Political War and Woolly Thinking

[Firn]

The 'play of chance' of good old CvC should really be featured more in political science. The rational aspect has been traditionally covered very well, with highly useful tools, but chance is difficult to map into the models. Complexity and additions in general come at a price in science...

CvC worked of course out how war is linked to politics but tried to avoid to get too much into the internal processes. For the sake of simplicity he treated for his work the state/political leadership mostly as a black box, despite noting how private interests, vanity and so forth play a role in politics. The reasons are mostly the same as in science, you often need to black box stuff and keep it as simple as possible.

That policy unites in itself, and reconciles all the interests of internal administrations, even those of humanity, and whatever else are rational subjects of consideration, is presupposed, for it is nothing in itself, except a mere representative and exponent of all these interests towards other States. That policy may take a false direction, and may promote unfairly the ambitious ends, the private interests, the vanity of rulers, does not concern us here; for, under no circumstances can the art of war be regarded as its preceptor, and we can only look at policy here as the representative of the interests generally of the whole community.

Chaptor 8, War as an instrument of policy.

While the rational/irrational division can be helpful it is important to note that rational actors can have bad incentives to inflame a conflict which is clearly irrational for the country as a whole. History is full of examples, perhaps the Falkland invasion is a timely one, considering the current economic problems of the poor Argentines under the great leader Kirchner in her glorious victorious decade.