In my view Somin's plea to "give war a chance" fails.
If you are interested in war and peace, you should listen to this debate.
Proudly delegitimizing the state since 2005
"Aye, free! Free as a tethered ass!" —W.S. Gilbert
"All the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and . . . the State should be abolished." —Benjamin Tucker
"You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." —James Madison
"Fat chance." —Sheldon Richman
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Bryan Caplan on Pacifism
I highly recommend listening to Bryan Caplan's debate with Ilya Somin on the question of pacifism (i.e., opposition to war, not opposition to violent individual self-defense). Listen or download it here. I found the debate an illuminating discussion of theory and history, and -- admitting my bias forthrightly -- I believe Bryan carried the day. Some relevant matters did not come up -- such as the deep domestic effects of a national security state, the structural consequences of a military-industrial complex, and Public Choice considerations regarding rent-seeking and mission creep -- which strengthen Bryan's case.
I think Bryan makes a good case against aggressive war, as a policy. He allows that sometimes aggressive wars can leave the world better off, but we are poor at foresight, and anyway the incentives for governments are wrong.
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite convinced by his case against defensive war, which he elaborates here. (The best part of his argument: What's wrong with defensive wars is "the same thing wrong with every war.") As one of the commenters to that blog post put it, "a marginal increase in pacifism would be a very good thing, but a total change to pacifism reduces the costs of aggressive war to zero." I agree with Bryan that in many (most?) wars, the citizens of the defending country would have been better or no worse off if their government had immediately surrendered. But if that became a policy, wouldn't the worst get on top?