Excellent opinion by Krugman. Give Crimea back and, indeed, watch out for China. Although, they don't need to start wars in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet etc. - they already have.
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Why We Fight Wars
A century has
passed since the start of World War I, which many people at the time declared
was “the war to end all wars.” Unfortunately, wars just kept happening. And
with the headlines from Ukraine getting scarier by the day, this seems like a
good time to ask why.
Once upon a
time wars were fought for fun and profit; when Rome overran Asia Minor or Spain
conquered Peru, it was all about the gold and silver. And that kind of thing
still happens. In influential research sponsored by the World Bank, the Oxford
economist Paul Collier has shown that the best predictor of civil war, which is all too common
in poor countries, is the availability of lootable resources like diamonds.
Whatever other reasons rebels cite for their actions seem to be mainly
after-the-fact rationalizations. War in the preindustrial world was and still
is more like a contest among crime families over who gets to control the
rackets than a fight over principles.
If you’re a
modern, wealthy nation, however, war — even easy, victorious war — doesn’t pay.
And this has been true for a long time. In his famous 1910 book “The Great Illusion,” the
British journalist Norman Angell argued that “military power is socially and
economically futile.” As he pointed out, in an interdependent world (which
already existed in the age of steamships, railroads, and the telegraph), war
would necessarily inflict severe economic harm even on the victor. Furthermore,
it’s very hard to extract golden eggs from sophisticated economies without
killing the goose in the process.
We might add
that modern war is very, very expensive. For example, by any estimate the
eventual costs (including things like veterans’ care) of the Iraq war will end
up being well over $1 trillion, that
is, many times Iraq’s entire G.D.P.
So the thesis
of “The Great Illusion” was right: Modern nations can’t enrich themselves by
waging war. Yet wars keep happening. Why?
One answer is
that leaders may not understand the arithmetic. Angell, by the way, often gets
a bum rap from people who think that he was predicting an end to war. Actually,
the purpose of his book was to debunk atavistic notions of wealth through
conquest, which were still widespread in his time. And delusions of easy
winnings still happen. It’s only a guess, but it seems likely that Vladimir
Putin thought that he could overthrow Ukraine’s government, or at least seize a
large chunk of its territory, on the cheap — a bit of deniable aid to the
rebels, and it would fall into his lap.
And for that
matter, remember when the Bush administration predicted that overthrowing
Saddam and installing a new government would cost only $50 billion or $60 billion?
The larger
problem, however, is that governments all too often gain politically from war,
even if the war in question makes no sense in terms of national interests.
Recently Justin
Fox of the Harvard Business Review suggested that the roots of the Ukraine crisis
may lie in the faltering performance of the Russian economy. As he noted, Mr.
Putin’s hold on power partly reflects a long run of rapid economic growth. But
Russian growth has been sputtering — and you could argue that the Putin regime
needed a distraction.
Similar
arguments have been made about other wars that otherwise seem senseless, like Argentina’s
invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982, which is often attributed
to the then-ruling junta’s desire to distract the public from an economic
debacle. (To be fair, some scholars are highly critical of this claim.)
And the fact is
that nations almost always rally around their leaders in times of war, no
matter how foolish the war or how awful the leaders. Argentina’s junta briefly
became extremely popular during the Falklands war. For a time, the “war on
terror” took President George W. Bush’s approval to dizzying heights, and Iraq
probably won him the 2004 election. True to form, Mr.
Putin’s approval ratings have
soared since the Ukraine crisis began.
No doubt it’s
an oversimplification to say that the confrontation in Ukraine is all about
shoring up an authoritarian regime that is stumbling on other fronts. But
there’s surely some truth to that story — and that raises some scary prospects
for the future.
Most immediately,
we have to worry about escalation in Ukraine. All-out war would be hugely
against Russia’s interests — but Mr. Putin may feel that letting the rebellion
collapse would be an unacceptable loss of face.
And if
authoritarian regimes without deep legitimacy are tempted to rattle sabers when
they can no longer deliver good performance, think about the incentives China’s
rulers will face if and when that nation’s economic miracle comes to an end —
something many economists believe will happen soon.
Starting a war
is a very bad idea. But it keeps happening anyway.
