Can Statistics Predict the Outcome of a War? 572
StatisticallyDeadGuy writes "A University of Georgia scientist has developed a statistical system that can, she claims, predict the outcome of wars with an accuracy of 80 percent. Her approach, applied retrospectively, says the US chance of victory in the first Gulf War was 93%, while the poor Soviets only had a 7% chance in Afghanistan (if only they'd known; failure maybe triggered the collapse of the USSR). As for the current Iraq conflict: the US started off with a 70% chance of a successful regime change, which was duly achieved — but extending the mission past this to support a weak government has dropped the probability of ultimate success to 26%. Full elaboration of the forecasting methodology is laid out in a new paper (subscription required — link goes to the abstract). Some details can be gleaned from her 2006 draft (PDF)."
Makes perfect sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Tags? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, the joys of revisionism... (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me see, what happened in Vietnam (and eerily enough, Korea didn't go that differently either.)
1. Actually refused to allow elections and backed an inept dictator that was hated even by the south. That's a funny way to spread democracy, you know.
2. It lost its chunk of Vietnam to the communists.
3. It actually created such an anti-american sentiment in Laos and Cambodia that they went Communist too. You know, let's bomb some countries which aren't our enemies, just because the communists smuggle arms and supplies through their territory. In fact, let's bomb a country that's our _ally_ FFS. If you trace the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, it went from a fringe group that noone really supported, to _massive_ support in the zones bombed by the Americans.
At any rate, voila, two more countries lost to communism as a result of inept American meddling in the area. Way to stop the spread of communism, buddy.
4. That and Korea scared China into flipping from a country just licking its wounds and wanting to be left alone, to becoming a lot more politically and militarily active. Just because some idiot generals wanted to push the border all the way to China, and at least one idiot actually advocated attacking China.
5. It takes some massive dose of revisionism to call it some spread of communism in the first place, when it was just a country (two, if you count Korea too), that just wanted to reunite. And that the _only_ reason it escalated to war is because the USA didn't allow elections.
Contrary to Domino theory bullshit and McCarthist propaganda, the USSR was _not_ your enemy at that point. The only reason why there was, say, a north and south Korea was because the Russians actually stopped their advance at the exact spot where the USA asked them to ask. The USSR was still licking its wounds after WW2 anyway, and it knew it's in no condition to start a world war.
You know what the USSR and China wanted at that point? They just wanted to have no border with NATO, if possible, because the USA had suddenly flipped from being their ally to treating them like mortal enemies. That's one reason why, for example, Stalin actually proposed to let Germany reunite if it stays neutral and doesn't join either pact. The wars in Korea and Vietnam just convinced them to rearm faster and help start the Cold War sooner.
And if you want something which stopped both sides, that was the rise of long ranged nuclear weaponry and the mutually assured destruction.
Redefining it as, basically, "nah, see, they calmed down because of the war (USA lost) in Vietnam" is pretty laughable.
Forget the stats, the rest is more interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
The relevant part:
Driving Saddam Hussein's army out of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War and overthrowing his government in 2003 was a brute force objective that was accomplished relatively quickly, for example, but quelling sectarian violence and building support for the current government has been much more difficult because it requires target compliance.
"We can try to use brute force to kill insurgents and terrorists, but what we really need is for the population to be supportive of the government and to stop supporting the insurgents," Sullivan said. "Otherwise, every time we kill an insurgent or a terrorist, they're going to be replaced by others."
So, don't panic. No one is seriously trying to "predict" the outcome of a war by statistics alone. It's about time the American academia and military ditch the Cold War mindset they've been stuck in since 1947, and start adjusting to the new realities of warfare and conflict resolution. This has happened in smaller countries (in Europe and elsewhere) some time ago, with varying degrees of success. French opposition to the war in Iraq, for instance, was largely based on a good understanding of which political and sociological forces would naturally prevail in Iraq once the artificial Baathist regime was terminated. In other words: yes, we can blow the country to bits, but once we've done that, there is very little that can be done to manage the country's politics afterwards.
Generally the reasons for war (Score:5, Interesting)
I completely agree there are wars started by psychopaths who just want to spread death and destruction while profiting as a consequence (both monetarily and through conquest). But the question then becomes, how exactly do you stop such a psychopath if not through war?
Wow, I get to play the Hitler card and still be on topic.
Re:Project Management (Score:2, Interesting)
The officially given reason for the war was, as you say "to stop Iraq from deploying its extensive stockpiles of WMDs". The goal of regime change is not an acceptable reason for invasion under international law. Despite this, evidence has come to light showing that both the US and the UK had intelligence that told them Iraq did not have WMDs. Someone else mentioned "Al-Qaida" being connected with the invasion - yes, GWB did go on about claimed connections to Al-Qaida, however, Blair consistently denied any link. In the British media this claim is often thought to have been an attempt to use 9/11 as justification for the Iraq war.
If you want references, try "The diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning", the president told Mr Blair [guardian.co.uk], In the memo, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is quoted as saying Mr Bush had made up his mind to take military action even if the timing had not yet been decided. [bbc.co.uk], and
Doesn't Matter (Score:5, Interesting)
The actual reason your (I'm Brazilian) government doesn't do this [the message I was replying to suggested USA simply stopped using foreign fuels] isn't because of oil itself. It's because it has since the 1970s a deal with OPEC by which all OPEC countries would accept only US dollars as payment for their oil, no matter who was purchasing it.
Now think about it: Germany, Brazil, China etc. want to purchase oil. Their currency isn't US dollar, it's something else. So, they must first acquire US dollars, and then use these dollars to purchase the oil. How do they do obtain US dollars? Well, the US government doesn't give US dollars to other countries for free, to get some they must sell goods to USA. At good prices, mind you, otherwise Americans won't purchase their goods, but those sold by some other country.
All these countries get the US dollars they need to purchase oil. But not only this amount. Imagine what would happen if for some reason Americans slowed down the purchase of their goods? No US dollars, no oil. Pretty bad, eh? So, all countries build reserves with billions of US dollars, as a way to purchase oil when and if the need arises. Now, obviously, some of these US dollars do come back to USA, otherwise USA would have no exports at all. OPEC countries, for instance, import lots of things from USA. They have tons of US dollars available due to only accepting this as a means of payment. Even so, though, most of these US dollars remain outside USA. Everyone has it, and everyone needs it, so other countries also allow exchanging goods among themselves using US dollars.
Now, US dollars reserves in foreign countries, as well as foreign exchange of goods using US dollars, both cause one important effect, more important than the above mentioned cheap import goods: less US dollars inside USA. And less dollars inside USA equals low inflation. In other words, this system allows USA to export its inflation to other countries, so that Americans themselves don't feel it. Were all the US dollars abroad come back to USA, and USA would feel a recessive inflation so extreme that 1929 would pale in comparison.
So, as I said in the beginning, the problems isn't oil itself. It's the money supply. Were OPEC to begin accepting other currencies, all these US dollars floating outside USA would be far less needed, thus starting to flow back into USA. And, guess what? Some months before USA deciding to wage war on Iraq, Saddam Hussein had decided to accept other currencies. Recently Iran has also shown interest in doing so. And what we began to hear? That USA is thinking about waging war on Iran.
So, don't be fooled. No matter whether the government is Republican or Democrat, any President of the USA will do the exact same thing. Because not doing, by allowing OPEC to accept other currencies, will mean years or even decades of extreme suffering to the American people. And no one has any idea how to solve the problem by any means other than bullying OPEC countries into conformance.
On the other hand, China, Russia, the European Union, all of them hate this system, because it ties their development to whatever is happening inside USA. And all of them would love to have their currencies among those accepted by OPEC countries, for this would yield them the same benefits USA have: inflation export and direct, non-USA dollar backed, cheap goods imports from all those countries who would need to build reserves of their currencies.
Do you smell 3rd World War on the air? I do. In a few years, decades if we're lucky, at everyone's backyard.
[PS for this statistics thread: if you consider that the actual goal is to stop OPEC countries from accepting currencies other than the US dollar, then so far it's being successful. Maybe not 100% so, but nevertheless more than if there were no war. Add this consideration to the statistical analysis and I bet its result would be very different.]
Re:Can Statistics Predict the Outcome of a War? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ah, the joys of revisionism... (Score:5, Interesting)
the USSR was _not_ your enemy at that point. The only reason why there was, say, a north and south Korea was because the Russians actually stopped their advance at the exact spot where the USA asked them to ask. The USSR was still licking its wounds after WW2 anyway, and it knew it's in no condition to start a world war.
You seem to forget that by 1946 half of Europe was under Stalin's boot, and all of the USSR's satellite states were feeding their citizens massive propaganda against the West. Remember the Berlin blockade? Two full years before the Korean War.
You think the US 'flipped'? How about the USSR invading Poland at the same time as the Germans, then taking half of it for themselves? How about destroying every single democratic regime in Eastern Europe, despite repeated promises to allow free elections? Do you really believe the USSR was a benign colossus? Do you honestly believe the 1952 Stalin note was anything but a bullshit ploy to divide the Western powers as they were setting up NATO?
The wars in Korea and Vietnam just convinced them to rearm faster and help start the Cold War sooner.
Mate, the Cold War started in 1946. Seriously. Look it up. It ended in 1989, when the Russians and the system they imposed through violence and fear were kicked out of Eastern Europe with no military assistance from the West, just by people who were fed up with Communism.
Just because the right these days is utterly insane and likes to start wars all over the place doesn't mean there were always wrong - just as the left might be right these days, but they have an awful lot of skeletons in their collective closet.
Probability's curve (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you suggesting there wasn't a better outcome that could have been negotiated without having a war?
Plausibly, there was [amazon.com]. Might also have prevented the horrid mess of the US Civil War, too.
I'm advocating the construction of a future in which we don't slaughter each other anymore. We are human beings, not lions or baboons. We're able to exchange knowledge to better ourselves and thereby avoid conflict through negotiation and compromise.
We're still animals. And, yes, while we have the abilities to exchange knowledge, negotiate, and compromise, the use of the first does not assure the latter two will be used, nor does anything assure that we'll even exchange knowledge.
For example... say you have a bundle of cash and a couple of cute college age daughters. (Unlikely combination, but just barely imaginable; Warren Buffett might have managed it if his daughter had had an identical twin.) I'm a sociopath who'd like to kill you, take your money, brainwash the girls, and add them to the harem of human sex toys I keep locked in my basement. It's not in my interest to exchange knowledge with you (since you probably don't know if they're carrying any STD's); even if I'm crazy enough to do so, I'm not sure there's any "compromise" to my "proposal" we'd agree on.
The problem with many idealists is they assume everyone will choose to be good, rather than selfishly evil. Evil is always a possibility; society tries to discourage it, and increases the probabilities of undesirable consequences. However, no matter how many meddling kids it throws at the problem, there's always a chance of getting away with it... and often the chance is perceived wider than it is. If the outcomes posed by being good are sufficiently undesirable (like being born black and poor in a ghetto), the potential gains of being evil (like becoming a violent crack dealing pimp) become more palatable. The nature of evolution is that almost any possible strategy gets tried, and it only needs to prosper slightly and sometimes to continue on down towards eternity.
Yeah, it would be nice if we didn't kill each other. However, we're still a pretty stupid species, and the societies we run around in (which are also subject to evolutionary pressures) are universally moronic. War isn't going away any time soon.
The approach seems rather different (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:100% likely outcome (Score:3, Interesting)
Once you get over the fact that this is false, you are lead to the inevitable conclusion that we will never entirely be rid of war.
Re:Project Management (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20 020912-1.html [whitehouse.gov]
Based on the UN's own data, and own resolutions, the Security Council voted to authorize the conclusion of the Gulf War (the 12 years between were supposed to be a cease-fire).