Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
Yes, I believe it does because the Military Aim is to disarm him in order to get to the Final Political Aim of making peace........the original purpose of War in the first place. If you don't make peace than as St. Carl said War may just erupt again.
I don't disagree on the goal of seeking peace, but rather that the military aim is to disarm.

Is the state of peace simply the absence of conflict? Or does peace come when the involved parties submit to the will of the victor?

I would say the latter, as it prevents a powderkeg of a population that has the will to fight but no longer the means. The man without a gun who still wants to fight will peaceably submit while looking for another weapon. The converse, an armed man who means no more harm, is a non-issue.

I would even go further and say that a man who is disarmed, but not *defeated*, still has not been taken out of the opposing force's available strength. He can still support the conflict without arms, or await a new weapon. While disarming efforts can prevent access of those who wish to fight the means to do so, it will not solve the root problem(s).

It is only through the imposition of one's will on another, with recognition of and submission to the victor, that you get peace rather than mere absence of conflict. It sounds worse (as in: might makes right) than it is. You can convince intellectually or emotively through words rather than high explosives, try to change to conditions that make a man want to fight, try to provide other avenues for political enfranchisement, provide jobs that co-op the mercenary attitudes of citizens looking for money, etc...

Ultimately though, you have to remove the man's will to fight.

Otherwise, as von Clauswitz notes, you'll be back at war- which kind of voids the assertion you were ever at peace.


I do really agree with the point by Redleg that:
Answering "why that guy left" allows us to exploit success.
But considering we can't effectively count them in the first place, I doubt we can make a quantitative assessment of impact, much less be able to sort out which program impacted an identified change. Errors of false precision are the most common logical fallacy I encounter.

My opposition to all the 'metrics' is not theoretical, but practical. Practical objections that probably would not hold on a conventional battlefield, due to a higher likely fidelity of information; though the other points still hold. Surrender-defeat-destruction, all remove enemy combat power. Tracking how to most effectively remove combat power, when feasible, is just common sense. The rest of the time you're just spinning your wheels.