Do you know what tribes, clans, city-states, and nations all have in common? It's a tough one, think hard.
A form of government and leadership.
Which is why I'm not an anarchist. I consider it an unstable society. And any unstable society will, more often than not, lead to oppression and tyranny. The framers of the Constitution built a republic with balance of powers because, as risky as that was, it was the best option available to them. We may have better options in the age of the Internet, but I'm not any more convinced of that then you seem to be.
Joe Idiot hiring Bob's Army to defend his personal interests against Jane Idiot and Bubba's Army is NOT comparable to US and Russian interactions.
Sure it is, it's just a matter of scale. The same incentives to avoid conflict, but not at any cost, exist just the same.
Also, there is a world-wide regulatory body, it's called the UN. There is such a thing as international law that the UN presides over.
No, they don't. The UN has no power not granted to them by the voluntary actions of the member governments. At best, the UN is an established system of mediation. At worst, the UN is a puppet organization that gives legitimacy to the
collective aggressions of the largest member states.
Yes, when it comes down to it, nations fight it out if they can't otherwise agree. However, the major difference is that in order to take an entire nation to war, one must first get public support from hundreds of millions of people or more.
I'd love to live in the world that you think that you live in. Even the most progressive democracies of the modern world
do not require the consent of the governed to engage in war. The United States has not declared war in the constitutionally described manner since WWII, and even that would not have required the public support from even a simple majority of voters.
The cost of entry into national sized war is large, the cost of operation is massive, and the cost of defeat is massive. On the other hand, Joe Idiot doesn't have to do anything other than make a phone call to Bob's Army that he's already got on paid retainer. Joe never has to put himself in harm's way and he is the only person that needs to be convinced.
Joe isn't the commander of Bob's Army. Bob is. Once Joe makes that phone call, Bob is the one that has to weight the options toward resolution. Bob faces, not just the prospect of defeat (and his own death) if he should choose to ignore mediation as a solution; but also (more likely) the expense of combat exceeding the perceived losses of his client, the desertion of his manpower, and the depletion of his resources. Depending on the injustice that Joe has suffered, it can quickly become in the best interests of Bob to compensate Joe himself, and either seek restitution from the offender (or offender's own private security force) using the evidence available to him, or drop Bob as a covered client should the evidence favor that Bob is a fraud. No one here can really say whether actual combat would be more or less rare in a anarchist society with any certainty. The answer would be highly dependent upon unforeseeable factors and matters of culture. That said, I find it unlikely that combat in the streets would be any more likely than such combat between rival mafia families or street gangs are in some areas today. There is no formal mediation process between such criminal organizations, and by definition, these organizations are filled with
violent criminals; yet, these kind of conflicts between such organizations are relatively rare for all the same reasons as it would be rare between private security forces that are (presumedly) comprised mostly of legitimate forces representing a broader and less violent cross section of society. I can't even imagine how this could lead to a 'Mad Max' scenario of a constant state of low level warfare, as you seem to imagine. But I won't argue that such a condition is
possible.
Again, I'm a libertarian, but not an anarchist. Like so many statists, you seem to confuse the ideologies.
