It’s bad enough that autocratic societies are set up in such a way that individuals can be targeted and punished at any time.
This situation becomes all the worse when autocratic leaders turn the amp up to 11.1
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?2
The wonder of war for your average autocrat is that they can kill and maim their subjects on a scale that would seem positively indecent to them if they ordered their own police and soldiers to do it. In fairness, mass death and generational collapse is rarely the real goal. Most autocrats see something else that they want and war means they can have others fight their battles for them with minimal risk to themselves.
Oh, the wonderful little joys of being an autocratic leader. How cool is that?
February 2022 and Vladimir Putin orders 100s of thousands of Russians to fight their neighbours in Ukraine. Apparently having just 143 million Russians to push around isn’t enough anymore. He wants to be able to command another 43 million more people, so he’s happy to sacrifice some of his existing subjects in a costly gamble to gain him more subjects.
The real human cost is unknown, though clearly huge, with neither side keen for the truth to be published. Ukrainian military losses are estimated at anywhere between 35,000 and 70,000, with 10,000 to 20,000 civilians killed on top of that. Russia’s military losses are projected at anywhere between 70,000 and 500,000.
And that’s without even considering the number of wounded which is probably considerably higher again.
All of that driven by the desire of one person for the glory of Russia. Except it’s not really for the glory of Russia, it’s for the glory of Putin.
Now let’s back up to 1990 and Saddam Hussein sends his army into Kuwait and annexes the country. Yet another grand adventure by one person in his grand palace gambling with the lives of his subjects.
How many Iraqi lives were lost because of that decision is unclear. Maybe anywhere from 20,000 up to 65,000, with almost 300 allied deaths and several thousand Kuwaitis. Yet the real cost to Saddam was negligible. He kept his total power. He kept his palaces. He kept his life of luxury.
If he’d got away with stealing the oil fields of Kuwait, do you think he would have shared those new riches with his people, in the same way that he shared so many opportunities for death and disfigurement?
Less than a decade earlier was the first war I remember.
The Falklands War. You had to be there to understand the jaw-dropping shock the British people felt when that news broke.
“What? The Argentinians have invaded Scotland? Did they eat a dodgy batch of corned beef?”
That pretty much was the response of everyone I knew at the time, until the media got their act together and pointed out to us that the Falkland Islands are, relatively speaking, just off the coast of Argentina.
I’ll be honest, I think most of us were a bit confused about how we came to possess an island off the Argentinian coast, but we happily put that to one side and let the media gee us up for a jolly good scrap with the Argies.
Not many of us ever stopped to consider the fact the Argentinian people lived under a harsh military dictatorship that could force their young men to go and fight and die on their behalf. It’s that same pattern again. Powerful narcissists at the top making others go and die for their folly.
649 Argentinians lost their lives because of the decision to invade, with 255 British deaths too. I guess the Argentinian leaders may have felt embarrassed by the loss, but embarrassment isn’t terminal. Death is.
Now to 1939, massed German soldiers followed the command of their leader up on high and marched into Poland, kicking off a global conflict. This time anywhere between 70 and 85 million people lost their lives because of this new war.
Why? Because one man believed being a leader meant making your people do what you want, rather than doing what they need.
Adolf Hitler believed he could literally take over Europe and place 100s of millions of people under his command. Take their freedom from them and make them his personal assets, in the same way he’d made most of the German people his personal assets.
If the German people had stood up to Hitler, those five or so years of war wouldn’t have happened. But the German people behaved just the same as we all do. If you and I had been there, we’d likely have acted no differently.
And even if that war hadn’t happened, there’d have been another big one later, perhaps even bigger and more destructive. As we can see above, it’s not as if we completely lost our appetite for war after 1945, we just learned to snack and graze more.
Back further still, to the war that eventually led to World War Two.
July 28, 1914, Europe plunged itself into World War One. Of course back then it wasn’t known that it was just the first in a two-part franchise. A franchise that right now looks worryingly like it may be preparing for a reboot.
It went on for more than four years. Depending on who you listen to, between 15 and 22 million people were killed during that period, with up to 23 million injured.
If you want to research it, you’ll find different historians will offer various reasons for why that war happened
I’m not a historian, but I’ll offer this take. It was basically just the powerful of Europe arguing over who had the biggest dick.
What did the war achieve? Various borders were redrawn, generally disregarding the wishes of the people living in those places, but little else seemed to change.
Pretty much the one concrete effect of the wasted four years of destruction, death and mutilation was laying the foundation for an even bloodier war and one of the most horrific attempts at genocide the planet has known.
Why did more than 15 million people sacrifice themselves?
The average British soldier slumped in the mud of a trench had much more in common with the average German soldier slumped in the mud of a trench 100 metres across a field than they did with the powerful and privileged who started and ran the war.
And that average German soldier had much more in common with the average British soldier than with the powerful and privileged in their society who were running their side of the war.
It would have made more sense for the average soldiers on each side to join together and fight against those above them. It was their respective leaders who presented the real threat to the soldiers who were actually fighting the war.
But humans have evolved to accept their position in society and to follow the commands of those at the top.
War may offer the clearest demonstration of how the power of a few at the top of society can make the majority act against their own best interest, but it’s a constant reality in every society.
Just look at the financial crisis of 2007/2008. Obviously, everyone at the bottom needed to tighten their belts to get through it, while the wealthy at the top of society continued living a life of excess. Sure, society’s poorest didn’t have to live in muddy trenches for four years while being bombed and shot at, but they were the ones expected to feel the pain while their leaders barely felt any difference in their own lives.
- https://youtu.be/KOO5S4vxi0o ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztZI2aLQ9Sw it’ll just take 3 minutes and 23 seconds of your day and if you’re lucky, they might suggest a good cat video for you at the end ↩︎