It's not in a nation's best interest to be an aggressor, because sooner or later it's going to be smacked down.Retaliator has been proven, statistically, to be the most stable and sustainable strategy- this is not opinion, it's simple statistics.
As was pointed out earlier, these statistics ignore suicide bombers and terrorists. They are therefore not reliable and furthermore, proven false by the existance of many aggressors everywhere.
As long as everyone cooperates, life is good; as soon as someone steps out of line, they get smacked.
What happens if there are a number of entities who work together and do preparations to step out of line? Something similar like the Central Powers in WWI and the Axis in WWII.
I believe that it still stands that cooperation and peace as the baseline state is the most sustainable- because history has been shown, time and time again, that expansionistic and aggressive states eventually degrade and dissolve.
History has also shown that policies which rely on neutrality - effectively being a retalliator - usually aren't sustainable, unless their independance offers something to the aggressor. An example was the US before WWI and WWII. After practically running your experiment it was plain that the idea just didn't work. Like Marxism, nice in theory, but worthless in practice.
The British empire, the Roman empire, the Spanish empire- all states with expansionist agendas who invaded and manipulated the affairs of other states, and eventually were destroyed.
Belgium was conquered in both WWI and WWII, Holland in WWII, even though their neutrality policy made them retalliators. Same was for Norway and Denmark.
Even a powerful hawk eventually takes such a toll in the process of destroying the others that eventually the other, smaller hawks finish it off.
Sure, but in the meantime he has much offspring, of whom some will become large hawks themselves and pass on their genes further. It should be clear to you that survival of the individual is irrelevant in evolution, what matters is the offspring.
Again, if every state follows the tit-for-tat strategy, an equilibrium of cooperation eventually occurs. If nobody attacks anybody, but with the ready threat against a cheater, there may be a few wars, but justifiable ones that are infrequent.
No, aggressors will arise and work together and prepare for a war they think they can win. There will be a WW size conflict and with modern weapons that would cause much more destruction than any small-scale conflict ever would.
Switzerland has long been neutral but ready to defend itself- and see how well it's survived and prospered.
Switzerland is an example of a country that is worth much more to an aggressor when it is neutral. It's banking and political connections are worth more to an aggressor than a few square miles of mountains, which are also easy to defend.
Holland tried the same tactic in WWI, but not having those advantages and being of much more strategic importance it didn't work.
Hitler would not have found fertile ground to sprout if we had not brutally ran Germany into the ground after WWI; when we rehabilitated Europe with the Marshall Plan, the country became one of the most respected and advanced countries on Earth.
You ignore the crash of '29, Hitler only gained traction when the crises started. A similar event did not happen after WWII and Hitler did poorly before '29.
The only reason China went communist was because of Western manipulation in the Opium Wars, which destabilized China and paved the way for corrupt rulers who bled China dry, which the precipitated the rise to power of the Maoists.
Right and wrong at the same time. Without any foreign intervention both China and Japan would still be ruled by an Emperor and Shogun respectively. Technologically and scientifically they would be some 500 years backwards.
Without competition from other countries there is no reason to do anything about corruption, anyway.
It was the constant competition and subsequent wars that brought the small European countries their economical, scientifical and political superiority, which explains why they were able to conquer most of the world.
It can be argued that the loss of life in these wars was more than made up for by the lives saved because the advances in medicine, made possible by the same competition that resulted in those wars.
A forum for the resolving of greivances (perhaps a very empowered UN) would be necessary to legislate disputes, of course, and a mechanism for enforcing the rules would also be necessary, perhaps in the form of a unified UN military command.
In any system you, or anyone can think of, other people will find weaknesses they can exploit.
A world organization much like the European Union could oversee things, too.
One thing learned from the EU is that every participating country tries to manipulate it for it's own good, very much neglecting the other members.
This will horrify the nationalists out there, but I truly think that this is the way to do it.
Risking the safety and stability of almost every country on earth - except those who already are a mess - and risking the advance of scientific/medical progress all for something that has very little gains for many people, why would anyone be horrified?
So far, you have done a quite poor job of showing that a peaceful world would be in equilibrium, never mind showing a possible way to accomplish this state.
This in no way advocates the destruction of cultures- anything but; following the doctrine of cooperation and mutual respect would ensure that each would in fact be strengthened and bettered. Italy is still Italy, France is still France in the EU- they just cooperate better than ever before, and despite the bumps that the EU has gone through, it is a generally workable plan.
This is where you are very naïve. After 50 years we have a single currency and some common legal and economical systems.
When it comes to taxes, anything judicial and most of the government all countries are still independent.
This extremely slow speed is despite the fact that all European countries have very similar cultures, we have a common history. It is obvious that larger cultural differences would slow the process down further. There are much larger differences between Europe and the US, nerver mind African and Aziatic countries.
And I think it's possible, too. We could do it, if we put enough effort into it.
You
think it's possible? I would suggest slightly more evidence is needed before we want to start running a world wide experiment. So far you've only shown a simple model, that breaks down when just a little more realism is added.
Besides, what you are proposing is much more of a hassle than world peace is worth to most people. You're making the mistake of thinking that peace is an end-goal, which it isn't. Peace is just one of many tools to accomplish the end-goal, which has always been passing on our genes.
And if we don't do it, we're looking at nothing less than the collapse of our civilization, economy, and everything we hold dear.
Nonsense. Though many great empires have fallen in history, the offspring from their people is still alive. The Roman Empire has been long gone, but their culture is part of the foundation of current western civilization. Their people spread across Europe at the expense of the locals, and those peoples' genes still exist across Europe.
The evolutionary succes of a species is independent of the individuals' survival. In case of nations, most people usually stay alive even if their country is conquered, but their genes are mixed with those of the conquerors. Even if the conquering nation is eventually destroyed, their genes are still planted in other countries and in their own country the people survive.
You could argue that the loss of life accompanying war counters this effect, but most victims are usually men and they are not the limiting factor for reproduction.
