[hessenwolf]

Culture, policitics, war and business = decreasing strength order? Isn't this almost the opposite of the Maslow hierarchy, with food, safety, belonging and esteem, self-actualizing?

He is only a few paragraphs in and he has drawn a causation diagram backwards.

[davidw]

I think he's saying that it can be harder to change cultures than it is to say, simply invade a country. The US rolled into Iraq with no problems at all, but how long would it take to truly change the people and culture? Would it even be possible?

[anamax]

> I think he's saying that it can be harder to change cultures than it is to say, simply invade a country. The US rolled into Iraq with no problems at all, but how long would it take to truly change the people and culture? Would it even be possible?

Why would it be necessary? The West could easily get oil from iraq without any involvement of the Iraqi people.

I write "the west" because the US doesn't get much of its oil from the middle east and oil's fungibility is a US choice. Neither of those things are written in stone.

As a matter of policy, the US could decide that oil doesn't leave the western hemisphere and let the europeans, chinese, and anyone else who cared handle the middle east. The western hemisphere has more than enough resources to handle US needs and europe could decide to simply take the oil and ignore the people. There's not much that any of the middle eastern countries/peoples could do about that.

[davidw]

> Why would it be necessary?

I have no idea; it's a purely hypothetical question meant to demonstrate that wars are "easy" compared to changing a culture.

[pavlov]

Caesar's invasion of Gaul changed the people and culture. Modern France still acknowledges a direct cultural link with the Roman era, while there's barely anything remaining of the Celts who were invaded.

Granted, it took hundreds of years. Present-day imperialists lack that kind of patience.

[TheloniusPhunk]

That's a good point. Invading Gaul et al. was probably more lucrative than invading a country like Afghanistan as the Romans were more obviously and unabashedly imperialistic and that war had to do with territorial expansion.

The invasion of Gaul is more akin to the way (relatively) early Americans forced out the Native Americans, and their culture certainly changed/doesn't really exist anymore. WWII Japan and Nazi Germany are examples of a places where a short war changed the culture.

The reason it won't work any more is because that style of 'total war' appears to have gone out of style. Probably a good thing, though Fareed Zakaria was on the Daily Show the other night talking about how one reason America has been so powerful is because Europe was leveled in WWII and the US had the industry to rebuild.

[quadhome]

> The reason it won't work any more is because that style of 'total war' appears to have gone out of style.

The effect of nukes not withstanding, I think 66 years is too short of a history to say that "total war" has gone out of fashion.

[hessenwolf]

I agree it is much too short, but I think we need a good solid baby boom before we will take arms in the near future.

I was also thinking that economics and not war are behind the spread of the English language. You could argue that movies (culture) also cause people to learn a language, but the movies are coming from the place that has the money and industry to make them.

[davidw]

> it took hundreds of years

Compared with a few years for the wars. That's the point - it's easier to wage war than to change a culture.

Another interesting book along these lines is this one:

A Language History of the World http://t.co/f80cwQo

It uses languages to look at where they 'stuck' and where they didn't, why, how, and so on.

[barry-cotter]

It's probably an exaggeration but I believe Caesar's Gallic Wars has something about killing a third of the Gauls and enslaving another third.

Implacable patience would almost certainly substitute for a certain amount of brutality, but the more of one you have the less you need of the other.