The Art of Manliness - #436： The Worth of War

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00:00:59.520 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. Now, you've

00:01:04.060 probably heard that Edwin Starr song, War. What is it good for? Edwin said, absolutely

00:01:08.920 nothing. My guest today makes the provocative argument that war is in fact good for a lot

00:01:12.920 of things. His name is Benjamin Ginsberg. He's a professor of political science at John Hopkins

00:01:16.620 University. And in his book, The Worth of War, he argues that while war certainly is terrible

00:01:21.060 in the death and destruction it wreaks, it also gives rise to many of the political structures,

00:01:25.500 technologies, and conveniences that society benefits from. We begin our conversation

00:01:28.940 discussing how war is what gave rise to many things we take for granted in the modern world,

00:01:32.940 including nation states, engineering, leadership strategies, and large-scale organizing. We also

00:01:37.940 discuss many of the life-saving medical advances that have been made thanks to war, including

00:01:41.520 sanitation, vaccinations, trauma surgery, and prosthetics. Professor Ginsberg then makes the

00:01:46.340 case that war is the ultimate test of rationality as it unsparingly eliminates bad ideas and bad

00:01:52.000 thinking, and he gives some examples of that. We then discuss how war has counterintuitively

00:01:56.920 advanced civil liberties, like voting, during the 19th and 20th century. This is a thought-provoking

00:02:02.300 conversation that's going to give you plenty of grist to consider and discuss with your friends.

00:02:05.920 After it's over, make sure to check out our show notes at aom.is slash worth of war.

00:02:10.200 All right, Benjamin Ginsberg, welcome to the show.

00:02:22.700 Delighted to be with you.

00:02:24.000 So there's that song that we probably all heard, War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely nothing.

00:02:30.240 But you got a book out called The Worth of War, arguing, no, actually, war is good for some things.

00:02:36.380 What got you thinking about the benefits of war to a society? Because that's a pretty provocative

00:02:41.700 thing to think about.

00:02:42.900 Yeah, well, actually, it was that bumper sticker, you know, war is not the answer. And I thought,

00:02:49.400 well, you know, it probably depends on the question. And war is actually the answer to

00:02:56.100 the great questions of politics. Statehood, for example, which states will exist? The states that

00:03:03.440 exist today are the results of a thousand year long culling out process, which was primarily based

00:03:11.680 on the ability to wage war. Those states that weren't able to wage war successfully or weren't

00:03:18.060 willing to engage in warfare, they no longer exist. So this idea that we should always give peace a

00:03:26.880 chance, that war isn't worth anything. Well, if we succumbed to that illusion, there's little doubt

00:03:33.020 whatsoever that the United States of America would, you know, in a relatively short order,

00:03:40.180 cease to exist. War is also the answer to the question of who will occupy what territory.

00:03:46.620 You know, there isn't a single square inch of territory on the face of the earth that didn't

00:03:52.620 used to belong to somebody else. North America once belonged to sets of Native American tribes.

00:04:00.640 It's occupied by the descendants of the white settlers and other immigrants as a result of war.

00:04:08.440 The Native Americans were defeated and driven out. A large part of the United States, we took by war

00:04:16.080 from Spanish settlers who had previously taken it by force from Native American groups like the Incas and

00:04:25.940 the Aztecs and the Aztecs and what have you, look at the history of any square inch of territory on the face

00:04:31.740 of the earth. And what you will see is the result of centuries of warfare. And I'm going to assume that 500

00:04:41.320 years from now, or even less, some of the states that currently exist, and some of the territory they

00:04:48.640 currently hold will have gone elsewhere. And war also decides who is going to wield power within a

00:04:58.020 territory. You know, if you take the history of the United States, that question, the large question,

00:05:04.140 was settled by wars, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War. Only in the aftermath of those wars did the

00:05:11.900 survivors discuss, you know, minutiae of territorial settlement. So in my view, war is the answer. 0.98

00:05:22.760 That bumper sticker is wrong. War is the answer to the most important, the largest questions of

00:05:28.920 political life. Now, we don't like that. You know, we Americans in particular like to think

00:05:35.220 that everything can be discussed, that all problems can be resolved through peaceful and cheerful

00:05:43.680 discussion. But unfortunately, that's not true. You know, in the course of doing my research, I really

00:05:50.140 only found one group, one group that was absolutely true to pacifist principles. One group, and these were

00:05:59.820 the Moriori of the Chatham Islands. The Moriori were, by religion and by custom, totally pacifistic.

00:06:10.540 Well, their little island was invaded by the Taranaki Maori. And the Maori, the Moriori refused to fight. 0.97

00:06:20.400 And the Maori, unfortunately, killed and ate them. So that, to me, is the, is one of the lessons, 0.98

00:06:30.500 one of the unfortunate lessons of the real world, as the Germans like to say,

00:06:36.040 the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. And in the world as it is, those who are unwilling

00:06:44.420 or unable to fight, get killed and eaten. And besides answering questions of statehood

00:06:50.460 and territories, you also argue that a lot of other advancements in civilization, art, technology,

00:06:58.780 philosophy, happen during times of war. Because we often think this idea that intuitively makes

00:07:04.300 sense. If we're in a time of peace, that's when all this innovation is going to happen. But you say,

00:07:09.740 no, actually, if you look back at human history, when a lot of the innovations happened in

00:07:14.340 human history, that civilization was embroiled in warfare. Any examples of that?

00:07:19.480 Well, you know, going back to ancient times, engineering, the term engineering,

00:07:26.680 referred to the construction of military machinery. The Greeks, the ancient Greeks,

00:07:33.000 were the masters of engineering. They invented many of the engineering principles that are still

00:07:40.080 with us today, the winch, the pulley, the hoist, the crane. And these were invented to power engines of

00:07:48.360 war. The Romans cheerfully borrowed all of these things, improved on them, and conquered a big chunk 0.80

00:07:55.560 of the world. The Romans were especially impressed during the famous siege of Syracuse. Syracuse had

00:08:02.840 among its citizens, famous Greek mathematician and inventor, a fellow named Archimedes. And Archimedes built

00:08:11.260 a variety of devices that were used to keep the Romans at bay. The famous claw of Archimedes,

00:08:18.500 which was a device that on a series of levers and pulleys could reach down from the cliff into the

00:08:25.820 harbor below and pull Roman warships out of the harbor, drop them, and dash them against the rocks.

00:08:32.840 Now, the Romans were incredibly impressed by this, and Roman soldiers were ordered to capture this

00:08:40.600 fellow and not to harm him because the Romans wanted to put him to work. Well, unfortunately,

00:08:46.440 one soldier did kill Archimedes, but nevertheless, the Romans made use of these principles for their own

00:08:52.960 weapons. And moreover, the winch, the pulley, the hoist, the crane, the screw, these became important

00:08:59.860 factors in civilian economies of all early states and continue to be important today. You know, ships,

00:09:07.380 all of the mechanisms that we use for farming, machines of all sorts depend upon these Greek 1.00

00:09:13.140 military inventions. Other modern-day principles that owe their origins to warfare would include

00:09:24.580 the idea of bureaucracy. Now, we may not like bureaucracy particularly, I don't, but it's

00:09:30.820 necessary to keep the world moving. And bureaucracy was initially developed as a mechanism for keeping

00:09:41.840 armies together. Bureaucracy derives from military personnel management, from military training,

00:09:47.960 logistics. The first bureaucracies were charged with organizing military forces. And in fact,

00:09:58.920 the Romans, one of their great innovations was the bureaucratization of military leadership.

00:10:04.340 In the ancient world, an army was led by an individual, a prince, a king, an Alexander the Great,

00:10:12.020 who rode out at the head of his forces. Well, if that individual was killed, sometimes the army would

00:10:18.760 collapse. Well, the Romans bureaucratized military leadership. They divided their legions

00:10:24.860 into a variety of different portions, and each portion was led by an officer. And those officers

00:10:36.040 collectively provided the leadership of a legion. So instead of one single general upon whose fate the

00:10:43.560 whole war depended, the Romans bureaucratized military efforts to great advantage. And of course, 0.69

00:10:49.720 bureaucracy is the mechanism we use to run all civilian and military and civil government operations

00:10:58.840 today. Bureaucracy is a nuisance, but it is the most efficient form of organization. Or to take the

00:11:06.480 obvious example, technology. Many, if not most, of the technologies upon which we depend today were

00:11:16.180 developed for military uses. Sonar, radar, the internet, microwave, nuclear power, robotics,

00:11:23.860 microelectronics. All of these were developed because the state saw military advantages to be

00:11:32.200 derived that way and invested large sums of money into what previously had been just theories. Usually

00:11:40.940 war doesn't produce theories, but it does produce applications, technologies. And though initially these

00:11:48.940 are used for warfare, sooner or later these become drivers of the civilian economy.

00:11:53.860 I mean, the other day I flew on a jet aircraft. Well, jets, as everyone knows, were developed

00:12:01.140 first by the Germans and then copied by the Americans and the Russians and others to use in military

00:12:07.880 aircraft. So, you know, the idea that war doesn't lead anywhere, you know, is just false. War is terrible,

00:12:18.020 but we have to look it squarely in the eye and ask what is there to be learned from it.

00:12:22.660 I would also add that the most important lesson of war is rationality. You know, it's very conventional

00:12:32.060 to see war as irrational. Why would people do such a terrible thing to one another? But the great

00:12:39.640 principle of warfare is irrationality, is rationality. Let me refer listeners to the great Greek historian

00:12:49.080 Thucydides and Thucydides who wrote the history of the Peloponnesian Wars. Now, Thucydides in one of his

00:12:57.280 portions, sometimes called the Melian Dialogue, discusses what happened when the Athenian army landed on the

00:13:06.600 island of Milos, little island in the Aegean. The Melians didn't want the Athenian invaders and the Athenians 0.99

00:13:16.100 said, look, we're not here to bother you. We're not interested in your island. We are just interested

00:13:24.200 in constructing a naval base and we're not going to bother you in any way. Well, the Melians said, 0.99

00:13:31.480 no, you've got to get out of here. We'll fight. The Athenians said, look, our army is 10 times as

00:13:38.140 large as yours. What's the point of fighting when we're not going to hurt you anyway? Well,

00:13:43.400 the Melians said, your army may be larger, but our cause is just and we know the gods will support us.

00:13:51.700 The Athenians said, well, you know, we are second to none in our reverence for the gods. There's no

00:13:57.940 question. However, it's been our observation that the gods tend to favor the larger army.

00:14:05.540 Well, the Melians wouldn't listen, attack the Athenian forces and were routed.

00:14:09.800 And Thucydides draws a lesson from this story. Thucydides says war is a stern teacher. And what

00:14:19.300 it teaches is to think rationally. If you can't think rationally, chances are you're going to be

00:14:27.480 defeated and possibly destroyed. And Thucydides says this lesson learned in war often is internalized

00:14:36.480 by warring cultures. They learn to think rationally. You know, and if we move forward in time a little 0.55

00:14:44.860 bit, we can find many such examples. You know, the Lakota Sioux, people, Americans are familiar with

00:14:53.140 this, the Lakota in the 19th century became convinced that a series of religious rituals

00:15:01.060 would protect them from the bullets of cavalrymen. So they danced something called the ghost dance

00:15:09.520 and then wore ghost shirts, which were, if properly sanctified, were alleged to turn aside bullets.

00:15:17.840 Well, it didn't quite work out. It didn't turn aside bullets. The result was the destruction of the

00:15:23.820 Lakota at the hands of the U.S. cavalry. Again, they didn't think rationally and as a result were

00:15:31.580 destroyed. Or consider World War II. Why didn't the Germans win? The Germans were on the verge of

00:15:38.960 victory. You know, German tanks were at the gates of Moscow and the Russians seemed utterly unable to

00:15:46.160 defend themselves for a time. Well, something happened. First, Stalin, who was just as crazy as Hitler, 0.82

00:15:54.380 retreated into his dacha, didn't speak to anyone, and when he came out after a couple of weeks, 0.93

00:16:00.120 he was a changed man and called for Marshal Zhukov and turned the army over to Zhukov. Stalin had decided

00:16:07.720 to think straight. Hitler, on the other hand, was never able to overcome the lenses or the blinders of 0.87

00:16:15.780 Nazi ideology. Here he had an army which needed food and provisions to be obtained in the

00:16:23.760 Ukraine. At the same time, because of Nazi ideology, he had forces brutalizing the Ukrainian peasants upon

00:16:32.020 whom the army would depend for food and provisions. It made no sense and contributed to the logistical

00:16:39.820 downfall of the Wehrmacht. Or one might say chasing out of Germany all the Jewish physicists who then 1.00

00:16:50.560 built the atom bomb for the Americans also made no sense. So here, you know, Thucydides would have

00:16:56.660 understood. Thucydides said war is a stern teacher. Stalin was willing to learn the lesson. Hitler was not. 0.70

00:17:04.960 And Hitler was defeated. That is the ultimate lesson of warfare. War teaches you to think 0.77

00:17:12.980 straight or else. If you can't think straight, you're not likely to be around later to talk about

00:17:19.860 it. Right, because it's the ultimate competition, right? We're all... Ultimate competition. Right.

00:17:25.100 And going back to, you know, some of the benefits, the technological advances that come from warfare,

00:17:30.520 I think a lot of people don't realize this, but a lot of medical advancements come from warfare. So

00:17:35.540 saving life comes from the lessons we learned in war. Yeah, that's ironic. Many medical advances,

00:17:42.760 including the use of antibiotics, came about because of military needs. Also, many surgical techniques

00:17:50.420 that were used for many years thereafter were learned or at least honed in military surgical hospitals

00:17:58.680 in front line, you know, just behind the front lines. Absolutely true. The use of blood for

00:18:05.660 transfusions, blood, various blood products, all of these came because of military necessity

00:18:11.980 and then became major factors in saving lives among civilians. It's ironic, you know, at the cost of life,

00:18:21.860 we learn how to save life. Yeah, I think also sanitation.

00:18:24.680 Sanitation. Sanitation, absolutely. Was another big one. And I think in the recent wars we've been

00:18:29.760 experiencing in the United States and the Middle East, like prosthetics have advanced considerably

00:18:36.280 because of all the IEDs, which, I mean, I'm not saying this is like, oh, so great, you know,

00:18:39.900 people lost limbs, but it's terrible. But like, as a result of that, other people benefit from the

00:18:45.520 advancements in prosthetics. Absolutely. This is what I keep coming back to. War is terrible.

00:18:50.980 War is horrible. Everyone who has ever been in a war knows that. On the other hand, war is something

00:18:59.920 that we humans engage in all the time. And we need to look at it carefully to understand it and to see

00:19:07.460 how our society is shaped by warfare. And, you know, the truth is that war has secondary effects

00:19:17.960 that produce often great nations, great cultures, and enormous scientific advances. You know, it's no

00:19:27.280 accident that, you know, the great imperial powers that waged war all the time also became centers of

00:19:36.220 science, centers of engineering, and even centers of culture. You know, look at the United States.

00:19:43.280 No country has waged war more frequently than the United States of America. We like to think of

00:19:49.880 ourselves as very peaceful, but we go to war a lot. By some counts, we've gone to war more than almost

00:19:55.840 anyone else in recent history. And at the same time, we've become a great center of science and

00:20:02.160 engineering. Culture, people might argue, but certainly science and engineering. And a lot of that

00:20:08.100 science and engineering derives from our military efforts. I mean, right now, advances in robotics

00:20:14.880 and microelectronics are coming about because of inventions. The drone, for example, invented for

00:20:24.500 military uses. And also, artificial intelligence is the next, from what I've read.

00:20:29.260 Absolutely. Artificial intelligence. And, you know, what will be next, I don't know. But there's

00:20:34.760 sort of no limit to this kind of forced incubation. In the absence of war, what often happens is that,

00:20:43.580 you know, societies become complacent. Things are good enough. And the people who, you know,

00:20:50.920 who are selling and producing products of some particular sort are, you know, happy enough with

00:20:56.940 them. But war stresses everything. Things that seem to be okay in a peacetime world turn out not to be so

00:21:06.280 good in the competition of warfare. You know, aircraft construction. Well, propeller aircraft were pretty

00:21:12.680 good. Nobody needed to replace them. Jets are better. And the transition from propeller to jet

00:21:21.020 came about because of intensive military competition, because of World War II. So, war is terrible.

00:21:30.000 War is awful. But war also has a number of consequences. You know, the modern world, for

00:21:38.120 better or worse, is the product of warfare. And the things that we take for granted are often

00:21:44.320 results of warfare. Well, and you mentioned, we move away from sort of like, you know, technology,

00:21:50.660 very visceral technology. But like, you also mentioned, you know, bureaucracy is a type of

00:21:54.020 technology that warfare developed. But you also argue in the book, you know, our conceptions of

00:21:59.280 leadership, organization that we have in the civilian world, whether you're in a university or a

00:22:04.900 business, like warfare helped refine those ideas of what we're using today.

00:22:09.960 Absolutely. And also, you know, our contemporary science of planning. You know, today we plan before

00:22:16.860 we act. And planning has become quite an important profession, both in civilian and military applications.

00:22:24.320 No corporation would do much of anything without planning. And planning derives from military necessity.

00:22:32.500 You know, the great writers on warfare, Clausewitz, Cotilia, Sun Tzu, these individuals in

00:22:39.880 their writings emphasize the importance of planning. You know, both Cotilia and Sun Tzu. Cotilia was an

00:22:46.480 Indian strategist of the ancient world, Sun Tzu, a Chinese strategist. Both say that the commander

00:22:53.520 who enters into a war without a plan is a fool and is going to be defeated. The commander who enters a 0.99

00:22:59.780 war with a very well-conceived plan, which takes into account the capabilities of the enemy,

00:23:07.400 his own capabilities, that individual is likely to be victorious. Now, it seems obvious, but absent

00:23:15.600 warfare, planning was not something in which people habitually engaged. Planning was important because

00:23:22.140 it became important because it kept your civilization alive in warfare. You had to plan what you were going

00:23:29.120 to do. You know, again, if we lived in a world where other people, where no one was violent, it would be

00:23:36.180 wonderful. Okay, we would probably be happier and more secure. But we don't live in such a world. We live

00:23:44.540 in a world where some people are violent, and we have to be prepared to be responsive. And as a result,

00:23:54.240 you know, we learn certain things that should not be ignored because they evolved for military

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00:26:03.780 Well, one of the other counterintuitive arguments you make is that war is something that is enacted by

00:26:11.280 states, right? But you argue that warfare throughout time has actually reduced state brutality. So how is

00:26:21.340 it that like this most brutal of thing, warfare, actually reduces state brutality?

00:26:28.200 Yeah, I mean, that to me is a very interesting phenomenon. When a state engages in war, it has to

00:26:36.480 think about the loyalty of its citizens. It's asking people to fight. And with the advent of mass armies

00:26:46.220 in the 18th century, governments had to reach out to ordinary folks and persuade them to be loyal,

00:26:56.880 to be willing to fight. You know, when armies were small, when they consisted of a small number of

00:27:03.020 mercenary forces or others, this wasn't an issue. However, with the advent of mass armies, which in

00:27:11.340 modern times came about during the French Revolution, governments had to think seriously about popular

00:27:19.560 support. You know, after the French Revolution, France was prostrate. Its economy was shattered. The

00:27:28.120 army, which had been the largest in Europe, was scattered, had no officers. And the other armies,

00:27:35.100 the other states of Europe saw an opportunity to pick off pieces of French territory. So a series of

00:27:41.620 coalitions led by the British attacked France from all sides. And at first, the French couldn't defend

00:27:48.860 themselves. But then the government hit upon something novel. It called upon the citizens of France

00:27:57.300 France to come forward to defend the fatherland. Now, most of the people living in France didn't know

00:28:03.800 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 0.92

00:28:55.160 of laughed at it because they saw lightly armed rabble. But these soldiers were actually willing 1.00

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 0.96

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 0.96

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 0.67

00:33:29.100 defeated Germany, the world would be very, very different. You know, in some respects, the world 0.81

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 1.00

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, 0.83

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 1.00

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 0.75

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 1.00

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 artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy the show, you've gotten something out of it. I'd appreciate

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00:41:34.080 thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think

00:41:37.360 gets something out of it. As always, thank you for your continued support. Until next time,

00:41:40.760 this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

00:41:53.300 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - August 29, 2018

#436： The Worth of War

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