The Nature of Modern Warfare; D. Osterfeld

us toward war. Only if we are cognizant of the processes that cause wars can we ever hope to obviate these warlike tendencies. The crux of this thesis, how ever, is nearly diametrically op posed to today's prevailing ethos which attempts to explain war, more often than not, as the result of the insidious machinations of the industrial magnates or the "warmongering capitalists," or· in sists that by its nature the capi talist system must culminate in violent conflicts and, ultimately, its own catastrophic demise. The position here is to equate classical liberalism and capitalism with peace rather than war. Conver sely, it considers the factors be getting war as endemic, not in socialism per se, but in any type of government economic interven tion of which socialism is merely one form. 205 206 THE FREEMAN April Aggressive Nationalism follows Intervention While everyone is agreed that the cause of war is aggressive na tionalism, the position here is that aggressive nationalism is the nec essary outcome of government in tervention. In other words, statism fosters nationalism. An in-depth study of nearly 1000 wars fought in the West from 500 B. C. to A. D. 1925 was conducted by the sociologist, Pitirim Sorokin. In contrasting the size of the casu alty list to the corresponding pop ulation, he determined that the war magnitude of the first quarter of the twentieth century stood at 52 per 1,000,000 (compared with 17 for the nineteenth century) leading Sorokin to conclude that "the twentieth century will un questionably prove to be the blood iest and most belligerent of all the twenty-five centuries under consideration. "1 - These figures are in accord with the two salient contentions of this article. If a general date can be given for the beginning of the abandonment of the principles of laissez-faire for those of govern ment intervention and control, it would be the 1870's, highlighted by events such as Germany's ap pointment of Bismarck as Chan1 As quoted by Edmund Opitz, Religion and Capitalism (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1970), p. 268.

cellor and the emergence of the first effects of Britain's Reform Bill of 1867. Since that time, the trend has been conspicuously away from limi ted democracy and lais sez-faire and toward government economic interference. We can say, generally, that the age of classical-liberalism was the nine teenth century and that the age of statism extends from the latter part of that century to the present. In applying Dr. Sorokin's find ings to that of our historical sketch, two things we have noted become manifest. On the one hand is the relative peace and tranquil ity enjoyed by a world embracing largely laissez-faire principles. On the other we see, with the substi tution of the deification of the state and rise of the controlled economy for the principles of clas sical liberalism, the concomitant rise of war and international con flict. The question to be considered now is why government interven tion - whether it be socialism or a "mixed" or welfare economy, and whether for humanitarian or in sidious purposes - engenders in ternational conflicts and war.

Domestic Ramifications of Statism The free market is perpetually heading toward equilibrium. Wages and prices are always heading toward a point at which 1972 THE NATURE OF MODERN WARFARE 207 the supply of laborers and of com modities equals the demand for them. Any attempt to interfere with the natural operation of mar ket pricing is destined to engen der economic imbalance, begetting in turn, international conflict. To illustrate how this occurs, we will follow the linkage of events in any government· inter ference. We will assume, moreover, that the intervention occurs under the most propitious circumstances; that it is, in other words, humani tarianly motivated. We will say, for example, that the government has intervened in an endeavor to raise the wages of the hard pressed or to set a. minimum stand ard for the lowest strata of the working force. Surely, most would exclaim, this is a generous act; surely there could be nothing sin ister or pernicious about such a policy; surely this would ease, not aggravate, tension. However, let's examine it more closely.

If wages are forced up, prices also may rise. Either they will rise nearly simultaneously, or the in creased wages will reduce the in come of the entrepreneurs, thus driving the marginal producers out of business and discouraging additional investment in those fields. This diminution in the' amount of capital investment will entail a reduction in the quantity of commodities produced, thus causing prices to rise. And the same thing is true of endeavors to hold prices down. At the lower prices, more is bought. But the reduced price discourages invest ment and once again forces the marginal producers out of busi ness, thereby engendering short ages that can only be corrected by either (1) removing the controls and permitting prices to rise or (2) carrying on production through means of subsidies, which requires higher prices in other fields. Any government interven tion, therefore, must inevitably create imbalances in the economy; these, in turn, tend to bring a rise in production costs and therefore in prices.

This rise in prices, moreover, must have catastrophic interna tional ramifications. Since domes tic wages and prices are artificial ly held above the level set by the free market, the lower prices of fered by imported goods will en courage the buying of the import ed commodities in preference to domestically produced goods. As long as prices domestically are maintained at bloated levels, .this foreign underselling ultimately will force the domestic firms out of business. Moreover, maintain ing wages domestically above their respecti ve equilibrium levels will attract immigrants from abroad. The influx of new laborers will 208 THE FREEMAN April either force the bloated wage level down or engender institutional mass unemployment. The apparent solution for such problems is a policy of autarchy, viz., economic isolation, as best manifested by recource to tariff and migration barriers, exchange controls, and the· like.

International Ramifications: War It should now be evident that a country intent upon controlling wages and prices cannot permit either imports .or immigration. Such penetration would easily and obviously frustrate the planners. Statism, therefore, becomes sy nonomous with autarchy. With the possible exceptions of the U.S. and .U.S.S.R., hardly any nation is ade quately blessed with the means of self-sufficiency; statism and au tarchy, . therefore, .must manifest themselves as a policy of aggres sive nationalism. As Lionel Rob bins observed: "It is really ridicu lous to suppose that such a policy is possible for the majority .... To recommend autarchy as a gen eral policy is to recommend war as an instrument for making au tarchypossible." It may be well to consider this passage further. In the. long run, exports must always equal im ports. The only reason one gives up an obj ect in trade is to acquire that which he does not possess but values more than· what he is giv ing up; similarly, the only need for exports is to pay for the re quired imports. Thus, the greater the imports demanded for sub sistence, the greater the exports required to pay for them.

A nation, in endeavoring to preserve domestic wage and price increases through recourse to tar iff and migration barriers, there by eliminates the possibility of exporting its surplus co~modities and thus acquiring the foreign exchange necessary to purchase imports. There are only three ways to procure the necessities of life: (1) to produce them at home, (2) .to trade for them, or (3) to go to war and take them. If a nation does not possess the kind or the necessary quantities of nat ural resources, and if it does not possess enough fertile agricultural land to provide for its population, then it must trade for these ne cessities. If it erects tariff bar riers and prohibits imports - or if other nations erect tariffs that prohibit exports - a nation is then unable to trade for its necessities. Unless one subscribes to the un likely proposition that the people of one nation will passi vely ac quiesce in permitting either star vation .or a substantial reduction in their standard of living, there is .only one recource left: war.

World Wars I ·and II are replete 1972 THE NATURE OF MODERN WARFARE 209 with support for this hypothesis. 2 It is important to note that be tween the wars, for example, all European nations resorted to very strict anti-immigration laws, in most cases prohibiting immigra tion altogether. Every nation was eager to protect its wage level against enchroachment from na tions with still .lower wage levels. Such policies were bound to en gender serious international fric tion. Moreover, like the "Sozialpoli tik" of pre-1914 Germany, Hitler's Germany endeavored to raise the wage rates of its workers. In do ing so, prices were forced up. Since this would have encouraged imports and thus thwarted the statist schemes, tariff barriers were established. However, the German ban on imports meant that no nation could acquire the necessary German exchange to purchase German exports. Ger many, an industrial nation, was largely dependent upon foreign foodstuffs. It had· to export its industrial commodities in order to obtain much of the needed food.

By eliminating imports, it elim inated, in a like degree, the only means by which it could peaceably attain these necessary agricultural 2 Easily the most lucid and cogent de lineation of this position is to be found in Ludwig von Mises' Omnipotent Gov ernment (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1969). and other products. So, Germany had but one alternative; it had to go to war and take them. Rise of Aggressive Nationalism The nineteenth century was gov erned largely by classical liberal principles. It was, for the most part, a peaceful century. The on slaught of war accompanied the abandonment of these principles. The question to be considered, therefore, is precisely why these policies were discarded. The an swercan be perceived if one real izes that an integral element of this liberalism was democratic rule. It is imperative, however, to appreciate that this was the de mocracy of Tocqueville; that is, a limited democracy. Under the clas sical liberal ideal, the power of the state - the apparatus of com pulsion and control - was severely circumscribed. The crux of this concept was the recognition of individual rights; the sole func tion of the state was simply the suppression of attempts by indi viduals to suppress -other individ uals, that is, to provide a secure and peaceful framework to facil itate social cooperation. While the means for determining who held the reins of government was to be decided democratically, the power and functions of government were significantly curtailed; the de mocracy of the classical liberal 210 THE FREEMAN April tradition was a strictly limited concept.

Before this ideal could be fully implemented, it began, like most ideals, to be abused. As suffrage was extended - which was not nec essarily inimical in itself - this democr~cy became ever less limi t ed. In exchange for votes, the pol iticians began to promise more and more. The function of the state, accordingly, could no longer be restricted to the protection of the life, liberty, and property of its citizens. The interventionist state thus began to supplant the laissez-faire state, even before the latter had been fully established. These statist measures were, in many cases, humanitarianly mo tivated, that is, aiding the poor, as sistance for the jobless, and so on. Nevertheless, the inevitable corol lary of this proliferation of gov ernment intervention was the pre cipitation of aggressive national ism. It was the inevitable result of an ethos that sanctioned the ex tension of government into all phases of life. It was, in short, the emergence of the total state.

Whether it came as autocracy or as the "despotism of the majority" was irrelevant. Significance of National Boundaries In a planned, autarchic econ omy, territorial boundaries are of supreme importance. An isolated nation must possess all of its re quired natural resources. The larger the area under control, the better it can provide for its wants and needs. Yet, no country is blessed with a position of com plete economic self-sufficiency. Au tarchy, accordingly, must manifest itself in aggressive nationalism, in the desire of every country for the control of ever larger areas. What is required to make peace viable, therefore, is a lessening of the significance of boundaries. This could only be attained, however, if the governments of the world were confined in their activ ities to protecting the life, liberty, and property of their citizens. Only then would international boundaries lose their significance.

It would then make no difference whether a nation were large or small; its citizens could derive no benefit or sustain any damage from the extension or loss of ter ritory. Under a laissez-faire sys tem, where all transactions would take place between individuals un impeded by government, the size of a nation would not matter. No one would be aided or hurt by a transfer of territorial jurisdiction, since all property would be held by individuals and all transactions would take place between individ uals. If the primacy of private prop erty and free trade were the rule, 1972 THE NATURE OF MODERN WARFARE 211 at least one of the major causes of war would be all but eliminated. Noone would be artificially or forcibly excluded, by tariff or im migration barriers, from acquir ing any needed goods or natural resources. Noone would be penal ized for having been born a for eigner or of a different race or in a country of limited natural re sources. Under these terms, then, at least one of the causes of war would be effectively ameliorated, if not eliminated entirely.

Conclusion Statism, in so far as it begets autarchy, engenders international antagonisms for which no peaceful solution can be found within the context of our contemporary polit ico-economic ethos. These antag onisms can be relieved only by a change in ideologies. What is need ed to make peace viable is the ac ceptance of the prinicples of lim ited democracy and its economic corollary, the free market. Only by such an advance can we ever hope to surmount at least one of the un derlying factors precipitating in ternational conflicts and war. If this analysis possesses any cogency at all, then at least one thing is surely manifest: all the antiwar marches, protests, dem onstrations, and peace songs from here to China cannot improve the situation one iota. While they may be fun, they are nevertheless fu tile. They are futile because they are premised upon a misunder standing of war. Yet, wars con tinue to occur. Accordingly, war will not be ameliorated, much less abolished, by the mere utterance of platitudes or by shock tactics designed to scare us into peace.

Only the elimination of its root cause can greatly diminish the threat of war. Such a policy, to re peat, entails a change in attitude, a policy impossible until the lead ers and the people of the world are prepared to accept it. ~ IDEAS ON $ LIBERTY To Discipline a Nation WHILE AN INDIVIDUAL peacebreaker can easily be punished and isolated in a penitentiary, a collectivist nation conducting policies of economic nationalism can be disciplined and subjugated only through a full-scale war and subsequent occupation of its terri tory. To discipline a nation that refuses to embrace the doctrines of freedom and free enterprise is an endless and hopeless task. HANS F. SENNHOLZ, "Welfare States at War"