The Worth of War (19 page)

DEVELOPMENT AND MILITARY PROWESS

Charles Tilly famously declared that war makes states and states make war. One might add to Tilly's observation that economically developed states make war more successfully than their more backward counterparts. In a recent empirical study, political scientist Michael Beckley has shown that level of economic development is the single most important variable explaining military outcomes over the past century or so. In hundreds of battles, says Beckley, the more economically developed side consistently outfought the poorer side on a soldier-for-soldier basis.
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States with a higher level of economic development are usually likely to have better weapons, but in the modern era sophisticated weapons can often be acquired by primitive fighters. More than weapons, though, economic development is likely to be associated with better communications, intelligence, and medical care. Armies deployed by developed states are usually better able to repair equipment in the field. Officers and soldiers from economically developed states are likely to possess higher levels of education and training and to be more adept at operating complex weapons systems that often link troops to sensors, satellites, and command centers.
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Generally speaking, as Eliot Cohen has noted, a less developed state can acquire the weapons that form the “teeth” of a modern army, but it is far more difficult to acquire these other capabilities, including training, that form the “tail” of a modern military force and give it its superior striking power.

Of course, some militarily ambitious states and even non-state actors have endeavored to develop shortcuts to military power that do not require long-term economic development. The two most evident of these shortcuts are the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and the use of various forms of so-called “asymmetric warfare” designed to threaten more powerful opponents with unacceptable losses if they engage in battle. The former strategy seems currently associated with North Korea and Iran and the latter strategy with a number of non-state actors targeted by America's “war on terror.”

As to weapons of mass destruction, most notably nuclear weapons, there is little doubt that even the most primitive state possessing such weapons could pose a threat to the lives of millions of individuals in the developed world. Such a state, however, would be highly unlikely to use its weapons. While a North Korea or, perhaps, an Iran or other so-called “rogue state” might do harm to a more developed state, it would risk total annihilation by the forces of that state or its allies. By acquiring nuclear weapons, an otherwise weak state actually does little to advance its place in the world. If a rogue regime actually used its weapons it would risk total destruction in retaliation; and, if a more heavily armed developed power became convinced that a rogue was
actually contemplating the use of nuclear weapons against its territory, the pressure for a preemptive strike of its own would be considerable. Thus, in some respects, weak states with nuclear weapons increase the military risks to themselves.

As to asymmetric warfare, this is hardly a tactic through which poor states can make themselves great powers. Terror attacks against the United States and other developed nations can be bloody and frightening to the civilian populace. However, they represent no real threat to a developed nation's security. And, as exemplified by the US response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, such acts are likely to provoke severe retaliation. In response to the 9/11 attacks, the United States destroyed the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, killed tens of thousands of individuals in those and other Middle Eastern countries, and continues to maintain a troop presence and to undertake targeted assassination campaigns via “drones,” or unmanned aerial vehicles, throughout the Middle East. Asymmetric warfare is a term that describes desperation tactics used by the weak against the strong. The strong usually prevail.

ECONOMIC STRENGTH AS A RESULT OF MILITARY POWER

Generally speaking, the world's dominant military powers seek to use that power to enhance their economic power, thus establishing a virtuous cycle in which military and economic might reinforce and enhance one another. One example, of course, is Great Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The British financial and industrial revolutions allowed Great Britain to become the world's greatest power, particularly in the maritime realm. At its peak, Britain's Royal Navy was generally larger and more combat effective than the next two or three largest European fleets. Naval strength served British economic interests as Britain used its fleet to expand the British empire at an average annual pace of 100,000 square miles between 1815 and 1865.
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Perhaps not all portions of this empire were economically beneficial
to Britain but, in general, its overseas possessions gave Britain privileged access to commodities and raw materials and a more-or-less captive market for British manufactured goods. The Royal Navy and occasional “boots on the ground” also protected British property and investments in regions such as Egypt, whose own rulers often showed insufficient respect for the property rights of foreigners. For example, in 1882, British warships bombarded Alexandria in a response to a threat by the new Egyptian government to expropriate British bondholders with investments in Egypt.
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For more than a century, international and intraempire trade and investment, protected by the Royal Navy, made Britain the world's wealthiest as well as its most powerful nation.

In a similar vein, America's economic power in the middle decades of the twentieth century allowed it to vault to a position of military preeminence at the end of World War II. In 1945, America's naval fleet consisted of 1,200 major warships and its air fleet boasted more than 2,000 heavy bombers. Its aircraft carriers and marine amphibious divisions gave the United States the capacity to project power throughout the world and, of course, it briefly possessed a monopoly on nuclear weapons.

As the British and others had in the past, America used its power to rebuild much of the world's economic system in a way that generally served American economic interests. The post–World War II economic settlement, more or less imposed upon the Western world by the United States (as Russia was imposing a self-serving economic settlement on its domain), included a number of elements. The first was privileged American access to strategic materials—particularly oil. This was accomplished in part by an American anticolonialist policy that pressured Great Britain to surrender its colonial possessions that, like the oil-rich kingdoms of the Middle East, quickly became American protectorates. Second, through such institutions as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the United States strongly promoted a program of free trade from which it expected to benefit as the world's greatest manufacturing power. Third, through these and other institutions, the United
States became the major source of international credit and the American dollar became the world's reserve currency. Credit allowed foreign governments and industries to purchase American goods, and the role of the dollar as a reserve currency gave the United States great leverage and flexibility in international bond and money markets.

British world preeminence lasted little more than a century, coming to an end as a result of the rise of other military and economic powers like America and Germany and the ruinous costs of two major wars in the twentieth century.
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And, of course, a number of authors have argued that American “global economic and military leadership is also in the process of coming to an end as America faces new economic and military rivals such as China.” In his well-known book,
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
, historian Paul Kennedy asserts that the American decline is in large measure a result of the tendency of great powers to rely too heavily on military might and spend excessively on warfare. “If too large a proportion of the state's resources is diverted from wealth creation and allocated instead to military purposes, then that is likely to lead to a weakening of national power over the longer term,” Kennedy declared.
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To Kennedy and other theorists of American decline, there seems to be a kind of inevitability to the process. Great powers amass wealth, build powerful military forces with which to defend and promote their military power, spend too much on their military efforts, and go into a period of decline. If the United States succumbs to this sort of imperial overreach, which is by no means certain, it will be in large measure because of a set of decisions initiated during the Cold War in the name of national security. As I have observed elsewhere, what could be called the dark side of American exceptionalism is the nation's often excessive willingness to go to war.
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If, however, the United States is able to avoid this sort of imperial decline, thanks will in no small measure be due to the prescience of James Madison, who was determined to place the constitutional war power in the collective hands of Congress. Madison thought, correctly, that executives, be they kings or presidents, had a tendency,
contra
General Lee, to become too fond of war. Congressional war powers, Madison thought, would leash what he and Jefferson liked to call the “dogs of war.” Presidents and kings tended to see only the benefits of war while Congress, representing those who actually fought and died in wars, tended to be more cognizant of the costs.
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Congressional war powers, coupled with a lively popular politics, provided an element of self-correction to compensate for the nation's often excessive bellicosity. Historically, after every war or skirmish, the United States sharply curtailed its military spending and went back to its mundane economic and civil pursuits. Political scientist Ira Katznelson refers to this pattern as expressive of America's “flexible capacity” to meet its military needs.
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Though, as we shall see in
chapter 5
, some wartime agencies were occasionally able to avoid postwar retrenchment by blending into the civilian bureaucracy. Congressional war powers coupled with popular politics helped to forestall America's militarist and imperialist inclinations. America could be a great power without committing itself to full-blown imperialism and succumbing to imperial overreach.

In particular, the American government's reliance upon ordinary citizens to fight as well as finance war efforts has often sparked significant mass political mobilization both in support of and in opposition to presidential war policies. To begin with, the recruitment of troops—especially through conscription—and concomitant efforts to rally citizen support for military undertakings often energizes popular political organization and activity both in support of and in opposition to the war effort. For example, as political scientist Theda Skocpol has shown, the Civil War and both world wars prompted the formation of hundreds of patriotic, civic, and service organizations such as the Grange, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the Red Cross.
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Some organizations were sponsored by the government itself. For instance, the American Farm Bureau Federation was organized with federal assistance during World War I to spur food production. Similarly, the Knights of Columbus received government support in exchange for its advocacy of military service for working-class Catholics.
Many of these groups became politically active, promoting causes ranging from labor reform to temperance.

At the same time, individuals and groups asked to bear the costs of war often feel emboldened to make new political demands and seek new political rights. As we saw earlier, in both America and Europe, war has been closely associated with expansion of suffrage. Revolutionary War militiamen called to place their lives at the service of the nation thought themselves just as entitled to vote as their betters who risked only property. Indeed, the revolutionary militia was known as a breeding ground for radical democrats. In 1776, the Philadelphia Committee of Privates, an organization of Pennsylvania militiamen, advised voters to “Let no man represent you disposed to form any rank above that of Freeman.”
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The sentiments of armed militiamen could not be ignored in the suffrage debates that followed the success of the revolutionary cause. Throughout the colonies, citizen soldiers pressed for and helped to win expanded voting rights. Organizations of state militiamen demanded an end to property restrictions for suffrage on the ground that those asked to fight should not be barred from voting. In Maryland, groups of armed militiamen went to the polls in 1776 demanding to vote whether or not they could meet the state's existing property requirements for voters. In some instances, those denied the right to vote threatened to refuse to continue to fight. The result in Maryland and other states was a general expansion of suffrage during the revolutionary period designed to accommodate the demands of those Americans being asked to fight. Subsequently, the War of 1812 led to suffrage reforms in a number of states on the argument that “men who were good enough to fight were good enough to vote.”
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Women's suffrage in the United States, as in England and Canada, was partially brought about by the First World War, on the basis of the notion that women were more likely to support the war effort if they possessed the right to vote.
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Most recently, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, lowering the voting age to 18, was designed in part to bolster support among young men who were then being conscripted for service in the Vietnam War.

While energizing the government's supporters, mobilization for war can also galvanize foes of the government's military efforts. Virtually every American war has engendered opposition from one or another quarter, and often opposition to war has been the basis for passionate rhetoric and intense bouts of organizational activity. Abolitionists, for example, castigated the 1846 Mexican War as a campaign to expand slavery and organized a fierce, if ultimately ineffective, movement to oppose President Polk's policies. Though its opponents failed to block the war, their organizational efforts helped bring about the creation of the Free Soil party, which subsequently became a major component of the Republican coalition.
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