Thank you for the comment. I will make some changes based on your comment and see about getting it published.
However, as you explicitly rely on the premise that Western interventions are on average good, this argument is a non-starter in the academic, political and media circles that most prominently call for a ban.
I said that stability operations (which do not include the initial invasions of Iraq/Afghanistan and the strikes on Libya) are good at least half the time. I think this is shared by the majority of think tankers, politicians, and academics concerned with foreign policy, though of course the most prominent anti-LAW activists will probably be a different story.
it is about re-orienting the human military professionals from delivery of force to effective conflict resolution, letting them focus on the soft jobs and strict supervision as LAWs do the lifting, marching and shooting.
I don’t think this is a serious benefit. Reducing the manpower requirements for firepower and maneuvering does not increase the competence and number of people in other sectors. People in non-force and non-military roles require different qualifications, they cannot be simply recruited from regular soldiers. This is like saying that a car company which automates its production line will now be able to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles.
(On the margins – comparing the cost of killing and ISIS fighter versus domestic interventions and calling it “cost-effective” appears heartless even within the community of committed utilitarians, let alone outside it.
Not sure exactly what your argument is, but desiring the death of active ISIS combatants is a quite popular and common-sense view. Especially among most non-utilitarians, who frequently disregard the welfare of immoral people, whereas utilitarians are more likely to be sympathetic to the personal interests of even ISIS combatants.
Not to mention that measuring the effectiveness of a military intervention by body count is highly misleading.)
Just because it’s rough doesn’t mean it’s misleading. Of course there is complexity and uncertainty to the matter. The accurate comparison is the typical cost of averting a death vs the cost of averting a foreign death from insurgency or terrorism. Getting there would require some assumptions about the average harm posed by an average combatant and similar issues, on which I don’t have any data. But based on the figures I provided, it seems like an intuitively persuasive comparison. I can however add a few more lines explicating the uncertainty.
The much higher incidence of abuse would not be offset by the greater stability of otherwise decent governments, partially because decent-but-weak governments will not be able to afford such technology in sufficient quantity, and partially because such governments are violently rebelled against at a much lower rate than parasitic or tyrannical regimes.
Hmm. I can think of lots of examples of flawed democracies facing recent internal unrest. E.g.: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, India, the Philippines, Thailand, Ukraine, and Georgia.
I think your classification is odd here, contrasting decent-but-weak governments with tyrannical ones. What about bad-but-weak governments? Won’t they similarly be unable to afford advanced LAW technology?
This would benefit from a clearer formalization of state types, which I will think about using.
Jihadism is currently the only ideology that foments significant unrest not connected with abuse or abject poverty,
I don’t think so. See: populism, socialism, ethno-separatism (though your definition of ‘abuse’ is maybe doing a lot of work here). But I’m not sure what your point is here.
However you have made me realize that liberal states are less likely to use LAWs for internal policing, for political reasons, so the increase in state stability does indeed appear likely to disproportionately accrue to bad regimes.
Thank you for the comment. I will make some changes based on your comment and see about getting it published.
I said that stability operations (which do not include the initial invasions of Iraq/Afghanistan and the strikes on Libya) are good at least half the time. I think this is shared by the majority of think tankers, politicians, and academics concerned with foreign policy, though of course the most prominent anti-LAW activists will probably be a different story.
I don’t think this is a serious benefit. Reducing the manpower requirements for firepower and maneuvering does not increase the competence and number of people in other sectors. People in non-force and non-military roles require different qualifications, they cannot be simply recruited from regular soldiers. This is like saying that a car company which automates its production line will now be able to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Not sure exactly what your argument is, but desiring the death of active ISIS combatants is a quite popular and common-sense view. Especially among most non-utilitarians, who frequently disregard the welfare of immoral people, whereas utilitarians are more likely to be sympathetic to the personal interests of even ISIS combatants.
Just because it’s rough doesn’t mean it’s misleading. Of course there is complexity and uncertainty to the matter. The accurate comparison is the typical cost of averting a death vs the cost of averting a foreign death from insurgency or terrorism. Getting there would require some assumptions about the average harm posed by an average combatant and similar issues, on which I don’t have any data. But based on the figures I provided, it seems like an intuitively persuasive comparison. I can however add a few more lines explicating the uncertainty.
Hmm. I can think of lots of examples of flawed democracies facing recent internal unrest. E.g.: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, India, the Philippines, Thailand, Ukraine, and Georgia.
I think your classification is odd here, contrasting decent-but-weak governments with tyrannical ones. What about bad-but-weak governments? Won’t they similarly be unable to afford advanced LAW technology?
This would benefit from a clearer formalization of state types, which I will think about using.
I don’t think so. See: populism, socialism, ethno-separatism (though your definition of ‘abuse’ is maybe doing a lot of work here). But I’m not sure what your point is here.
However you have made me realize that liberal states are less likely to use LAWs for internal policing, for political reasons, so the increase in state stability does indeed appear likely to disproportionately accrue to bad regimes.