Israel uses the OCCASIONS of face-to-face negotiations as TARGETS for lethal attacks with missiles, drones, etc. This, it would seem to me, constitutes a truly formidable barrier to conducting such negotiations, not only with Israel, but with ANYBODY ANYWHERE within Israel's tactical reach.
The US has been known to do this, too, aside from dependably reneging on terms it does negotiate with anyone (another frustrator of the purposes of negotiation).
(Also, you seem to have missed the whole point of Caplan’s piece, namely, instead of just naming something bad that was done, ask yourself, “how does that compare to the worst that said actor could have done?”)
Honestly, I’m not sure even if a government does the worst it can do this means negotiation is hopeless. Just because you’re evil does not mean there isn’t anything preferable to war for you. After all war is a major expenditure of resources, and you might also have some preference for your own soldiers, not dying and depending on the state of the war, you might also worry about your own civilians, even if you’re totally evil in the sense of not giving a shit about other people. That war is generally worse than a negotiated settlement is a long established result of game theory and rational bargaining. Honestly, the idea that because you’re evil you cannot be negotiated with strikes me as something of a reverse halo effect with people thinking that because you’re morally horrible in one respect, you must also be morally horrible in the different respect of being unwilling to negotiate or refusing to keep your word. In fairness, there probably is something of a correlation, but I expect it’s pretty weak. Yes, I am aware that Hitler was morally horrible in both respects but he was such an extreme outlier in so many different ways that I don’t think he proves much, especially given he’s a single example out of a history of thousands of years.
Even Hitler was not maximally evil in all domains. (This is the first time in my life I've posted a defense of Hitler.)
He was maximally evil to the officers involved in the July 20 plot to assassinate him. (He had them tortured very creatively before killing them; he supposedly loved watching the film of it.)
He was close to maximally evil against Jews, Gypsies, Communists, homosexuals, and other groups he sent to extermination. (Even those, for the most part he just murdered; he didn't go out of his way to torture them first - tho there was definitely some of that.)
He was less than maximally evil to other civilians, and to captured enemies.
In theory I guess it's possible to be "worse than Hitler". (But maybe it's not possible to retain power while doing that.)
Fair enough, although to be fair, there were groups like the Polish against whom he was close to a realistic level of maximum evil because he planned to pretty much exterminate them. So, if you’re Poland, deciding how to treat with him, he’s almost as bad as it can get. Still in fairness, even the jews could have had it worse, since in actuality, being kept alive and tortured to the maximum extent possible for the rest of your life is likely quite a bit worse than simply dying. Of course realistically, nobody is quite evil enough to actively waste resources on that scale. Though then again I would also have assumed before Hitler that nobody would be stupid enough to try to exterminate a group which disproportionately contains the smartest people in your society. It is definitely possible to be worse than Hitler while retaining power since Stalin was able to treat his own supporters quite a bit worse without losing power. At minimum, I expect you can have a leader who combines Hitler treatment of perceived enemies and completely insane foreign policy with Stalin treatment of even his own supporters and disastrous economic policies. I suppose it depends on what you mean by the worst someone can do. If you mean the worst, you can realistically expect from a human Hitler was close to the limit, but if you mean somebody who has a utility function, the exact opposite of what you would consider maximally good, then he was pretty far from it.
Right, my point was being a mass murderer and being impossible to negotiate with are different things, so you shouldn’t assume the second based on the first.
Every negotiated settlement is perceived as preferable to war by the involved parties else they wouldn't have agreed to it. Game theory has nothing to do with that.
In the Gaza conflict, it looks like Hamas is already doing the worst it is able to but the Israelis are not. Hamas has very little it can offer that the Israelis would find preferable to the current situation in which Hamas is slowly being destroyed.
I think it’s an obvious result from game theory that a zero some conflict where both actors are spending resources cancelling each other out is worse for both actors than not doing that. If both parties are rational, they will reach an agreement that is better for both of them with the stronger party obviously getting more from the deal because there BATNA is better.
True, but I do think a party like that would be pretty much impossible to find in real life, although mild versions of that problem can definitely happen. In most actual cases, I think the reason you don’t have a piece agreement is more mundane things like misaligned incentives differing factual beliefs about how the war will go and commitment problems. Also, probably should not forget good old-fashioned irrationality and stupidity, although I do think that gets overemphasised.
Agree, but I'm thinking the Hamas-Israel conflict is close to that situation. Hamas seems willing to accept an incredible amount of harm to Gazans in exchange for relatively little harm to Israel.
I think the issue with them is more that harming their civilian population, doesn’t actually hurt them as an organisation much and indeed might benefit them because more recruits. Still given how badly the war has gone for them and the fact that they have shown interest in peace at various points in the conflict, I am inclined to suspect that they wouldn’t have started this war if they had realised how thoroughly they would lose it. That’s especialy likely given how many of their leaders have died. I think it’s pretty obvious that their utility function is not pure revenge. Otherwise they won’t have started the war in 2023. They would already be at war from day one and would never have stopped until they were all dead. Obviously, some level of delusional thinking had to be involved for them to start the conflict, but their behaviour is not crazy enough for me to think that they don’t care at all about their own well-being and are purely focused on hurting Israel. At any rate, their behaviour is much more explained by assuming they thought the war would benefit them diplomatically instead of thinking they just want revenge.
"Morally speaking, all sides in any serious military conflict are led by war criminals."
The fact that any serious military conflict inevitably involves war crimes raises some disturbing questions for me, independently of whether those conducting the war are minimizing or maximizing their criminal activity.
First, if everyone breaks the "rules of war" to some degree, does the rule actually exist? Second, isn't it rather grotesque to even have "rules of war," since this implies that war is a type of game? Third, why does it even matter if soldiers kill each other with grenades (allowed) or chemical weapons (not allowed)?
It’s also important to be honest about what the other guy’s objectives are. You might not agree with them, but you can’t possibly find a solution short of total domination if you refuse to understand what the other party is trying to achieve
"Peace requires negotiation, and the mere fact that one side has done great evil does not show that negotiation is futile. If you seek to weigh the viability of negotiation, it is far wiser to compare the ratio of actual to potential evil. "
I will give a counter-example: the partition of India and the violence that followed it. The peace party ie.Congress Party tried to appease the war party (Muslim League) and the war party responded by killing a few thousands, leading to further appeasement and final surrender.
But even that, did not lead to peace, because the partition itself was not the final aim, but ethnic cleansing, which was entirely unsuspected by the peace party.
The peace only came after ethnic cleansing of 15 million and death of one or two millions.
So, in this case at least, the potential evil, the utmost defeat, which was even unsuspected by most people, came to pass. It would have been far better for the peace party to not enter into negotiations with the war party and prepare for war instead.
Israel uses the OCCASIONS of face-to-face negotiations as TARGETS for lethal attacks with missiles, drones, etc. This, it would seem to me, constitutes a truly formidable barrier to conducting such negotiations, not only with Israel, but with ANYBODY ANYWHERE within Israel's tactical reach.
The US has been known to do this, too, aside from dependably reneging on terms it does negotiate with anyone (another frustrator of the purposes of negotiation).
What are you talking about?
(Also, you seem to have missed the whole point of Caplan’s piece, namely, instead of just naming something bad that was done, ask yourself, “how does that compare to the worst that said actor could have done?”)
Honestly, I’m not sure even if a government does the worst it can do this means negotiation is hopeless. Just because you’re evil does not mean there isn’t anything preferable to war for you. After all war is a major expenditure of resources, and you might also have some preference for your own soldiers, not dying and depending on the state of the war, you might also worry about your own civilians, even if you’re totally evil in the sense of not giving a shit about other people. That war is generally worse than a negotiated settlement is a long established result of game theory and rational bargaining. Honestly, the idea that because you’re evil you cannot be negotiated with strikes me as something of a reverse halo effect with people thinking that because you’re morally horrible in one respect, you must also be morally horrible in the different respect of being unwilling to negotiate or refusing to keep your word. In fairness, there probably is something of a correlation, but I expect it’s pretty weak. Yes, I am aware that Hitler was morally horrible in both respects but he was such an extreme outlier in so many different ways that I don’t think he proves much, especially given he’s a single example out of a history of thousands of years.
Even Hitler was not maximally evil in all domains. (This is the first time in my life I've posted a defense of Hitler.)
He was maximally evil to the officers involved in the July 20 plot to assassinate him. (He had them tortured very creatively before killing them; he supposedly loved watching the film of it.)
He was close to maximally evil against Jews, Gypsies, Communists, homosexuals, and other groups he sent to extermination. (Even those, for the most part he just murdered; he didn't go out of his way to torture them first - tho there was definitely some of that.)
He was less than maximally evil to other civilians, and to captured enemies.
In theory I guess it's possible to be "worse than Hitler". (But maybe it's not possible to retain power while doing that.)
Fair enough, although to be fair, there were groups like the Polish against whom he was close to a realistic level of maximum evil because he planned to pretty much exterminate them. So, if you’re Poland, deciding how to treat with him, he’s almost as bad as it can get. Still in fairness, even the jews could have had it worse, since in actuality, being kept alive and tortured to the maximum extent possible for the rest of your life is likely quite a bit worse than simply dying. Of course realistically, nobody is quite evil enough to actively waste resources on that scale. Though then again I would also have assumed before Hitler that nobody would be stupid enough to try to exterminate a group which disproportionately contains the smartest people in your society. It is definitely possible to be worse than Hitler while retaining power since Stalin was able to treat his own supporters quite a bit worse without losing power. At minimum, I expect you can have a leader who combines Hitler treatment of perceived enemies and completely insane foreign policy with Stalin treatment of even his own supporters and disastrous economic policies. I suppose it depends on what you mean by the worst someone can do. If you mean the worst, you can realistically expect from a human Hitler was close to the limit, but if you mean somebody who has a utility function, the exact opposite of what you would consider maximally good, then he was pretty far from it.
Hitler has lots of mass murdering company in hell
Right, my point was being a mass murderer and being impossible to negotiate with are different things, so you shouldn’t assume the second based on the first.
Every negotiated settlement is perceived as preferable to war by the involved parties else they wouldn't have agreed to it. Game theory has nothing to do with that.
In the Gaza conflict, it looks like Hamas is already doing the worst it is able to but the Israelis are not. Hamas has very little it can offer that the Israelis would find preferable to the current situation in which Hamas is slowly being destroyed.
I think it’s an obvious result from game theory that a zero some conflict where both actors are spending resources cancelling each other out is worse for both actors than not doing that. If both parties are rational, they will reach an agreement that is better for both of them with the stronger party obviously getting more from the deal because there BATNA is better.
"if both parties are rational" is a big ask.
If a party places value only on harming the opponent, and no value on their own welfare, there's not much to negotiate over.
True, but I do think a party like that would be pretty much impossible to find in real life, although mild versions of that problem can definitely happen. In most actual cases, I think the reason you don’t have a piece agreement is more mundane things like misaligned incentives differing factual beliefs about how the war will go and commitment problems. Also, probably should not forget good old-fashioned irrationality and stupidity, although I do think that gets overemphasised.
Agree, but I'm thinking the Hamas-Israel conflict is close to that situation. Hamas seems willing to accept an incredible amount of harm to Gazans in exchange for relatively little harm to Israel.
I think the issue with them is more that harming their civilian population, doesn’t actually hurt them as an organisation much and indeed might benefit them because more recruits. Still given how badly the war has gone for them and the fact that they have shown interest in peace at various points in the conflict, I am inclined to suspect that they wouldn’t have started this war if they had realised how thoroughly they would lose it. That’s especialy likely given how many of their leaders have died. I think it’s pretty obvious that their utility function is not pure revenge. Otherwise they won’t have started the war in 2023. They would already be at war from day one and would never have stopped until they were all dead. Obviously, some level of delusional thinking had to be involved for them to start the conflict, but their behaviour is not crazy enough for me to think that they don’t care at all about their own well-being and are purely focused on hurting Israel. At any rate, their behaviour is much more explained by assuming they thought the war would benefit them diplomatically instead of thinking they just want revenge.
"Morally speaking, all sides in any serious military conflict are led by war criminals."
The fact that any serious military conflict inevitably involves war crimes raises some disturbing questions for me, independently of whether those conducting the war are minimizing or maximizing their criminal activity.
First, if everyone breaks the "rules of war" to some degree, does the rule actually exist? Second, isn't it rather grotesque to even have "rules of war," since this implies that war is a type of game? Third, why does it even matter if soldiers kill each other with grenades (allowed) or chemical weapons (not allowed)?
I explore these kinds of questions here, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cui-bono/201702/war-game
So having the rules in the first place, determines that everything within those bounds is acceptable.
Yes, rules of war are grotesque, but not having them is even worse.
The rules were put in place for reasons.
I understand. I still find it appalling that men believe that there are fair and unfair ways of slaughtering each other.
"The fact that the U.S. government killed a few million innocent people rather than a billion is, to put it mildly, damning with faint praise."
On the contrary; it is praising with faint damns.
It’s also important to be honest about what the other guy’s objectives are. You might not agree with them, but you can’t possibly find a solution short of total domination if you refuse to understand what the other party is trying to achieve
"Peace requires negotiation, and the mere fact that one side has done great evil does not show that negotiation is futile. If you seek to weigh the viability of negotiation, it is far wiser to compare the ratio of actual to potential evil. "
I will give a counter-example: the partition of India and the violence that followed it. The peace party ie.Congress Party tried to appease the war party (Muslim League) and the war party responded by killing a few thousands, leading to further appeasement and final surrender.
But even that, did not lead to peace, because the partition itself was not the final aim, but ethnic cleansing, which was entirely unsuspected by the peace party.
The peace only came after ethnic cleansing of 15 million and death of one or two millions.
So, in this case at least, the potential evil, the utmost defeat, which was even unsuspected by most people, came to pass. It would have been far better for the peace party to not enter into negotiations with the war party and prepare for war instead.
Well written and with some thought. Von Clausewitz could not have written better.