I can’t let this pass without response. If this is what Rousseau meant, then my criticism of his political theory in comment #6 is even stronger. Your statement, “the good of the entire body of citizens”, is abstract and meaningless. For a start, there is never a single, unique “good”, so use of the definite article is inappropriate. Possible decision options for any non-trivial political issue will each have diverse impacts, and usually both winners and losers, and the impact on society as a whole must be a complex combination of these diverse impacts. To talk of “the general good” of society is either naive or machiavellian, as Mrs Thatcher once tried to explain in a statement widely quoted out of context.

So I think the state does have a chance to shuck off the war culture. The U.S. had that chance in the 90s, for instance. And who knows, maybe the realization that we have a severe, life threatening global environmental threat on our hands might just push states away from the war culture. But at the moment, with the U.S. spending a trillion dollars every two years on the military, and having, frankly, no serious enemies—al qaeda, by all rights, should have disappeared if the Bush administration had wanted it to, in 2002, instead of putting it on tap as an exhibit threat in Pakistan, and paying Pakistan 3 billion dollars per annum to act as zookeeper—I wonder if the war mentality is going to simply bring down the whole system.

Pre-1945, war was considered an economic disaster. Hitler’s most enduring legacy, in my opinion, was to merge the welfare state and the war economy. It was an amazing success—as Tony Judt days in his recent history of Europe, the German population never really suffered from the war until around 1944. The idea of being able to segregate a war from the population for which it is ostensively fought was an amazingly diabolical idea. Hitler’s model has been used ever since—by the Soviet Union, by the U.S., and by European countries that formed a parasitic variant, creating vast industries to export military weaponry. It is my hope that Hitler will be defeated in the 21st century.

How does “the state’s need for wars” square with the substantial number of states not involved in military activity now, or anytime recently? For example, Japan, Switzerland, Iceland, New Zealand. Are they unhealthy?

You don’t think US entry into the European theater in WWII was justified, even though Germany had not threatened the US mainland?

During the US Civil War, approximately 600,000 Americans died.

There are about 450 prisoners at Guantanamo. There have been about 600 civilians killed in Lebanon. I don’t know how many civilians have been killed in Iraq-probably in the thousands, but the vast majority were killed by the insurgents (i.e. the bad guys). Thus far in Iraq, approximately 2,500 American soldiers have died.

How do ‘total war’ and ‘end of geneva conventions’ relate to current times, given a modicum of understanding of the history of warfare?

Steve

The danger I see in detached, academic, overly abstract political theorizing is that conclusions drawn from ‘hard-case’-type thought experiments (or from ‘let’s-see-how-our-intuitions-match-this-ridiculous-example’-type theorizing), which bear little resemblance to the actual issues facing policymakers, might shape one’s conclusions about the more commonplace cases. (While the latter might to some extent resemble the more extreme theoretical cases, they too often do not).

An example that comes to mind is the ‘able-bodied surfer’ in the context of debates over universal minimum income. This kind of extreme case can be used wisely, but often is not.

third sentence should read: “…not from the point of VIEW of their individual…”

Sorry for getting off-topic. I just don’t like it when poor JJ gets bashed unjustifiably. Anyway, I’m sure Chris would be able to give a more authoritative take on this…

On a related note, I just saw this page.