What are the implications of the offence-defence balance for trajectories of violence?
Questions: Is a change in the offence-defence balance part of why interstate (and intrastate?) conflict appears to have become less common? Does this have implications for the likelihood and trajectories of conflict in future (and perhaps by extension x-risks)?
Epistemic status: This post is unpolished, un-researched, and quickly written. I havenāt looked into whether existing work has already explored questions like these; if you know of any such work, please comment to point me to it.
Background/āelaboration: Pinker argues in The Better Angels of Our Nature that many types of violence have declined considerably over history. Iām pretty sure he notes that these trends are neither obviously ephemeral nor inevitable. But the book, and other research pointing in similar directions, seems to me (and I believe others?) to at least weakly support the ideas that:
if we avoid an existential catastrophe, things will generally continue to get better
apart from the potential destabilising effects of technology, conflict seems to be trending downwards, somewhat reducing the risks of e.g. great power war, and by extension e.g. malicious use of AI (though of course a partial reduction in risks wouldnāt necessarily mean we should ignore the risks)
It is well-understood that technological progress can impact offense-defense balances. In fact, perhaps the primary motivation for developing the concept has been to understand the distinctions between different eras of military technology.
For instance, European powersā failure to predict the grueling attrition warfare that would characterize much of the First World War is often attributed to their failure to recognize that new technologies, such as machine guns and barbed wire, had shifted the European offense-defense balance for conquest significantly toward defense.
And:
holding force sizes fixed, the conventional wisdom holds that a conflict with mid-nineteenth century technology could be expected to produce a better outcome for the attacker than a conflict with early twentieth century technology. See, for instance, Van Evera, āOffense, Defense, and the Causes of Warā.
The paper tries to use these sorts of ideas to explore how emerging technologies will affect trajectories, likelihood, etc. of conflict. E.g., the very first sentence is: āThe offense-defense balance is a central concept for understanding the international security implications of new technologies.ā
But it occurs to me that one could also do historical analysis of just how much these effects have played a role in the sort of trends Pinker notes. From memory, I donāt think Pinker discusses this possible factor in those trends. If this factor played a major role, then perhaps those trends are substantially dependent on something āweā havenāt been thinking about as muchāperhaps weāve wondered about whether the factors Pinker discusses will continue, whereas theyāre less necessary and less sufficient than we thought for the overall trend (decline in violence/āinterstate conflict) that we really care about.
And at a guess, that might mean that that trend is more fragile or āconditionalā than we mightāve thought. It might mean that we really really canāt rely on that ābackground trendā continuing, or at least somewhat offsetting the potentially destabilising effects of new techāperhaps a lot of the trend, or the last century or two of it, was largely about how tech changed things, so if the way tech changes things changes, the trend could very easily reverse entirely.
Iām not at all sure about any of that, but it seems it would be important and interesting to explore. Hopefully someone already has, in which case Iād appreciate someone pointing me to that exploration.
(Also note that what the implications of a given offence-defence balance even are is apparently somewhat complicated/ādebatable matter. Eg., Garfinkel and Dafoe write: āWhile some hold that shifts toward offense-dominance obviously favor conflict and arms racing, this position has been challenged on a number of grounds. It has even been suggested that shifts toward offense-dominance can increase stability in a number of cases.ā)
What are the implications of the offence-defence balance for trajectories of violence?
Questions: Is a change in the offence-defence balance part of why interstate (and intrastate?) conflict appears to have become less common? Does this have implications for the likelihood and trajectories of conflict in future (and perhaps by extension x-risks)?
Epistemic status: This post is unpolished, un-researched, and quickly written. I havenāt looked into whether existing work has already explored questions like these; if you know of any such work, please comment to point me to it.
Background/āelaboration: Pinker argues in The Better Angels of Our Nature that many types of violence have declined considerably over history. Iām pretty sure he notes that these trends are neither obviously ephemeral nor inevitable. But the book, and other research pointing in similar directions, seems to me (and I believe others?) to at least weakly support the ideas that:
if we avoid an existential catastrophe, things will generally continue to get better
apart from the potential destabilising effects of technology, conflict seems to be trending downwards, somewhat reducing the risks of e.g. great power war, and by extension e.g. malicious use of AI (though of course a partial reduction in risks wouldnāt necessarily mean we should ignore the risks)
But How Does the Offense-Defense Balance Scale? (by Garfinkel and Dafoe, of the Center for the Governance of AI; summary here) says:
And:
The paper tries to use these sorts of ideas to explore how emerging technologies will affect trajectories, likelihood, etc. of conflict. E.g., the very first sentence is: āThe offense-defense balance is a central concept for understanding the international security implications of new technologies.ā
But it occurs to me that one could also do historical analysis of just how much these effects have played a role in the sort of trends Pinker notes. From memory, I donāt think Pinker discusses this possible factor in those trends. If this factor played a major role, then perhaps those trends are substantially dependent on something āweā havenāt been thinking about as muchāperhaps weāve wondered about whether the factors Pinker discusses will continue, whereas theyāre less necessary and less sufficient than we thought for the overall trend (decline in violence/āinterstate conflict) that we really care about.
And at a guess, that might mean that that trend is more fragile or āconditionalā than we mightāve thought. It might mean that we really really canāt rely on that ābackground trendā continuing, or at least somewhat offsetting the potentially destabilising effects of new techāperhaps a lot of the trend, or the last century or two of it, was largely about how tech changed things, so if the way tech changes things changes, the trend could very easily reverse entirely.
Iām not at all sure about any of that, but it seems it would be important and interesting to explore. Hopefully someone already has, in which case Iād appreciate someone pointing me to that exploration.
(Also note that what the implications of a given offence-defence balance even are is apparently somewhat complicated/ādebatable matter. Eg., Garfinkel and Dafoe write: āWhile some hold that shifts toward offense-dominance obviously favor conflict and arms racing, this position has been challenged on a number of grounds. It has even been suggested that shifts toward offense-dominance can increase stability in a number of cases.ā)