The Georgia War and the Century of “Real Power”
Quote:
In short, “real power,” not “soft power” or “smart power,” is going to be the critical factor shaping the course of this century—just as it has shaped the course of every other century in human history. Acknowledging this fact does not mean ignoring the actions of powers when their actions challenge our goals and values. It means we must not move towards pointless confrontations or turn them into enemies. It means dealing with issues in terms of the real balance of power in carefully measured terms, and pursuing pragmatic compromises and options.
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/...an_georgia.pdf
Big Wars will never go away.
As previoulsy said by Colin Gray
Another Bloody Century
and also worth a look.
Military Power
Thanks for the good breakdown
AmericanPride,
While I recognize that in life is unfortunately not fair, nor necessarily just it still remains that there is no such thing as absolute power and thus any efforts to attain it are doomed to failure. In that context the idea of zero sum considerations in politics, social settings, and other arenas must be kept in context with what are now known to be realities rather than what may historically have been known as legends.
I would challenge you to point out one time anywhere in recorded history that any one power was able to conquer let alone control any more than a segment of the world at any given time. From what I've read there always were and always will be outside interests which not only exist but affect one's power.
Also consider that there might be a balance between use of force. The more heavily one uses their power the less restrictively outsiders would tend to be when dealing with you. Consider this one reason (Small wars:D) irregular warfare exist in such abundance throughout history.
I have not said (that I'm aware of) that Russia can't do whatever they choose when it comes to their overwhelming force capability over many of these smaller countries/regions. That however has never been the question, rather I question the wisdom of doing what their doing and the manner in which they've chosen to do it, over the long term. Will they actually achieve what they are/were seeking to or will it be something that in the end cost them even more in areas which hadn't been considered.
As we are only human we cannot predict the future, but when you remember old sayings like "Best laid plans of mice and men" or "if one thing is consistent in the world its change" it would seem that humanity has a really bad habit of thinking its in control of things when later they come to rediscover not quite so much