Talk:War cycles

I don't understand the graphs. What do the y-values measure? Casualties? Theshibboleth 20:51, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Shibboleth,
The values on the ordinate are an index of the severity of an armed conflict, estimated using (quite complex) criteria set forth by Quincy Wright in his Study of War.
Best Wishes,
David Cruise 01:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC).

The graphs look very interesting, particularly the European one. Is it possible that the integral of each war is the same - i.e. the product of intensity and duration is constant?

Though this is a good article, the language is a bit obtuse. Could someone clarify it for we poor laymen? Wally 09:16, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Wally,
This is one of the series of articles on preventable causes of warfare. As observed throughout millenia, some nations wage wars more than others. It seems likely that differences in their respective moral canons related to warfare may, partially, account for this differential rate of violent deaths of millions of human beings.

Best Wishes,
David Cruise 13:52, 12 February 2006 (UTC).

David Cruise has said here thatthe graphs do have a y-axis - could he (or someone else) possibly write a section on this? A graph without titled axes is just a wobbly line, after all.

The most intense conflict in the recorded histoey was the WWII and both graphs are plotted relative to that conflict (on the right hand side of both graphs). David Cruise 05:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, just wandering into this one.

• Chart axes /need/ labels. One can't even properly tell if the x-axis is time being told linearly or on some sort of logarithmic scale.
• Mr. Cruise, you keep saying the y-axis of the charts is a measure of severity. How is "severity" defined, and how does one compare the severity of global total war (WW2) to regional structured war (the Napoleonics) to relatively-low intensity local disturbances (Northern Ireland)? I'm certain it's complex, but an equation would be nice.--The Centipede 03:07, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Cycles vs. Causes

The issue of war cycles (do they exist? if so, what causes them?) is distinct from the issue of underlying causes (eg. religious, social, geographical?). However, the article does not make this distinction. It seems to me that most of the article should be moved to eg. Pacifism or maybe a new article on religions and war.CDaMama 18:13, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Brief comment:

I don't see how most of the information in this article is tied in with the subject of the article. The article goes from giving background info on the theory of war cycles to discussing how China didn't have wars for certain periods of time. If there is a war cycle, then it should have a beginning, middle and ending points. The article briefly alludes to this, but then goes back to being, what I believe to be, off topic or not purposefully brought into the article. S. Randall 10:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, this article seems to exist entirely to push the opinion of a small number of authors and repeated uses the same reference to make its point.

Chomsky

The Whole last section of this article uses a quote as a smoke-screen for western religion bashing at pushing progressive theology. Liberation Theology, for example, is inherently violent, but the author props it up as a new-agey progressive peace. Seems a little off.

Yes, I certainly agree. The last section should be promptly removed or revised.

Article contains many faults

As pointed above, there is no y-axis on the charts. The charts are uneven, one depicts 400 years in a continent (Europe?) while another depicts 2200 years for a country. It also makes the erroneous claim the Confucianism was "abandoned" during the Six Dynasties. It also neglects the world outside of China and the West. Then there is the general NPOV tone which is exemplified by the conclusion.--Countakeshi (talk) 03:44, 26 June 2009 (UTC)