Why The "War For Peace" Trope Is Dangerously Illogical... And What You Can Do About It

As if I needed more black pills for my colossal disappointment in the human condition, I caught a tweet the other day by someone whose political beliefs couldn’t be more different than mine... Yet this tweet found us in agreement:

“You cannot war your way to peace” underlines the deontological argument over the utilitarian argument. And deontology is morality over gain.

War cannot be a justification for peace, especially when knowing that every single war in history was committed by both sides supposedly “for peace”.

Utilitarianism is a socialist concept that is founded on the dangerous concept of “necessary evil”, in other words, the notion that evil is necessary. This is why socialism, like any other utilitarian mindset, is evil by definition. How else would you characterize an admission that “evil is necessary?”

Evil for good defeats the purpose of good. If good requires evil, then that “good” is evil by definition. So, there is no value in pursuing this “good” in the first place.

Utilitarianism usually appeals to a false dichotomy of two unrealistic extremes. In the case of war, it’s either your victory through war, or your oppression through submission. There are never any other options, like total decimation through defeat, or perhaps mutual gain through negotiation, trade, or incentives for peace. And perhaps warmongers just want to see their opponents suffer, even if that means they themselves suffer too. War pigs have a Samson mentality: they’d rather die if that would mean killing their rival… they wouldn’t be able to live in prosperity if that meant living next to a prosperous rival.

It’s the insecure ego that needs desperate validation that makes war so attractive to weak people. Ego validation becomes more valuable than prosperity, peace, humanity, and even their own lives.

The utilitarian “war for "peace” mindset goes like this: “My kind of evil is justified because, if I don’t do it, a greater evil will arise. There are no other viable options.” This exploits our fear, because this implied threat blinds us to this apparent false dichotomy fallacy, or these wild non-sequitur assumptions of “war for peace.” Fear also distracts us from the convenience warmongers who never have to face the consequences of war from their safe distant bunkers.

Let’s dive deeper.

Utilitarianism is the notion that it is “ethical” to murder an innocent than to let 5 people die. This is morally wrong on several levels. One is the false dichotomy of murdering an innocent being the only way to save the other 5. The other is assuming that you have a moral right to decide who lives and dies, reducing the value of human life to mere numbers. And we know this is hypocritical because the one who gets to decide who lives and dies would make completely different decisions if the one called to be sacrificed were themselves, or their loved ones, or people with different qualities. Utilitarianism is also wrong because it is based on the presumption that the unwilling sacrifice of one will, without a doubt, indeed save the rest, when we can’t know that. Furthermore, it doesn’t take into consideration the domino effect of normalizing utilitarian mentality; tyrants and technocrats can then murder people with arbitrary definitions of “saving lives”, as is the case today. Moreover, murdering someone is not the same as letting someone die without your intervention. Who says those about to die (supposedly) aren’t responsible for their own wellbeing, especially when they found themselves in that situation? Why would an innocent have to pay the price for their negligence? Who died and made you god to make decisions over who deserves to live and who deserves to die? Utilitarianism is objectively immoral and evil, and so is any ideology that embodies it: socialism, statism, and the insane “war for peace” crowd.

Here are a few arguments for the “war for peace” assumption:

“If we hadn’t waged war on the Nazis, we’d still have war!” This idiotic argument is self-defeating because the Nazis initiated war exactly for this idea of “war for peace.” The entire German propaganda narrative at the time was to “bring peace to the world.” Hitler was very specific about this in his book and speeches that I will not cite here for obvious reasons. Had the Axis been victorious, they’d also claim that they brought “peace through war.” Ponder that!

“We needed WW2 to bring peace.” This is false and ironic, especially when the exact reason the Axis initiated a full-scale multi-front war was because they also believes in “war for peace”, and they expected their idea of peace as a result. And what happened after that? It decimated Europe, the cost of which was far more than any concession either side would have made through negotiation. The only true victors of WW2 were the warmongers who rewarded themselves with money, recognition and power. WW2 created the grift of the World Bank and of NATO. These institutions are then emboldened and encouraged to keep creating war for profit. The end of WW2 handed half of Europe to Socialist Russia, directly initiated the Greek civil war, coerced German citizens into concentration camps and forced labour (slavery), and plunged NATO-member countries into a neo-imperialist perpetual war all over the world until today. How exactly is this “peace?”

You’d deserve an Olympic gold medal in mental gymnastics if you could justify how Korea, Vietnam, the endless Middle East war grift, and the countless CIA-funded military coups and insurgencies were a “necessary evil” for the “peace” following WW2.

“Yea, but it would have been worse had we let the Nazis win.” “Submission to an enemy is worse than going to war.” This is an ad-hoc fallacy, as well as a false dichotomy. Who says that your only choices are either war or submission? War is a failure to negotiate, a failure to provide incentive to your antagonist to value you more as a trade partner than as a conquered enemy. This is a failure from both sides. There are plenty of more options other than war or submission: there are trade wars or trade incentives. There are mutually beneficial negotiations by which you can give your opponent something of little value to you, yet of great value to him, and vice versa. This requires that you let go of your insecure fragile ego, and try to see what your rival really wants, and more importantly, why. If you understand that his ‘why’ is more important than his ‘what’, then you’ll be in a position to create and propose mutually beneficial alternatives for him to consider, none of which include war or submission for anyone.

“Oh yea? Name one instance of negotiation working better than war.” Switzerland was literally in the middle of two world wars, and nobody touched it; not the Nazis, not the Soviets, and not the Allies. Why? Because it positioned itself in such a way in the banking market that it would be absurd for anyone to mess with the value they offered. Taiwan has never invaded by China, nor will it ever be invaded by China, because Taiwan is valuable to China as a trading partner of tech parts. Why would China mess its own manufacturing machine by decimating Taiwan? Taiwan is more valuable to China as a trading partner than as a conquered submitted enemy who can offer little value when decimated. Singapore, one of the world’s biggest port hubs, is a tiny country with no military force worth of note. Yet nobody has dared to invade it. Why? Because if they were to mess with that part of the logistics chain, they’d suffer more than their conquered enemy, and they’d earn less than what they’d lose. Also consider how invading a country makes you a less attractive trading partner to others, just because of the untrustworthiness and aggression you have displayed.

And this is the folly of Hitler. He though that war was the only way to address the geopolitical power shifts of the time. He and his warmongering lackies assumed that Germany’s grievances in the interwar period would only be satisfied through war. Sure, negotiation with atherosclerotic inflexible autistic old politicians was hard to initiate, but what was holding Germany back from using trade as a “weapon”, or more accurately, as leverage? If Germany’s manufacturing machine could quickly produce high-tech military equipment enough to initiate a multi-front global war, why on earth couldn’t they use that immense production power to become a key trade partner? Had Germany chosen trade instead of war, they’d find a way to “buy themselves out” of the treaty of Versailles, instead of starting a hopeless losing war that brought them way worse consequences than their interwar grievances. Imagine Germans of the Weimar republic choosing a saner leader with a grasp of international economics. Where Hitler thought Germany’s geographical position was a disadvantage in war, a discerning leader would see it as a great advantage in trade. A true leader would seize Germany’s production capacity to flood the world market with low-cost high-quality goods. He’d use this advantage to negotiate exclusive partnerships with Americans, Brits or Soviets, playing on their antagonisms. He’d thus secure peace and prosperity for Germany through incentivising its rivals to keep it peaceful and prosperous. This may be an assumption of mine, but the chances of this working our were far better than a multi-front war against everyone. And you have a better chance of getting people to do what you want when you give them incentives rather than threats.

The greatest predictor of human behaviour is incentive, not fear.

If you want you influence your opponent’s behaviour, you give him incentive to do so. Fear through war, violence, threats or oppression is unpredictable, because you don’t know if he will fight back, reluctantly submit, backstab you when the timing is right, or make alliances that will destroy you.

Yes, negotiation requires concessions or effort, but are those concessions and effort worse than the cost of war, even if you end up victorious? They are definition not worse if you lose the war, which is always a big possibility, regardless of government propaganda telling you otherwise.

Why not lock your opponent in a deal so lucrative for him that he would never dream of endangering it? Why not concede something, but also bargain for concessions from your enemy, this way saving the lives and tremendous cost of a war for both sides, even if you win?

Utilitarians believe that any evil is justified as long as it may or may not bring a supposed “greater good” (by their arbitrary logic or definition). So, utilitarians have this “war for peace” delusion, and they pride themselves for their presumed moral ability to weigh human lives, and choose to sacrifice the smallest number; as long as they themselves or their loved ones are never in the sacrificial bunch. It is ironic then that they choose bloody victory (assuming they will win) instead of some concession through negotiation. And this concession is not submission, because it would be a lesser sacrifice than their best outcome of a war.

“War is good when the good guys win.” Every side in a war assumes that they are the good guys. What, you thought that anyone went to war thinking they were the bad guys? Every side in a war believes that they are the victims of the other, and that their war is justified because it will bring their kind of peace. This is what state propaganda does to you. Presuming that your enemy is propagandised, but you are not, just goes to show how effective propaganda is. Governments manage to propagandise their own people into believing that their war is holy, noble and justified, and that it’s only the enemy’s war effort that is evil.

The irony is that the same people who were rightfully against covid restrictions and mandatory injections fall for the “necessary war” insanity. The same people who saw the utilitarian hypocrisy of promoting an evil for a supposed “greater good” cannot see their moral inconsistency in supporting “war for peace.”

“But the American Revolution brought peace.” Did it? The American Revolution created the biggest most war-mongering state in history. The USA has been in perpetual war since its creation. What did you expect? The victors of any war become emboldened and entitled: If they won the effort, tasted power, and became entitled to power due to their war effort, did you think they’d put down their weapons and retire? Not at all. Every war won is another war in the works, because war and power are a drug. War lust is intoxicating, and I am talking from experience.

“But if we didn’t have war, we wouldn’t have peace.” Do you hear yourself say that? Read it again and again, until you get it. A similar argument is with law enforcement: “If we didn’t have law enFORCEment, we would have chaos.” That’s a wild assumption and ad-hoc fallacy. Law enforcement forbids you (with the threat of violence no less) to protect yourself from violence. It disallows private insurance and private security for private dispute resolution and order in your community. Then, it takes the credit for the level of “order” we have, and excuses itself for the actual crime and disorder by claiming that “it would’ve been worse without them.” This is a “tiger horn” analogy, by which a scammer soothsayer claims that he has a magical horn that prevents tigers from attacking a village. When tigers attack the village anyway, he exclaims: “Imagine how much worse it would have been had I not had the horn!”

No, peace does not come from war. Peace comes from mutually beneficial incentives to live and let other live too.

The “war for peace” mentality is an instance of the cure being the disease. Yes, defend yourself against a direct attack, but to what degree and at what cost? Is it in your best interest to risk total defeat (worse than your submission), or to win but create resentment and historical aggression from a defeated enemy? And who says you have to submit against an aggressor when you have so many other options: negotiate, trade, offer partnerships, position yourself as someone more valuable as a partner than as a conquered battered resentful vengeful enemy?

In the end, if your peace requires war, then it’s not a deserved peace. If saving the world requires child sacrifice, then it’s not a world worth saving.

War is a failure to negotiate. If both sides resort to war, it means that they both deserve war, and they are both to blame. So, there are no good guys in war, even if one is more aggressive than the other. The least aggressive is still responsible because he showed excessive pride, inflexibility and failure to communicate. He aggressive demonstrated little foresight, weak negotiation skills, and no will to understand his aggressor’s motivations, nor to see if there’s a way to satisfy them without war. Just like on a personal level, if you are randomly attacked on the street, you can fight back with equal or more ferocity until one is dead, or you can be defensive while trying to deescalate, and escape to a position from where you are harder to attack. The people with the least street violence experience will call me naïve. Coming from personal experience, more often than not, you can deescalate an aggressor if you have the situational awareness, skills, empathy and humility.

Your desperate need to validate your ego is your true enemy in a violent situation.

If you can deescalate on a personal level, then you can definitely do this on a large scale involving countries with millions of different people and voices of reason, as well as varying levels of exposure to the risk of war. If you can’t communicate with the tyrannical leadership of your opponent group, then you can reach out to the merchants in that group. Give them an incentive to keep trading with you. Their pressure within their group is sure to disincentivize aggression against you by their group.

And one more thing. Since we can’t deny that so many wars have been provoked, initiated and perpetuate based on lies, propaganda, false flag operations, foreign insurgency agitation, and CIA-orchestrated military coups, why on earth would you assume that your governments is honest when it claims that “there is no other option other than war?” Why is “war for peace” necessary when the ones making the decisions to go to war are not the ones facing the dire consequences of war?

If the front-line soldiers of either side were the ones making the decision to go to war, would war be as common?

No one believes that “war is necessary for peace” unless he believes that his side is righteous, and that his side will win. For war to occur, the naïve brainwashed people of both sides need to believe both of these two delusions. The politicians who call the shots and cause war don’t have to believe that they are righteous, nor that they will win. Politicians gain even if their side loses.

Politicians who call the shots for war have the least skin in the game.

The “war for peace” mindset comes from a deluded romanticising of war from effective propaganda in media and academia. There is nothing noble about the barbarism of war. Women have been conditioned to be obsessed with military uniforms, and I remember how I felt disgusted by the women who found mine attractive. Men who admire military figures have unresolved daddy issues and a love for authority figures, which makes me wonder whether their military obsession is repressed homo-eroticism.

Terms like “pre-emptive war”, “just war” or “collateral damage” just go to show how propaganda-reliant war is. Without brainwashing, without convincing people that the atrocity of was is good, there can be no war.

The harsh reality is that, if a leader cannot find a better option other than war, then he is incompetent, and should step down to make room for someone fit to lead. This is what people should demand, otherwise they don’t deserve peace. If “victory” is the aim of war, then war is useless, because there are no victors in war; except the bankers and the leaders who make lucrative deals on the backs of young naïve boys with a desperate need to prove their insecure manhood by submitting to the total obedience of warfare (hardly manly).

Yes, there is no victory in war. Your country loses even if it “wins” the war. A concession in a negotiation would be far less costly than the sacrifice of a military victory. And the gain from a negotiation with an empowered partner would be greater than the gain from a defeated, demoralized exhausted enemy (assuming you’ll win, and you won’t be the one defeated).

Post-WW2 Germany is a prime example. After it got decimated due to Hitler’s inability to negotiate, concede and provide incentives for irresistible business partnerships, it was the Allies who realised that Germans would be more valuable to them as empowered business partners than as oppressed enemies. The Soviets were too rigid in their socialist mindset to comprehend this. Keeping their eastern part of Germany bound in socialist oppression is why the regions of former East Germany are still underdeveloped in comparison with former West Germany. (Side-track: another reason for the low productivity of eastern Germany today is the fact that the western regions still subsidise it, this way disincentivizing innovation and entrepreneurship… the same thing that keeps African countries down.)

Regardless, the WW2 Allies sought through the Marshall Plan to somewhat liberate and empower their defeated enemies, so that those enemies could become productive business partners with mutual benefit. The Germans realised this too: despite their defeat, they could become so productive and beneficial to their former enemies, that it would be illogical for those former enemies to want to jeopardize that business relationships through another war.

This is why Germany today, despite having a laughable military force, is a country that no one has any incentive to attack. Why would they when their own industrial parts say “Made in Germany”?

If you can’t find an incentive to make your enemy see the value of business trade with you, then perhaps you haven’t earned peace, and perhaps you don’t deserve peace. Who says you are owed peace by default? You must work for it.

Yes, there will always be illogical foes whose fanatic fundamentalist ideology is more important than wealth. Yes, some enemies see the act of war and brutalism as their priority over the wellbeing of their people. But their entire tribal group cannot be uniform in this insanity. You must pacify the ones who are logical by offering them incentives to do business with you. This would erode the illogical enemy’s monolithic aggression, and it would undermine his expansionist efforts. For example, the Islamic agenda to Islamise Europe is now overtly admitted. Islamists in Europe are open about their desire to enforce Islam and Sharia law onto Europe, even if that would mean the end of the prosperity and welfare they have been enjoying in Europe in the first place. But perhaps that prosperity and welfare is the problem. If you feel that your enemy is working from within to change the demographic character of your country (which is a type of warfare), then you don’t have to fight them: simply provide them incentives to stop fighting you. How? Cut all welfare so that you end their entitlement mindset. Without welfare, they become humbled, since they now have to work to receive value. And maybe their countries of origin seem more attractive to them. If they keep expressing aggressive expansionist ideas, then the locals can boycott them, encouraging them to take their ideology elsewhere. Without welfare to keep them in your country, why would they stay? What? You can’t get your politicians to stop providing free welfare and special treatment to foreign expansionist aggressors? Then war is your only option, because your group does not deserve peace. You preference for bog government with vast wealth redistribution powers is your preference for war. If you didn’t know how one would bring the other, you should have known. And if you don’t deserve peace, then you don’t deserve victory in war either.

You can only get peace through peace.

European royals in the middles ages had the right idea when they wed their children to rival kingdoms. They knew that a concession for a mutually beneficial peace would be better than a bloody victory, let alone a defeat. But they didn’t go further than that because their inflexible feudal mindset was not fertile ground for private innovation, and therefore, economic growth. Feudalism is local-level socialism; no wonder labour-saving technology couldn’t evolve, and no inter-feudal trade could flourish. So, even though royal intermarrying should have prevented some wars, they could have also provoked others. Feudal lords couldn’t trade much with lords under other kingdoms, so there wasn’t enough incentive not to go to war.

The question now is, with today’s globalized international trade, why the hell is war even relevant? War is not benefiting to anyone other than delusional megalomaniac atherosclerotic old fart politicians, as well as their military industrial complex buddies, and corrupt government officials scooping from gigantic war budgets. And we tolerate this because we allow ourselves to be manipulated by state propaganda (which I was part of). And we deserve state-induced war because we sold our souls to the devil of the the state. We dance with the devil when we slyly seek privilege over others through the power of the state, but then then complain when others do this to us.

If you still can’t see how peace does not come from war, consider this: If we assume that victory in war is better than peaceful negotiation or business partnership, then we accept that the sacrifice of war was worth it. Would it still be worth it if the ones being sacrificed were you and your family? And if you still say ‘yes’, then would such a sacrifice be worthy, noble or appreciated if you know that nepotism kept many of your countrymen away from the front lines, so that you alone would take the full weight of war?

If you still believe that war is necessary because you assume your side are the “good guys”, as if the enemy doesn’t also thinks so, then please, go yourself to man the front lines, and don’t expect us to pay for your ludicrous bloodshed. Put your money where your mouth is.

If you fall for the glorification of war propaganda, then go be glorious while the people with no desperate need to prove their manhood stay home popping corn. If you think it’s “cool” to play Rambo and slaughter hopeless Mullahs without intel, equipment or air support, then you should also consider as “cool” the possibility of your PTSD, limb detachment and gruesome death.

Expectation

👇

Reality

So, how do we prevent the next war?

Military grunts love fearmongering with the trope “peace is the period between two wars". Their point is that war is constant, and that their cosy military job is necessary (funded by the involuntary taxation of workers who provide actual value, no less). I call bullshit. Mafia mobsters will say something similar; religious scamsters too. They claim that a threat is real, that the devil is real, that doom is upon us, just so they justify their existence.

This is how we prevent war:

• Call out war glorification propaganda in movies, video games and political rhetoric.

• Call out women who admire “men in uniform”. Gimp suits are gay, and women who admire authority figures promote the violent oppressive warmongering insecure males (the true toxic “masculinity”).

• Stop thank mercenary killers for their “service”. They are thugs who get paid by corrupt politicians to kill for big oil and big bank. They are nothing but gang enforcers.

• Call our those who glorify war, and those who pretend that war is the only option. They are cowards compensating for their cowardice.

• Call them out when they manipulate you with the false dichotomy of either war or submission. There are more options than either war or submission.

• Point out their comfortable position from which they will never have to fight themselves. Show that they have no skin in the game they push. Demonstrate their personal benefit from a future war, regardless of result.

• Isolate war mongers. Ridicule and boycotted them. Name them, expose them, advertise them, and call for others to do the same. Don’t do war against them; just give them incentive to stop pushing their war propaganda narrative. This way, you prove to them that peaceful negotiation and partnership incentives are indeed a more viable option than war.

• Stop venerating veterans and the casualties of war. They don’t deserve honour or glory; they deserve sympathy for falling for state propaganda. The more we glorify them, the more we make sure than the next generation of civilians falls for state propaganda, since young insecure males will want to prove themselves by mimicking the previous war “heroes” (war victims). Glorifying war victims is part of the war propaganda effort for two reasons: Firstly, it “rewards” the victims of war with meaningless praise so as to mitigate discontent from the cost of war. Secondly, it makes war seem attractive and meaningful, when it is not, so that naïve conscripts and mercenaries willingly kill and die without question.

• Read ‘The Origins of War in Child Abuse’, and share it with everyone you know. It explains some of the deeper darker motivations for war on a personal as well as tribal level. It’s a free book, and I promise you, it will change the way you see the world. (https://psychohistory.com/books/the-origins-of-war-in-child-abuse/)

  

  

Most importantly, think of ways to make yourself more valuable to your opponent as a valued trade partner than as a conquered enemy. Be empathetic enough to understand what your opponent wants, and why he wants it. Then, find ways to negotiate so that your gain from negotiation is greater than your concession, just like any voluntary business transaction. Make sure your rival also values your concession more than his. This is how peace is made.

I cannot stress this enough: incentive is the greatest predictor of human behaviour. Give people the incentive to work with you instead of fighting you, otherwise you invite attack. This is because you make yourself more attractive as a submitted enemy, since you are worthless as a partner.

Maybe, if he keep challenging the “war for peace” trope, we might get a chance at lasting meaningful peace. If we understand that peace doesn’t have to mean submission, but rather, exchange of mutual value, then perhaps war will become irrelevant. Maybe, if our species transcends from its animalistic brute-force assumptions, then we could deserve better things to come. So, let’s stop asking for peace before we become worthy of peace.

If we can’t accomplish this, if we can’t at least give peace every benefit of the doubt before we push for war as the first option, then war is what we’ll keep getting, and what we’ll keep deserving.

Please share this with as many people as you can. War and peace concern us all, and it’s about time our species stopped making excuses for this barbaric behaviour