Rahvin writes
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There's not just a lot of extra room - there's a lot of extra room. So much that it's extremely cost-prohibitive to engage in such warfare for silly reasons.
And you think marching a million people from Persia to Greece was cost effective? You think that marching your entire civilization from Mongolia to as far as Constantinople cost effective?
Most warfares in human history have been extremely cost-prohibitive and over very silly reasons.
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It will take many, many years, likely centuries or more, for any invasion force to reach us at even a reasonable fraction of c. And we'll be able to see them coming long before they get here if they make any kind of radio broadcast (long meaning likely years in advance). Because of the incredibly long timescales involved, it becomes feasible for a defending species to not only prepare a defense, but also to launch countermeasures in the form of missiles or simply small asteroids with rocket engines attached to intercept the invading fleet while the soldiers are still on board.
You are thinking in terms of our technological level. I highly doubt that an advance alien race capable of interstellar travel would be restricted to our own technological level. Most likely, they'd have things we've never imagined.
Again, all we have to do is look back at our own history. Native Americans never saw the Europeans coming. In fact, they probably thought since the oceans were too vast or the world was too big for other peoples to come and conquer them. They probably thought in terms of their very limited technology in regard to sea travel. I'm pretty sure they never imagined the gun or canon, not to mention the old world diseases.
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Essentially, an interstellar invasion would be the height of stupidity. It's crazy high-risk, takes a massive investment in energy and material and manpower resources, and gains you absolutely nothing. Normal war is stupid enough. Interstellar war is the mark of a true moron.
And yet our own history is littered with extremely cost-prohibitive wars over the silliest reasons.
quote:
Interstellar warfare is not the same as Earth-bound territorial disputes.
Noone is saying interstellar warfare is the same as earth bound disputes. Try to think of it in term of comparing tribal disputes and the world wars. I'm pretty sure at some point somewhere a tribal native must have proclaimed that an inter-continental warfare such as world war 2 was impossible simply because of cost and land area involved... not to mention the sea area involved.
You should read
the forever war by Haldeman. I think it's one of the better, more accurate descriptions of interstellar warfare by science fiction writers.
Most likely, an interstellar war will result from simple misunderstanding.
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