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"What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"
Madeline Albright, 1992
Yes, what's the point of a military?
I suppose to answer this properly you need to go back to the question of what's the point of having a government.
The Western view since the the enlightenment is that government serves the people. We, the people, by majority agree to do things together for our own good - we are a community.
There were other reasons for governments in the past. Some motivations were
- to seek security in greater numbers.
- to do things together in order to be able to exploit others.
- to organise an effort of many to worship some deities.
The enlightenment view - as documented in the philosophical construct of the
contrat social - has been the dominant in Western circles on the surface. Another rationale ("To do things together in order to be able to exploit others.") has been more of an undercurrent, particularly in countries that had a rather dysfunctional political culture or a dictatorial regime at the time.
"to seek security in greater numbers" became rather the motivation behind supranational alliances than behind individual governments.
The hawkish party (which is not necessarily congruent with a political party) tends to emphasise "to seek security in greater numbers" as a key purpose of government. This is particularly evident in the utterly ignorant nonsense that government is merely meant to provide security against criminals and foreigners. And I call this utterly ignorant because it is - the function of providing rule of law regarding properties is completely essential to any wealth, for example. There would be no private property and hardly any functional markets without enforcement of rules regarding property and trade.
So the hawkish party espouses that security is what government about (not social security, of course). The problem with this is that their actions betray them. They behave according to another paradigm - "to do things together in order to be able to exploit others" at any opportunity given, though with a minor variation nowadays: They're not so much proponents of exploiting as of harming, dictating and at times eliminating others. This variation is but a cosmetic one, though. Nowadays exploitation isn't about taking away more wealth than is effort required to take it. Exploitation is nowadays at best about exploiting the capacity of others top take a beating in order to make oneself more comfortable psychologically. Many "problems" that can supposedly be addressed with aggressive military power are not material problems to the hawkish party. Defiant loudmouths and people with a very much different culture seem to be outright favourite targets to the hawkish party.
To princes of old government served their own and their dynasty's well-being, to modern 'hawkish party' partisans it appears to serve to alleviate their psychological stress.
My line - as repeated again and again on this blog - is a very different one, one rooted in economic theory. I follow the notion of government by and for the people.
Government action for the people must not do more harm to the people than good - which leads to a simple (though only theoretical) criterion for judging government action: The net benefit (benefit minus costs) should be maximised.
To conquer in order to exploit is simply not profitable any more, and thus cannot be considered a subset of government by and for the people. The benefits that government can bestow on the people with military power are mostly keeping peace (sparing the people the damages of war) and in worst case restoring the peace at minimised costs. Deterrence and defence.
There's sometimes a little benefit to be gained by the entertainment factor - parades, fascinating videos of war (remember the 1991 war porn?), positive feelings of pride. There are also a few other benefits such as disaster aid. No such secondary benefits come anywhere close to the benefit of keeping the peace, and such secondary benefits can either be provided at lesser costs by civilian organisations or the military is the most efficient institution to deliver those because their costs are sunk anyway.
All this leads to another cornerstone of what I write a lot about; the benefits from military power are limited. You don't get much more benefit from spending more once you succeeded at keeping the peace without concessions. This leads to much criticism of overspending, inefficiencies and spending that's not cost-efficient for deterrence or defence.
There is one philosophical uncertainty in all this, though: Benefits are not absolute. Even famous economists like to pretend they are, and pretend that one currency unit means the same to one person as to another, but there's no evidence to back this up. It's merely an assumption that makes matters calculable.
Philosophers have not yet found a definitive answer to how to value benefits (or even only money). They have theories, but none are fully satisfactory. There's also the information problem - only a god-like being would know how much value goods and services truly have to a person.
This keeps us from being able to claim with 100 per cent certainty that the satisfaction from seeing things getting blown up is less important than the suffering of the people who used to live or work in those buildings, or lost friends and relatives in there.
The "for the people" aspect adds another complication; how would we weigh the suffering of foreigners in a cost-benefit calculation?
Philosophy, economics and rational thought don't necessarily matter to people, of course. Some people are simply locked-in in opinions that were built on fears, aversions, disrespect and emotional needs. They would be fine with giant government expenses to beat up some loudmouths on another continent if only the government dudes don't show up on the doors and take share of the costs right away. Abstract public debt (delayed and magnified costs) is a much more comfortable price to pay. The connection is rarely seen this way - just as a dog doesn't understand why it gets punished for something it did hours ago. We, too, are animals with limited ability to process complex affairs.
Maybe you - the reader - are one of those who think (and write) that I should stick to military stuff and stay out of political issues because I'm "idiotic" about those.
Well, I like to think that the gargantuan efforts that sustain governments should be worth it. I do not see any evidence that aggressive military/foreign policies are worth it - but I see a lot of people whom I do not trust when they pretend that they have solid, conclusive reasoning behind their opinions.
S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
P.S.: This was meant to be about inter-state warfare. Wars of independence are much less clear-cut.
P.S. again: Well, I attempted to keep this blog post at an easily readable length. That was probably a mistake, there's much more that should have been mentioned. I'll think about other ways to get the thoughts across.
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