@realcaseyrollins

When the two parties involved remain static that would be true in many cases. 10x the deaths for a day is less than 10 years of 1/10ths the deaths. Sure thats fair.

But thats not the case here. We are talking about a relatively small war over a long period of time vs a world war involving the entire world, which based on past world wars is likely to last years.

To put this to actual numbers. WWII resulted in, on average, 10,000 deaths per day over a 7 year period. Resulting in 53 million deaths total.

By contrast in the ukranian-russian war, in its current phase has been going on for exactly 2 year as of 2 days ago. In the course of those two years there has been a total estimated death toll of half a million. That is 684 people per day.

So a large world war results in ~20x more people killed per day then a much smaller, but potentially longer lasting war. Considering a global war tends to not be short, as ~7 years given past incidents that would mean the russion-ukrain war would have to last 140 years in order to cause more casualties than the world war that would result if the USA got directly involved.

@randahl @trendytoots

@freemo @randahl @trendytoots Fair enough, that’s a good point. I think I was hoping that the conflict would remain contained in the region and not spread all over the place, but I guess that’s a false hope.

One of the arguments for Ukraine that I find compelling is that if we let Russia have an easy time in Ukraine, then other regimes will go "Oh, is it conquering time? Cool! Let's go conquering!" and a bunch of wars will kick off because the calculation says you'll lose less in conquering than you'd gain by having a new border.

Historically speaking, we're in an unusual period of relative peace, and once that peace ends it could be millennia before we see it again.

The first big period of global peace was called the "Pax Romana", where the Roman empire was so powerful nobody really bothered doing much war because the hegemony of the empire destroyed the cost/benefit of doing so.

The second happened almost 2000 years later in the 19th century with the "Pax Britannia", where the UK was so overwhelmingly powerful it wasn't really worth doing war because the empire could step in.

We're arguably in the third big global peace called the "Pax Americana", where the (historically rather bizarre) American empire has been so powerful that for the most part nobody has really wanted to be involved in much war.

The Pax Romana lasted about 150 years, the Pax Britannia lasted almost exactly 100 years, and the Pax Americana is about 80 years old today. If it collapses, who knows when the next period of peace might come about, and who knows what sort of empire could bring it about?

Presently, we're seeing wars in Europe, Africa, imminent war in South America, a real threat of war in Asia, it's a powder keg that could go off and not pushing the cost up could really help dry that powder.

Previous eras like this include the 30 years war in Europe, and that wasn't a noble war like World War 2, it was a meat grinder that caused mass suffering. This isn't a period we want to allow to return.