--

To say that the human condition is unchanging in terms of warfare is like saying there will always be slavery or that women will never have the vote. Both of which were true of even the most technically advanced countries for several millennia up until the last third of the nineteenth century or thereabouts. Such examples of actual change in the world confound what C Wright Mills referred to back in the early 60s as the "crackpot realism" of the perma-militarists, who in those days were telling President Kennedy that a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was inevitable so we in the West should get it over with while the USA had more hydrogen bombs than the Russians. Such are the intellectual and practical dangers of your line of argument.

--

--

Chris Harris, PhD
Chris Harris, PhD

Written by Chris Harris, PhD

I am an urban historian from Aotearoa New Zealand. With an engineering background, I also have a PhD in planning and economics.

No responses yet