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| g21 #311: Wars, Rumors of War
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During the 1920s a mathematician by the name of Lewis Richards (regarded as one of the pioneering fathers of modern meteorology) gathered statistics and historical information on all armed conflicts and aggressions since the 1850s. In short, Richards concluded that war breaks out no less randomly than tropical storms that float through the turbulent currents of the atmosphere. The only unique conclusion postulate amidst the randomness of armed conflict was that wars have a contagious affect. In other
words, a war can act as the catalyst to spark new wars.
To count the number killed during a war is daunting and convoluted. However, you get the idea - 77 million people from one type of human action, one cause, and one effect. I can imagine any real historian will raise both hairy eyebrows at my claim. I don't blame her/him. History is very complex and so is war. There are as many reasons to have a war as there are eddies and currents in the Earth's atmosphere.
Thus, predicting war is as much a matter of chance as predicting those specific weather patterns that create the typhoons and hurricanes that ravage the coastlines of the world. Hurricanes, like earthquakes, are classified by levels of magnitude. Therefore, Richards hypothesized, wars could be classified along similar lines. During the 1940s, Richards recompiled data from his previous work to include
numbers from World War II . He extrapolated, interpolated, etc., employing all of those strange methods of calculation mathematicians use to make graphs out of intricate information. He found that there exist theoretical levels of magnitude by which wars can be measured. He used the base-10 logarithm of 2 to classify a war --- meaning that a magnitude- 3 conflict would have casualties ranging from 1000 to 10,000. So, for example, World War I and World War II are class 7 wars. The three most recent conflicts in U.S . history, the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Gulf War are magnitude-4 wars.
What does all this statistical analysis really mean to us? Two magnitude seven wars were fought in the last hundred years of human history. Thought of using the analogy to hurricanes, World War I and World War II are analogous to the two hurricanes that ravaged New Orleans in 1965 and in 1969, Hurricane Betsy and Hurricane Camille.
If war is truly a chaotic system, as Richards claims, history has a few cataclysmic conflicts in store for us in the future. If true, why? Look at the latest projections for the world's population. By the year 2050, the population is projected to reach 10 billion. If Richards's principal of using a logarithm of base 10 to calculate the human toll of war is applied, the possibility of having a war of a magnitude 8 or 9 is both possible and probable. A magnitude 8 or 9 war brings a casualty count of about 100,000,000 and at worst 1,000,000,000 people.
The "Big One", as we call any natural cataclysmic event, does not need to come in the form of erratic storms and tornadoes. I am not trying to induce a streak of panic. I am merely trying to point out that war will always be a part of our history as a species as much as hurricanes are part of our atmosphere. However, considering the efficiency at which modern warfare kills, the possibility for a massive armed conflict that will eliminate 100 million to 1 billion people from the face of the earth is inevitable, mathematically
speaking.
But who would start such a war?
We do not need to look to the far reaches of the planet to find the culprits. For the United States, the technology for producing massive amounts of carnage is at a stage where by the end of the Gulf War the United States had only lost around 139 soldiers in combat as opposed to the Iraqi loss of 70,000-plus. Another example of our massive killing might was in Vietnam. Fifty-seven thousand U.S. servicemen were killed while the Viet Cong lost approximately 666,000. Get the picture? If there is anything the U.S. military can do it's kill massive amounts of people and still be able to get no more than a smudge of mud on the political facade of American world power.
So by following mathematical theorems established by Richards, we might come to the realization that this country will be a major player, if not the perpetrator of the next big war. We have the means to produce mass destruction. The weapons and technology, not including nuclear weaponry, that we possess alone leaves even the strongest foreign armies in a constant state of anxiety. During the Gulf War, the Iraqi army went from the world's second largest army to the world's forth-largest army in a matter of a hundred hours. Every self-delusional dictator from Stalin to Pinochet to Adolph Hitler would have loved such a destructive
military power.
Regardless, I would argue that we are in for a "Big One" and the likelihood that our country will be the one to start it. Remember wars can carry momentum. From 1800 - 1895 the United States took military action 103 times, Tripoli (1800-1805), Algiers (1815), Sumatra (1832, 1838), Argentina (1833,1852,1890), Mexico (1836, 1842, 1859, 1866, 1870), etc. During the past twenty years, the United States attacked Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Afghanistan, Serbia, and Sudan. Our nemesis, Iraq, a nation considered to be hostile and aggressive, invaded only two countries -- Iran and Kuwait-- during the same two decades. We are an aggressive nation and, looking
at our history, we are carrying the momentum. We have all the ingredients necessary to prove Richards's theorems correct, momentum and machinery.
Can anything be done? From a mathematical perspective, wars cannot be prevented, much as the path of a hurricane cannot be altered. The best anyone can do is get out of the way and, if that is not possible, buckle down, hope for the best and take measures for controlling the damage. Yet if other mathematical theories are correct every individual contributes, in some form, to the gravity of the storms of war. Like the infinite number of air currents in a hurricane, we all play a role in a greater system. Unlike the whirls and winds of a storm, we can make a decision to contribute to the storm or simply not participate in the calamity or the chaos
NEW ORLEANS - As shots whirl through the air over a street in the city of Sarajevo, the neck of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand bursts open and blood flows into the seat of the car in which he is riding. Four years later, World War I comes to an end, as do the lives of 21 million citizens of Australia, the United States, France, England, Germany, Austria, Serbia, etc. The course of the relatively short history of mankind was changed and a new apocalyptic concept of war was introduced to the world. New machines brought warfare a new kind of weaponry, biological and chemical,which can eliminate people more efficiently and quickly. The ability to eradicate thousands of people in a matter of hours is achieved. Twenty years later more trouble stirs in Europe thanks to our friends the Germans - again. As a result of the political hangover left over from the First World War, the Second World War breaks out in September,1939. Four and a half years and 56 million dead people later, the greatest and most deadly war known in the history of man comes to an end. A new and more
destructive force is unleashed from the smallest particle known by scientists at the time.
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