No true war is bad?

I have not read the book in question, so I don’t know if the author made this point: “Since violence or implicit violence is how we overcome essentially all collective action problems as humans, war probably does belong in the human toolkit.” Obviously it would be better if we could find more and better alternatives to war, and remove the obvious glitches in the alternatives (e.g., representative democracy, single-party states, etc.) we have tried in the past. So I find it odd as I get old that so little energy/research/academic effort is devoted by the human race to finding better means of collective decision making. Clearly our current abilities in this field are completely inadequate. I ponder if this is because we are incapable of doing better by some inherent flaw in our makeup or if it is because, as in some many areas of life, the wicked work tirelessly to maintain the systems that enrich and empower them. I suspect I’ll never find out.

Not so much pedantry as strawmannery – all JQ has claimed is that the EU wasn’t formed through war. Apparently anti-EU zealots can’t even concede that obvious fact.

I think perhaps we should be celebrating the publication of this argument as a data point, rather than actually engaging with it on the merits.

To declare my bias up front, the book and the op ed piece sound like trivial pieces of sloppy stupidity that deserve never to have seen the light of day, or, failing that, to be dismissed in silence.

But . . . now that I have the bile cleared from my system, I’ll confess that, as a child of the mid-20th century, born in the immediate post war era, with parents who devoured Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and the Proud Tower, I’ve alway found the idea of ‘pre-war’ and ‘post-war’ eras beguiling. Clearly, I (and most of this blog’s readers) are products of the post-war era. So, when, and how, will the next pre-war era begin? That’s something I’ve been wondering about, and watching for, for about a half century now.

By war, just to be definitionally precise, I mean things like the 30 Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, the conflict that started with World War 1 and ended (probably) with the Korean War Armistice (arguably at VJ Day). Lots of other wars, of course, imperial misadventures (Soviets in Afghanistan, Americans in Vietnam), endemic and endless civil wars (Africa, especially central Africa), Dirty Wars (in Latin America), global terrorism and so on. No religious wars yet (well, jihad, maybe, ISIS tried) and I was surprised that a Great Power (the USSR) could implode with a lot more violence than actually occurred (so, apparently, were Putin, etc.).

Anyway, to have the kind of international train wreck that led to World War 1, or could lead to a World War 3, requires a different mindset than prevailed in the half century after World War 2. Articles like the one JQ is berating suggest, to me, that the requisite shift in mindset may be underway. Lovely prospect . . . maybe we should all spend a little more time speculating on what World War 3 might look like. Most of the thinking about that is terribly dated.

Tim Worstall and Dipper’s suggestion that the EU is borne of war is mostly just a failure to take Morris’s claim on its unsophisticated face and instead assume it contains subtle complexity that is obviously missing if you read the article itself:

This happened because about 10,000 years ago, the winners of wars began incorporating the losers into larger societies. The victors found that the only way to make these larger societies work was by developing stronger governments; and one of the first things these governments had to do, if they wanted to stay in power, was suppress violence among their subjects.

For the EU to have been a result of war in the sense that Morris means, it would have to have been forcibly formed in 1945 by the US/UK/Russia forcibly incorporating Europe into it. When Morris states “wars make us stronger and richer” he very simply means wars of conquest are long-term net positives. He doesn’t mean something subtle about nations banding together to forestall further war; he bluntly means conquerors gluing together their conquests into empires and then liberally applying boot leather to necks.

It is perhaps further pedantry to note that Morris is not really an expert on the classical world c.100 CE; his research field, before he decided to move into the Niall Ferguson market, was archaic and early classical Greece, some half a millennium earlier…

John Quiggin is, of course, well aware of this quotation, but some of you may not.

“Though some of them would disdain to say that there are net benefits in small acts of destruction, they see almost endless benefits in enormous acts of destruction. They tell us how much better off economically we all are in war than in peace. They see “miracles of production” which it requires a war to achieve. And they see a postwar world made certainly prosperous by an enormous “accumulated” or “backed up” demand. In Europe they joyously count the houses, the whole cities that have been leveled to the ground and that “will have to be replaced.” In America they count the houses that could not be built during the war, the nylon stockings that could not be supplied, the worn-out automobiles and tires, the obsolescent radios and refrigerators. They bring together formidable totals.

“It is merely our old friend, the broken-window fallacy, in new clothing, and grown fat beyond recognition. This time it is supported by a whole bundle of related fallacies. It confuses need with demand.”

Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, Chapter 3, “The Blessings of Destruction.”

Okay!

Then let’s say it the way also a Dipper understands it:

ALL the European Countries which are in the EU – and even better – ALL the countries which are united by one currency won’t wage war against each other anymore – and in such a pretty democratic EU the question who submits to whom get’s only asked buy really nasty and small-minded nationalists.

And as it always were these Germans – and these French – and these Brits – and etc – etc – etc – who started these ”wars” – and they don’t do that anymore – since over 73 years – YES!

There is some REAL PEACE in the EU.
-(even if some idiots on the Internet try to dispute it)

Tim Worstall: “The EU came into existence in 1992, neatly coinciding with the Yugoslav unpleasantnesses.”

You might want to look at the time between then and WWII.

You also might want to check the membership in the EU in 1992, and see which state(s) were not in it (hint – Yugoslavia).

Sorry if I have a hard time getting Morris’ argument, but: towards the end, be seems to be saying the world requires a “Globocop” like the US to ensure its prosperity. But how does that relate to his wider point about the benefits of war? Does Morris believe the hegemon owes it to itself, and to the rest of the world, to wage permanent war?

Morris sold out. This was evident in his book comparing the progress of China and Europe, though that book made excellent points in between the fluff and is well worth reading. But he is well versed enough in Chinese history to be aware of the ultimate example of armies conquering and bringing peace to a large area, which happens repeatedly in Chinese history.

Actually, Chinese history itself shows that the opposite argument has more support, that instead of war being valuable because one powerful country will conquer a large area and bring peace to it, its valuable because competition between states who are worried about other states getting a jump on them turns out to be valuable to progress. Large continental empires, including the Roman one as well, tended to stagnate in terms of culture and technology and become correct.

In the long run, we’re all dead.

I guess it may not be in line with what the initiator of this thread hoped it would be about, but so many commenters have taken the occasion to write about a peaceful post-WW II Europe that I’m moved to express my surprise that no one–unless I’m missing something–has seen fit to mention that the US played the major part in blocking any turn towards war in western Europe and that it was the US and the USSR together, each according to its own imperatives, which blocked war throughout Europe during that period. Much as many Europeans may have been inclined to avoid a war in Europe, had the US and/or the USSR wished it, there is, it seems to me, very little the Europeans could have done about it. So let’s give some credit to the Cold War.

So some classicist looked at the world of letters, and thought, “more Steven Pinkers! That’s what the world needs!”

Or perhaps looked at his bank account? At his degenerating scholarly output?

Or perhaps he just thought: “why should Harvard and Chicago have all of the fun producing pernicious reactionary propaganda? Surely Stanford can get in on the action, too. Where’s my invite to our West coast Jeffrey Epstein’s house?”

Well, the opinion-piece was published on Jeff Bezos’ blog. Oligarchs are naturally in favour of centralised power and therefore of empires (so long as they are at the apex thereof, which they usually are). The best way to build an empire is through war.

Of course, the author has to say “despite Hitler, Stalin and Mao”, for ideological reasons. Actually, Hitler built his empire largely through the threat of war rather than through war itself; once he had actually started the war, he antagonised three more powerful empires than his own and his empire was then crushed. As for Stalin, he actually did various double-back-somersaults to avoid getting into wars, and the “empire” which he built in Eastern Europe as a result of winning a war he didn’t want did not sustain itself. And of course Mao didn’t start any wars at all — his name just had to be thrown in for reactionary reasons.

It is true that the Spanish, Portuguese, French and British empires were built upon war. But where are they now? The United States fought a lot of wars against its indigenous people, but frankly it would still have been a global superpower if it had simply sidestepped most of them, at least from about 1865 onward.

An interesting question: can it be that a professor of Classics doesn’t actually have to understand the concept of evidence-based argument in any case, because everything has already been said on the subject and all you have to do is cherry-pick other people’s statements? Because that seems to be how that silly article reads.

And yes, the whole thing reeks of the better angels propaganda. Let’s not forget, by the way, that various members of the EU — Britain, France, Italy et al — have launched brutally murderous wars elsewhere, and the fact that they don’t fight among themselves doesn’t make them peaceful or moral entities.

@TheSophist #25: that was mentioned as a joke rather than self-publicity, but if you’re really interested: The Roman Empire: roots of imperialism (Pluto Press, 2020). Obviously books about the Roman Empire are ten a penny; my main claim for this one, besides its being less apologetic and/or gung-ho than most, is that I try to integrate the historical reality with its reception, i.e. how people have subsequently deployed Rome as an example or model.

“As both your comment and Tim Worstall’s unwittingly illustrate, the fact that the EU has been entirely peaceful since its creation (by contrast with non-EU Europe) is not because Europeans suddenly became pacifists.”

For this to hold it would be necessary for non-EU Europe to have been at war. Norway hasn’t, at least so far as I know. None of the (non-ex-Yugoslav, Slovenia was for a few days wasn’t it?) accession states have been either. At least, not in Europe. Switzerland has of course become a byword for opportunistic militarism in recent decades.

why, it could even be that there’s a point to the idea that perhaps it was some other things which reduced war in this place and time?

re nasty @ 31

Well at least I was trying to think!

@
”Well at least I was trying to think”!

That’s how I always lose every argument on the Internet about the EU being ”peaceful” because the Internet thinks so much more than I am. BUT I promise I will try to think more too in the future – as this ”feeling” so peaceful with all of my European friends seems to have very little affect about all of this… ”thinking” (not only on the Internet)?

But as you are a ”Scotsman” and the Internet says that 62% of Scottish voters voted to remain a member of the (peaceful) EU, with 38% voting to leave – I like you – very much – without even thinking.

AND thinking even more about it? –
the last time we -(German-French-Italian-Irish) got into an argument with a Brexiter in London the Brexiter told US that ”them Germans just waging war by conquering the world -(and Great Britain) economically” – and we had to tell him that WE can’t think like that.

AND perhaps THAT is the problem?
Not about ”thinking per se BUT thinking the ”right” or the more pleasant ”things”.

Like – like… there is this organisation called ”Erasmus” and everybody who ever comes… in touch with tis… organisation – tends to think things – like ”peace” and how nice it is to exchange thoughts – with a lot of totally different people about all kind of pleasant things.

And so we told this Brexiteers that we just can’t THINK like him as we are far too busy thinking about ”Orgasmus”.

And the dude really was shocked and asked: Say WHAT? -(with a very British accent)
and then we told him – that if he would think a lot more about ”Orgasmus” too -(and perhaps even with ”a German) he probably wouldn’t always think such silly things – like WE would need the US or the UDSSR in order to ”block” us from exchanging our juices peacefully…

Mfb wtf! Name a single territory hitler conquered without soldiers after Anschluss! (Agree about Stalin and mao though)

For this to hold it would be necessary for non-EU Europe to have been at war. Norway hasn’t, at least so far as I know. None of the (non-ex-Yugoslav, Slovenia was for a few days wasn’t it?) accession states have been either. At least, not in Europe. Switzerland has of course become a byword for opportunistic militarism in recent decades.

Hey, you left out Lichtenstein! They haven’t been at war either, so that totally supports your argument!

A more sensible analysis would note that the devastating European wars of the period 1914–1945 involved Germany, France, Italy, Austria, and the UK as the primary belligerents, so the real issue is the extent to which the European Coal and Steel Community/EEC/EU has prevented them fighting with each other or invading their neighbors (the latter being an obvious motive for Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Which, come to think of it, seems to have been the case, though I’d agree that the Cold War NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation played a role, too.

I’ve no problem with your point, that the USSR and the Cold War have been gone for quite some time, John. But as someone who sees both pros and cons to the EU, my point was to take note that the EU should not be held uniquely responsible for the virtue that western Europe has been internally war free since 1945. As to the post-1989 period, since I view the eastward expansions of NATO and the EU as linked, I’m not ready to dismiss the role of the USA as at least a factor in constraining whatever we western Europeans might have got up to on our own.

Of course, now that Trump has disrupted the entire foreign and domestic American systems in ways that make it difficult to see how they might be resurrected (and I, for one, don’t want them resurrected, though events might cause me to change my mind on that), and since we have seen just how casually he throws American allies under the bus (though he is certainly not the first US President to do so—I’ve heard Woodrow Wilson also did in the Kurds in 1922), I imagine there’ll be quite a bit of manoeuvring in Europe—and elsewhere—in the coming years. And maybe it will actually emerge that the EU will behave in such a way as to warrant at some future date the entire credit for a post-2016 war free Europe.

I don’t want to unnecessarily dump on Peter Erwin, because I don’t believe in kicking disadvantaged children, but if he reads the original post he will notice that it was talking about international wars, not civil wars. I’ll admit the invasion of Finland (and of the Baltic states and Poland) but those were fairly obviously ways of strengthening the USSR’s position in order to discourage a German invasion, and all took place within the boundaries of the former Russian Empire which Stalin undoubtedly saw as the default position.

As to Mao, he didn’t start the Korean war (as Erwin unwillingly admits) and all the other wars except for the invasion of Vietnam were civil wars since they entailed moving into Chinese-controlled territory which had broken away during the main civil war. I’ll admit that Vietnam was a problem, but then, since Mao had been dead for some time by then, it’s would be hard for Erwin to blame him except for the fact that Erwin clearly lives on Planet Bizarro.

@John Quiggin Lots of people predicted, along the lines of your post, that with the external threat of the USSR gone, and the US pulling back, the old warlike Europe would reassert itself.

I think what we may call the “wide military context thesis” runs rather like this: because of the experience of WWII and the Cold War, modern industrial states have amassed enormous military power while at the same time knowing that they can experience total destruction if they enter into a military conflict with a state of comparable military might. As a consequence, peace dominates between them. So France is not at war with the United Kingdom or Germany, certainly in part because they are all (for now) members of the EU but also in part for the same reason Japan is not at war with South Korea and Russia not at war with China.

Personally, I think it would be absurd to claim that the EU has played no role in the pacification of Western Europe in the second half of the twentieth century, but I think it would be equally absurd to deny the role of other factors that plainly play a major role in the equally remarkable pacification of other regional areas in the absence of an economical and political unification process (rise in prosperity, rise in education, aging populations, increased military power…).

@Neville Moreley, #37, fair enough.

Round and Round It Goes
(if JQ will pause the discussion for comic relief, a true truce)

“Great news out of Turkey!” Donald Trump tweeted minutes before Pence spoke. “Millions of lives will be saved.”

Dirty Donnie already saved millions and millions by not lofting nukes at N. Korea.

@JQ
I made a mistake — searching on “Ian Morris Washington Post” did bring up some replies, but none that seem to have been published in WaPo. One was published at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, another at the Wash. Monthly. Links to those:

https://www.wagingpeace.org/war-makes-us-poorer/

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2014/04/27/orwellian-piece-by-ian-morris/

Wish I had time to engage on the substance here, but I don’t. So I’ll confine myself to one point that I don’t think is esp. controversial and has been made many times before: the basic character of war in the late 20th cent and early 21st is different than it was from, say (because one has to pick some start date though it will be somewhat arbitrary), 1792 to 1945. The causes of wars are different, the nature of the main belligerents tends to be different, and conflicts tend to be either civil wars or internationalized civil wars (e.g. Syria) rather than the interstate wars that characterized the 1792-1945 (or 1953) period (though of course there were other sorts of wars as well, e.g. what in the late 19th and early 20th cent were sometimes referred to by certain writers in the imperial and other powers as “small wars” against “uncivilized” peoples).

As to why the basic character of war has changed and classic interstate war has dropped off to a minimal amount, there are various extant arguments and theories. But the fact of the drop-off in interstate war seems indisputable, even if the reasons remain a matter of debate. And if one carves out a subset of interstate war and labels it “great-power war,” the drop-off is even more pronounced. There has not been a great-power war, depending on how one defines a “great power,” since 1945 (end of WW2) or 1953 (Korean War armistice). The USSR and China did clash on the Ussuri River in 1969, but that did not rise to the level of a war. The India-China war of 1962 was not a great-power war, since India was not a great power in 1962 under any reasonable definition of “great power.” The absence of great-power war since 1945 (or 1953) is not a chance blip but reflects underlying normative and/or material trends in the international system, though as I said the exact causes of the decline in interstate war, and of great-power war in particular, remain in dispute.

@John Quiggin 57 I’ve had the recurrent thought that the chances of avoiding nuclear extinction since 1941 weren’t 1% but 0%, and what we’re experiencing now is a communal version of Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, the human world having ended when a Russian sub commander fired an atomic torpedo during the Cuban missile crisis.

Assuming we’re actually all still here, though, I think the difference between the first era of global fascism and its contemporary reprise is that nuclear weapons change the calculus for the authoritarian leaders. Imagine 1939 if Germany, France, the USSR, the UK, the Japanese, the Chinese, and the US all had the bomb. Invading powerless neutrals would be on the agenda, but the political monsters would be stuck with glowering at one another and terrorizing their own citizens, i.e., it would have been much like 2019.

Collin: Simply because a book is 30 years old and not a primary source hardly means it’s assuredly – or even likely to be – wrong. After all, in the U. S., Battle Cry of Freedom is still considered possibly the finest single volume work on the Civil War ever written, and it was published in 1988. Having been written ~ 100 years after the end of said war, it can hardly be considered to be a primary source.

Not saying you should give D. *much* of a break because of that, though.

Sure, but I wouldn’t use the book as an authority -bludgeon against modern-day americans, because that would be arrogant as fuck.

(Also the timings are important; there’s been an awful lot ofrecent work that we as australians pick up on osmotically, essentially, simply by how it shapes the discourse of those who have read it and to whom you all respond. I mean, I haven’t read Dark Emu but my mother and sister have. Dipper, probably not)

Dipper, google Henry Reynolds.

Also, what Collin said.

@7, Omega
Not really wanting to get into the “do empires benefit civilization by promoting trade” argument, but having just read Lost Enlightenment, nothing in that lengthy tome suggests the Silk Road city states gain any special advantage from the Mongol invasion. In fact, quite the opposite. After the Mongols (in part for reasons preceeding the conquest), Central Asia never regained its pre-eminence (it had actually not just been a facilitator of trade but also a center of manufacture, culture, scientific progress). Maybe the trade routes hobbled along as trade routes but the civilization that was both built by and facilitated trade did not rebound. Most empires seem to get that there is wealth to be had from involvement in trade, they don’t always know how to keep the gold goose alive.

If Z‘s summary of the Book is correct, it makes even less sense than JQ‘s summary.
„war made states, and states made peace”
The opposite is obviously true. How can nonsense like this get published?