# Let's talk about the long-term effects of today's events on a global scale **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 11, 2026, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-long-term-effects-of-todays-events-on-a-global-scale/1029206 "2026-04-11T15:57:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2026, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-long-term-effects-of-todays-events-on-a-global-scale/1029206/1 "2026-04-11T15:57:34Z")
Politics aside; national exceptionalism, ethnic priority, xenophobia, religious factors aside. What I am concerned with here is the long-term viability and preservation of homo sapiens or a reasonable facsimile. If I have a bias, it is towards that. To echo songwriter Alan O’Day, > I really love my land; > I wanna lend a hand. > But isn’t it all right to love my world as well? I look at daily events around the world, and even if I am cheering for one country or faction over another, I try to put myself above the conflict to analyze it. Example: The good guys decimate the baddies. But to do so, they destroy some of the world’s unrecoverable resources. A bad guy is killed. But this represents a human life. Is a human life _always_ sacred, or only if you don’t agree with his politics or actions? A drone costs much less than the oil depot that it attacks. But the outcome is destruction of resources on both sides. In the long run, the loss of one oil depot and one drone is less than the overall loss of materials – oil, storage, drone parts. All of these could have been used to improve lives, not kill them. Think of what we could do, globally, if all the engineers that develop munitions would instead develop housing, food sources, recreation and entertainment. So I see news reports of EVERY raid on EVERY target and think, “They just killed human beings and made the land unlivable.” Your thoughts? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2026, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-long-term-effects-of-todays-events-on-a-global-scale/1029206/2 "2026-04-11T19:35:24Z")
I more or less think the same, and question whether military action ever achieves its goals better than peaceful actions would. Destruction of lives and property and infrastructure seems a crude way to achieve one’s longterm goals. ---
**Author:** ![Dereknocue67](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6de8d8/32.png) [@Dereknocue67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dereknocue67)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2026, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-long-term-effects-of-todays-events-on-a-global-scale/1029206/3 "2026-04-12T09:46:08Z")
My philosophy is to enjoy today; tomorrow will bring some good with slightly more bad. I’ll do what I can to fight the bad, but with good fortune, I’ll continue my philosophy and survive and die before our planet becomes realistically unbearable. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2026, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-long-term-effects-of-todays-events-on-a-global-scale/1029206/4 "2026-04-12T14:25:21Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > question whether military action ever achieves its goals better than peaceful actions would. In a rational world, true. But people are not all rational. The key question is: what do you do if someone is attacking you, for whatever reason? Turning the other cheek isn’t really an answer. Ghandi perhaps only got away with peaceful resistance because there was a strain of “that’s not cricket” in British culture. Harry Turtledove has a good story. > **[The Last Article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Article)** > > "The Last Article" (1988), is an alternate history short story by Harry Turtledove. > The story describes a German invasion of British India and the reaction of the Nazi occupation authorities to the nonviolent resistance and pacifism of Mahatma Gandhi and his followers. This story was later reprinted in Turtledove's short-story collection Kaleidoscope in 1990, the variety showcase The Best Military Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century in 2001, and in Turtledove's short-story collection The ... ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2026, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-long-term-effects-of-todays-events-on-a-global-scale/1029206/5 "2026-04-12T14:47:50Z")
War now is far less common than it was in the past. Its just that we have media laser focused on conflict so we see the wars now. Engineers spend far more time learning to make the world a better place than they do trying to destroy things. Globally, about 2-3% of GDP goes to military. Compare that to 10% for health care, 5% for education, 4% for infrastructure, 8% for support for the elderly and disabled, etc. Also keep in mind most military spending isn’t actually used to fight. Its just used to prepare to fight if needed. Only a small % of global GDP actually goes to active wars. Also humanity does recover from wars. WW2 destroyed a lot of infrastructure, but nations rebuilt. I do not believe all lives have equal value. Someone at MIT working to solve climate change has a life with far more value than a religious extremist trying to create a global dictatorship. In theory, the long term solution is the democratic peace theory. The theory that liberal democracies generally do not wage war on each other. Most wars are between 2 authoritarian states, or between 1 democracy and 1 authoritarian state. > **[Democratic peace theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory)** > > Proponents of democratic peace theory argue that both electoral and republican forms of democracy are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies. Different advocates of this theory suggest that several factors are responsible for motivating peace between democratic states. Individual theorists maintain "monadic" forms of this theory (democracies are in general more peaceful in their international relations); "dyadic" forms of this theory (democracies do not In terms... Sadly, not every nation wants democracy though. The Russian people would likely reject democracy in favor of rule by an authoritarian. When Gaza was given a democracy in 2006, they destroyed it in one election cycle and brought authoritarian Islamic extremists to power. So the democratic peace theory only works if the people want a functioning democracy, and many people do not want that. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2026, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-long-term-effects-of-todays-events-on-a-global-scale/1029206/6 "2026-04-12T15:17:58Z")
> [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > The key question is: what do you do if someone is attacking you, for whatever reason? Excellent question. I think the answer differs if it’s a clearly unsustainable one-off (9/11) vs an invasion (Ukraine). In general, I think non-violent, de-escalating reactions are more effective in the long run. That wouldn’t work in a situation like the Ukraine, though. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2026, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-long-term-effects-of-todays-events-on-a-global-scale/1029206/7 "2026-04-12T15:42:15Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Engineers spend far more time learning to make the world a better place than they do trying to destroy things. Absolutely. I would much rather work on something generally useful than a weapon system. Though if I’d been around in WWII, I don’t think I’d have had any qualms about contributing as a ‘boffin’. > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Sadly, not every nation wants democracy though. That’s the crux, isn’t it? We like to think that a democratic and egalitarian society is somehow ‘normal’ or ‘inevitable’. And it’s what almost all of us here want to live in. But this doesn’t seem to be the norm. There have been a few democracies in the past (though not quite what we would call egalitarian), but they didn’t last. And our current enlightenment-style systems are very recent… and hardly what you’d call perfect even now. Anyone who doesn’t realize this has not read much history. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2026, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-long-term-effects-of-todays-events-on-a-global-scale/1029206/8 "2026-04-12T16:14:09Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > War now is far less common than it was in the past. Its just that we have media laser focused on conflict so we see the wars now. I think this is well worth repeating, and it’s true for things in general. The news media’s relentless and immediate focus on anything lurid, violent, or prurient make it look like these things are more common than they’ve ever been. We see every instance of those sorts of things immediately and in great detail, which misleads people into thinking these things are much more common than they are. Ultimately, most of what Trump’s doing is going to be a political PITA for his successors, both domestically and internationally. The part that won’t be is the climate change denial and deliberate dismantling of anything climate change related and encouragement of fossil fuels. That sort of thing has global effects. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2026, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-the-long-term-effects-of-todays-events-on-a-global-scale/1029206/9 "2026-04-13T12:26:44Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > War now is far less common than it was in the past. Its just that we have media laser focused on conflict so we see the wars now. I’m actually not sure that’s true. I did a quick Google search and the numbers seem inconclusive to me. Do you measure by number of conflicts or total deaths? Certainly there is less overall war since the 1940s and early 1900s. Are internal civil wars (which seem to be more numerous) somehow “better” than inter-country wars? Conflicts between global powers has been somewhat tempered by the fact that most of them have nuclear weapons. But it is perhaps worth researching whether the world is, in fact, becoming more stable, less stable, or sort of a historically constant level of low-intensity instability.