posted
The book I am reading (The Gulag Archipelago) had an interesting idea. The people in a country sometimes gain more from a military defeat than from a military victory.
In this case they referred to the Stalinist crackdown in the Soviet Union after WWII. It also mentions a war between the Russian Empire and the Swedish Kingdom. Russia won a great victory. Sweden lost. Russia went on to become a military expansionist might that led to all sorts of problems. Sweden went from being one of the most militaristic countries (vikings, Beowulf, etc) to a happy peaceful neutral country.
So I began to wonder about winning vs gain.
We originally lost the space race, as the Soviet Union put up Sputnik. The result was NASA and a man on the moon.
We then won that space race. The result, not much since then.
We won WWI. The result was the violence of the roaring 20's, and eventually WWII.
We won WWII. The results were the division of Europe, the Cold War and a slow deterioration of the armed services until by Vietnam we were less than victorious.
The military was forced to lose in Vietnam, but the result was a recreating of a better, stronger, more powerful military that made Desert Storm possible.
We won Desert Storm, and then the invasion of Afghanistan so easily, it made the Conquest of Iraq seem simple.
We have not lost in Iraq, but we have been humbled. NeoCon bravado is now completely out of favor, and a more rational policy may bring even greater benefits.
Can defeat bring more gain than victory? Can victory bring more suffering and destruction than defeat?
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I think there is a problem with your outline, Dan, as KoM has just pointed out. Not only does Germany's defeat in WWI buck the trend (more on this later), but you're supposed to be focusing on the individual country as you did with Sweden. What happens in Europe is irrelevent when it comes to the US' 'winning' WWI or II.
WWII was basically Britain's last big hurrah before the US rose to dominance, so you could call their win so difficult and devastating to achieve that it essentially destroyed the infrastructure of the country and weakened it, leaving it behind.
The US of course faired much better, infrastructure-wise. It won the war both on paper and for its people. The post-war period was a prosperous and powerful time for the US.
To look at Russia and its ridiculous to say that Russia won the war. Russia's involvement in the war was so catastrophic that it caused a revolution in the country. In WWII, the USSR was much more factually successful, but went on to be powerful and successful in a global sense but perhaps not the best environment for its population.
Germany also faired poorly in WWI, losing both factually and on paper. What happened to Germany was disastrous for the country and the people. It was not rendered less warlike, only poor and angry.
WWII was less disastrous for Germany, but it did not fair well. It was divided and occupied.
The evidence is highly scattered, as it is for most human-based assertions.
I think you can say this:
A defeat provides an opportunity and a catalyst for change among the people (Hitler, the Russian Revolution). A win strengthens the government/infrastructure of the country, and the confidence of the citizens in the government or leadership (Stalin, the US' rise to power, strong British leadership between the World Wars).
You cannot say one is better, because a revolution can be bad or good and and a government's increased strength can be a bad thing or a good thing.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:We then won that space race. The result, not much since then.
I think this kind of ignores the modern telecommunications industry and the large number of military applications that space travel have brought us, all of which is mostly in the form of modern satellites, but JPL, NASA and other space oriented agencies and researchers have brought us dozens of advances that were originally aimed towards space exploration and branched out into things we couldn't have guessed at at the time.
quote:We won WWI. The result was the violence of the roaring 20's, and eventually WWII.
This is agruable to many, but WWII wasn't a direct result of winning WWI so much as it was a ridiculous Versailles Treaty and the subsequent failed actions of France, Britain and the US to check Germany's rise after the war ended and they rebuilt their war machine. And I'd say the roaring 20's violence, despite some of the gains in the 20's, has a lot more to do with domestic issues than with foreign ones.
quote:We won WWII. The results were the division of Europe, the Cold War and a slow deterioration of the armed services until by Vietnam we were less than victorious.
And yet domestically here in the United States it sparked the dawn of a massive upswell in American wealth and power. In many ways you could call the late 40's and 50's a golden era in America. Hunger and unemployment were at all time lows. We were an undisputed world superpower. Every aspect of American life changed in obvious and most of the the beneficial ways (at the time anyway). Russia was a rising power by then anyway. Losing WWII wouldn't have made that go away. Either Nazi Germany would have conquered a swath of Russia and the Cold War would have been with them, or the war would have been prevented and WWII would instead have been fought against Russia directly.
I think you could very likely list any war America has fought and I could recite a list of pros and cons from the results of that particular war. The good thing from our losses is that we generally learn from them, even if we don't always apply the knowledge we gain.
I don't think there's any any kind of a rule about what we gain or lose, but generally I think the prevailing wisdom of a win being a win and a loss being a loss is pretty good. There are always exceptions to every rule. But could you name a war we've won that you think we would've gotten more out of by losing?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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