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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24890 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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Utilitarianism in war : what are some under-explored tools of war that are effective but dismissed out of hand due to bad optics ?

This isn't so much a top level post as a seed to begin a conversation. I've always found it rather barbaric that the only acceptable way for a superior power to engage in war is straight violence & bloodshed. This is especially true with a truly imbalanced siege. In almost every occasion, the 'honorable' way of doing a siege costs more money, causes more deaths and eventually leads to the same outcome.

  • Chemical warfare is horrible. But are there way to engage in chemical warfare that neutralizes the enemy without any long-term consequences to the heath of those attacked ? Why limit yourself to flashbangs and smoke grenades ? Why not use FPV drones with mass-pepper spray ? You can buy a 1000 pepper-spray FPV drones for a $1 million. Train a few people to operate them as a swarm (like a school of tuna) and they will be very hard to take out. A single deployment of the iron dome costs Israel more.

  • Sound based violence has been used before, but can it be taken further ? Gaza is just across the border.

  • Why not identify 1 of the tunnels on high ground and flood them ? Maybe flood them with sewage just so it is extra disgusting.

It's war. You're willing to kill by the thousands. Less than honorable means are absolutely acceptable (with long term effects accounted for) if that means a lower body count.

What are some other avenues of war that could be tried to minimize body count but increase effectiveness ? Is there some long term pandoras box reason to keep these tools of war off the table ?

Utilitarianism in war : what are some under-explored tools of war that are effective but dismissed out of hand due to bad optics ?

Things aren't dismissed out of hand due to bad optics. Things that have particularly bad optics get dismissed after the operational and strategic consequences of said bad optics outweigh the benefits. It's raw Utilitarianism goes all the way down, not utilitarianism disrupted by bad optics.

minimize body count

For whom? The user, the adversary, or third parties?

I find that “honor” rarely comes into it. Instead, there are trade-offs between pure killing efficiency and…everything else.

Consider the cluster bomb. Thanks to explosive physics, it’s more efficient to detonate many small bombs than one big one. Yet a large number of countries refuse to use them, usually because more fuzes means more unexploded ordnance. So: which of the following reasons should be considered “optics”?

  1. Fear of losing material support from other nations
  2. Fear of provoking intervention from undecided parties
  3. Fear of damaging your own force
  4. Belief that collateral damage will increase enemy will to fight
  5. Belief that more efficient killing will not actually achieve your strategic goals
  6. Belief that adopting the weapons is more expensive than they’re worth
  7. Belief that collateral damage will harm your material goals (i.e. infrastructure you want to use, fields you want to till)

I’d say everything but the last two could count as “optics.” Even 6. should, if you’ve got to justify your budget. And yet we ask our militaries to consider all these things. The question is rarely “how do I get that land?” but “how many men/dollars/negotiations should I expect to spend in the process?”

I saw a post somewhere (might have been here) suggesting that one can estimate the effectiveness of generally-morally-opposed warfighting techniques by seeing which arms control treaties the US endorses, follows, and has actually ratified as a signatory (these categories are different), because while many states can adopt "would-be-nice" policies, the Pentagon actually thinks about the next World War. New Zealand can afford to adopt prominent anti-nuclear policies because it's protected by both long distances and nuclear-armed allies should war come to its doorstep. Poland and Israel aren't so fortunate.

  1. Cluster munitions the US has chosen not to join treaties obligating it to do so, but does have formal policies that we will generally choose not to use them and invest in safer versions over time. But we're also providing a bunch to Ukraine because in the event of a true crisis, we're willing to break that glass (and because they needed a bunch of artillery shells that we planned to destroy anyway).

  2. The US has ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (notably ratified after the end of the Cold War), and in fact finished destroying its stocks in July of this year. But this was done roughly in parallel with Russia destroying ex-Soviet stocks.

  3. The US very publicly maintains its nuclear arsenal, despite the existence of the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, although it does advocate against nonproliferation and is a member of certain treaties related to inspections and testing.

  4. The US has not joined the Ottawa Treaty on landmines, but (outside of the Korean Peninsula) voluntarily align with its some of its requirements. Presumably they retain the right to change those policies as necessary.

Yet a large number of countries refuse to use them

note that almost all countries who banned cluster munitions neither used them nor were in position where important use was likely (info from Perun)

none of countries where use of cluster munitions was strategically important banned them

I originally had a much more rambling version of this that noted, predictably, the big players weren’t willing to sign on; those that did likely hadn’t bombed another country since the 50s. And I was starting a section about how the presence of a hegemon makes it much easier to claim the moral high ground. But I decided it was distracting from the point that militaries optimize for things other than killing power.

So: yeah, pretty much.

Utilitarianism in war : what are some under-explored tools of war that are effective but dismissed out of hand due to bad optics ?

Monetary incentives, as proposed both by rootless cosmopolitan Bryan Caplan and Tatar patriot Kamil Galeev.

Bribery as weapon of war - not secret offers to enemy generals as in Iraq but public offer of cash for enemy soldiers en masse is super weapon exactly tailored to strength of Western US+NATO bloc. US dollar is still the king, despite printing press going into overdrive, everyone knows what dollars are and everyone wants them. The printing press is American true superpower, why not use it?

Of course, paying enemies to surrender would be extremely unpopular among your own troops - this plan must be compounded with even more generous reward for bringing live POW's. The dirty secret of war is that most killing of POW's happens not because of sadism, hatred and revenge, but just because soldiers cannot/do not want to guard and care for the prisoners and have no incentive to keep them alive.

Had something like it been ever tried? Check Operation Moolah.

On March 20, 1953, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the plan. The approved operation was forwarded on April 1, 1953, to the Joint Psychological Committee at FEAF in Tokyo, Japan, where it was staffed, approved, and advanced to Clark. He dubbed the plan Operation Moolah. The plan offered $50,000 to any pilot who flew a fully mission capable MiG-15 to South Korea. The first pilot to defect would be awarded an additional $50,000. The plan also included complete political asylum, resettlement in a non-Communist country, and anonymity if desired.

What was the impact on enemy activity?

According to General Clark, immediately after the drop of the leaflets on April 26, UN aircraft did not make visual contact with any MiG aircraft for the following eight days. Though weather may have been a factor, he opines that the leaflets had a direct effect and believes that senior Communist military leaders began to screen for politically unreliable pilots.

But not everyone was happy.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower did not support Operation Moolah. He thought it unethical to offer money to a defector and was concerned about the North Korean reaction to the defection due to the uneasy armistice agreement.

As all professional ethicists will tell you, it is much more ethical to kill people than pay them.

This plan would never come to fruition, because it is as extremely dishonorable as it is extremely rational, utilitarian and effectively altruistic. No surprise - we do not live on dath-ilan, we live on planet of the apes. Conduct yourself accordingly.

When the British offered money for dead snakes in India, the Indians weren't so stupid as to actually do what was expected of them - in a display of enterpreneurial elan, they started breeding snakes. When the bounty was withdrawn, they promptly released their snakes into the wild, thus worsening the problem the Brits were trying to solve. So how do we know that this won't just create a rush to join up?

I think that's why they required the defectors to bring a very expensive MiG with them.

I have little to add, except that like fuckduck (isn't duck sufficient? They're fond of rape enough as is, maybe additional fucking), I deeply appreciate this comment.

It's far, far cheaper to pay for someone to lay down their weapons than to kill them in most conflicts, and you're not out of anything till they do. It might not work well if they're fanatics who prefer to die, but even then you don't lose much by offering.

Maybe this was more common back when mercenaries were used more alongside standing armies, a person motivated by opening of purse strings is probably the best person to fight, they're not going to try too hard after all.

Like Mewis said above though, you might encourage extortion if you pay off anyone who raises arms against you.

I think in peer or near peer conflicts this isn't an issue in practise. I strongly doubt that Russians would sign up to the army in the hopes that they could surrender to the Ukrainians for a payout.

I doubt this is how it would work in most situations either, and if it was an issue it could be solved.

I loved and agreed with this comment so much I had to think of something to say.

The best part of democracy is that it’s the sublimation of a battle. Count heads, go home alive, prosper. Of course it relies on using sheer number of people as proxy for fighting prowess, but it’s a decent one, and it has paid off handsomely.

So why not sublimate even more battles? Richest side was very likely going to win anyway. Count your money, go home alive, prosper. I completely agree with caplan, it’s a magnificient, tremendously assymetric, super-ethical weapon: even if they had the money, and they don’t, militaristic dictatorships do not have the credibility, or the quality of life to spend the money in.

What do the virtue ethicists here think? Is it dishonorable to make soldiers betray their country, or is it good to save lives and ordnance?

This is why I'm afraid of AI. Once most humans are economically and militarily obsolete, and can't go on strike, we will leak power one way or another, and it will eventually end up in the hands of whoever controls the value-producing robots and chip factories.

At least since WW2 leaflets and other propaganda aimed to convince enemy soldiers to turn themselves in, along with their vehicles if possible, has been commonplace, was it not?

Weird, I only received notification of this comment now. I am almost certain this comment did not appear earlier in the thread, I could not see it.

This is a relatively new measure enforced on new accounts, I think their comments are being manually approved by the mods, or if that's not done, showing up after 24 hours.

I had this same thing happen to me just now with a reply to a comment of mine in a different thread. It also appeared to have just turned 24h old when I got the notification for it, and I'm also almost certain I could not see it before that.

Sure, but this is about offering considerable sums of money – paying for desertion, paying for proof of sabotage, paying at least market price for any equipment they bring with them. I think a russian soldier trusts, and can trust, EU states far more than a japanese soldier in WWII can trust the US government. So the leaflets of the time were far less credible.

Chemical warfare is horrible. But are there way to engage in chemical warfare that neutralizes the enemy without any long-term consequences to the heath of those attacked ? Why limit yourself to flashbangs and smoke grenades ? Why not use FPV drones with mass-pepper spray ? You can buy a 1000 pepper-spray FPV drones for a $1 million. Train a few people to operate them as a swarm (like a school of tuna) and they will be very hard to take out. A single deployment of the iron dome costs Israel more.

In addition to being ineffective against soldiers with gas masks and suits as others have mentioned, I can forsee a high risk of immediate escalation. During a battle many forces would not have the equipment on hand to rapidly test, identify and disseminate info to everybody on what exact chemical weapon the enemy just started using, particularly non-state actors like Hamas. All you know is that the enemy just dropped gas on your forces and all the soldiers and civilians lacking a gas mask are choking, coughing, blinded, throwing up and getting burns. I've been tear gassed and pepper sprayed before and if I had not known what they were, I would have thought I was dying.

The natural impulse of many would be immediate retaliation to punish a perceived WMD attack. Cue atrocities or some actual WMD use in perceived "tit for tat," especially with less disciplined paramilitaries and the like.

The natural impulse of many would be immediate retaliation to punish a perceived WMD attack. Cue atrocities or some actual WMD use in perceived "tit for tat," especially with less disciplined paramilitaries and the like.

Hamas does atrocities anyway, to the point where "don't use WMD or Hamas will retaliate with atrocities" means nothing at all.

One party in a war deeming the other side sufficiently heinous is a very loose and ambigious threshold for acceptable use of chemical weapons. White phosphorus is pushing it as is. And there will be many wars beyond this current one.

The certainty of mutually assured destruction is safer than creating ambiguity over what kind of weapons trigger MAD-like retaliation, or risk of making a military opponent think their enemy just used a WMD.

It means nothing to Hamas but I'm not sure giving the countries that support Hamas a justification to supply WMDs is such a great idea.

Train a few people to operate them as a swarm (like a school of tuna) and they will be very hard to take out.

I don't know what the effective range on pepper spray is, but is this something that can be defeated with a pair of safety goggles, a respirator, and a broom?

Embarrassingly, I know from personal experience, that pepper spray can cause searing pain much further out than broom-distance. You can safely pepper spray (morel like bear spray) from ~10 meters out.

safety goggles, a respirator

Yeah, and building respirators and safety goggles for all Hamas members is a great way of bankrupting them. They're making pipe bombs here.

Fair enough, makes sense.

Using AI controlled infrared lasers to blind people. The AI looks for people's eyes and when it detects them, it aims the laser and gives the eyes enough of a blast to roast them. Being infrared makes it difficult to know where it's coming from, it turns a combatant into a permanent liability, and the threat of one of these sitting around would be psychologically damaging. It's fairly cheap, non-lethal, and could be deployed in all kinds of ways (mount it on a drone, a small stationary platform collaborators could put in their windows, whatever).

Directed energy weapons are going to be the next big thing. You can make an area really uncomfortable to occupy without permanently harming anyone.

Agreed, it's a shame this didn't come immediately to mind when I first replied to this post, since in my own novel this is a valid technique, the only reason it's not used more is precisely because countermeasures have been adopted, such as enclosed helmets that filter everything through redundant cameras. Oh, and they can replace the burnt out eyes with ease, it's 20 years in the future.

Right now it would be absolutely devastating and cheaply, at least for Infantry as we know it.

That's already banned.

Just set it to not intentionally roast the eyes worse than 20/200. Some accidents may happen, but that's war. If they've got binoculars or sunglasses, they're probably fair game for a full on blast by my reading of the 'rules.'

Is it possible to modulate the resulting vision of the target by modulating the laser in some way? I would think that the exact level of vision is primarily determined by the shape of the lens, whereas whether or not you have vision is primarily determined by the status of your retina, and a blinding laser weapon would be good at damaging the retina and perhaps the lens, but not so good at precisely choosing what shape the lens will take on. They're not strapping these folks into chairs like a LASIK procedure, after all.

Is it possible to modulate the resulting vision of the target by modulating the laser in some way?

Well, LASIK exists.. But I think it's a much harder problem in the middle of a battle if you're not just content to burn eyes out for good.

The reason chemical warfare isn't used against peer enemies is largely because it isn't effective.

Gas masks work against many toxins, and worst case, they'll continue fighting on with NBC suits. Sadly the chemicals don't discriminate, so your men need to have them too, especially if the enemy returns the favor.

They're finicky, and some of the can leave the earth effectively scorched until very expensive cleanup.

And now both sides are still fighting, because it isn't powerful enough for a decisive victory, but now you've just made combat an order of magnitude more annoying for your men for no clear benefit, so both sides largely refrain from using them.

Against less well equipped foes? It certainly has a niche, but goggles and gas masks aren't particularly expensive in themselves.

https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/

Thanks for linking it, I've read it but I was feeling lazy.

Assuming this video exists, how do you know it's Mossad? You seem overly confident in your posts about Israel/Palestine.

Why not identify 1 of the tunnels on high ground and flood them ? Maybe flood them with sewage just so it is extra disgusting.

I watched two incredibly pedantic former armed service members argue over whether this would be legally considered a warcrime last night. Because apparently it's against the laws of war to purposely destroy the environment, which flood Hamas tunnels with sewage would do. It's also illegal to flagrantly endanger civilian lives, which flooding the tunnels with sewage would do since you don't know all the places they go. They specifically cited this law, and it was apparently common knowledge to them where it came from, but I have no clue.

Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;

All I came away from the conversation with is that it's apparently illegal to use any novel forms of warfighting that may save innocent lives over bombing Gaza to glass, because bombs are grandfathered into everyone's expectations. There is also apparently no penalty to committing warcrimes beyond words. Unless you lose. But since Israel faced genocide should they lose, it's not like they have any reason not to commit warcrimes. Better to warcrime and win, and let people say mean things about you.

They specifically cited this law, and it was apparently common knowledge to them where it came from, but I have no clue

That is from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

All I came away from the conversation with is that it's apparently illegal to use any novel forms of warfighting that may save innocent lives over bombing Gaza to glass, because bombs are grandfathered into everyone's expectations.

I didn't see the conversation, but it is clearly not the case that bombs are grandfathered into the definition of war crimes that you cite. That is the whole point of the current criticism of Israel's campaign in Gaza, as well as criticisms of recent events in Yemen. The issue re the sewage is not that attacks which damage the environment are per se war crimes, but rather that, as the quote says, only "attack[s that] will cause . . . widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated" are war crimes. Whether flooding tunnels with sewage would be a war crime depends on 1) their anticipated effectiveness; and 2) their likely effect on the environment and civilian populations (cholera, perhaps?)

So I want to be clear. I'm not saying bombing gaza (or any hostile region) is grandfathered into the law, I'm saying it's grandfathered into peoples expectations. Because every country has done, is doing it, and reserves the right to do it again. It's against the law in name only. Like sodomy.

It was the same way when Trump was in office, and his corrupt was novel. He was flexing his hospitality industrial complex. Where as everyone else grew up with the military industrial complex being nakedly corrupt. They're all corrupt, but he acted corrupt in a novel, unique way. So it drew more attention, and people were tricked into thinking his corruption, such as it was, was somehow uniquely evil.

So it goes with bombs versus other novel means of warfighting. Israel might be wrong to bomb gaza, but they wrong in good company. You don't want to be the only nation on Earth to have weaponized sewage.

It was indeed a bit unclear, because all the evidence you mentioned was re the law, and indeed you introduced the topic by stating that it was prompted by a discussion re "whether this would be legally considered a warcrime" and that "[a]ll [you] came away from the conversation with is that it's apparently illegal to use any novel forms of warfighting that may save innocent lives." You didn't say anything about expectations or the like.

As for how people actually respond, it is rather difficult to say whether bombing is considered more acceptable than novel forms of violence, since 1) we don't have many examples of the latter; and 2) we have lots of evidence of people disapproving of the former (and indeed of indiscriminately applying the "war crime" label).

because bombs are grandfathered into everyone's expectations.

...

You didn't say anything about expectations or the like.

I honestly don't know why I even try.

There is also apparently no penalty to committing warcrimes beyond words.

...

we have lots of evidence of people disapproving of the former (and indeed of indiscriminately applying the "war crime" label).

Yes.

Sorry, I missed one aside. Nevertheless, your entire post was about the legality of the practices in question. I understand that you meant to make another point, but surely you can understand why readers might not have inferred that. Which is fine; everyone here is less than completely clear on occasion.

I'm a pesky civilian, so maybe I am missing something. But the rules of war sounds like saying that a man shouldn't kick another man in the nuts. No, if you are more armed than me and the outcome is my death, then I am going to kick you in the nuts. A few times, for good measure.

laws of war to purposely destroy the environment. But, bombs are grandfathered into everyone's expectations.

Man, war is ridiculously pedantic.

They're usually more that you're allowed to do what it takes to disable a soldier, which includes killing them, but you should avoid things that do more long term damage than short term. Also soldiers should be able to surrender when things are bad and expect decent treatment.

Chemical weapons that cause permanent lung damage for life are seen as bad. Lifetime blinding is bad. Shooting people is fine.

There's a lot of confusion because activists on the left like to pretend that things that aren't banned are banned. You aren't allowed to shoot soldiers that have surrendered. You are allowed to shoot soldiers that are retreating. Indeed, it's expected.

If you watch old videos of the debate in Britain over the Falklands war, anti war activists were trying to claim that sinking a boat was a war crime because it was facing the wrong way. Which was silly.

No, if you are more armed than me and the outcome is my death, then I am going to kick you in the nuts.

Which is perfectly acceptable under the laws of war. Because you are kicking the nuts of an armed combatant. OP is talking about a different issue: what the limits are or should be re actions that create the risk of killing civilians. Which is a complex topic which cannot be usefully analogized to nutkicking an armed opponent who is seeking to kill you.

The question of what is "effective" will have different results depending on what the political goal which the warfare is seeking to achieve is. Attempting to clear an area is a different task with different methods than attempting to identify and eliminate particular individuals in a large civilian mass.

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