War Club CHPT 20/21 Qs

Question - do you think the fact the world favors warriors over shopkeepers is ultimately going to lead to our own destruction? With power and strongmen being favored, corporate power grows and ultimately the environment, our education, our healthcare, the broader society at large is destabilized. By not focusing on mutual benefits (especially for the environment) we erode what supports us... When taking a step back and looking at this on a global scale... with climate change, deforestation and dying oceans I fear we cant turn it around because of the warrior mindset. Curious what you think about this?

Cazzamatazz

I had never heard the term "attrition culture" before and when I read that in chapter 20 my experience of growing up as an American suddenly made a lot more sense. It seems to me that France is always a couple steps ahead of the rest of the Western world when it comes to the arts. Do you think this is because of Napoleon's influence as a maneuver strategist? Like after Napoleon did his thing France became more of a maneuver culture?

It feels like the author is getting more into tactics than strategies at this point. 1- On maneuvers: this is about giving the opponents a small set of options and forcing them more or less to pick the obvious choice. In real life, outside of games, elections and actual warfare, things aren't so turn based, limited by terrain or up to one specific event. Still, can you think of examples where you manipulated an opponent into seeing a desired (false) dilemma or limited set of choices so that they would be forced to pick the best (or least worst) of the presented options? 2- On diplomacy: the art of negociation. I would love to talk about the math of this one, how parties eventually select non-optimal solutions to one or to all. But perhaps it would be more interesting to talk about "troll" diplomacy, where one side plays the game just to infuriate the other, knowing no side wants to escalate to the point of violent conflict. Can you elaborate on how diplomacy strategies have affected your life?

PJ B