Fungibility arguments fail because tradition governs war limits

Evidence

An economist can argue—with the same persuasiveness as those who argue that “pinpoint”-delivered small-yield weapons are just another form of artillery—that equipment and manpower are fungible resources in a military campaign, that air intervention is not “really” different from ground intervention, that military intellect is as important as leg muscle for troops that lack leadership and planning skill. The controversy about redefinition of service functions in the light of modern weapons, and about the usefulness of defining military-service functions in terms of the means of locomotion, suggests that an air-ground distinction or a naval-ground distinction rests on nothing but tradition. But the point of all this is that, in limiting war, tradition matters. — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 595

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the reader’s engine: the economist’s fungibility argument is the same move the Mafia’s ‘protection is just a service’ claim would make, and both miss that convention, not function, creates the binding institution. — connects to: Nuclear weapons differ by a tradition of their nonuse — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 597; Traditions are mutable and contested rather than fixed and class-bound

Broader Connections

• Traditions are mutable and contested rather than fixed and class-bound #corroborates (0.80)