World politics

[Zolar V]

Has anyone ever noticed that the politics and actions of the worlds super powers don't coencide with how a power would act if it was in the same position.

IE military testing, for military testing many of the worlds super powers tell the other countries that it is going to be testing and such on such 'n such day at such n'such time and they are going to be shooting such n such rocket/missle

 

that doest make any sense to me, why would someone want to do such a thing when military stuff is supposed to be kept secret from other countries?

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, there's two aspects: one is bragging, my ******** is bigger than yours. Then there is the second: we're doing a test here don't misinterpret it as an attack and nuke us.

[Sisyphus]

Well first of all, military research is very much secret. It's just sometimes that demonstrations are public. Showing off that you have some crazy hardware is not the same as showing off how it works.

 

As Skeptic says, there would be at least two reasons. One, to avoid other nations misinterpretting it as aggression. Two, to show off strength. That's not just "bragging rights." Deterrents only work if everybody knows about them. If you're planning to fight, you want to hide your strength as much as possible. If you want to avoid fighting, you want to appear as strong as possible. Or more generally, show that you're not worth fighting. This can mean showing off the high cost of fighting you (by appearing strong) or the low gain of fighting you (which can sometimes mean hiding the fact that you're a threat). It doesn't make any sense for a superpower to say "leave me alone, I'm harmless," because they're obviously not. It does make sense to say "leave me alone, because you wouldn't stand a chance fighting me."

Edited April 2, 2010 by Sisyphus