High productivity nations in conflict with low productivity nations.

Hmmmm.  Full of debatable ideas.  In the most positive sense.  From Capitalism put an end to systematic warfare by Tove K.  The subheading is There are still wars. But war is no longer the only way for producers to compete with each other.

Worth reading.  I would dispute with several aspects of the argument but can anticipate that I might come around on some of them.  What really caught my attention was.

Two hundred years ago, attacking one's neighbors once in a while was business as usual. Now, doing so is considered a sign of (mass) psychosis. It can be done, but it is objectively stupid. Few people discuss whether Napoleon Bonaparte invaded his neighbors out of insanity. Many people discussed whether Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine out of insanity. Two hundred years ago, invading a weaker neighbor was seen as the most normal thing a leader could do: Because that was what countries did by then. They mostly do not do that by now, except when someone loses it. 

High productivity caused two phenomena:

1. Very efficient weapons with great destruction power
2. Productive forces that are easy to destroy and difficult to steal. Modern production is based on skilled labor and intricate organization. The least unwillingness from the side of the workers risks causing great productivity losses. 

The combination makes war unprofitable. Before capitalism, land was the most valuable and scarce resource. Land is difficult to destroy but not that difficult to conquer. Under capitalism, the main resources are machinery and equipment and, above all, human labour. Both are easy to destroy and hard to catch. The result is war with great destructive power and slim chances of any profit at the end of the day. 

Broadly, I think this is correct.  However, I now see there is a distinction which I knew but which I also obscured.

There is a belief in some Mandarin Class circles that Democracies do not go to war with one another.  It is a pleasantly glib shibboleth that seems profound until you realize its truth rests entirely on No True Scotsman definitional games.  When elected Putin takes "democratic" Russia to war with "democratic" Ukraine, does that disprove the adage?  Of course not.  Russian democracy is highly flawed and while de jure a democracy, de facto it is an autocracy.  

But once we have opened the No True Scotsman fallacy, then the adage will always be true because we will always find a means of arguing that the attacking nation is not the democracy to represents itself to be.  

But what if the adage is not "Democracies do not go to war with one another" but rather "Rich nations do not go to war with one another."  

I know that the latter is also not true but it is perhaps more true than the former.  

It is not tautological, but it almost certainly usually true that the opportunity costs of a war for a high productivity nation is greater than the opportunity costs for a low productivity nation.  

That distinction is worth mulling.