similar to the conquerors, and truly welcomes them. Otherwise you will probably spend a fortune holding on to a territory that is never truly yours.
Can it replace hostile foreign governments with sympathetic ones? A strong conventional military can topple the government of a non-nuclear foreign country. But, for the most part, it cannot ensure that the government that replaces it will be sympathetic. In fact, the invasion itself may make the replacement government much more likely to be hostile. And you do not actually need a military invasion to topple a hostile foreign government. Often you can rely on funding internal dissent.
Can it gain you new resources? Maybe. But it’s almost always cheaper to simply buy resources, rather than spend the money to wage a war for them.
Can it gain you international prestige? Maybe. It can certainly make others fear you. But that fear will fade quickly unless you prove that you’re willing to actually use your large military. So it would seem that a large military comes with another hidden price tag: You have an obligation to engage it in warfare just to prove that you’re willing to use it. And even then, a nuclear armed state will fear you significantly less. Can it impress others? It can, in two ways: through scientific and technical feats, and through impressive humanitarian service. However, impressive technology and humanitarian service do not actually need to be military in nature. We may always need rough men to deliver the humanitarian resources to dangerous areas, but a strong conventional military is not the only place that you can find rough men. And impressive technology does not actually need a strong conventional military to wield it. Remember, in the terms of the benefits of unity, “strong” translates to “more numerous.” You do not actually need a very large military in order to show off impressive offensive technology. In fact, a lot of technology seems geared towards making a larger military less necessary.
So what, exactly, are the benefits of having a stronger (larger) conventional military? What benefits does a larger military have that justifies the downsides of unity?
It gives you the ability to stop foreign wars – not necessarily wars on your own territory, but wars between two other countries. If you have a large, strong military, simply by promising to get involved in a war between two other countries, you can influence them not to go to war.
It gives you options. If you don’t want to invade someone, but, instead, want to blockade them, it helps – though it is not strictly necessary – to have a larger conventional military. If you want to enter someone’s territory to accomplish some (non-conquest) political objective, it helps – though again, it is not strictly necessary – to have a larger conventional military. Consider the scenario that a terrorist group, after bombing your capitol, takes refuge in a foreign nuclear-armed nation. You may not want to jump immediately to threatening the foreign government with a nuking in order to get them to arrest and extradite the terrorists. If you send in a small highly-trained team to arrest the terrorists yourself, you may get the foreign government to look the other way. Although, in this scenario, having a more numerous military is not actually necessary – simply having a small highly-trained unit is.
So, when we assume that defense of territorial integrity is largely taken care of by nuclear weapons, unity offers a distinct disadvantage by increasing the likelihood that you’ll be annihilated on the whims of someone’s ideology that you don’t necessarily agree with. To offset that, unity offers the remaining benefits for which a large conventional military is necessary, which boils down to: toppling hostile foreign governments (for which there is an alternative option), gaining resources (for which there is an alternative, less expensive option), making others fear you (assuming they are not nuclear states), and stopping wars between other foreign powers. So, if you really, truly just do not care about whether or not two foreign powers go to war, all that unity has to offer you is the ability to project fear. I’m not going to argue against fear. Having others fear you can be a very precious resource. But is it worth the price of permanent unity?
cultoftheegg 