#436： The Worth of War
Episode Stats
Summary
Benjamin Ginsberg argues that while war is terrible in the death and destruction it wreaks, it also gives rise to many political structures, technologies, and conveniences that society benefits from. In his new book, The Worth of War, Ginsberg gives examples of how war has counterintuitively advanced civil liberties during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Now, you've
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probably heard that Edwin Starr song, War. What is it good for? Edwin said, absolutely
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nothing. My guest today makes the provocative argument that war is in fact good for a lot
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of things. His name is Benjamin Ginsberg. He's a professor of political science at John Hopkins
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University. And in his book, The Worth of War, he argues that while war certainly is terrible
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in the death and destruction it wreaks, it also gives rise to many of the political structures,
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technologies, and conveniences that society benefits from. We begin our conversation
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discussing how war is what gave rise to many things we take for granted in the modern world,
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including nation states, engineering, leadership strategies, and large-scale organizing. We also
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discuss many of the life-saving medical advances that have been made thanks to war, including
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sanitation, vaccinations, trauma surgery, and prosthetics. Professor Ginsberg then makes the
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case that war is the ultimate test of rationality as it unsparingly eliminates bad ideas and bad
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thinking, and he gives some examples of that. We then discuss how war has counterintuitively
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advanced civil liberties, like voting, during the 19th and 20th century. This is a thought-provoking
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conversation that's going to give you plenty of grist to consider and discuss with your friends.
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After it's over, make sure to check out our show notes at aom.is slash worth of war.
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All right, Benjamin Ginsberg, welcome to the show.
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So there's that song that we probably all heard, War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely nothing.
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But you got a book out called The Worth of War, arguing, no, actually, war is good for some things.
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What got you thinking about the benefits of war to a society? Because that's a pretty provocative
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Yeah, well, actually, it was that bumper sticker, you know, war is not the answer. And I thought,
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well, you know, it probably depends on the question. And war is actually the answer to
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the great questions of politics. Statehood, for example, which states will exist? The states that
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exist today are the results of a thousand year long culling out process, which was primarily based
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on the ability to wage war. Those states that weren't able to wage war successfully or weren't
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willing to engage in warfare, they no longer exist. So this idea that we should always give peace a
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chance, that war isn't worth anything. Well, if we succumbed to that illusion, there's little doubt
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whatsoever that the United States of America would, you know, in a relatively short order,
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cease to exist. War is also the answer to the question of who will occupy what territory.
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You know, there isn't a single square inch of territory on the face of the earth that didn't
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used to belong to somebody else. North America once belonged to sets of Native American tribes.
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It's occupied by the descendants of the white settlers and other immigrants as a result of war.
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The Native Americans were defeated and driven out. A large part of the United States, we took by war
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from Spanish settlers who had previously taken it by force from Native American groups like the Incas and
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the Aztecs and the Aztecs and what have you, look at the history of any square inch of territory on the face
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of the earth. And what you will see is the result of centuries of warfare. And I'm going to assume that 500
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years from now, or even less, some of the states that currently exist, and some of the territory they
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currently hold will have gone elsewhere. And war also decides who is going to wield power within a
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territory. You know, if you take the history of the United States, that question, the large question,
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was settled by wars, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War. Only in the aftermath of those wars did the
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survivors discuss, you know, minutiae of territorial settlement. So in my view, war is the answer.
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That bumper sticker is wrong. War is the answer to the most important, the largest questions of
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political life. Now, we don't like that. You know, we Americans in particular like to think
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that everything can be discussed, that all problems can be resolved through peaceful and cheerful
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discussion. But unfortunately, that's not true. You know, in the course of doing my research, I really
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only found one group, one group that was absolutely true to pacifist principles. One group, and these were
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the Moriori of the Chatham Islands. The Moriori were, by religion and by custom, totally pacifistic.
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Well, their little island was invaded by the Taranaki Maori. And the Maori, the Moriori refused to fight.
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And the Maori, unfortunately, killed and ate them. So that, to me, is the, is one of the lessons,
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one of the unfortunate lessons of the real world, as the Germans like to say,
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the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. And in the world as it is, those who are unwilling
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or unable to fight, get killed and eaten. And besides answering questions of statehood
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and territories, you also argue that a lot of other advancements in civilization, art, technology,
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philosophy, happen during times of war. Because we often think this idea that intuitively makes
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sense. If we're in a time of peace, that's when all this innovation is going to happen. But you say,
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no, actually, if you look back at human history, when a lot of the innovations happened in
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human history, that civilization was embroiled in warfare. Any examples of that?
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Well, you know, going back to ancient times, engineering, the term engineering,
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referred to the construction of military machinery. The Greeks, the ancient Greeks,
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were the masters of engineering. They invented many of the engineering principles that are still
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with us today, the winch, the pulley, the hoist, the crane. And these were invented to power engines of
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war. The Romans cheerfully borrowed all of these things, improved on them, and conquered a big chunk
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of the world. The Romans were especially impressed during the famous siege of Syracuse. Syracuse had
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among its citizens, famous Greek mathematician and inventor, a fellow named Archimedes. And Archimedes built
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a variety of devices that were used to keep the Romans at bay. The famous claw of Archimedes,
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which was a device that on a series of levers and pulleys could reach down from the cliff into the
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harbor below and pull Roman warships out of the harbor, drop them, and dash them against the rocks.
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Now, the Romans were incredibly impressed by this, and Roman soldiers were ordered to capture this
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fellow and not to harm him because the Romans wanted to put him to work. Well, unfortunately,
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one soldier did kill Archimedes, but nevertheless, the Romans made use of these principles for their own
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weapons. And moreover, the winch, the pulley, the hoist, the crane, the screw, these became important
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factors in civilian economies of all early states and continue to be important today. You know, ships,
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all of the mechanisms that we use for farming, machines of all sorts depend upon these Greek
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military inventions. Other modern-day principles that owe their origins to warfare would include
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the idea of bureaucracy. Now, we may not like bureaucracy particularly, I don't, but it's
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necessary to keep the world moving. And bureaucracy was initially developed as a mechanism for keeping
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armies together. Bureaucracy derives from military personnel management, from military training,
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logistics. The first bureaucracies were charged with organizing military forces. And in fact,
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the Romans, one of their great innovations was the bureaucratization of military leadership.
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In the ancient world, an army was led by an individual, a prince, a king, an Alexander the Great,
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who rode out at the head of his forces. Well, if that individual was killed, sometimes the army would
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collapse. Well, the Romans bureaucratized military leadership. They divided their legions
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into a variety of different portions, and each portion was led by an officer. And those officers
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collectively provided the leadership of a legion. So instead of one single general upon whose fate the
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whole war depended, the Romans bureaucratized military efforts to great advantage. And of course,
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bureaucracy is the mechanism we use to run all civilian and military and civil government operations
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today. Bureaucracy is a nuisance, but it is the most efficient form of organization. Or to take the
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obvious example, technology. Many, if not most, of the technologies upon which we depend today were
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developed for military uses. Sonar, radar, the internet, microwave, nuclear power, robotics,
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microelectronics. All of these were developed because the state saw military advantages to be
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derived that way and invested large sums of money into what previously had been just theories. Usually
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war doesn't produce theories, but it does produce applications, technologies. And though initially these
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are used for warfare, sooner or later these become drivers of the civilian economy.
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I mean, the other day I flew on a jet aircraft. Well, jets, as everyone knows, were developed
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first by the Germans and then copied by the Americans and the Russians and others to use in military
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aircraft. So, you know, the idea that war doesn't lead anywhere, you know, is just false. War is terrible,
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but we have to look it squarely in the eye and ask what is there to be learned from it.
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I would also add that the most important lesson of war is rationality. You know, it's very conventional
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to see war as irrational. Why would people do such a terrible thing to one another? But the great
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principle of warfare is irrationality, is rationality. Let me refer listeners to the great Greek historian
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Thucydides and Thucydides who wrote the history of the Peloponnesian Wars. Now, Thucydides in one of his
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portions, sometimes called the Melian Dialogue, discusses what happened when the Athenian army landed on the
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island of Milos, little island in the Aegean. The Melians didn't want the Athenian invaders and the Athenians
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said, look, we're not here to bother you. We're not interested in your island. We are just interested
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in constructing a naval base and we're not going to bother you in any way. Well, the Melians said,
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no, you've got to get out of here. We'll fight. The Athenians said, look, our army is 10 times as
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large as yours. What's the point of fighting when we're not going to hurt you anyway? Well,
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the Melians said, your army may be larger, but our cause is just and we know the gods will support us.
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The Athenians said, well, you know, we are second to none in our reverence for the gods. There's no
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question. However, it's been our observation that the gods tend to favor the larger army.
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Well, the Melians wouldn't listen, attack the Athenian forces and were routed.
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And Thucydides draws a lesson from this story. Thucydides says war is a stern teacher. And what
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it teaches is to think rationally. If you can't think rationally, chances are you're going to be
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defeated and possibly destroyed. And Thucydides says this lesson learned in war often is internalized
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by warring cultures. They learn to think rationally. You know, and if we move forward in time a little
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bit, we can find many such examples. You know, the Lakota Sioux, people, Americans are familiar with
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this, the Lakota in the 19th century became convinced that a series of religious rituals
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would protect them from the bullets of cavalrymen. So they danced something called the ghost dance
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and then wore ghost shirts, which were, if properly sanctified, were alleged to turn aside bullets.
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Well, it didn't quite work out. It didn't turn aside bullets. The result was the destruction of the
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Lakota at the hands of the U.S. cavalry. Again, they didn't think rationally and as a result were
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destroyed. Or consider World War II. Why didn't the Germans win? The Germans were on the verge of
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victory. You know, German tanks were at the gates of Moscow and the Russians seemed utterly unable to
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defend themselves for a time. Well, something happened. First, Stalin, who was just as crazy as Hitler,
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retreated into his dacha, didn't speak to anyone, and when he came out after a couple of weeks,
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he was a changed man and called for Marshal Zhukov and turned the army over to Zhukov. Stalin had decided
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to think straight. Hitler, on the other hand, was never able to overcome the lenses or the blinders of
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Nazi ideology. Here he had an army which needed food and provisions to be obtained in the
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Ukraine. At the same time, because of Nazi ideology, he had forces brutalizing the Ukrainian peasants upon
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whom the army would depend for food and provisions. It made no sense and contributed to the logistical
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downfall of the Wehrmacht. Or one might say chasing out of Germany all the Jewish physicists who then
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built the atom bomb for the Americans also made no sense. So here, you know, Thucydides would have
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understood. Thucydides said war is a stern teacher. Stalin was willing to learn the lesson. Hitler was not.
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And Hitler was defeated. That is the ultimate lesson of warfare. War teaches you to think
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straight or else. If you can't think straight, you're not likely to be around later to talk about
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it. Right, because it's the ultimate competition, right? We're all... Ultimate competition. Right.
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And going back to, you know, some of the benefits, the technological advances that come from warfare,
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I think a lot of people don't realize this, but a lot of medical advancements come from warfare. So
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saving life comes from the lessons we learned in war. Yeah, that's ironic. Many medical advances,
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including the use of antibiotics, came about because of military needs. Also, many surgical techniques
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that were used for many years thereafter were learned or at least honed in military surgical hospitals
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in front line, you know, just behind the front lines. Absolutely true. The use of blood for
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transfusions, blood, various blood products, all of these came because of military necessity
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and then became major factors in saving lives among civilians. It's ironic, you know, at the cost of life,
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we learn how to save life. Yeah, I think also sanitation.
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Sanitation. Sanitation, absolutely. Was another big one. And I think in the recent wars we've been
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experiencing in the United States and the Middle East, like prosthetics have advanced considerably
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because of all the IEDs, which, I mean, I'm not saying this is like, oh, so great, you know,
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people lost limbs, but it's terrible. But like, as a result of that, other people benefit from the
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advancements in prosthetics. Absolutely. This is what I keep coming back to. War is terrible.
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War is horrible. Everyone who has ever been in a war knows that. On the other hand, war is something
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that we humans engage in all the time. And we need to look at it carefully to understand it and to see
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how our society is shaped by warfare. And, you know, the truth is that war has secondary effects
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that produce often great nations, great cultures, and enormous scientific advances. You know, it's no
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accident that, you know, the great imperial powers that waged war all the time also became centers of
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science, centers of engineering, and even centers of culture. You know, look at the United States.
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No country has waged war more frequently than the United States of America. We like to think of
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ourselves as very peaceful, but we go to war a lot. By some counts, we've gone to war more than almost
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anyone else in recent history. And at the same time, we've become a great center of science and
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engineering. Culture, people might argue, but certainly science and engineering. And a lot of that
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science and engineering derives from our military efforts. I mean, right now, advances in robotics
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and microelectronics are coming about because of inventions. The drone, for example, invented for
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military uses. And also, artificial intelligence is the next, from what I've read.
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Absolutely. Artificial intelligence. And, you know, what will be next, I don't know. But there's
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sort of no limit to this kind of forced incubation. In the absence of war, what often happens is that,
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you know, societies become complacent. Things are good enough. And the people who, you know,
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who are selling and producing products of some particular sort are, you know, happy enough with
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them. But war stresses everything. Things that seem to be okay in a peacetime world turn out not to be so
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good in the competition of warfare. You know, aircraft construction. Well, propeller aircraft were pretty
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good. Nobody needed to replace them. Jets are better. And the transition from propeller to jet
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came about because of intensive military competition, because of World War II. So, war is terrible.
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War is awful. But war also has a number of consequences. You know, the modern world, for
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better or worse, is the product of warfare. And the things that we take for granted are often
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results of warfare. Well, and you mentioned, we move away from sort of like, you know, technology,
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very visceral technology. But like, you also mentioned, you know, bureaucracy is a type of
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technology that warfare developed. But you also argue in the book, you know, our conceptions of
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leadership, organization that we have in the civilian world, whether you're in a university or a
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business, like warfare helped refine those ideas of what we're using today.
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Absolutely. And also, you know, our contemporary science of planning. You know, today we plan before
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we act. And planning has become quite an important profession, both in civilian and military applications.
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No corporation would do much of anything without planning. And planning derives from military necessity.
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You know, the great writers on warfare, Clausewitz, Cotilia, Sun Tzu, these individuals in
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their writings emphasize the importance of planning. You know, both Cotilia and Sun Tzu. Cotilia was an
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Indian strategist of the ancient world, Sun Tzu, a Chinese strategist. Both say that the commander
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who enters into a war without a plan is a fool and is going to be defeated. The commander who enters a
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war with a very well-conceived plan, which takes into account the capabilities of the enemy,
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his own capabilities, that individual is likely to be victorious. Now, it seems obvious, but absent
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warfare, planning was not something in which people habitually engaged. Planning was important because
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it became important because it kept your civilization alive in warfare. You had to plan what you were going
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to do. You know, again, if we lived in a world where other people, where no one was violent, it would be
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wonderful. Okay, we would probably be happier and more secure. But we don't live in such a world. We live
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in a world where some people are violent, and we have to be prepared to be responsive. And as a result,
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you know, we learn certain things that should not be ignored because they evolved for military
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Well, one of the other counterintuitive arguments you make is that war is something that is enacted by
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states, right? But you argue that warfare throughout time has actually reduced state brutality. So how is
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it that like this most brutal of thing, warfare, actually reduces state brutality?
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Yeah, I mean, that to me is a very interesting phenomenon. When a state engages in war, it has to
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think about the loyalty of its citizens. It's asking people to fight. And with the advent of mass armies
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in the 18th century, governments had to reach out to ordinary folks and persuade them to be loyal,
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to be willing to fight. You know, when armies were small, when they consisted of a small number of
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mercenary forces or others, this wasn't an issue. However, with the advent of mass armies, which in
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modern times came about during the French Revolution, governments had to think seriously about popular
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support. You know, after the French Revolution, France was prostrate. Its economy was shattered. The
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army, which had been the largest in Europe, was scattered, had no officers. And the other armies,
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the other states of Europe saw an opportunity to pick off pieces of French territory. So a series of
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coalitions led by the British attacked France from all sides. And at first, the French couldn't defend
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themselves. But then the government hit upon something novel. It called upon the citizens of France
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France to come forward to defend the fatherland. Now, most of the people living in France didn't know
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they were citizens. They were, you know, subjects of the king or subjects of some local nobleman. But
00:28:10.560
this idea of citizenship, the idea that they had a stake in the nation, this had a powerful effect. And it
00:28:17.840
brought about, through a mix of voluntarism and conscription, the so-called levée en masse,
00:28:24.560
the construction of a huge army, hundreds of thousands of poorly trained soldiers, poorly
00:28:32.600
trained, underarmed, but enthusiastic. These soldiers received political indoctrination. They were told that
00:28:42.280
they were citizens, that they were members of this society, and they had something to fight for.
00:28:48.720
So when this army appeared on the field, the Austrians and the Prussians and the British sort
00:28:55.160
of laughed at it because they saw lightly armed rabble. But these soldiers were actually willing
00:29:02.040
to die for their country, and they overwhelmed the opposition. And all the other governments of
00:29:09.740
Europe saw that they either had to follow the French example, or they would simply disappear from
00:29:16.060
the face of the earth. They'd be overwhelmed by the French. So the other European regimes set
00:29:22.420
about turning their own subjects into citizens. One way they did that was through the creation of
00:29:29.140
schools, where among, in addition to the three R's, they were taught citizen, they taught their kids
00:29:34.320
citizenship. Later on, systems of public welfare evolved, first in the form of benefits for veterans,
00:29:41.960
and then social benefits for everyone. And subsequently, voting rights were seen as a mechanism
00:29:50.280
for more thoroughly linking ordinary folks to the state. Now, you know, we've all heard the slogan,
00:29:58.080
one man, or today they say one person, one vote. But the origins of this slogan are a little bit
00:30:04.580
different. The slogan originated in Sweden, and the full slogan was, one man, one vote, one gun.
00:30:13.740
The idea being that the right to vote would tie citizens to the government and make them willing
00:30:22.120
to fight. You know, during World War I, Britain and Canada gave women the right to vote, but it was
00:30:29.300
very limited. Women who had relatives in the military services were given the right to vote for the
00:30:35.920
duration of the war. Well, they never took it back, but the idea was, again, this notion that giving
00:30:42.080
people here, giving women the right to vote would help persuade them to encourage their loved ones to
00:30:48.560
fight. So a lot of aspects of our society that, in which governments treat citizens well, voting rights,
00:30:57.720
public welfare programs, today, health benefits, et cetera, all of these derive from military necessity.
00:31:07.960
When governments needed people to fight, they found that citizens were more effective than,
00:31:17.620
you know, reluctant or unwilling mercenaries. Now, you know, that should lead us to think about
00:31:24.180
the contemporary period when ours and other governments are shifting away from citizen-soldiers
00:31:31.400
back to much smaller professional armies, nowadays wielding weapons such as drones and increasingly
00:31:41.780
robotic weapons of various sorts that don't require ordinary folks to be involved. You may remember this,
00:31:49.800
but I recall that right after the 9-11 terror attacks, President Bush addressed the nation and
00:31:57.820
everyone was expecting a sort of Churchillian speech, you know, blood, sweat, toil and tears. But you
00:32:04.600
remember what President Bush said? He said, don't worry about anything. We have it all under control.
00:32:09.800
Everybody should go shopping. I asked my wife, you know, do you think it would be okay to go to
00:32:14.660
Macy's or do we have to go to Neiman's? Well, the, the, what I saw here was that in the modern,
00:32:22.520
in modern times, the military didn't really need citizen participation anymore. And I wonder how
00:32:30.420
this will play out over the next century or a century or so. If you don't need citizens to fight,
00:32:36.880
you're under no obligation to treat them as well as they were treated during, during the period of mass
00:32:43.480
armies. That's something to watch. Yeah. I'm curious too. Do you think,
00:32:48.280
and you sort of your research of this, does, does like living in a peaceful time do something
00:32:54.240
to the psyche or I don't know, you can call it soul of the site is like make it flaccid. Does it make
00:32:59.640
it complacent? Like do people kind of get, I don't know, yeah, morally lazy, I guess is the word I'm
00:33:05.560
looking for. Well, you know, when people become accustomed to whatever it is that they experience
00:33:10.760
and when we live in a, in a peaceful time, it's people stop, stop, stop, uh, remembering that
00:33:19.580
the peace we experience is the result of war. Had the United States, um, and Russia and Britain not
00:33:29.100
defeated Germany, the world would be very, very different. You know, in some respects, the world
00:33:35.300
that we live in is still the world that resulted from that great military victory, but we forget,
00:33:43.680
you know, we think that peace is self-perpetuating and that we should, uh, at all costs avoid war.
00:33:54.020
Now, war is to be avoided when possible, but we have to recognize that war eventually overtakes us,
00:34:04.080
eventually we have to be prepared to fight. Now, you know, the United States has compartmentalized
00:34:11.780
fighting. We have a military that is divorced from civilian society. We don't have an army of
00:34:19.560
citizen soldiers anymore. We have a professional army. President Nixon worked to create a professional
00:34:25.160
army because he thought professional soldiers could more easily be used. Remember, um, during the
00:34:32.800
Vietnam war, the New York times would always run these multi-page spreads, faces of the fallen.
00:34:39.300
And we would all pour through these pictures, recognizing people we knew. And this was a very,
00:34:45.040
you know, this was designed to increase popular opposition to the war. Well, during the, uh,
00:34:51.300
Gulf Wars, the New York times did the same thing, but most people I know didn't find anyone they knew
00:34:58.000
and these pages and as a political ploy, you know, just didn't have the same impact. Well,
00:35:05.240
looking beyond the politics of it, what, what, uh, this said to me is that, you know, we've
00:35:11.780
compartmentalized war, war is being undertaken by professional soldiers and military hardware.
00:35:19.120
So the rest of us can live as though war doesn't exist. To most Americans, war is something that
00:35:28.060
they read about or turn the page if they don't want to read about. So Americans live in a, I would
00:35:34.500
say an artificial reality in which the world, their world is peaceful and there is conflict somewhere
00:35:41.780
else. Well, I hate to say this, but sooner or later, this illusion, uh, is likely to be shattered.
00:35:52.200
And at that point, we have to refresh our memory of Thucydides. Thucydides says war is a stern teacher.
00:36:02.600
And if decades of peace haven't, you know, had the effect of, you know, allowing us to forget the
00:36:11.000
lesson, uh, we better learn it damn quickly, or we will join the millions and others who bore in the,
00:36:17.540
the, um, you know, Moriori who refuse to learn that lesson. War is always with us. And, um,
00:36:26.220
you know, the idea that we should always give peace a chance. Well, it's a nice idea. It's a very,
00:36:31.240
very pleasant idea, but that's not what the world that we live in is about. We don't live in a peaceful
00:36:37.380
world. We have, we can't allow that illusion of peace to make us forget that the peace we live
00:36:45.400
in was produced by war can only be protected by war and sooner or later is going to be shattered by
00:36:52.280
war, whether we like it or not. So I'm curious, is it all these benefits of war? I mean, I guess
00:36:57.900
you're, you're, you're not advocating that we come jingoist and like, you know, start wars.
00:37:02.880
So it's just, but it's just like, be ready for it. And also be ready. It's going to happen. You know,
00:37:09.180
there, there, there are several kinds of theories about how you can get rid of war. And there, there
00:37:16.760
are, um, two, uh, main philosophers whose in whose ideas have influenced thinking about how to bring
00:37:25.140
about peace. And those would be Immanuel Kant and Thomas Hobbes, both 19th century political
00:37:32.420
theorists or one 18th century, the other 19th century political theorists. And they believed
00:37:37.740
that that war could be expunged from the face of the earth. Kant produced what is sometimes known as
00:37:46.960
his theory of perpetual peace. Kant observed that democracies didn't seem to go to war, at least not
00:37:56.200
against one another. So his, uh, his observation led him to assert that if the whole world consisted
00:38:04.460
of democracies, there would be no more war. You remember during the, uh, Bush administration,
00:38:10.240
people made this argument in one of, this was one of the arguments in favor of going to war in the
00:38:15.200
Middle East. If we turned all of the Middle Eastern nations into democracy, we would bring
00:38:20.740
about peace in that region. You know, this seems like a nice idea, but turning the world into
00:38:26.640
democracies, especially if they don't want to be democracies would seem to require an awful lot of
00:38:32.340
war as we discovered in the Middle East. Moreover, it's not clear that, that Kant was, uh, was right.
00:38:39.400
The United States of America, which is still the world's premier democracy is also a
00:38:45.080
very war-like country. So I'm not sure that the Kantians, um, have it right. And then there was
00:38:51.340
Hobbes. Hobbes, in his book, The Leviathan, argued that war was a product of the absence of sovereignty.
00:39:00.180
He observed that within a country where, where there was a sovereign power, there was no war.
00:39:06.180
Very, very, very seldom would there be war. Whereas in a world of sovereign powers,
00:39:11.820
they warred against each other all the time. So Hobbes' idea was the Leviathan, a state that
00:39:18.100
encompassed all the nations of the earth and would thereby banish war because there wouldn't be
00:39:24.060
a bunch of competing nations. Well, this idea also has its problems. One is that it would require
00:39:33.280
centuries of warfare to achieve the existence of one sovereign. And then that sovereign, in order to
00:39:41.800
prevent war, to prevent violence within its territory, would probably have to be quite
00:39:47.140
despotic. You know, I hear that North Korea is a very peaceful place, but it keeps several million
00:39:53.600
people incarcerated and brutalizes them. So it's not clear that this is a good trade-off. In fact,
00:40:00.560
people, most people prefer violence to totalitarianism. So the, the two main philosophical
00:40:08.500
principles that people bandy about for ending war both have their serious limitations. I say that,
00:40:17.640
you know, the best we can do is be prepared. The best we can do is understand that war is a fact of life
00:40:27.840
on this planet. And that so long as it is, we need to be prepared for it and be prepared to the extent
00:40:38.240
possible to gain whatever benefits come about because of it. Well, Ben, is there someplace people
00:40:45.120
can go to learn more about the book? Amazon.com, the source of all knowledge.
00:40:50.600
The source of all knowledge, right. Well, Benjamin Ginsberg, this has been a great conversation.
00:40:54.940
Thanks for coming on. Oh, delighted to do it. My guest today was Benjamin Ginsberg. He's the author
00:40:58.600
of the book, The Worth of War. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Also check
00:41:02.760
out our show notes at aom.is slash worth of war, where you find links to resources,
00:41:07.020
ring delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:41:23.300
For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at
00:41:26.680
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00:41:30.460
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00:41:34.080
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00:41:37.360
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