{"id":1698,"date":"2008-04-01T05:49:40","date_gmt":"2008-04-01T05:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-04-02T17:21:06","modified_gmt":"2008-04-02T17:21:06","slug":"are_peace_offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1698","title":{"rendered":"Are Peace Offers Just For Losers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before dropping snark<\/a> on us at his own site (more below), lefty academic blogger John Quiggin stopped by<\/a> the comments to my post on Basra below.<\/p>\n

I posted a comment<\/a> in response to him:<\/p>\n

It’s interesting; I’ve just finished two of Biggest Guy’s books (he asked me to store them until his next phase) – “A Better War”, the revisionist Vietnam history, and “Masters of Grand Strategy”.<\/p>\n

\nAn observation occurs to me from both of those, which is that a typical mismatch is where one side is fighting to win, and the other is fighting to settle – pretty much the history of the latter part of the Vietnam War. Unless the imbalance of power is extraordinary, the side fighting to win tends to – win.<\/p>\n

\nThis also refers back to the endgame in WWII when there was heated debate among the Allies about conditional vs. unconditional surrender.<\/p>\n

\nJohn Q’s notion, as I understand it, is that war is essentially a signaling exercise.<\/p>\n

\nAnd in rationally bounded games, it typically is.<\/p>\n

\nBut as Taleb notes in “Black Swan” much of the interesting action happens outside those islands of stability.<\/p>\n

\nA.L.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m kinda bummed that he didn’t reply, so I thought I’d put this up here and see what kind of discussion it triggers.<\/p>\n

And as a historical point, I can’t think of a case where the winning side in a conflict made the initial peace offers; any help out there? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Quiggin asks if “Peace Offers Are For Losers” – he’s being sarcastic – but what if it’s true?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}