Re: [GZG] Colonial wars was Re: [OFFICIAL] GZG: FREEBIE OFFER

On 7/28/08, K.H.Ranitzsch <kh.ranitzsch@t-online.de> wrote:

> It took me some time to realize who you meant by 'Nicky II' - Zar
> NIcholaus II, I guess ?

AKA the Tsar-Martyr, among other things.

> Imterestingly for the argument about the effect of electoral politics
on
> wars, the Russian participation WWI didn't last exactly 'forever'. 2
1/2
> years until the Zar fell, 3 years until the Bolshevik revolution. All
> the participating democracies lasted longer.

Yes--but the Russians had already fought one nasty high-cost war to an
embarassing conclusion less than nine years prior.  The Russian Army
and people eventually got tired of sacrificing for little appreciable
gain.

As for the democracies, all of them managed to whip up their
populations with nationalist drivel, and by 1916 the French had burnt
themselves out--you don't see any effective offensives out of them
after that time.  However, this sort of rhetoric is only of use in a
Napoleonic-style national total war--which we know the great powers of
the GZGverse DON'T fight because they'd be nuking each other's
colonies and there would be heavy fighting in the inner systems.
You'd can't mobilize mass armies driven by crusading vigor (whether
you use Democratic, Nationalist, Fascist, or Communist propaganda is
irrelevant to the discussion per se) and then NOT use them to crush
the enemy once and for all.  That's the game all the powers were
playing in WWI and WWII, and it's nearly useless for limited wars of
colonialism.

> Also, colonial wars led by democracies are not neccessarily short.
Some
> wars lost by the outside power that lasted longer than the Russians in
WWI:
>
> Dutch / Indonesia. Early 1946 - 1949
> French Indochina. 1945 - 1954
> Algeria 1954 - 1962
> US troops in Vietnam 1965 - 1973

True--although that supports my premise that using mass draftee armies
fired by patriotic enthusiasm is not ideal for prolonged wars.	I was
just having a harder time coming up with a good example of an
autocratic government failing as spectacularly at sustaining it's
population's morale.

> Maybe the main difference between a war led by a democracy and a
> dictatorship is that the debate about how to lead the war is in the
open
> rather than behind closed doors ?

That, and democracies tend to simply vote the government out and sue
for peace in one way or another, while autocracies are far more likely
to do something spectacularly messy.  Like hold a civil war, then
starve the Ukraine.

John
-- 
"Thousands of Sarmatians, Thousands of Franks, we've slain them again
and again.  We're looking for thousands of Persians."
--Vita Aureliani

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