[Unknown Target]

I'm curious what everyone else thinks when asked this question. With the habit of our nation's leaders to enter into war without declaring it as an actual war, and the rampant currency inflation/deflation going on across the world, I have wondered aloud to my friends if we are engaged in a war based on currency; destroy your opponent's financial stability before you ever engage in actual combat. I feel that warfare, as it used to be understood, has become outdated and too costly. I believe that in the future, if warfare continues, it will be more like economic competition, as opposed to outright movement of large scale armies. After all, if one invades a developed or almost developed country, you will end up blowing up almost everything that made that country valuable. If you invade for resources, you're going to expend much of those same precious resources just trying to get theirs, and most of theirs will be destroyed by the time you're done. So it's easier and more effective, IMO, to destroy the enemy's stability and ability to fight a war, before ever attempting to fight said war. Then you can simply move in economically and take control.
What do ou guys think?

[Bobboau]

implying the cold war was not WW3

[Polpolion]

you two have pretty lousy definitions of `war'

[Pred the Penguin]

Some think that the 7 Year War should be considered as the first actual world war.

To answer your question seriously, like Polpolion wrote, you need to clarify your definition of war. There haven't been many 'declared' in recent times.
You could say that the world has been in conflict for quite a while now, but you don't need me to tell you that.

I do agree that 'war' as you explain has been taking a more economic turn, but that's been around for a long time in one form or another.

[Mr. Vega]

Rational actors don't really engage in real currency and trade wars because it's the economic equivalent of MAD. Your competitors are also your trade partners; if you bring down their economy your own can soon follow, especially one driven by exports like China's. That's one of the reasons the Great Depression happened; the losers of WW1 owed indemnities to the victors, who in turn owed money to the US, but the creditor nations (especially the US) put up barriers against imports which made it impossible for the debtor nations to generate the income pay off their debts. The debtors retaliated with their own tarrifs and it became an arms race. By the time the financial system collapsed in 1929 international trade was in complete shambles, so demand for goods died. That said, there are benefits to exchange rate manipulations in the short term, but in the long term impoverishing your neighbors is really, really self-destructive.

[Unknown Target]

I never said war was a good idea, Mr. Vega, nor was it something always done by "rational actors". Bobbau, that's an interesting point, very true.

According to Dictionary.com, the most apt definition of war that would apply to what I proposed in my first post would be;

"active hostility or contention; conflict; contest: a war of words."

So the question would be, whether or not the current economic issues facing the world is a result of active hostility, and who from towards whom? Remember in this new era we may not be necessarily talking about state actors.

[Mr. Vega]

Oh I know what you said, I'm just saying that if there really is a currency war being waged, it's going to be China and other industrial powerhouses that don't care about things like the standard of living of their workers trying to see how much trade surplus they can get away with. There's no way in hell China would actively try to wreck the economies of the Western nations. The amount of wealth they would be throwing away would be staggering. No, they're just trying to see what they can get away with.

And the primary motivation to wage a trade war died when the First World went off the gold standard following the Great Depression. You don't have to inflict trade deficits upon your neighbors to maintain full employment since you can just control interest rates by controlling the money supply. During the gold standard taking in more money in then you sent out was the only way to cheapen your currency and keep rates low.

[Unknown Target]

Is it possible that extra-national entities could wage a currency war so as to gain more influence?

I also think the situation with China is even more complex than you say; they have their own internal issues and there's talk of a Chinese property bubble that's beginning to pop. Even more than that, China wants to begin moving to a different standard world currency, and Russia (and I think China, though I have not seen it anywhere) are engaged in large gold swaps as of late to shore up their home currencies in material wealth.

[Mr. Vega]

If your goal is to just to make money? Hell yeah. Happens all the time. Google "Speculative Attack".

And I have read leftists like Chomsky claiming that financial elites have used the threat of speculative attacks to induce their governments not to pass policies unfavorable to them. One of the reasons leftists are such fans of governments putting in capital controls to restrain speculative capital movement.

[Unknown Target]

So, and this is just light-hearted speculation amongst fellow community members on an internet forum, but, could the next phase and design of warfare be examined as a competition between extra-national entities such as corporations, multinational banks, organizations established post-WW2 (NATO, IMF, UN), perhaps fighting for, against, or separate from citizen populations?

[Mr. Vega]

I'm smelling the plot of a really bad dystopian sci-fi novel right now.

But to answer your question, even the most powerful countries on earth have a very limited ability to manipulate international markets (with the possible exception of energy-critical countries like Saudi Arabia, an even then, I mean, come on, how much effect did the OPEC crisis have on US policy towards Israel, which was the target of the oil embargo? About jack squat). A multinational corporation trying to do it would be like trying to hold back a waterfall with your hand. And it's much more cost-effective just to buy off officials with lobbying and, in the case of "democratic" governments, campaign financing.

[Unknown Target]

Hm, that's true - and it's something that many companies do do already.

On companies and private organizations having power to manipulate world markets; do you think international ratings agencies seem to have a disproportionately large amount of influence on global stocks and thus on global markets and funds? I think so, though I am not well versed in their history and the history of standardization of economic ratings.

So to bring it back to the original question of the thread, what do you think? I think that, if we are not in a sort of "economic war" now, then we are one or two steps away from one. There is no real evidence ti indicate that we currently are in one, so all of this is speculation.
I feel that we are involved in multiple other wars-that-aren't-wars (information war, war on terror, war on drugs, etc). I just saw a speaker discussing how we have the largest peace-time accumulation of debt in history; prior to this, we always ended up in or it was during a war when debt levels got anywhere near where they're at now. Perhaps the answer is because of these "pseudo-wars"?

[BrotherBryon]

You have no idea what war really is until you have experienced it for yourself. Perhaps that is why we find ourselves engaged in it generation after generation. The lessons learned by the old generations seem lost or not understood by the next generations.

[Nuke]

i wouldn't call it ww3. a world war requires multiple countries aligned to expand their empires, and those resisting the expansion aligning to save their own asses. what i see going on is a lot of world policing. the stable countries are going out and trying to stabilize the weaker governments out there. not to say that it aint war, it is and people get killed, but this is not world war. that requires everybody fighting everybody because multiple nations have aligning goals and invoke treaties and alliances to collectively attain them. the idea of economic warfare belittles war and misrepresents the economic conflict and comparing bad buisness on a global scale with world war is a gross exaggeration.

[Marcov]

Yes, I knew this, since being trigger-happy with emotion up high will make you look like the bad guy, hence a sudden global frown on you, hence the downfall of your country.

People will tend to work more discreetly. It's a silent war today.

[NGTM-1R]

Perhaps the answer is because of these "pseudo-wars"?

This assumes they are new things. The war on drugs dates back to at least Prohibition, more probably as far back as the Whiskey Rebellion in the early United States. The war on terror has changed a lot since the use of the Legions to suppress banditry in the Roman Empire. The fight for and against censorship goes back to the earliest days of organized government.

And in all honesty, many of these battles have become much less desperate and less destructive to order and economics.

[Mr. Vega]

Perhaps the answer is because of these "pseudo-wars"?

This assumes they are new things. The war on drugs dates back to at least Prohibition, more probably as far back as the Whiskey Rebellion in the early United States. The war on terror has changed a lot since the use of the Legions to suppress banditry in the Roman Empire. The fight for and against censorship goes back to the earliest days of organized government.

And in all honesty, many of these battles have become much less desperate and less destructive to order and economics.

Absolutely correct. The only thing about our current situation that is really novel is the incredibly bloated international finance system.

[stinkyFeet]

http://www.hsrgroup.org/our-work/security-stats/state-based-battle-deaths-year-million-population.aspx

It's WP1: World Peace 1

The graph doesn't take into account the last 6 years though, including the arab spring, but I don't think those conflicts have been that deadly. The total number of conflicts is up, there's just less killing.

[Unknown Target]

If you listened to the news you'd think things were terrible. This thread is rather uplifting.

[Nuke]

the news is a horrible source of information. thats why i hardly ever watch it.