> Industrialization made wars of conquest unprofitable by 1890-1910 or so, and it took the world that long to get a clue
To wit:
“…much of [balance-of-power politics] theory was based on agrarian states or early industrial states. And one of the features of agrarian interstate relations was that returns to war outpaced returns to capital, which is a fancy way of saying you could get richer, faster by conquest than by development. Under those sorts of conditions, most powers were going to be, in some form, ‘revisionist’ powers because most powers would have something to gain by attacking a weaker neighbor and seizing their resources (mostly arable land and peasant farmers to be taxed). Indeed that basic interaction creates much of the ‘churn’ of interstate anarchy: everyone has an incentive to prey on their neighbors, creating the dog-eat-dog brutality of interstate interactions. The only countries without such an interest would be countries that were very small and weak, seeking to avoid being absorbed themselves.
But, as we’ve discussed, industrialization changes all of this: the net returns to war are decreased (because industrial war is so destructive and lethal) while the returns to capital investment get much higher due to rising productivity. In the pre-industrial past, fighting a war to get productive land was many times more effective than investing in irrigation and capital improvements to your own land, assuming you won the war. But in the industrial world, fighting a war to get a factory is many, many less times more effective than just building a new factory at home, especially since the war is very likely to destroy the factory in the first place. This was not always the case! The great wealth of many countries and indeed industrialization itself was built on resources acquired through imperial expansion; now the cost of that acquisition is higher than simply buying the stuff. War is no longer a means to profit, but an emergency response to avoid otherwise certain extreme losses.
So whereas in the old system, almost every power except potentially the hegemon, had something to potentially gain by upending the stability of the system, the economics of modern production means that quite a lot of countries will have absolutely nothing to gain from a war, even a successful one. Now that dispassionate calculation has arguably been true for more than a century; the First World War was an massive exercise in proving that nothing that could be gained from a major power war would be worth the misery, slaughter and destruction of a major power war. Subsequent conflicts have reinforced this lesson again and again, yet conflicts continue to occur. Azar Gat argues in part that this is because humans are both evolved in our biology (and thus patterns of thinking and emotion) as well as our social institutions, for warfare and aggression. We have to unlearn those instincts and redesign those institutions and this process is slow and uneven.”
In every war, someone gains something, but War on Terror was detrimental to the US as a whole, and the American population understands that - which is why the hawks are really unpopular right now. The defeat of H.C. in 2016 can at least partly be explained by the fact that she was considered a foreign policy hawk.
Compare this to wars of Ancient Rome which were actually popular, because they brought home visible wealth.
> yet the "war on terror" happened. US companies gained a lot from that even if the average taxpayer didn't
The War on Terror, and invasion of Iraq, were massive American policy failures. (The article I quoted says as much.) Had Xi not become a dictator and Putin not invaded Crimea and then the rest of Ukraine, American hegemony would be on a downturn as a result of those fumbles.
The stockholders who have seen a third against since 2006?
You’re dragging a red herring. In the past, conquest was popular because it made the conqueror as a whole rich. Today, you’re limited to scratching out whatabouts with one-off and dated examples like Halliburton. The circle of net beneficiaries rivals that of botched aid operations.
Industry has made war, proper war, almost universally stupid for advanced societies.
To wit: “…much of [balance-of-power politics] theory was based on agrarian states or early industrial states. And one of the features of agrarian interstate relations was that returns to war outpaced returns to capital, which is a fancy way of saying you could get richer, faster by conquest than by development. Under those sorts of conditions, most powers were going to be, in some form, ‘revisionist’ powers because most powers would have something to gain by attacking a weaker neighbor and seizing their resources (mostly arable land and peasant farmers to be taxed). Indeed that basic interaction creates much of the ‘churn’ of interstate anarchy: everyone has an incentive to prey on their neighbors, creating the dog-eat-dog brutality of interstate interactions. The only countries without such an interest would be countries that were very small and weak, seeking to avoid being absorbed themselves.
But, as we’ve discussed, industrialization changes all of this: the net returns to war are decreased (because industrial war is so destructive and lethal) while the returns to capital investment get much higher due to rising productivity. In the pre-industrial past, fighting a war to get productive land was many times more effective than investing in irrigation and capital improvements to your own land, assuming you won the war. But in the industrial world, fighting a war to get a factory is many, many less times more effective than just building a new factory at home, especially since the war is very likely to destroy the factory in the first place. This was not always the case! The great wealth of many countries and indeed industrialization itself was built on resources acquired through imperial expansion; now the cost of that acquisition is higher than simply buying the stuff. War is no longer a means to profit, but an emergency response to avoid otherwise certain extreme losses.
So whereas in the old system, almost every power except potentially the hegemon, had something to potentially gain by upending the stability of the system, the economics of modern production means that quite a lot of countries will have absolutely nothing to gain from a war, even a successful one. Now that dispassionate calculation has arguably been true for more than a century; the First World War was an massive exercise in proving that nothing that could be gained from a major power war would be worth the misery, slaughter and destruction of a major power war. Subsequent conflicts have reinforced this lesson again and again, yet conflicts continue to occur. Azar Gat argues in part that this is because humans are both evolved in our biology (and thus patterns of thinking and emotion) as well as our social institutions, for warfare and aggression. We have to unlearn those instincts and redesign those institutions and this process is slow and uneven.”
https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coa...