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「戰爭」、「反戰」、與「和平」 -- 開欄文
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瀏覽9,145 ｜回應27｜推薦1 |
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2023年我收到傅大為、盧倩儀、馮建三、和郭力昕等四位教授發起的《我們的反戰聲明》時，就想專闢一欄刊出該聲明，並收集網上以及我自己討論「戰爭」與「反戰」的文章。但是，由於這個題目很大，我一時三刻間寫不出一篇提綱挈領的「開欄文」；所以作罷。後來將該聲明和拙作《「我們的反戰聲明」爭議淺見》分別單獨刊出。
現在想想這其實不是個充分理由。最近讀到一篇介紹雷博教授著作的文章(本欄第三篇)，覺得有寫篇評論的必要(本欄第四篇)；寫作過程中，由於搜查相關資料，又看到史投克教授的大作(本欄下一篇)。我認為它值得介紹，就決定以這三篇文章為基礎而開此欄。
史投克教授的大作不但分析了「全面戰爭」這個「概念」，他借這個分析來強調：使用「明白清晰」的概念在建構理論和政策上非常重要。史投克教授在該文中並簡明的闡釋了韋伯「理想型」概念；軍事學之外，全文在「方法論」上也頗有參考價值。
我一向認為論述中所用詞彙和「概念」需要明白易懂，以及其「所指」應該確定而無岐義；我曾經說過和史投克教授同樣的話：
「如果一個詞彙或概念『無所不指』，則它實際上就會變得『無所指』」。
我不敢說和史投克教授「英雄所見略同」；或許，理性、務實的人在思考邏輯上都是同路人吧。
本文於 修改第 10 次
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烏克蘭武器研發的能力與效率 - Verity Bowman
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高科技新型武器將是現代/未來戰爭決勝因素之一。而人民的創新力則是決定這一類型武器效用的重大因素。
The Ukrainian weapons boom catching Putin off guard
How a nation under fire ditched defence bureaucracy for ‘if it works, just build it’ lethality
Verity Bowman, 06/09/26
In tiny workshops scattered across Ukraine, a war machine is being built at a pace that has left Nato's most powerful members standing still.
In May alone, Ukraine's ministry of defence certified 175 new weapons systems for operational use, nearly 93 per cent of them designed and built entirely within the country.
Germany, by comparison, certified fewer than 20 new systems in the whole of 2024 – its fastest year on record.
The United States fields between two and five genuinely new platforms per year, with procurement cycles averaging 10 years.
Four years ago, Ukraine was desperately importing whatever its allies would send. Today, it is certifying six new weapons systems every day.
"Put it all together, and you've got a defence procurement ecosystem that is completely unrecognisable compared with anywhere else in Europe," said Keir Giles, an associate fellow of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia Programme and the author of Who Will Defend Europe.
The question is how a country under sustained bombardment managed to build this in four years.
The answer, according to Mr Giles, begins not with the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022 but in 2014, when Russia first seized Crimea and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
"It's not from scratch," he said. "Some industries and innovations have obviously been kick-started by the war, but Ukraine had already spent eight years before the full-scale invasion developing these capabilities; there is a deep reservoir of experience, particularly in outsourcing to private industry, that Ukraine has built upon rather than invented."
What the full-scale invasion changed was the speed. Under the pressure of an existential threat, Ukraine stripped out bureaucracy that in other countries causes procurement to take years or decades.
It adopted a "fail fast" principle: if a weapon works, adopt it; if it doesn't, discard it, with far less cost and delay than a Western-style proving process would involve.
It pushed development down to individual battalions, which now update and modify their own equipment in the field.
"Ukraine's defence ecosystem is turbocharged by initiatives like the Brave1 military tech marketplace, where units purchase what they know works well," explained Robert Tollast, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. "Their will for survival and lethality drives efficiency."
The 175 new weapons range from interceptor drones and ground robots to ballistic missiles and armoured vehicles.
Among the newly certified drones, including the Tin, Tur, Mamba, Palii, and D'Artagnan, is the Lupynis-10-TFL-1. 視頻
It was developed by The Fourth Law, a "miltech" start-up founded in 2023 by Yaroslav Azhnyuk, whose previous company made remote-controlled pet cameras.
What makes it remarkable is what "first level of autonomy" means in practice.
For most of its flight, a human operator retains control. But in the final 500 metres, where Russian electronic warfare is most intense and jamming most likely to sever the pilot's connection, the drone's onboard AI takes over entirely, identifying and locking on to its target without human input.
The company says this increases mission success rates by two to five times, at an additional cost of just 10 to 20 per cent.
"In essence, this is an internal weapons market where every manufacturer and every idea has the opportunity to be realised, with the best and most effective designs ultimately remaining," said Dmytro Zhmailo, deputy head of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre.
Another crucial new drone is the Sichen, built for deep strikes at ranges of up to 870 miles, carrying an 88lb warhead.
0906 Sichen long-range strike drone 機型與規格
Its ability to navigate active electronic warfare enables Ukraine to carry out strikes within Russia despite Moscow's campaign of drone interference and hijackings.
Ground robots, including the Gnom, Primar-Killer, Vepr, Plyushch+ and Ratel X, which were all approved in May, are also key.
Most significant is the Ratel X, a low-profile combat robot capable of reconnaissance, mine-laying and casualty evacuation in the line of fire, as well as launching its own fibre-optic FPV attack drones directly from the battlefield.
Ukrainian forces have already captured a Russian position using only robots and UAVs.
Mr Zhmailo said the driving force behind Ukraine's ground robotics push was the emergence of so-called kill zones, which are sections of the front line up to 20km deep under constant fire from both sides, where sending in soldiers had become tantamount to sentencing them to death.
"In certain situations, robotic systems and drones make it possible to keep personnel away from the zone of direct fire contact, reducing the risk of injury or death, and thus minimising the loss of Ukraine's most valuable asset: its people."
The push for autonomy does not stop at the front line.
Ukraine has also quietly built a domestic missile programme from scratch, with the FP-7 ballistic missile with a 200km range already in active service.
The more powerful FP-9, with a reported range of 850km and an 800kg warhead capable of reaching Moscow, is expected to complete testing this summer.
And the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile, with a range of 3,000km and a 1,150kg warhead, has already struck targets more than 1,500km inside Russia.
"Ukraine had little option but to develop its own alternatives, as we've seen with the long-range strikes into the heart of Russia using technologies that were developed in Ukraine, because the United States did not wish to allow Ukraine to strike into Russia," said Mr Giles.
1908 Flamingo (MP5) cruise missile 機型與規格
While Ukraine relies on smaller factories set up by former civilians, Russia's approach is the opposite: a state-controlled monopoly concentrated in facilities such as Alabuga, producing one weapon at a massive scale with no competition and no incentive to innovate.
It is dangerous in its raw volume, but brittle in its inability to adapt.
Mr Tollast argued that the comparison increasingly favours Ukraine, not just because of its dispersal model but because of its growing two-way pipeline with Western defence firms.
"Initially we learned a vast amount from Ukraine's innovation," he said, "but this is increasingly a two-way pipeline of talent and material."
The West, meanwhile, has been watching and largely failing to draw the right lessons.
"Of course, corners are being cut in Ukraine," said Mr Giles. "But the corners being cut are the ones that make British defence programmes take decades."
Ukraine's domestic defence production capacity has grown from $20bn (£15bn) in 2024 to $35bn (£26.2bn) in 2025, with output forecast to reach $50bn (£37.5bn) this year, a figure that would make it one of the largest defence producers in Europe.
The lesson for Europe, Mr Giles said, is that it should not wait until it faces the same existential pressure to reform its own procurement processes.
"Ukraine needs to win the war. And Europe needs Ukraine, because it has developed all of these technologies and capabilities."
Verity Bowman is The Telegraph’s Foreign and Global Health Security Reporter, covering conflict, human rights abuses, global development and international health issues, with a particular focus on Ukraine. See more
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本文於 修改第 1 次
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從歷史看俄軍潰敗的可能情境 - Brynn Tannehill
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What a Russian Army Collapse Might Look Like
The Ukrainians are trying to break the Russian military—and they just might do it.
Brynn Tannehill, 06/08/26
HEMINGWAY FAMOUSLY OBSERVED in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises that one goes bankrupt "gradually and then suddenly." The same can be said of armies. Sometimes they're routed in great, decisive actions, like the French in 1940, but often their ability to fight is eroded slowly over time by many factors, so gradually as to be almost imperceptible, before reaching a tipping point where the illusion of strength shatters all at once.
The war in Ukraine—just counting the high-intensity phase of it since the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022—has been going on longer than World War I, and seems likely to surpass World War II in duration. Until this spring, the general consensus was that the war was in a perpetual stalemate of drones, trench warfare, and attrition that would go on, for all intents and purposes, forever. Many of those who subscribed to the theory of perpetual stalemate concluded that the only way for the war to end was for Ukraine to capitulate and cede all the territory it had lost (plus perhaps some more) to the Russians. Yet history teaches that as long as a country has the will to continue to fight, it will find a way to do so until it either loses the will or fighting becomes materially impossible.
For years, casual and expert observers alike assumed that if one of the armies in Ukraine were to collapse—to suddenly lose the wherewithal to fight—it would be the Ukrainians. But now it seems more likely to be the Russians. And that's no accident, as it appears the Ukrainians' theory of victory is not that they will drive the Russians from their land in great, sweeping offensives like those of late 2022 but that they will break the Russian army's back by attacking its logistics, its manpower, and its will to fight.
What if the fate of Ukraine isn't a perpetual attritional stalemate? What causes an army to collapse, and an invading tide to reverse itself? Here are four historical examples that might be instructive today.
The Russian Army in 1917
Russia suffered horrific casualties and numerous defeats during World War I, starting with the battle of Tannenberg in 1914. Russian peasant conscripts were poorly trained and poorly equipped, and the tsarist economy was not sufficiently industrialized to match that of Germany. Russian logistics, particularly railways, were ill equipped to move what troops and matériel they did have where they needed to be in a timely manner and in sufficient quantities.
About a year after the war began, with shocking defeats and even more shocking casualty lists, Tsar Nicholas II took personal command of the army, stocking his command staff with loyalists, cronies, and relatives. He embraced magical thinking about the mystical connection between the tsar and the people and believed that his personal command of the forces would lead to a boost in morale sufficient to ensure victory.
The decision backfired. The war continued to go poorly, the losses continued to mount, and there was no one for the people to blame but the tsar.
Nicholas was unsuited to supreme command during a modern war. Not only did he lack a mastery of industrial manufacturing, wartime economics, logistics, and strategy, but he chose underlings based more on their personal proximity to him and his court than their expertise. When his government was overthrown in a popular revolt in 1917, much of the army deserted.
The interim government that followed the Romanov dynasty was able to amass enough force to mount one last offensive—the so-called Kerensky Offensive in the summer of 1917—but when that failed, Russian soldiers lost all faith and quit fighting en masse.
The German Army in 1918
After Bolshevik Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in December 1917, surrendering huge swaths of land and people to the Germans and all but ending the war in the east, Germany raced somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 troops from the Eastern Front to the Western Front. Here they launched an offensive in hopes of finishing the war before American troops could make it across the Atlantic and augment the French and British military structure. The resulting spring offensive of 1918 was initially a success: German forces pushed close to Paris, roughly equaling their furthest advance of the war—but they outran their logistics and failed to break the French logistics before American forces arrived to help stabilize the lines and eventually push the front lines back toward the pre-war border. In the end, Germany suffered nearly a million irreplaceable casualties while leaving its army exhausted.
Behind the German lines, the economy was in tatters. The allied naval blockade of Germany had forced the introduction of ersatz ("substitute") goods, often of inferior quality, both for industrial inputs and individual consumption: synthetic rubber, coal-tar industrial lubricants, "coffee" made from acorns, "tea" made from catnip, paper instead of cotton, "eggs" made from corn, and so on. When German workers went on strike in early 1918, the high command ordered that strikers immediately be conscripted and sent to the front. That helped ameliorate neither overall morale nor the growing problem of hunger.
Exhausted and demoralized German troops faced hordes of fresh Americans who brought the industrial and agricultural capacity of the United States with them. After four fruitless years of fighting in France, German troops began surrendering at the Battle of Amiens in August 1918, believing that the war was lost, and the quickest way to end it and live was to capitulate.
The Japanese Burma Area Army in 1944
By the standards of World War II, Burma was a backwater, constantly starved of men and matériel. Political infighting between the United States, Great Britain, and Chinese Nationalists under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek left the northern region of Burma a mess that no one wanted responsibility for. The Japanese objective in the theater was to prevent the Allied forces—especially British Indian forces—from invading the Japanese-held territories in Southeast Asia, which they were unprepared to do, while the Allied objective was to prevent the Japanese from invading and conquering India, which they didn't intend to do either. Still, between 1941 and 1944, Japan steadily drove Commonwealth troops back toward the Indian border.
Then, in early 1944, Lt. Gen. Renya Mutaguchi, who believed he was destined to win the decisive campaign of the war, launched what may have been the most ill-considered offensive in history: Operation U-Go. He sent out 90,000 men to conduct a four-month long campaign—but with only twenty days of supplies on hand. He wrongly assumed they could simply live off the land as they advanced. These starving and diseased Japanese troops were decisively defeated at the Battles of Kohima and Imphal, where most of them died in wave after wave of doomed attacks. In the end, only 12,000 of these troops lived to see Japan again: a breathtaking 87 percent casualty rate. The Japanese Burma Area Army never recovered and spent the rest of the war retreating.
The failure of Japan in Burma was caused by poor leadership at all multiple levels: primarily Mutaguchi's arrogance and delusions of world-historical grandeur, but also the Japanese high command's lack of oversight and failure to rein in his foolhardy plans. At an operational level, failure to plan for adequate logistical support doomed U-Go as much as it's overly ambitious premise.
The South Vietnamese Army in 1975
As part of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the United States withdrew its forces from South Vietnam. In December 1974, North Vietnam began sending troops into South Vietnam preparatory to the 1975 spring offensive. In March 1975, South Vietnamese leadership realized that they could not effectively hold the Central Highlands and ordered a withdrawal to a more defensible line farther south.
The result was a chaotic rout in which both civilians and military personnel clogged a solitary highway running south. Despite pleas from the South Vietnamese government, the United States refused to intervene. North Vietnamese troops retained the support of China and the Soviet Union.
Though South Vietnamese troops rallied somewhat, the capital of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) fell to North Vietnamese troops on April 30, 1975. The mayhem as the city fell produced images of desperate American and Vietnamese civilians boarding helicopters on the roof of the U.S. embassy to escape the onrushing Communist regime. Forty-six years later, a similar scene played out in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The collapse of South Vietnam was primarily due to severe equipment and fuel shortages following heavily slashed U.S. aid, cascading logistical failures, and the fatal blunder of their ill-conceived retreat from the Central Highlands. South Vietnamese political and military leadership suffered from deeply ingrained corruption, and its heavy reliance on American-style warfare became impossible to sustain without American logistics and firepower to back it up. Even the threat of spending years in brutal North Vietnamese re-education camps was not enough to compel South Vietnamese troops to fight to the last man in service of a despised, corrupt, unpopular regime.
LL OF THESE ARMIES STARTED OUT in positions of strength. Tsarist Russia had the largest standing army in Europe in 1917. Germany had numerical superiority and the best designed trench system on the Western Front in early 1918. Japan had more front-line troops in Burma at the end of 1943 than the British, and those troops were battle-hardened and well-trained compared to the Allied troops, who were ill-prepared for jungle warfare. South Vietnamese troops outnumbered their North Vietnamese counterparts four to one on paper, and were fighting to avoid ending up in concentration camps.
But the biggest army does not automatically win. All of these armies fell apart in a matter of months due to some combination of poor leadership, lack of logistic support, exhaustion, corrupt regimes, failed offensives, and broken morale.
None of these factors acts alone. Bad leadership can lead to bad logistics and failed offensives. Corrupt regimes can produce low morale and poor leaders. Lack of logistic support leads to cold, sick, starving, demoralized soldiers, and so on.
The conventional wisdom about the Russo–Ukrainian war has become that it is an attritional stalemate, where the front lines are unlikely to move again without some massive external force. This reading of the situation may be due in part to projection and extrapolation bias. Projection bias leads people to assume that the future will look exactly like today; extrapolation bias leads people to assume that if a trend has been going up (or down), it will continue to do so in a straight line indefinitely.
Russia displays many of the characteristics common to armies that fail. Poor leadership: Putin demands constant advances, while being fed lies by his underlings who are afraid of admitting failure. Corruption is endemic to every aspect of Russian life, and money in the military budget often doesn't end up where it needs to be. Even when it isn't diverted to vanity projects, it often is used in head-scratchingly ineffective ways, like the $50 million Oreshnik ballistic missile used to destroy a parking garage two weeks ago. Russia has also blown up the same McDonald's in Kyiv four times now, and it brings into question the effectiveness of their targeting strategy and munitions allocation.
Troop morale is terrible; commanders constantly extort money from their troops. Russian soldiers are punished with violence, rape, torture, starvation, and occasionally murder, with predictable effects on combat effectiveness. The Russian tactic of the past year of sending in small infiltration teams to constantly probe Ukrainian defenses has resulted in extremely high losses and minimal territorial gains. There is no real hope (or intention of) a combined-arms breakthrough. The Russian spring offensive of 2026 has failed, and those creeping gains have effectively flatlined.
There have been constant reports of troops being shot when they attempt to retreat. Now, despite massive economic incentives to sign a military contract, Russia is struggling to replace their losses. Additionally, Russian soldiers don't seem to be buying into the narrative that they're liberating Ukraine—which may make them wonder whether it's worth fighting in the first place.
Lastly, Russian logistics are suffering. After Russia mostly solved the HIMARS/GMLRS problem with better electronic warfare, their rear areas were generally safe from interdiction. Now, however, Ukrainian FPV drones are striking military transport vehicles 150 kilometers from the front. When the Russians send convoys at night to avoid Ukrainian drones, the Ukrainians simply use their drones to lay mines on the highways. The frequency of these strikes has been growing geometrically since January, and civilian fuel in Crimea is either rationed or gone completely. Russian "milbloggers" are starting to panic about the logistics of the Russian Army in southern and southeast Ukraine.
It is impossible to say if the Russian military will collapse; it has so far confounded all previous predictions that it would. However, many of the conditions for collapse have been in place for a long time, and the most important one (logistics) is now trending in the wrong direction.
It does seem, however, that military collapse is the Ukrainian theory of victory. They have publicly announced that their goal on the front lines is not to gain territory but to kill more soldiers than the Russians can replace, which is an attack against both Russian morale and the labor-starved Russian economy. Ukrainian long-range strikes against Russian energy infrastructure similarly attacks two of the factors that keep armies in the field: logistics and productive domestic economies. The more spectacular Ukrainian strikes—such as the recent strikes in the Moscow region and in St. Petersburg just as the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum was opening, are designed to weaken Russian morale and raise questions in the minds of Russian leaders, civilians, and soldiers about what the "special military operation" is really accomplishing. The Ukrainian assassination campaign against Russian general officers is similarly designed to erode morale, and to degrade leadership—though as always, the best guarantor of poor Russian leadership is Vladimir Putin's health.
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本文於 修改第 2 次
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中國從伊朗戰爭長到的知識 -- Miles Bryan/Noel King
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請參考：
* Iran says US has responded to its latest peace proposal
What China is learning from the US war in Iran
Miles Bryan/Noel King, 05/01/26
Two months into the US-Iran war, the fighting has hardened into a standoff, with no end in sight. Both countries claim to have the upper hand, but there is only one clear winner so far — and it isn’t either of them.
“China’s watching this war very closely,” James Palmer, deputy editor of Foreign Policy and author of its China Brief newsletter, tells Today, Explained co-host Noel King.
Palmer talked with Noel about the lessons China is drawing from America’s military performance in Iran, why Trump’s treatment of US allies could prove costly in any future conflict in the Pacific, and why — despite all of that — China is still pushing hard for a ceasefire.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
What does China have to do with America’s war in Iran?
China’s watching this war very closely. China’s always been interested in how America fights, going back to the first Gulf War, which caused Beijing to really rethink its military, rethink how far ahead the US was.
One of the things they’ve noticed this time is just how fast America’s burning through its munitions. They’re also looking at where does America go in terms of allies and who will stand [with] America when America goes into a really stupid war? China wants to know how this will affect any potential conflict with the US in the Asia Pacific in the future.
What is the relationship between Iran and China? They’re communicating. Are they friendly?
Yes, they’re very friendly. If you go to China, you’ll run into Iranians a surprising amount because there are a ton of exchange programs — including, for instance, pilot training. There’s an Iranian medical school at the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine for some reason.
It’s very odd because China is a communist state, and the Iranian regime has regularly murdered communists in the past. And equally, at least in theory, Iran is all about protecting Muslims. And China is the world’s greatest persecutor of Muslims: millions of Uyghurs arrested, imprisoned, put in camps, forced into labor.
But it’s a very practical relationship. They see themselves as having shared interests, both commercial and geopolitical. They see themselves as both opposed to the United States, and in particular, I think China sees Iran as a fellow victim of the current world order.
China is watching this war play out very carefully because it is trying to learn a couple of things, including what the US military can and presumably can’t do. What is it learning about our military strengths and weaknesses?
The main thing they’re looking at is really the question of production chains and the ability to replenish munitions, which seems to be even weaker than people thought. People have been warning about this for many years, but one of the American catastrophes of late has been to take these warnings and write a million think tank pieces about them and not actually do anything to fix it.
That’s in contrast with China. China had a bunch of strategic weaknesses in the 2010s, which it then went and fixed — domesticated its own supply chains, looked for new suppliers, all this kind of thing. And while we haven’t seen it stress-tested yet, it seems to be much more potentially capable of mass munitions production than the American system is. So while America has better weapons, China may have the ability to get those weapons out there more.
And you think of something like the Germans versus the Americans in World War II. The German tanks, the German planes were in many ways superior, but the Americans were putting 20 tanks on the battlefield for every German one. Industry is a force all its own. But even the quality of American weapons, I think, is coming into some doubt as a result of the Iran war because we’re seeing that the Iranians with their dug-in positions, with their preparation, even with their air defense being completely overwhelmed by American power, they’ve got surprising survivability: Much more, I think, has survived that American and the Israeli onslaught than first anticipated.
That’s partially because Iran’s a big place. It’s got a lot of places you can really dig stuff in. But it may also be that America has been overestimating its own capabilities even against a country that isn’t a peer opponent.
I hear you saying that China is paying attention to what the US can do militarily because it is thinking, what would we do? What would China do if the US attacks it in the way it attacked Iran?
I think it’s double-sided because on the one hand, China can imagine itself as being the victim of air power, the victim of this overwhelming force. And so it’s asking itself, could the Americans kill our leadership? And the answer to that is probably not, because Chinese air defense is a lot better than Iranian.
But it’s also looking at it and saying, well, what if we want to take Taiwan? What if we want to use our power and project force across the [Taiwan] Strait? Like the Iranians, the Taiwanese have had plenty of time to prepare. They dug in, they know who their opponent is, and they’re expecting it.
We’ve seen also that there’s this ability to threaten your [neighbors], even if you are being beaten by a stronger opponent. For all of America’s power, for all of America’s force, it’s not able to force the reopening of the Strait [of Hormuz]. It’s not able to keep those waters safe. And so China’s thinking, well, what will the Taiwanese be able to do in the [Taiwan] Strait? If we’re sending across a million men, how many of those ships are going to be safe? And maybe it’s less than they thought.
So China imagines itself as the US and it imagines itself as Iran. In that case, it’s thinking of Taiwan and what China might do to Taiwan. Let me ask you where the US plugs back into that, because I’ve been reading that the US has moved an aircraft carrier and expensive missile defense systems out of Asia and into the Middle East to kind of cope with Iran. Are we now at this huge disadvantage if China is to go after Taiwan?
Not really, because in any Taiwan scenario, we get tons of warning.
It requires amassing matériel, men, ships in a way that’s going to be extremely obvious. And there’s perhaps no part of the planet more closely watched than the Taiwan Strait. Aircraft carriers, mobile assets — you’re going to have probably enough warning to move them back. And we’ve got a ton of them in the Asia Pacific anyway, it is festooned with American bases.
What moving stuff out of the Asia Pacific is costing America is mostly political credibility. And the big example of this is THAAD, which is this very expensive, very technologically advanced missile defense system that we put in South Korea in the 2010s. China was really opposed to the deployment, and it punished South Korea very harshly for allowing the deployment of THAAD in South Korean territory.
Most notably, there was a complete boycott of the South Korean supermarket chain Lotte, which was trying to break into China and was basically driven out of China, as were a bunch of other South Korean businesses. South Korean pop stars were banned from entering the country for a while. They really paid a price.
Now they see the Americans treating them like shit in the way that Trump has treated all of America’s allies like shit. The US military says it hasn’t moved every part of that [system] out and that it’s just moved some components, but the damage has been done anyway. The South Korean press has widely reported it as THAAD itself being moved out and the reputational cost is already there.
Okay, you said it, not me: President Trump treats America’s allies like shit. And that raises some interesting questions here about diplomacy. President Trump has not been able to get America’s usual allies on board with the war, despite various pleas and whining and whatnot. What does it mean for China that America’s allies are like, Uh-uh guys, not this time?
America’s entire power projection in the Asia Pacific is very dependent on allies. Any conflict in the Taiwan Strait, you’re running a supply chain all the way up from Australia or from Japan. You’re dependent not only upon the big countries or relatively big countries, you are also dependent upon these little island states on the way, which have traditionally looked to America as a security patron.
All of this is dependent on goodwill and that goodwill is falling apart. As Trump has made the US increasingly a pariah state, it’s going to affect our readiness.
All right, so I think someone might be hearing us talk and thinking this war in Iran has been entirely upside for China. Is that the case?
Not really. It’s more of a lose-lose scenario. They’re getting the best they can out of it, but the closure of the Strait [of Hormuz] is still a big problem for them. And they’ve been working hard to try and get a ceasefire.
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「當代戰爭」形同經濟黑洞 -- Jason Ma
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請參考：
A $300,000 Ukrainian Drone Just Crippled a $200 Million Russian Tanker — It's Now a Drifting Time Bomb Headed Toward Libya's Coast
請參照本欄2026/03/31和2026/03/29兩篇貼文。
The ‘obscene economics’ of modern warfare show how the race to military supremacy is transforming, while U.S. rearmament relies on China
Jason Ma, 04/27/26
The Iran conflict has confirmed a transformation in the economics of warfare toward cheap, mass-produced weapons, forcing a wholesale rethinking of military procurement, according to a recent report.
While the U.S. and Israel have decimated Iran’s military, the Islamic republic still has enough combat power to inflict meaningful economic and physical damage, said Noah Ramos, chief innovation strategist at Alpine Macro, in a note earlier this month.
In particular, the regime has leveraged its Shahed drones, which cost only $20,000-50,000, forcing the U.S. and its allies to shoot them down with $4 million PAC-3 missiles or THAAD interceptors that cost $12 million-$15 million.
“Even with interception rates above 90%, the value of asset protection is diminished given the obscene economics,” Ramos wrote. “This imbalance has haunted Western military planners since the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
He explained that such lopsided attrition is the opposite of the West’s model of precision lethality and is a deliberate part of Iran’s strategy: mass losses are a feature not a flaw, because even the most advanced defenses can be overwhelmed with sufficient volume.
The cost asymmetry is worsened by severe production and supply-chain constraints. For example, no new THAAD interceptors have been delivered since August 2023, and the next batch is due in April 2027.
At the same time, the U.S. has rapidly drawn down stockpiles of its most expensive munitions during the Iran war. The Center for Strategic and International Studies put the tally at 45% of its Precision Strike Missiles, 50% of its THAAD interceptors, and almost half of its of PAC-3 missiles. CSIS estimated it would take one to four years to restock seven major munitions to prewar levels.
“The diminished munitions stockpiles have created a near-term risk,” the report said. “A war against a capable peer competitor like China will consume munitions at greater rates than in this war. Prewar inventories were already insufficient; the levels today will constrain U.S. operations should a future conflict arise.”
In fact, Alpine Macro’s Ramos pointed out that many critical components for a variety of U.S. munitions are deeply exposed to Chinese supply chains.
That includes the stealthy Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, the Tomahawk cruise missile, the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, and the Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kit.
The U.S. military’s reliance on Chinese suppliers “poses a grave threat given geopolitical fragmentation or a conflict over Taiwan,” Ramos warned.
Despite the emergence of mass-produced munitions, Ramos still expects legacy platforms like fighter jets, strategic bombers, precision missiles, and warships to continue enabling force projection.
Rather than displacing so-called “exquisite” weapons, the more expendable systems will sit along side them and even amplify them, he predicted.
Cheaper weapons can exploit specific vulnerabilities, prevent expensive assets from being depleted, and carry out riskier missions unsuitable for traditional platforms, Ramos suggested.
“Going forward, supremacy will belong to the force that deploys the right tool for the right task at the right cost, not the one that defaults to multi-billion dollar platforms for every engagement,” he added. “The Iran conflict is proving this in real time.”
The Pentagon also understands the new economics of warfare that bring to mind a quote attributed to Joseph Stalin during World War II as he weighed the Red Army’s numerical advantage against Nazi Germany’s superior weapons: “quantity has a quality all its own.”
Efforts at cheaper, mass-produced platforms are underway while upstart defense contractors like Anduril are developing manufacturing innovations to enable hyperscale production.
The U.S. has even incorporated a copycat version of the Shahed drone, using the American version against Iran during the war. Emil Michael, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said at an industry conference last month that the Pentagon plans to go big with the LUCAS drone.
“After only a few years, we continue to refine that and make that something that we can mass produce at scale,” he said. “They’ve worked very well so far and it’s proven out to be a useful tool in the arsenal.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
相關閱讀
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* Major Ally Swipes at ‘Humiliated’ Trump’s Woeful War Strategy
* Hormuz crisis spurs $24B Iraq trade corridor as Gulf routes shift
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改變戰爭方式的10項科學突破 —TIMES OF INDIA
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請至原網頁觀看相關照片或示意圖。「無人機」和「人工智能」也是時候上榜了。
10 scientific breakthroughs that rewrote the rules of war
TOI Science Desk, TIMESOFINDIA.COM, 04/15/26
The history of warfare has typically been depicted as the result of the combined efforts of accomplished generals and well-thought-out strategies, however it is often science that has provided the ‘force multiplier’ that could turn a (previously) successful general into a (newly) unsuccessful one and will change the rules of engagement, so that in an instant, what was once the effective means of war become outdated. Through a series of ten major advancements, ranging from the incredible weaponry powered by the ‘alchemy’ or ‘magical fire’ of Greek Fire to the new ability to navigate precisely via satellites. These technological leaps fundamentally redefine the battlefield, ensuring that tactical superiority remains inextricably linked to the relentless, often volatile progression of human scientific and engineering ingenuity.
the invention of gunpowder
Gunpowder was the result of an accidental discovery by Chinese alchemists working with Taoist principles. Gunpowder switched the basis for warfare from mechanical, on the use of bows and catapults to chemical, on the use of propulsion; when it was introduced into Europe, it made castles and plate armour used by knights no longer a viable means for holding or controlling land, thus concentrating power into the hands of those states that could afford to buy cannons and artillery.
Greek Fire in Byzantine Defense
Greek Fire was an advanced form of chemical warfare, which was most likely made from a mixture of petroleum and other materials that continued to burn on water. Developed in the seventh century, Greek Fire provided the Byzantine Empire with a significant naval advantage, enabling it to defend against the massive siege by the Arabs during the sieges of Constantinople and maintain its control of the Mediterranean for centuries.
The Development of Bronze Weapons
The transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age brought about advancements in weaponry with the introduction of weapons made of bronze (copper and tin) being stronger, longer-lasting, and more easily sharpened than weapons made of stone. The creation of swords and armour through the advancements in metallurgy led to the emergence of the organised professional infantry of Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Printing Press and Military Communication
Gutenberg press changed the way armies operated, through the production of large quantities of standardized maps, manuals for drill procedures and, various tactical doctrine; this enabled armies with multiple division commanders in a country to all function under one set of command and operate in a way that mirrored the methods used by other divisions in the field, which was the basis for the Military Revolution.
Satellites and GPS Technology
The GPS (Global Positioning System) uses multiple satellites to determine a location, along with atomic clocks that give very precise measurements of time. This system was originally designed for military use. Precision-guided munitions will allow for surgical strikes with little chance of collateral damage and will provide ground troops with superior situational awareness.
The Atomic Bomb
Applying theoretical nuclear physics to build a bomb, the Manhattan Project made use of fission or splitting the atom, to create a weapon that would create an incredible amount of destruction when dropped on Japan. Because of the scale of the destruction at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ‘Total War,’ a concept that resulted from this type of destruction, was introduced. Because of this new concept of 'Total War,' military doctrine shifted from ‘active combat’ to ‘nuclear deterrence' and 'Mutually Assured Destruction.'
Radar Technology in World War II
Radar, or radio detection and ranging, is a system that uses electromagnetic energy to provide visibility to the user in situations where visibility would otherwise not be possible (such as in darkness or in a rainstorm). During World War II, the Chain Home radar network allowed the Royal Air Force (RAF) to conserve scarce resources by providing the RAF with the ability to detect German bombers before they reached Great Britain. This enabled the RAF to significantly alter its air defence strategies.
Chemical Warfare in World War I
The industrial development of chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas was the first time that the periodic table was used as a weapon of mass destruction. Chemical warfare killed many men, but, due to the psychological terror created by chemical weapons and the rapid scientific innovation required to protect soldiers from chemical weapons (gas masks) as well as the possibility of being exposed to chemical weapons in the future, history will reflect that the introduction of chemical warfare had a profound impact on the manner in which warfare occurred after World War I.
Machine Guns in World War I
Another major invention that changed warfare was the recoil-operated machine gun created by Hiram Maxim. This weapon allowed soldiers to shoot bullets and fire bullets with energy, causing the cartridge to be fired and thus allowing for the firing of another round into the weapon. The development of this weapon created a zone of death that supported defensive positions and helped perpetuate the horrible stalemate of trench warfare and the decline of cavalry as a viable offensive fighting force.
The Development of Rifled Barrels
Rifles work by spinning a projectile and providing a greater range of accuracy. Rifles also altered military tactics in the 19th century, whereby soldiers stopped fighting using bayonets and instead began shooting at each other from hundreds of feet away.
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教宗李奧重申反戰與呼籲和平 - Tom McArthur
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給他按個「讚」！另請參考：此欄2026/04/16貼文。
Pope criticises 'tyrants' who spend billions on wars after Trump spat
Tom McArthur, 04/16/26
What Trump and Pope Leo have said about each other 請至原網頁觀看視頻
Pope Leo has criticised leaders who spend billions on wars and said the world was "being ravaged by a handful of tyrants" in unusually forceful comments during a visit to Cameroon.
The pontiff blasted those he said had manipulated "the very name of God" for their own gain, while touring a region ravaged by a deadly insurgency.
The remarks come just days after a high-profile spat with US President Donald Trump, who posted a lengthy attack on the Pope, a vocal critic of the US-Israeli military operation in Iran.
The Pope had voiced his concern about Trump's threat that "a whole civilisation will die" if Iran did not agree to US demands to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz.
Leo, who last year became the first US-born Pope, has previously also questioned the Trump administration's approach to immigration.
"Leo should get his act together as Pope," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post at the time.
The Pope told reporters at the start of his Africa tour that he did not want to get into a debate with Trump but would continue to promote peace.
Speaking in Cameroon, the Pope criticised leaders who "turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found".
"The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy, yet often a lifetime is not enough to rebuild," he said on Thursday.
The Pope also condemned "an endless cycle of destabilisation and death" in a "bloodstained" region of Cameroon that has been gripped by insurgency for nearly a decade.
"Those who rob your land of its resources generally invest much of the profit in weapons, thus perpetuating an endless cycle of destabilisation and death," he told those gathered at a cathedral in the north-western city of Bamenda - the centre of the violence that has left at least 6,000 people dead and displaced many more.
"Peace is not something we must invent: it is something we must embrace by accepting our neighbour as a brother and as our sister," the Pope said.
Separatist insurgents in Cameroon's two Anglophone regions have been fighting the predominantly Francophone government since 2017.
Following Leo's address, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, said that she stood with the Pope in his "courageous call for a kingdom of peace".
The war in Iran has increasingly placed the Pope and the Trump administration at odds.
Soon after the first US and Israeli attacks on Iran, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth recited a highly controversial prayer at a Pentagon worship service that talked of "overwhelming violence" and "justice executed swiftly and without remorse".
Then, during a Palm Sunday Mass in St Peter's Square, the Pope said the conflict between Iran, Israel and the US was "atrocious" and that Jesus could not be used to justify war.
"This is our God: Jesus, king of peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war," he told tens of thousands of worshippers gathered in Vatican City.
"He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them."
The pontiff also quoted the Bible passage Isaiah 1:15: "Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood."
Earlier this week, Trump launched a scathing attack on the Pope on social media, in which he described the leader of the Catholic Church as "WEAK on Crime and terrible for Foreign Policy" while portraying himself as a Jesus-like figure.
He later doubled-down on his criticism and refused to apologise – but deleted the AI-generated image of himself.
Asked about the US president's remarks as he arrived in Algiers, the Pope said he had "no fear" of the Trump administration and that he would continue to speak out against war.
The Catholic leader's wide-ranging Africa tour will include stops in 11 cities across four countries. It is his second major foreign visit since being elected to the papacy last year, and reflects the importance of Catholicism in Africa.
More than a fifth of the world's Catholics - some 288 million people - live in Africa, according to figures from 2024.
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停火協議：伊朗戰略上的勝利 - Shlomo Ben-Ami
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請參考：US inadvertently handed Iran’s leadership a safe place to regroup
Iran’s Strategic Victory
Shlomo Ben-Ami, 04/09/26
The US-Israeli war will be remembered as yet another episode of powerful countries falling into the trap of asymmetric warfare, with the ceasefire ratifying what any competent military planner should have anticipated. But while the US might be able to absorb the shock of another defeat, Israel is no superpower.
TEL AVIV—When the news that the United States has agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran broke, I was immediately reminded of an exchange described by the American Colonel Harry Summers in 1982. “You never defeated us on the battlefield,” Summers said to a former North Vietnamese colonel. “Yes, but we won the war,” was the categorical response.
Make no mistake: the ceasefire deal seals the strategic defeat of the US-Israel alliance in Iran. This war will be remembered as yet another episode of powerful countries falling into the trap of asymmetric warfare, in which the mightiest militaries invariably fail to translate tactical gains into strategic victories.
The US and Israel—especially Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is better versed in history than US President Donald Trump—should have known this. The principles of war, laid out by Carl von Clausewitz in 1812, make clear that the destruction of enemy forces should have a terminal impact on their will to resist. Asymmetric wars defy this norm of “decisive battle.” And there was no reason to think that Iran would be an exception.
A civilization animated by ideological fervor, which has endured centuries of wars of survival, was never going to surrender easily. A country that sacrificed some 750,000 of its people’s lives, including thousands of children, in its eight-year war against Iraq in the 1980s always had a tremendous advantage over enemies that crumble under the emotional impact of a few dozen body bags. A regime that in January murdered tens of thousands of its own citizens in a mere 48 hours was not going to be fazed two months later by threats against civilians.
Even as the US and Israel have killed much of the Islamic Republic’s political and military leadership, and demolished much of its military capacity, the regime has waged a war of attrition against the global economy. As any competent military planner would have predicted, Iran has blocked transit through the vital Strait of Hormuz, and ensured that its Houthi allies are poised to close the only alternative, Bab al-Mandeb. Add to that strategic drone and missile attacks, and Iran has managed largely to offset its enemies’ military advantage.
In the process, Iran has managed to replenish its budget: it is now earning nearly twice as much from oil sales as before the war, while raking in profits from taxing ships for passage through the Strait. Russia has also profited, thanks to the easing of US sanctions on its oil. Meanwhile, the earnings of America’s allies in the Gulf have plunged, raising questions about whether they will be able to fulfill their pledges to invest billions of dollars in the US and in their own economic diversification.
To top it all off, the US and Israel have failed to achieve any of their war aims. Even the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz cannot be considered a victory, since it was open before the war. Iran’s ballistic-missile capabilities and its enriched uranium supplies remain a problem that will be addressed through diplomacy, just as they were before the war. And the upcoming negotiations in Islamabad are not going to produce an American diktat: the Iranians can still teach US negotiators a lesson, especially since Trump is eager to cut his losses and shift his attention to the politically vital domestic front and to the neglected East Asia theater.
As for regime change, though different individuals now lead Iran, they are no more moderate than their predecessors. Quite the contrary: the Islamic Republic has been transformed into an outright military dictatorship, with the Ayatollahs providing religious legitimacy to the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The broader regional implications are no more favorable to the US and Israel. The war is bound to lead to a redrawing of the geopolitical map of the Middle East. Ties among the countries most overtly challenging the Western-led global order—China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea—might be strengthened, and their resolve hardened.
At the same time, the Gulf states, which have borne the brunt of Iran’s retaliatory strikes, might start viewing US military bases as more of a liability than an effective deterrent and move to diversify their alliances. They may consider aligning with a regional power like Turkey, which already has ties to the Gulf Cooperation Council, or Pakistan, which has a defense treaty with Saudi Arabia and has shown a willingness to share its nuclear know-how with Islamic states.
In fact, the likelihood of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East has now grown, as leaders in Iran and elsewhere come to view nuclear weapons as the ultimate insurance policy. Iran will also continue to build up its proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, capitalizing on state failure—and the West’s reduced appetite for nation-building—to strengthen its regional buffers.
As for Israel, unless it holds Netanyahu accountable for leading the country into the abyss, its democracy is doomed. With his violent and poorly conceived policies, he has torn apart a once-cohesive society and undermined Israel’s standing in the US to the point that Americans’ alienation poses a strategic threat. His attempt to use Iran to distract from Israel’s escalating brutality toward the Palestinians—which has been essential to Netanyahu’s political survival—only compounds the catastrophe.
During the Cold War, the late US diplomat and strategist George Kennan recognized that internal dysfunction and external overreach would cause the Soviet Union to collapse on its own. So, he devised a strategy of containment, focused on preventing Soviet expansion while avoiding an unnecessary military showdown.
The same strategy could have worked against the Islamic Republic, which sooner or later would have collapsed under the weight of its internal contradictions. Instead, the US and Israel initiated a confrontation that was never going to go their way. And whereas the US might be able to absorb the shock of yet another defeat in an asymmetrical war, Israel is no superpower, no matter what Netanyahu claims.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, is the author of Prophets without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution (Oxford University Press, 2022). He’s been writing for PS since 2006
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戰爭以及和談過程的基本原理 - George Friedman
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請參看此欄2026/04/04貼文的「編者前言」。
War and the Principles of the Negotiation Process
George Friedman, 04/13/26
All wars end. Sometimes, the end is reached when one side achieves its goals, which can range from a limited victory to the conquest of the enemy nation. When neither nation is able to reach its goals, the war ends in negotiations. The evolution and outcome of those negotiations depend on two things.
The first is resources: Which nation is most able to continue the war?
The second is popular support: whether an agreement can be reached that is acceptable to the public.
The leaders on both sides must know what they need to achieve in order to survive, a question that at times competes with the national interest.
Each side must consider the willingness of its citizens to fight on or to demand an end to the war. This is not unlike the world of business, where the interests of shareholders and the management can at times diverge.
The goal of the United States in initiating the war against Iran was stated as preventing a nuclear Iran. One fear was that a nuclear Iran might threaten the United States. The other was that a nuclear Iran would come to dominate the region, which, given the region’s oil wealth and economic importance, would make Iran a superpower. Armed with a nuclear weapon, Iran could coerce its neighbors, build its economic power and translate it into greater military power. So there was a great deal at stake during this war.
At this point, neither side has been able to defeat the other militarily, and both sides must reach a conclusion in which the price of peace is not so great as to threaten the survival of their nations, or of their regimes. This, then, is a moment when geopolitical considerations encounter domestic political considerations. And as in all negotiations, there is a psychological dimension. The nation that appears to need a settlement based on both its military and domestic political reality is the weaker party. Therefore, each nation and its regime must appear fully prepared to continue the war and capable of doing so. The side that seems both more capable and even desirous to wage the war has a huge advantage. Internal threats to the regime’s survival undermine this strategy.
Iran’s weakness is that in the long run, the United States is inherently more powerful in terms of weapons production and weapons capability. The United States’ weakness is the vulnerability of the political leadership and Americans’ substantial opposition to continuing the war. Recent polls show a majority of Americans oppose the war, and a higher percentage oppose sending ground troops into Iran. By contrast, Iran’s posture is that it is prepared to carry on the war indefinitely, given the strength of its regime internally. Thus, while Iran is much more vulnerable to the United States in an extended war, the United States is weaker because of its political reality: It is a nation that is not prepared to engage in an extended war. Given the nature of Iran’s regime, it seems not to fear or consider the internal mood of the nation. As the war began, President Donald Trump called for an uprising of the Iranian people, based on the recent demonstrations that had taken place against the regime. That this has not happened indicates that the regime has subdued its internal enemies, giving it a somewhat more powerful hand in the negotiations than it would have otherwise had, while the political reality inside the United States makes extended warfare more difficult to wage.
Iranian strategy is to prolong the war, even as the United States degrades Iran’s military. The Iranian view is that the longer it can constrain the global oil supply, the more likely resistance to the war will weaken the American government at home. In addition, the longer the war lasts and oil is disrupted, the more other nations will pressure the United States to end the fighting. Iran’s view is that a longer war will weaken the United States in several ways, even as the U.S. military advantage over Iran widens. It does not expect the United States to capitulate, but the longer it can drag out the war, the more urgently the American leadership will want to end it, and the more concessions the U.S. will make.
Iran’s strength is that it has far more to lose in this war than the United States does, yet paradoxically, the longer the war lasts, the more favorable the end will be for Iran. From the United States’ point of view, the longer the war goes on and the higher the military and economic costs, the less leverage it has in negotiations. It is essential that the U.S. be able to increase military pressure on Iran to increase the costs of war on the Iranian public and regime. But an escalation runs counter to Washington’s ability to wage the war due to domestic political forces.
The American dilemma in this war is in principle similar to the logic of the Vietnam War. The United States entered that conflict on the assumption that its military force would cripple North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. The communists, however, had a far greater interest in winning the war than the United States had. By not losing the war, they defeated the United States by generating over time opposition to the conflict in the United States. The time frame for that was more than a decade, but the communists had interests so profound that they endured, while the U.S. interest was far more limited, leading to American failure to achieve its ends in the war over a very extended time.
To some extent, the U.S. stakes in this war are greater than they were in Vietnam. Certainly, the economic stakes are higher, given the negative short-term economic impact on the United States, American allies and other nations such as China, whose economy is somewhat dependent on oil imports at prewar prices and which is in the process of negotiating mutual accommodation with the United States. The question is whether other nations harmed economically by the war will place pressure on Iran, or on the United States, to end the conflict. Given that the Iranian regime has everything to lose in this war, and that the United States has far less to lose, pressure on the U.S. (domestically and from other nations) will have a much greater effect than pressure on Iran.
The fundamental question is whether internal pressure on the Iranian regime will increase and be more effective in the coming weeks of war. And that is in turn based on whether the U.S. will escalate the war and help create such a result. That depends on whether the Vietnam model of escalation will be more effective in this war – which is at least a very uncertain assumption.
George Friedman is an internationally recognized geopolitical forecaster and strategist on international affairs and the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures. Dr. Friedman is also a New York Times bestselling author. His most recent book, THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM: America’s Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond, published February 25, 2020 describes how “the United States periodically reaches a point of crisis in which it appears to be at war with itself, yet after an extended period it reinvents itself, in a form both faithful to its founding and radically different from what it had been.” The decade 2020-2030 is such a period which will bring dramatic upheaval and reshaping of American government, foreign policy, economics, and culture. His most popular book, The Next 100 Years, is kept alive by the prescience of its predictions. Other best-selling books include Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, The Next Decade, America’s Secret War, The Future of War and The Intelligence Edge. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages. Dr. Friedman has briefed numerous military and government organizations in the United States and overseas and appears regularly as an expert on international affairs, foreign policy and intelligence in major media. For almost 20 years before resigning in May 2015, Dr. Friedman was CEO and then chairman of Stratfor, a company he founded in 1996. Friedman received his bachelor’s degree from the City College of the City University of New York and holds a doctorate in government from Cornell University.
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/author/gfriedman/
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歷史上導致戰爭的12種原因 -- Mark Cartwright
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下文作者歸納出歷史上導致戰爭的12種原因；附錄1則列舉對史上7個重要戰爭的分析。請自行參考；並可與本欄2025/07/06和2025/07/13兩篇貼文對照。
Causes of War in History
Mark Cartwright, 05/16/25
This collection of resources examines the causes of various conflicts in the last millennium, from religious and civil wars to revolutions and global wars. The origins of conflict through history are often many and varied; they often, too, include simmering causes of discontent between the parties involved, which have existed long before any fighting ever took place. Common causes of wars throughout history include:
1. the desire for land and resources
2. disputes over borders
3. the disputed succession of a ruler
4. differences in religion
5. nationalism
6. a desire for independence (e.g. from a colonial power)
7. a desire to remove a tyrannical or incompetent ruler
8. self-defence against a perceived aggressor
9. the personal ambitions of leaders
10. the need to distract from domestic problems
11. revenge for a previous act (e. g. an assassination), exploitation, or lost conflict
12. treaty obligations
Mark Cartwright is WHE’s Publishing Director and has an MA in Political Philosophy (University of York). He is a full-time researcher, writer, historian and editor. Special interests include art, architecture and discovering the ideas that all civilizations share.
Articles & Definitions
1. The Crusades: Causes & Goals
2. Causes of the Hundred Years' War
3. Causes of the Wars of the Roses
4. Causes of the English Civil Wars
5. Causes of the American Revolution
6. The Causes of WWI
7. The Causes of WWII
External Links
* Timeline Of 20th And 21st Century Wars - IWM
* The Five Reasons Wars Happen - Modern War Institute
* War - National Geographic
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人工智能與未來戰爭進行模式 - Katrin Bennhold
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請參考：
* Anthropic
* Judge rejects Pentagon's attempt to 'cripple' Anthropic
* The Cost of Conscience: What the Anthropic-Pentagon Feud Means for AI Governance
A Fight About the Future of War
A.I. is already reshaping warfare, but there are big disagreements over what guardrails are needed.
Katrin Bennhold, 03/04/26
If there’s a war unfolding somewhere in 2026 — and there are currently several — there’s a good chance that artificial intelligence is playing a part in it.
A.I. is being used in fighting in Iran and Ukraine. The U.S. used it when it captured the leader of Venezuela. Israel used it during its war in Gaza.
And the use of A.I. on the battlefield is only just getting started. That’s why another battle that unfolded last week between the Trump administration and Anthropic, an American A.I. company, is so important. I asked my colleague Julian E. Barnes what the fight means for the future of warfare, for Americans and for the world.
A fight about the future of war
Anthropic is one of the world’s leading A.I. companies. Its Claude model has been widely used by the Pentagon to collect intelligence, identify targets, map out operations and more. But the fight last week wasn’t about how A.I. is currently being used. It was about how it could be used.
Anthropic’s contract set out two restrictions: The government could not use its technology for surveillance of U.S. citizens. And it could not use Claude with autonomous weapons that kill without human involvement.
The Pentagon balked. It said it didn’t want to use A.I. for domestic surveillance or autonomous killer robots. But it refused to let a private company put restrictions on how the military uses its product.
The standoff has been a messy mix of contract dispute and culture war, a focal point for fears about A.I. and worries about U.S. competitiveness in the global race for A.I. pre-eminence.
On Friday, after negotiations failed, President Trump ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic. The Pentagon also labeled it a “supply-chain risk to national security,” potentially barring any military contractor from doing business with the firm.
Julian, who writes about intelligence and national security, was covering the fight between Anthropic and the Pentagon before he started covering the war in Iran. (He’s been busy.)
Julian, how much is A.I. already integrated into warfare and national security?
It’s totally integrated. The use of A.I. in warfare is no longer theoretical. A.I. is on the battlefield. We do not believe that large language models are being used to command drones or fire weapons yet. But A.I. is deeply embedded in the process of collecting intelligence and using it to shape strategic decisions.
And what exactly is Anthropic worried about?
One of their concerns was that the government could use A.I. to analyze commercially available data on U.S. citizens. Our web browsing data, our telephone metadata — commercial firms can scoop that up and use A.I. to figure out where you’ve been, what you’ve visited, what you purchased.
Anthropic is also worried about this idea of killer drones.
And why is the government objecting to these red lines?
The U.S. says it will always have a human in the loop when artificial intelligence is making decisions around whether or not to kill someone. But there are problems that go along with that, because whoever can observe, think and decide faster is going to win in a battle, and humans can slow that process down.
The central question here is the role of humans in future warfare. And that will probably look very different than today. We still need them, but we haven’t decided what their role is going to be. And that makes it hard to write A.I. rules in advance.
What does the law have to say about A.I. and warfare?
The Pentagon says that the existing laws that govern the conduct of war should be enough. Because the principles of ethical warfare are the same if I’m dropping a bomb or using software to improve my targeting.
But Anthropic says A.I. is not like other weapons. Other weapons are confined by their hardware. This plane flies to this spot, and drops a bomb. This plane flies to this spot, and shoots another plane.
Large language models are different. You can have them analyze data for insights. You can have them suggest places to bomb. You could have them design a cyberattack. Their use constantly evolves.
Anthropic’s line is that this is special technology and we need to have special guardrails on it.
So if we boil it down, what is this fight really about?
It’s about politics and about principle — on both sides.
Anthropic wants to show that it’s a responsible, safety-minded company. That’s their brand. And the Pentagon is saying: This is the woke A.I. company! We’re cracking down on woke! That’s the MAGA brand.
As for principles, the Pentagon is saying there is one standard for all companies who do business with us: We are constrained by the lawful use of this technology, not by any conditions dictated by private companies.
And Anthropic is saying that existing laws are not fit to regulate A.I.
How does this fit into the bigger A.I. race between the U.S. and China? I assume Chinese companies don’t ask the government to put in place guardrails.
Definitely not. Chinese law commands Chinese companies to give up their technology to the state. That’s also why the threat of China hangs over what just happened in Washington. Because the U.S. believes that if there is a war with China over Taiwan, the opening battle will be a battle of drones over the Taiwanese Strait. The drones that can move and decide faster are going to win.
No guardrails also means the Chinese government has asked A.I. companies to develop mass disinformation tools. It has used A.I. for mass surveillance. It has used large language models to identify dissidents. So how China has used A.I. is the actual nightmare scenario that Anthropic is warning about.
Related: OpenAI, Anthropic’s primary rival, signed a deal with the Pentagon immediately after Trump’s order. On Monday, OpenAI said it was amending the contract to say its A.I. systems “shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals.”
You’re reading The World newsletter. Your daily guide to understanding what’s happening — and why it matters. Hosted by Katrin Bennhold, for readers around the world.
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