The already-massive mobilization of the late 20th century has made it very difficult for any large powers to wage war on each other without sacrificing a large part of their population as unwitting hostages. The next step of this process he's outlining seems to be an intermeshing of ethnicities to the (eventual) extent of the Global Brain theadvancedapes talks about. At which point war is a ridiculous concept.Conscription is a harder capability to maintain with a mobile populace, but is increasingly irrelevant in a world of automated warfare waged by small and highly professionalized military and police forces. Even if (say) half the population of America happens to be traveling in other parts of the world at any given time, that should not significantly affect the ability of the American government to wage war on some unfortunate little country.
If this seems like a very banal conclusion to draw from a very impassioned debate, that’s a good thing. The evil and good that states do is a matter of a balance of banalities.
Quotable.
Yes, this is all about the relationship between cooperation and competition in our global system structure. Throughout the 20th century competition in the form of military aggression for land and resources seemed to have been winning out (especially in the first half of the 20th century). In the second half of the 20th century this subsided on a major scale because no major powers were directly at war - instead they fought in proxy wars with one another. Today global markets make it increasingly difficult for developed countries to go to war with one another because they all depend on each other so heavily for economic stability. This should continue and accelerate. The integration of global markets also puts a major selective pressure on our system to govern those markets on a global scale. In the end, if trends continue, we should get a planetary scale of governance during the next metasystem transition. And that indeed would make war a ridiculous concept. However, I'm sure there will be internal disruptions of various kinds - perhaps new forms of group violence. Hopefully not, but it's possible. Terrorism - although Americans make too much of it - is projected to increase.At which point war is a ridiculous concept.
Terrorism is the natural side effect ... terrorists haven't got the things to lose that large states do (thriving economies, ex-pat tourists, growth) so they are free to make war on those states. I really agree with you about the future of global markets and global governance. Therein lies my hope for space exploration.