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I posted about this before, but apparently people still don't understand. So this is a dedicated topic.
War is bad. War must be prevented. War is mass murder for the purpose of armed robbery. Let's not mince words. If you claim to be Christian, one of the Ten Commandments is "Thou Shalt Not Kill", period, full stop. Killing for fun or killing for armed robbery is evil and wrong.
This has come up at the 2023 Mars Society Convention. I suggested a federal government of Mars. I said federal law would be thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, but other than that you're pretty much on your own dude. There would be cities that are effectively city states. Each city will be different, all organizations can be tried. Cities will have a great deal of autonomy, but will not be allowed to engage in war. One response was "That's no fun." A couple people others claimed "there will be multiple countries". I'm sorry if you still don't get it. With multiple countries, there will be war. Period. Not avoidable. It's a fundamental characteristic of countries. Whoever is head of state of a country sees him/herself as the ultimate authority. So they will not acknowledge nor respect authority of other countries. They believe they have the right to force their views on others. So they will try to force their views/opinions/values/priorities on other countries. Some national leaders will respect others, but many will not. It only takes one to start war.
Don't believe me? Boris Yeltsin was president of Russia. He believes in freedom and tried to integrate his country with the rest of the world. But he was followed by Vladimir Putin. Putin has invaded and annexed Chechnya, invaded Georgia and installed a puppet government, and now is engaging in war with Ukraine.
Mars is a planet without a breathable atmosphere, war cannot be tolerated. Separate countries will bring war. One federal nation with multiple city states means cities are not allowed war. The federal government will have a military, city states will not be allowed. Cities will have police, but cities (and their police) will not be allowed weapons of war. That means no tanks, no armored personnel carriers, etc. Need I detail what that means?
For those concerned about individual rights, any homestead built in the "outback", not part of a city or municipality will be allowed to possess all the same weapons of city police. What happens inside a city is up to that city, but a homestead outside city limits is not subject to any city/town/municipality.
So again why to people keep being up the idea of dividing Mars into multiple countries? That means war. Always. Inevitable. Don't do that!
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RobertDyck,
War is a fundamental characteristic of governments, which are comprised of people, most of whom have differing priorities that frequently don't align. Therefore, war is a fundamental characteristic of humanity. Groups of four-legged animals have also been observed "going to war" with each other, over land and resources and group membership. Anywhere you have people or other social animals from Earth, you will inevitably have war.
Yes, war is bad. Death is also bad. Both are inseparable parts of life. If you want less war, then you do your utmost to make sure priorities align. The way we used to reduce the number of wars was to marry off the women to the other tribal groups or nation-states. Potentially killing your own daughter and grandchildren was considered beyond the pale for most men, but unfortunately not all men. In modern times, we have independent and co-equal branches of government. One of those branches is the judiciary, which has various punishments for breaking laws. One of those punishments is the death penalty. Breaching of the peace was, under certain circumstances, punishable by death. If there was a faithfully executed law which included the death penalty for breaching the peace, war would require large numbers of people who were willing to risk execution to prosecute a war.
Every new territory has been divided up amongst nations. Nations from Earth are spearheading the colonization efforts. One or the other nation will inevitably try to take the resources, people, and/or property of another. What you're asking is for fundamental human nature to change in a radical way. The likelihood of that happening is near-zero or actually zero if we're being honest with ourselves. Antarctica is the only exception to this rule that I'm aware of. No war has ever been fought there by the various nation-states who send their scientists there for research and monitoring. Priorities align almost perfectly in this one exceptional case, so that is unsurprising and worth investigating further.
Creating one armed group with the means to dictate terms to all the other unarmed groups under their thumb is practically guaranteed to result in a war at some point- a fairly short war with a bunch of casualties on one side, but disarming specific groups of people is not going to stop warfare. If anything, it will encourage war, because there are no consequences to the armed group. Alternatively, the unarmed groups will start building weapons in secret.
Every vehicle capable of protecting its occupants from a solar storm is a de-facto armored personnel carrier. There's not much getting around that inconvenient fact of life, and little point to designing non-survivable vehicles. Tanks and artillery would be over-the-top for self-defense, but the moment one group decides they need military hardware to protect their settlement from real or imagined threats, every other group will ultimately follow suit.
If there is to be a planetary military, then it will need to draw soldiers from all of the people in all of the colonies and unincorporated areas, which implies shared citizenship- Mars Citizenship! Other nations can come and go, but the permanent residents of Mars need to be their own country, separate and apart from any national government.
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Creating one armed group with the means to dictate terms to all the other unarmed groups under their thumb is practically guaranteed to result in a war at some point- a fairly short war with a bunch of casualties on one side, but disarming specific groups of people is not going to stop warfare. If anything, it will encourage war, because there are no consequences to the armed group. Alternatively, the unarmed groups will start building weapons in secret.
United States of America has a federal government with military, cities do not. States have a "national guard" but according to Wikipedia...
The National Guard is a state-based military force that becomes part of the reserve components of the United States Army and the United States Air Force when activated for federal missions.
I argue city states do not need it. Yes, the federal government will allocate land. Yes, the federal government will prohibit anyone using military force. That includes preventing corporations from stealing or bullying. If you read history, during the American war of independence, two corporations competed for resources in North America. Hudson's Bay company and Northwest company went to war with eachother. When the War of Independence was over the government military has to stop them.
Last edited by RobertDyck (2023-10-06 18:37:19)
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RobertDyck,
There are no city-states sending anyone to Mars. Only nation-states are doing that. All nation-states have military forces.
An all-powerful federal government is going to prevent bullying? How well has that worked out for Canadians under Trudeau?
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Federal government of Mars will prevent one city from bullying other cities, or trying to impose their authority outside city bounds. And prevent corporations from bullying other corporations, or homesteads.
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RobertDyck,
That sounds like it should work in theory. Why has it never worked in practice?
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For kbd512 ... thanks for engaging with RobertDyck. I am staying out of this discussion, because I think RobertDyck is in a class by himself, but I appreciate your considerate handling of this topic.
(th)
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kbd512,
So the federal government of the US is evil? The US doesn't work?
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RobertDyck,
Please do this topic justice by answering my question about why the idea of one group of armed people telling all the other disarmed groups of people what they may or may not do, hasn't worked out so well in the past. Given your proposal, it's not a rhetorical question.
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The United States of America federal government has an armed military. States do have a national guard, but in case of conflict they are under command of the federal military. How well has that worked out?
Yes, I am saying Mars will be one country. One nation. With one military. Cities will have a great deal of autonomy, but they will be cities of the Mars government. Cities will be allowed a police force, but no military. Not even a "national guard". This is the answer to your question. I am saying Mars will be one nation just as USA is one nation.
You could argue the Civil War of 1861. Is that a valid argument? Is taking up arms against the federal government of USA really a good idea, or a solution to anything?
I could also cite Canada, which also has a federal government. Provinces do not have a national guard or any equivalent. There are units of the military in every province, but they're part of the national military. Canada did have the Red River Rebellion of 1870, followed by the North-West Rebellion of 1885. I could give a long-winded explanation. But the point is Canada has a federal government, it has a military, Provinces do not.
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Right at this moment there are reports of an Arab, Palestine or Hezbollah or Iranian or Sunni or Shiite attack or offensive or bombing against Israel. I am not sure what the news event truly is on social media. There is news reports of Hamas shooting or bombing or rocketing or beheading in an attack or Firing Thousands upon Thousands Rockets Into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
You can catch the breaking news on social media, a lot of it is internet Live feeds unconfirmed rumors but there is so much live footage on mobile cell phone it must be true and now it seems Israel now Declares 'State of War' they will undoubtedly strike back and blitz their neighbor States from the Air, the muslims are making facebook twitter telegram selfie vids screeching Death to others and shouting for 'our Arab and Islamic nations' to join the battle. I will not link vids because they are graphic but you can find the breaking news if you wish.
There are many Arabs and reports of terrorists that now infiltrate southern Israel. The State of Israel always had good military technology, when the Israeli Jewish did not have high tech American military equipment they also had French made weapons, however the history of fighting is long and the Arab Muslims inside Israel are breeding a lot more than Jewish Israelis.
I have no doubt the Israeli military will respond.
In discussion of civilizations there were threads before where we Discussed 'Wrong Personality Types for Mars'? Some personality had their classification the Driver, Expressive, the Leader, the Artist, the Grunt need to do the hard physical work fixing and working that thing in the mines, Analytical or Amiable. When politics came up a guy like Putin seemed to be in a class of his own Strong Willed but Cold and Manipulative, Smart and Clever in his own way but perhaps somewhat Delusional and Insane, perhaps a Psychopath type. Yet even with all these Wars around Earth there are realms of peaceful civilization. Our blueprints for avoiding conflict in areas of multi cultural crossing are the examples of Science-Team exploration at the South Pole that somewhat respects it as a nature reserve and the science done at International Space Station.
Some claim it is the Male thing but not always and Women can be good at war there is the history of Catherine the Great, there are folk stories Hua Mulan, Margaret Thatcher. Women they were leaders in War but it is a mostly 'Male' thing a 'Man' dominated sphere of violence. There is no exact definition as to what makes something a true war, it can be a conflict between tribes, it can involve unconventional warfare, guerrilla tactics, people with no true uniforms the Afghan the Sunni and Shiite jihadists the Mujahideen, groups for payment such as mercenaries, or class of fighting people insurgents, rebels fighting against a foreign King for 'Freedom' and militias and mass industrial warfare, some people even consider war a universal and ancestral aspect of our current human nature.
There are studies that having a woman around can perhaps chill things out or support communication, not all women will be the same so any personality going to an offworld colony on Mars or Titan or Europa would probably be screened before the journey.
Some war is through a manipulated event, a fire starts by fear and reaction and propaganda a fake story that starts an out of control flame and panic, Bismarck made it sound like the King had gravely disrespected the ambassador – a ploy tricking Emperor Napoleon III into declaring war on the North German Confederation and the end goal of unifying the northern and southern German states. The Royal Swedish Opera received an order to sew a number of Russian military uniforms, Puumala incident allowed King Gustav III of Sweden, who lacked constitutional authority to initiate hostilities without the Estates' consent, he now had a fake staged event to launch the Russo-Swedish War. The guys in Tokyo with people inside China fabricated a pretext for invading Manchuria by blowing up a section of rail the explosion was too weak to disrupt operations but Japanese nevertheless used the Mukden Incident to seize Manchuria and create a puppet government. With the French kicked out of Vietnam along came the Gulf of Tonkin and the United States government falsely claimed that a second incident occurred between North Vietnamese and United States ships in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. Originally, US military claims blamed North Vietnam for the confrontation and the ostensible, but in fact imaginary a Later investigation revealed that the second attack never happened. Even at the basic level people can be manipulated or are naturally tribal such as Inter-tribal violence in parts of Africa or Kenya they might treat some local guy like a Football Popstar 'Hero' and when their guy or colored shirt does not win, they will attack the other team and even without guns grab improvised weapons such as spears.
There are many ways to class personality which have been discussed in our threads, the Alpha Male the tough leader of the zealot Temple, the manager, military general, the politician, the guy who has his face on the Multi National Mega Corp, the Beta male the doctor or social worker, Delta males are the guys working in the Levee, the Engineer, the Firefighter, a Gamma male is the funny guy but also coordinator, the travel agent, the Sigma Male a person like a philosopher or professor, the Zeta Male simply does their own thing musician/writer and the Omega Male a happy introvert a scientific researcher, a composer, the chemist. In conflict there is 'Psychological Warfare' or other times a mass scale event of 'Terrorism' a large scale event like the 9-11 attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001 they can be designed to strike fear into some nation or group but also have an opposite effect, help unite a Nation giving everyone the sense their civilization and 'Way Of Life' itself is under direct threat, unite a people behind a counter attack and gain sympathy and gain support from other nations.
Federal government of Mars will prevent one city from bullying other cities, or trying to impose their authority outside city bounds.
I don't know if these ideas will work on Mars, we must accept we as humans have the potential to be the most violent and dangerous creatures, don't worry about Spiders like an old movie Arachnophobia tells you, don't worry about Jaws and its Sharks when violence breaks out it is we that are the monsters with the most potential for death and destruction, however we also have potential for helpiong others for building and for goodness. On Earth the only continent that has known peace is Antarctica and it came very close to war with Argentina and Chile and British claims and the Falkland Islands War, maybe there could be some similar treaty or a form of scientific co-operation. Even now as relations break down between Russia and the West there is a spirit of mission and unity on the ISS.
War is a fundamental characteristic of governments, which are comprised of people
and it is also a characteristic of groupings of non-government for example the group of mohammedanism, people pushing ideas of infidel and islam, an old jihad a religion founded by a mass murdering pedophile. You could remove government and have humans break down into little non-governed anarchist religious tribes and yet they might be ruled by the 1400 yr old words from a dead terrorist pedophile, no true functional government in sight and yet there would still be war, one tribe of islamics killing anotehr group over who is the better muslim.
That is not to say every person who works in government is bad or every muslim is a terrorist, the individual muslim can have good qualities as single people.
War perhaps has existed before governments were a thing and even if all governments were to collapse Human Wars might continue to exist.
We know before the arrival of the European Colonial White man in North America not all the Natiev American tribes got along peacefully, many were in conflict and what could be described as in a state of war with each other. Lawrence H. Keeley an American archaeologist who died 2017 says many of the known primitive old pre-civilization societies throughout history engaged in at least occasional warfare, and many fought constantly.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060706042 … 4Aa02.html
,
https://web.archive.org/web/20101121021 … s/war.html
The way we used to reduce the number of wars was to marry off the women to the other tribal groups or nation-states. Potentially killing your own daughter and grandchildren was considered beyond the pale for most men, but unfortunately not all men. .
The past had extremes the current period is still extreme. Here is a Sikh telling the story of a father that would kill his own bloodline rather than have her enslaved as a breeding machine that proliferates islamism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WQtUYv1_-s
If you look at countries that are ranked by Low Crime and as Peaceful Countries which do not invade others you have places like Sweden, Iceland, British Virgin Islands, Japan, Norway, Guam, Nepal, Germany, the Vatican City, Greenland, New Zealand, Cuba and Austria to be the Lowest Homicide, Non-aggression and most peaceful countries,
However we can look at these countries more both Germany and Japan were disarmed after WW2, they enjoyed the protection of the United States as did many other countries.
Places like the Vatican City and Cuba can claim to be peaceful but there are many reports of crimes underneath, Sweden and Germany are also starting to experience waves of social unrest by way of islamic immigration.
Also location, who would want to invade Greenland or Iceland, they are remote and cold hostile places their location does not invite invasion.
The 'Cold War' was an example of smaller nation states which do not want to be part of a war but find their people and cultures getting dragged into a War as Two Major Powers had a political clash, the expansion of Unconventional warfare use of covert forces, backing of militia criminal type groups, expansion of propaganda subversion, or guerrilla warfare.
A lot of current Middle East conflict might also be traced to Iran and Saudi Arabia fight for regional control and religion expansion through proxy warfare.
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-10-07 05:53:08)
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RobertDyck,
Why is it that your proposal, which is disarming everyone else in favor of giving a central authority a complete or near-complete monopoly on violence, results in many more deaths than decentralization?
Your proposal has been tried before. It hasn't worked very well. The result was more state-sanctioned / state-sponsored killing of people, not less. When everyone has enough infantry and tanks to repel an invasion, the prospect of one nation-state or colony invading another becomes far less appealing to the others.
Let me explain a bit more about how the US military operates on US soil:
Here in the US, at least since the end of WWII, the US military is primarily a garrison force with an Active Duty component that primarily operates overseas or within the confines of US military bases. It would be very accurate to say that the Active Duty force is not permitted to conduct any activities outside of their bases without approval from local authorities. Apart from civilian vehicles like delivery vans, anything that looks like a military vehicle is restricted to operating within its own base unless it was going overseas. US military bases are scattered throughout the US, in every state of the Union, to make widespread destruction of our military forces from any single attack a very low probability event. Each military base is effectively a community unto itself, and that is very deliberate. Our armed forces technically fall under the control of the central authority, but it's more succinct to state that if they wish to conduct any operation within the US, then they primarily answer to the state governors. During time of war, they answer to the President / Defense Secretaries / flag officers, whilst operating almost exclusively overseas, apart from training, and that only the upper echelons of the officer corps are a part of, or interact with, some form of centralized leadership.
This may superficially appear to be semantics, but it's not. Most military commanders interact with local authorities more than anyone in Washington DC or the Pentagon (the places where all of our central planners reside). If they need permission to do something within any US state, then they obtain that permission through the governor's office. The only exception is the Navy and Marine Corps, which interact very little with individual states, if for no other reason than they're primarily acting far outside of the US, where international law of the sea applies and US law does not.
What is the reason for this arrangement of local civilian control on US soil?
State and local governments have military forces to call up for defense of the state, governors can be assured that the central authority cannot unilaterally dictate what our federal military forces do within their states, meaning the governor has ultimate authority unless the issue involves federal law enforcement or an active war, and the federal government has to obtain broad consent before launching any military operation, of any description, on US soil. Permission may be granted to do so, but it's infrequent and over predefined periods of time. Guard troops have been deputized by the local Sheriff and operate under the Sheriff's authority, if deployed to enforce law.
The net net is that all Active Duty military is almost entirely confined to its military bases within the US, never to leave without permission of the local governor or a declaration of war. Even then, they make a beeline to the exits to go fight overseas. Short of an alien invasion, you won't see columns of tanks rolling down the streets of US cities. You will see, for example, columns of military vehicles loaded onto trucks, headed towards civilian-run repair depots. There's one within a few miles of our house. Armaments have been removed and stored in bunkers at their bases. US military aircraft are allowed to stop at civilian airports to obtain fuel or for emergencies, but that's about it. There are no cross-country flights with weapons onboard, for example. Remember that B-52 that accidentally took off with a nuclear weapon onboard? He was relieved of duties, as was his squadron commander.
After that lunatic stole a M60 tank in California, a tanker from the local Army base told the Sheriff, "I've been authorized by my commander to give you a tank. I can't be in the tank with you, because I'm not authorized to leave my base. Our tanks are not armed, either, so you'll have to wait a little longer for that, because I'm waiting on authorization for release of munitions from the armory." The governor could authorize an active duty tanker to leave his base, but without dual-approval from the federal government, he still can't leave his base. There is no unilateral authority for military action, and largely no ability to take it, unless we've been attacked. After an attack, the military is obligated to defend the country, so it has permission to leave their bases if that's necessary.
After 9/11, my fellow sailors and I (both officers and enlisted, whether you lived on or off-base) were entirely confined to our bases and not permitted to leave under any circumstances, because that's what the central authority and governors decided upon. We were given 24 hours to comply and muster for duty, although 8 hours is about how long it actually took. My squadron and the aircraft carrier I was assigned to were sent overseas to the Indian Ocean within 72 hours, IIRC. We embarked in San Diego, everyone who was working on the ship left, all Air Wing 9 squadrons were flown onto the ship after we were underway, armaments were loaded while underway via VERTREP, we briefly stopped in Pearl Harbor to collect stragglers and civilian weapons support techs flown ahead of the carrier to Pearl, and the rest of the deployment was combat flight ops, with very few breaks and maybe one or two liberty calls, in Australia and Guam towards the end of the deployment.
In short, there's a very clear distinction between allowable vs unallowable behavior, decentralization of authority and location of the military hardware, and no authorization to arm vehicles or aircraft except on military bases while operating on military bases, or during time of war. I distinctly recall the guards at San Diego being ordered to remove the M60 from their Hummer to cross a civilian street between both sides of the base, the day of 9/11. That's how serious they are about the rules. You literally cannot cross a civilian street to travel from one part of a naval base to the other, with an armed vehicle. It may seem silly until you recall what happened with British troops stationed on US soil.
When you see military vehicles from the US Army operating on civilian roads within the US, you'll notice that all the vehicle-mounted armament has been removed, or the ammunition supply is gone. The same applies to aircraft, with the US Coast Guard being the only exception I'm aware of. If you see an armed US Navy or US Marine Corps helicopter, they took off from a military base and ventured out into open ocean.
That's the difference between what appears to superficially be centralized military control, and the reality of how military forces operate within the US, what's allowed, and what is not. Until the riots of 2019, America was a society of the well-controlled. It was definitely not "anything goes". The Democrats have discovered that "anything goes" isn't working for them, now that they're about to lose power again, so we're finally shifting back to the center again. What was the reason for the departure? Pitching a multi-year fit over being shown the door by the American people over their utter lack of leadership and control. The President has to act like the President, or he's not the President. They could've reversed course long ago, as they are right now, and all would be forgiven.
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I'm at the Mars Society Convention. Your post TLDR: Too Long Didn't Read.
I only read your first sentence. And a couple paragraphs of Mars_ B4_Moon. There's more war in the Middle East. That is an argument FOR my proposal. Seriously, do I really need to explain why?
Some Americans have a mental problem about weapons. I repeat, I did say individuals would be allowed the same weapons as police. Individuals would be allowed all weapons except weapons of war. You would be allowed all weapons currently legal in the United States.
If you still want to argue then I suggest you go live in a currently active war zone.
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RobertDyck,
Intellectual arguments require evidence. In lieu of evidence, you've made declarations and then asked whether or not I think the US government is "working", then refused to provide evidence of where or when granting exclusive use of military force powers to a centralized authority has worked out well for the people living somewhere on Earth. Nobody who is sane and rational wants a war. This isn't about weapons or lack thereof. It's about how and why all-powerful central authority doesn't work. Stop fixating on the tools and methods, and start addressing WHY things should be done one way or another.
War is very very bad. I agree with that, 100%. I hope everyone already knows that.
Now, can we address "the why" behind who gets authority, for what purposes, and under what circumstances?
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kbd512, you're getting very annoying. I made a proposal. You asked for evidence. You again demanded evidence. I repeated the same evidence. Now you again demand evidence. Either admit admit I am right or claim you believe the United States of America is not a real country, and doesn't work.
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For RobertDyck .... In #15, you said you had made a proposal ....
Your proposal seems to have gotten lost in the discussion and back and forth ....
While looking back I found this:
Mars is a planet without a breathable atmosphere, war cannot be tolerated. Separate countries will bring war. One federal nation with multiple city states means cities are not allowed war. The federal government will have a military, city states will not be allowed. Cities will have police, but cities (and their police) will not be allowed weapons of war. That means no tanks, no armored personnel carriers, etc. Need I detail what that means?
My question is... how are you planning/hoping to keep aggressive armed forces from landing and taking all the valuable equipment and supplies from the Martian population, killing the men, and enslaving the women?
No doubt you have something in mind, but it might help if you were to go back to the first post and restate your Proposal, marked clearly with the word: "Proposal"
Then, please return to create a new post citing the change in Post #1, and answering the question I am asking.
You may have a good idea. If it ** is ** a good idea, more than one person will support it.
May I offer a suggestion? If you are the only person alive on Earth who thinks something is a "good idea", is it still a good idea?
(th)
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RobertDyck,
Your proposal was a declaration that only one indigenous government (that doesn't presently exist) should be allowed to have a military force on Mars, and dictate terms to anyone else who wishes to live there. Someone might want to know who died and left them in charge. Nobody has claimed ownership of the entire planet. Any such claim would never be respected by the other space-faring nations if it was made. If someone attempted to enforce such an outrageous claim, the inevitable result will be WAR!
Whenever Mars colonization ceases to be a construct wholly created and funded by Earth-centric nation-states, if you can get a majority of the people living there to agree with this proposal, and all of those Earth-centric nation-states who funded the endeavor to begin with will agree to independence, then they can vote to have their own federal government, a military if they want one, and they can decided who gets authority to do what, when and where the authority to use military force applies, and under what circumstances.
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Tom, post #1 said a federal government with cities. Each city will have a great deal of autonomy, practical all authority of a state. This means the entire planet is one country, but cities are practically city-states. Brian is arguing for separate countries with military weapons so they can go to war with eachother.
That's all I proposed in this discussion thread. But if you want more, there's a whole thread with multiple pages.
Corporate Government
In this thread I deliberately avoided use of the word "corporate".
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RobertDyck,
What you're arguing for is "One World Government". That's never existed here on Earth. It's not hard to figure out why. See how many people are ready to go to war after you try to force it on them.
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You don't understand what I wrote, so just stand down. You're military, can't understand a world without war. So again, just stand down.
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RobertDyck,
I understand what you wrote perfectly well. What I can't understand is why you think something that's only resulted in a never-ending series of wars when it was tried here on Earth is going to do the opposite of what it's historically done when multiple space faring nations send people to another planet. All the empires created throughout human history were various attempts at "one world government" to the liking of one person or group of people. Unless this central authority intends to kill everyone who doesn't agree to submit to their authority, otherwise known as a W-A-R, then this proposal does the opposite of what it intends to do. It's a beautiful idea that utterly ignores human nature.
I think you're better off simply asking all nations involved to treat Mars the same way they already treat Antarctica. If we can all agree that nobody lays claim to the land, then there's no need to militarize it. You get what you want by proxy, but without a central authority. I can't think of a militarily useful purpose for colonies on Mars. After some study, the US military came to the conclusion that the moon wasn't militarily useful, despite its proximity to Earth.
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For kbd512 re #21
Thanks for your closing paragraph, and particularly for the suggestion it might be possible to persuade existing governments to accept a treaty similar to the one already in place in Antarctica.
I have only a cursory understanding of how that treaty was achieved, so would appreciate suggestions for well written not-too-long pieces on the history.
In general, and without knowing the facts of the event, I'd guess Antarctica is not "owned" or "claimed" by any nation because it is thought not to be worth the trouble.
It seems to me likely Mars is eventually going to be worth claiming. It may well have resources we don't know about today, but it will always be higher in the gravity well than Earth, and for that reason it will be advantageous from a military point of view.
Still, your suggestion might be worth serious consideration, and even worth a letter or two to our respective governments, in hopes it might catch on.
A place to start is with someone like Bob Zubrin. I don't know what his position might be on the subject, and would appreciate someone in the forum posting a link to whatever position he might have taken.
(th)
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For many months, Mars_B4_Moon has been building up a collection of posts in the Antarctica topic. Among those was one that reported briefly on the history of territorial claims in that region, and the (to me surprising) decision by major powers to agree to a treaty in 1959.
Chile and Argentina once almost tired to colonize the place, British concluded that a military Naval occupation was indeed necessary to end flag raising and these tit-for-tat tactics. Argentina and Chile disputed the British claim, and make their own counter-claims that overlap both Britain's and each other's, in the 40s British personnel from HMS Carnarvon Castle removed Argentine flags from Deception Island, Royal Navy warships were dispatched in 1948 to prevent naval incursions. Britain submitted an application to the International Court of Justice in 1955 to adjudicate between the territorial claims of Britain, Argentina, and Chile, that proposal failed, as both Latin American countries rejected submitting to an international arbitration procedure. Seven sovereign states had made eight territorial claims to land in Antarctica south of the 60° S parallel before 1961. To prevent the possibility of military conflict in the region, the United States, United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and 9 other countries with significant interests negotiated and signed the Antarctic Treaty in 1959. http://60south.com/about/about.htm , https://web.archive.org/web/20100326100 … spx?lang=e Antarctica is at peace these days it is peaceful and maybe private yacht voyages are happening today in the Southern Ocean.
From: http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 62#p200562
If kbd512's suggestion is to become reality, right NOW is the best possible time to push it vigorously.
(th)
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Is it merely an unbroken chain of cosmic coincidences, stretching back throughout all of human history, that whenever one group of people tried to dictate terms to another group, that the end result was war? How is that even possible, if it all boiled down to dumb luck? You'd think at some point there would be a counter-factual to point to, whereby imposing authority on others when no consent was granted had the effect of reducing or eliminating war and killing, except that there's not. No such thing ever happened.
RobertDyck opined that since I was in the military, I can't imagine a world without war. I imagine that when factions with interests that don't align stop trying to impose their will on the other side, war will become a rarity. If that ever happens, people won't see much of a point to having a military of any description, so this fear becomes a non-issue. Sadly, all I can do is "imagine" such a set of circumstances. I can't change human behavior, which is still animal behavior at the end of the day. Apart from fundamentally transforming humanity into something it never was, war will always be with us.
If we attempt to impose authority on everyone living on Mars, who may have very different ideas about what is best / right / moral, what is the most probable outcome?
I'd imagine that'd be the makings of another damned war.
Assuming we still don't want war, what's the only way we've done that in the past (using Antarctica as our example)?
We decided that setting aside an entire continent for scientific study, was of greater interest to humanity, than anything we could possibly do with it militarily or economically. The academics convinced our politicians that we could still fight and kill each other every other place in the world, except this one place we all set aside as a no-go zone for military forces. Whatever Antarctica's military potential may be, every nation has thus far decided it's not worth fighting over.
Given the fact that Mars is vastly less hospitable to any form of life, I'm thinking that fighting over it is likely to be viewed as an utter waste of time and money. You can put your nation's Mars colony any other place on the planet and still have equal access to an immediately lethal environment that makes Antarctica look like a good vacation spot.
This is how we'd prevent war on Mars. Convince people that it's not worth fighting over, rather than try to impose authority on everyone, knowing that some of them may completely disagree with the authority. More than a few people want to go to Mars to escape from the insanity of governments imposing their will on others. They may not take kindly to someone immediately re-imposing the capricious dictates of a centralized government upon them. Regardless of how they view government, imposed or even consented to, anyone going to Mars is fighting the environment at all times. Artificially creating additional human-caused dangers won't be very high on their priority list. The settlers of the Old West figured out pretty quickly that if they didn't work together to survive, they weren't going to make it.
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The only truly peaceful world, would be a world devoid of life. Look at the natural world around us, with its many different lifeforms all jostling for space and food. We can sum up life for each individual lifeform inhabiting the world as being a competitive struggle for resources. This has driven evolution. This is why people have conflicts and wars. They all want things that are in limited supply. Human ingenuity allows cooperation to access new resources. That works as far as it goes. But when all is said and done, if someone is sitting on something you need, like land, or coal or oil, you have the option of of either exchanging something for it or taking it by force. Nations make that decision as an economic question. War is a conflict over limited resources. Usually, we don't go to war with other people because we sadistically want to destroy them. We do it to eliminate a threat or to take for ourselves what they have. It is brutal and cruel for those involved, but it is the way life works and has always worked.
A non-violent solution is always preferable, because it limits damage on both sides. Humans actually achieve that better than most other living things. But don't expect war between humans to disappear, as long as there remains competing claims on resources. I fully expect a 23rd century independant Mars to boast a space navy, full of warships armed with rail guns, lasers and nuclear tipped missiles. Mars orbit will be full of rail guns and lasers to shoot down interplanetary missiles launched from Earth. Earth will be doing the same thing. We could eventually have the sort of cold war between Earth and Mars that we see in The Expanse. Seeing how humans have developed, it is easy to see where we are going. It doesn't make us evil, anymore than any other living thing competing over resources is evil. It is the way of the world. Humans are actually unique in having other options and war is rarely our default solution. But even peaceful nations like Switzerland are armed to the teeth. Diplomacy has to be an iron fist in a silk glove, because any other approach in a world of limited resources makes you vulnerable. The past seventy years have been a period of unrivalled peace between great powers, because each possess weapons that can obliterate any would be attacker. Ironically, without nuclear weapons, the past seventy years would have been far more brutal. What has in fact happened, is that the damage resulting from total war has become so destructive that it is no longer a desirable option for securing new resources.
Last edited by Calliban (2023-10-09 04:53:46)
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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