The End Of War (I/II): By Diggers And Concrete
How the world can construct itself out of war.
The Ukraine War shows that we haven't reached the end of history, yet. But war is by no means a necessity or completely unavoidable. It can be prevented and even ended once and for all. We don't even have to like each other for that or form a unified power center to control everything. All that is needed is reinforced concrete and finance capitalism.
Der Ärmelkanal
England has a lot of quirky features. Thanks to its stable development, the nation acquired plenty of institutions that are impart confusing and appear to hold back the development of the country, but are perhaps also a reason why we know England as it is. With a few exceptions in Italy and Switzerland, most other countries in Europe lack such features for the most part and the cause for this history: The 30 year war, the French Revolution, Napoleon, both World Wars with their tyrranies and the clash of systems during the 2nd half of the century have put away most quirks. They were simply too inefficient or were drowned in the blood of generations of soldiers.
Much to the dismay of the Cornish, Welsh, Scots and the Irish, the English were blessed for most of their history as they were the by most dominant power in Great Britain, while their homeland came with its own moat: The Channel, or La Manche, as the French prefer to call it. Those 30 kilometers of water dividing Great Britain from the continent are enough that so far only around once every millennium an enemy is powerful enough to successfully cross La Manche. So far only the Romans and Normans could do so while both the Spanish, French and Germans failed at the same. It may well be that thanks to technology, Great Britain will be forever save from violent invasions.
The Pyrenees
When looking around in Europe, there appear to be only two places with similar features. For one, there is mountainous Switzerland, which is a special case given its status as neutral power, and there is also the Pyrenees marking the border between Spain and France. While both powers were repeatedly at war with each other throughout the past 600 years, the mountain chain separating the two nations was never a contested area. If at all, it was only the bottleneck at its Eastern end near Perpignan, where armies had enough space and flat land to cross through. But even with this bottleneck offering an opening, throughout history only a few managed to successfully pass: Hannibal, the Andalousian Caliphs as well as the Spanish monarchs during the Requoncista of the Spanish peninsula.
Such few break-through attempts over the course of two millennia should not be ignored. In comparison, the Pyrenees appear to be at least equally suited as the Channel to serve as a mutual defence and therefore peace-facilitating institution dominating the landscape. It's a scone, nobody would mess with. Interestingly, both the Pyrenees and the Channel have a similar width and length, they only differ in the height or depth. The Pyrenees are around five times as high as the Channel is deep. One has to wonder how the world would look like if all nations were seperated by either, or what overall size a combined moat with sconce would need to have to provide a similar protection to both sides as the Channel or the Pyrenees.
A What If For Eastern Europe
In the wider angle there is one region in Europe, which is historically prone to invasions: It's the area between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. A 1,500 kilometer wide vast and sparsely populated flat land filled with swamps, lakes, rivers and forrests. An ambitious army even just on horseback can cross through this region in only one season, and this is what happened throughout the last millennium: The Vandals, the Mongols, the Turks, the Russians, the French and the Germans all cut through with relative ease - and while they may have lost everything at the end, taking this vast flat land by storm was never an issue.
Now, imagine there was a 30 kilometer wide channel or a mountain chain going straight from the Sea of Azov to the Baltic Sea. Things would likely look very differnt. There is no need to assume a successful invasion would have never happened, but it's very likely that the frequency would be much lower with a long-term equilibrium developing analogous to France and it's Southern and North-Western neightbors. Defense is much simpler with such a separator and defense would grow in importance over considerations of conquest. The Russians woul remain on one side and the Germans, French, Habsburgs, Ottomans or whomever on the other.
Pyrenee-Channels For Everyone!
It would be too much for this blogpost to calculate how wide and deep/high a moat-scone-combination would have to be to protect either side for an average of 500 years. But there is enough historic knowledge to assess how much it could cost to be cheaper than preparing for war. Just alone in WW2 Germany, Poland and the USSR suffered a total of 37 million military and civilian casualties. Assuming the average casualty lost 40 years of his productive life and the average producitity per year was 1,000 USD, the human productivity loss was at around 15 trillion USD. Those are the opportunity costs for a moat-scone-combination powerful enough to prevent a direct confrontation.
If you now divide these 15 trillion USD through the width of Eastern Europe of 1,500 kilometers, then you come out at 10 million USD per meter (sic!). That should be enough to basically re-built both the Channel and the Pyrenees throughout Eastern Europe - and that’s just the opportunity costs for WW2. If you add Napoleon and WW1 the money would likely be enough for nonstop bunker systems on both sides from St.Petersburg to Rostow providing a weather independed transportation system in a region prone to harsh conditions. Even more so, the additional Channel would provide a powerful waterway directly connecting Northern Europe with the Black Sea region.
But What About Maginot?
This way of thinking in long-term opportunities is the kind of thinking that is completely absent from defense thinking these days. In fact, there is only one major case where this thinking was applied and lead to the construction of a defense structure: The Maginot Line. This is perhaps also the reason why such thinking fell out of fashion, the Maginot Line didn't work, or so we think. But if you dare looking beyond the obvious, you will realize that the Maginot Line worked perfectely fine: The Wehrmacht had to circumvent it in order to invade France. What failed in this case was only the paper on which defense promises were written for Belgium.
There is no doubt that the Maginot Line did work just as intended. Besides relying too much on diplomacy, the failure was not to trust even more so on a foundational shaping of the landscape. The logic of the geostrategic thinking can neither be accomplished by diplomacy, nor can this happen with the help of a new military doctrine or new tanks and missiles. At the end, only more diggers and concrete can accomplish this. Then a long lasting peace will follow.