Economy and War

[Don]

Strategy games are probably my favorite type of game, and I'm always interested in hypothetical discussions for war. One thing I noticed is that, probably because there hasn't been a serious war anywhere in the world for a while, there seems to be this assumption that stronger economy ensures victory in war. For example if you look up World War 2 discussion, most nonhistorians believe that US would've won the war against Japan no matter how badly their fleet was wiped out in a hypothetical scenario (say, Japan won Battle of Midway with the complete annihilation of the US defending fleet) because US has a much bigger industrial base. Even ROTK manga talks about how Wei has an overwhelmingly economic advantage (this is true) so there's no way Shu or Wu could've possibly won no matter what happened on the battlefield. Never mind that Cao Cao considered moving the capital after Guan Yu won decisively near Xiang Yang and it took a fracture of the Shu/Wu alliance to stop the advancement. I think people literally think if you got 10 times the GDP all you do is click 'buy troops' and stuff instantly comes out, so even if your military commander just got all your army wiped out in a battle, you just queue up more troops and they'll definitely be ready before the invading army arrives. Of course Mongols never had much of an economy but that didn't stop them from making a great empire. China is consistently the world's greatest economic power in all but the last 2 centuries historically but certainly have lost to warlike neighbors with much smaller economy. If your army was decisively wiped out, it takes time before you can replace the people or the equipment, and even longer the expertise. Losing decisively could easily make your people no longer support the war. Right now North Korea and Russia are viewed as possible threats to the western world. NK has pretty much no economy to speak of but even without nuclear weapons, they'll likely inflict grievous harm to South Korea. Russia has less GDP than Germany alone but current estimate is that it'd be difficult to stop Russia from some kind of land grab operation because of their superior army.

Yes, if the western world declared war on Russia right now then in ten years there's no way the Russian army would stand a chance, except they wouldn't just wait for ten years while the western world gets its army production ramped up. I'd call this kind of thinking video-game-like, but I think most decent strategy games does simulate the fact that if you stupidly lost most of your forces you'd be pretty screwed even if you have more, even far more, total production capacity. Do people just not even understand that the side that won the battle generally gets to take everything from the loser's territory, so that even if the aggressor has a weak economy, they can just take the loser's stuff? No it wouldn't be as good as having your own equivalent economy but looting/pillaging is still better than nothing and definitely destroys the economy of the vanquished.

[Julius Seeker]

In the China/Mongolia example, China was also more technologically advanced. Mongolia also defeated the Abbasid Caliphate, which was also extremely wealthy.
This isn't the only example of this happening either. European Crusaders were from weaker and far less advanced nations than the locations they conquered.

I would say a lot of it had to do with the situations. In both Mongolia and Europe there had been some intense warfare in their recent histories, as a result, they built up large militaristic orders in their society. In Europe, it was the Scandinavian invasions that led to the militarization of its nations. In the Asian steppe, it was clan warfare and the rise of the Mongols. In both cases, they had huge militaries and essentially realized they could actually utilize them to extend their power further - Europe turned against the Abbasids, and the Mongols turned against China and (also) the Abbasids. China and the Abbasid Caliphate fell in the coming centuries. Much of the wealth and trade emphasis went east and westward - and Europe and Mongolia both became very prosperous for a time; Europe got lucky in that they found other places to conquer Westward, while the Mongols fractured into Chagatai, Ilkhanate, Golden Horde, and the Yuan Dynasty China - eventually the Timurids rose up, followed by the Turkish Empire wiping out the Ilkhanate and Chagatai, Slavic forces defeated the Golden Horde, and Chinese rebels defeated the Yuan dynasty. In Europe, they managed to remain powerful.

The military has changed significantly since that time, there's much less emphasis on skill, and much more on technology. So the idea that a country with a big military tradition could defeat one with a superior economy and superior technology is far less likely in this day and age than in the middle ages.

Anyway, I don't know if the combined forces of the west could defeat Russia in warfare in this era - not without committing huge atrocious genocide using nuclear arms; and I am not sure to what purpose or end would motivate that aside from people who hate other people and are willing to, perhaps, end the world in order to get rid of them.


Don, if you are interested in history and warfare - I recommend getting Crusader Kings 2 or Europa Universalis. Crusader Kings 2 is mostly focused on Europe and the Caliphate, but expansions have brought in the Mongols as well, and even properly developed their nomadic based society; the base game is from the 8th to the 15th century. Of course, there's also mods, and they include a Romance of the Three Kingdoms mod. Europa Universalis has a more worldwide focus, but takes place during the 15th to 19th centuries.

[Don]

Russia's economy isn't like what it was during the Soviet Union era, and even during the cold war the West likely would've won in a prolonged conventional warfare because the West indeed has more industrial output than the Soviet Union. Of course, tanks that will come out 3 years later isn't exactly very helpful if war actually broke out right now.

While warring expertise probably matters a bit less in modern era, you still need a lot of training for all modern weapons, and the production facilities are generally specialized building that you can't just immediately plop down overnight either. It usually takes on the timeframe of at least an year to get a new factory running and longer still to increase production capacity.

I'm not a big fan of Paradox's games because due to an inability to play multiple players by yourself the games resort to some pretty contrived mechanisms to prevent the runaway effect and it's just not very fun. I don't think I've ever played a game where the computer controlled entities play in a believable way of détente/containment.

[Julius Seeker]

It's a shame you feel that way, I find it to be an extremely fun game (speaking of Crusader Kings II), and there are mods out there which effectively make it into a large scale Romance of the Three Kingdoms game, only with a different battle system.

Anyway, on topic.

Yeah, training is a thing, but nowadays economy is a much greater factor in military success. Other examples of poorer countries with superior militaries to their neighbours were:

1. The Greek Hoplites and the phalanx formation. Despite the Hollywood portrayal, the Persians weren't very militaristic, and would often hire mercenaries, including Greeks, to fight their wars. The Empire's main focuses were trade and economy. The whole campaign against the Persians was essentially planned out based on the knowledge acquired by Greek mercenaries. In addition, a force of 10,000 hoplites utilized in a Persian civil war ended up being the most powerful military force in the whole Empire. Then of course, the Macedonians came through with 40-50,000 troops and conquered it.

2. The Roman Empire, fabulously wealthy, and had by far the most expensive military in history up to that point. But the East Germanics tended to have more of a military tradition, and the Romans were incapable of winning major battles without utilizing them as mercenaries. Many of the great defeats of the Romans were a result of betrayal against the mercenaries - and like the Abbasids, their arrogance proved to be their undoing. Economy did factor in, the Byzantines were still fabulously rich, and they eventually overcame the East Germanic tribes, but not without ruining themselves in the process - it's partially why the Rashidun Caliphate was able to walk in to cheers from the common people for overthrowing their economic oppressors.
The worst battle of the Byzantines prior to this was a ludicrously expensive expedition against Geiseric of the Vandals - the Byzantines had build an enormous fleet and armed 100,000 troops. Geiseric blew them up with bomb ships.

3. The Vikings - people from the poor North Germanic areas. They used their speedy flat bottom longboats to travel over shallow waters - they could also pick the boats up and carry them from one body of water of another. In this way, they defeated the mighty Empire of Francia (France, Italy, Burgundy, and Germany), along with the Britons - a lot of historians skip the part that Canute was the real first King of all of England.

4. The extraordinarily wealthy Bronze Age Empires of Mycenaean Greece, the Hittites, New Kingdom Egypt all fell to pirates. Although there is much debate on the cause of the Bronze Age collapse - the likely cause is an uprising of iron wielding pirates and warlords. The New Kingdom of Egypt fell, while Mycenaean Greece and the Hittites Empire were both completely wiped out. No one knows exactly who these pirates were, but the Homeric legends may echo some truth. According to the legend, the Mycenaeans waged war on Illium/Troy and destroyed it, but the gods ensured they would never reach home. Also in the legend, Agamemnon used Hector and the Myrmadons to conquer Greece in a fairly civilized manner. In reality, the force could have been much more destructive than the legend, and their leaders were likely not the Kings of Bronze Age Greece, but warlords in rebellion. The battle for Troy could be symbolic of a much wider conflict. After all, the archaeological record doesn't show Troy as having particularly impressive walls - but Hattusa (capital of the Hittite Empire) on the other hand, most certainly did. The written records on the Levant and Egypt also have names that reflect Greek tribes. Lastly, at the end of this period of sea people invasions there are questions of where these people went; there were Philistines, who are suspected of being the descendants of the sea people, but the culture group that is everywhere over the Mediterranean, after the Bronze Age collapse, are the Greeks.

But nowadays, I don't see a poorer economy winning a war over a wealthier one. Then again, I don't think the US, Russia, or China have the capability of defeating one and other without the use of nukes; despite the US currently being far wealthier.

[Don]

Even ROTK is a game where if you conquer a city or two and didn't die in the first 20 turns you'll probably never lose the game. I find that if you've a game that has any amount of tactical combat at all, it's really hard to stop human from just always winning easily against the AI. This is because an AI that can easily beat the human in tactical combat would be very boring to play against so they always have to err on the side of being dumb and yet if you can always win in combat then there's pretty much no way you'll lose unless there's some other gimmicky. Now there are games that don't have tactical combat but then combat that's just number crunching is a bit too spreadsheet-like for my taste.

Economy matters in a protracted war but winner of a decisive victory can quickly capitalize their advantage. Traditionally the loser have to cede land and money and that'll usually jump start the winner's economy just fine. Now in the very long run having a better economy will make a difference but it's hard to see war waged on this scale in modern times. Russia annexed Crimea and nobody is planning to retake the land back. If Russia launched a surprise war today and annexed Ukraine and then sued for peace, it's unlikely the western Europe and USA will be working on a 10 year production plan to take it back by force since stuff like nuclear weapons exist. Even if they do not, the defense has a huge advantage so just because you can roll out more weapons on one side doesn't mean you'll be able to easily retake what you lost earlier. Economy's deciding factor is more of a technological one since the richer nation can afford to invest more into researching game-changing technology. Again this seems pretty unlikely in modern warfare even if deterrence doesn't exist unless someone figured out how to build a Death Star or something equally outlandish.