[mattlondon]

This is the same idea as letting two sides play chess and see who wins.

It might work for trivial matters, but when the stakes are high and the chips are down human nature is always going to lead to force to get what is important.

"Ok so our robot beat your robot on some contrived fight. We're going to invade your country with a population of millions, take all of your money and possessions and force you all to work in the salt mines as slaves until you die an untimely and avoidable death. Please form an orderly line at the salt-death-mines tomorrow morning. This is totally fine since the robot your country sent to fight ours lost so you've just got to accept it without any resistance. Kthx Bai - signed your new overlords"

[chrischen]

Well if our robots beat your robots in killing each other, the logical next step is that the robots would kill the human opponents. So it’s not quite like a contrived chess game if the humans are reasonably inferior fighting machines.

It’s more like proxy battles, and in real life we do this with expendable humans rather than robots. When a side decides to surrender it’s not necessarily when the last person is wiped out... usually done when the military is near or close to defeat.

OP is suggesting that one day robots could outclass flesh and bone humans so much that real humans will be like the women and children of past society that will not have to fight in real battles.

[TaylorAlexander]

It’s already like that today. The robots are unmanned aircraft with missiles. The US kills a fair amount of people using this method, though it is not widely reported.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/14/122732/

[qppo]

I think it was Kissinger that said (paraphrasing) war is a tool to achieve political objectives. The necessity, scale and manner of violence depends on what those objectives are and feasibility of success.

The kind of political dilemma that would be solved by a mecha duel would probably not be the same one that requires invasion and enslavement in death mines.

[Someone]

Kissinger may have said it, but it dates back to, at least, Carl von Clausewitz. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz:

“Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln.”

(“War is the mere continuation of politics with other means”)