Armistice Day
Today is Armistice Day. It marks the end of an era.
Before the First World War, the western understanding of warfare was that it made plain things noble. It allowed superior individuals to show their valor, to exercise a virtue that both transformed themselves and offered a shining example to those around them. To act in the face of danger was what men did, and for them to do it properly, you needed a war.
Yes, there were a few naysayers out there — Thoreau, Mark Twain, Moorfield Storey — but the consensus view held that war made weak things strong, boys into men, and good nations into great ones. Yes, war was horrible. No one doubted it. But to be sublime, a thing must, on some level, be horrible. So was war — a great, terrible proving ground for the man and the nation.
Industrialized war, the thinking often went, would do all of this on an even grander scale. Just as mechanization made shirts and steel faster and better, mechanization would make warfare faster and better, too. Men of valor could be, and would be, mass produced. This view of war can be found in thinkers from the great to the pitiful, from G. W. F. Hegel to Edward Mandell House. For them, not only was war great and sublime, but it was thought to be getting better and better.
World War I changed all that. From the early months of the conflict, thinking people realized that modern warfare would certainly be more productive, if “productive” was quite the right word for it. It would not, however, be more ennobling. Modern warfare would be capable of killing on a scale never before seen. Sure, there had been some hints of it — the U.S. Civil War, the Crimean War — but this was different, particularly to most Europeans.
Personal valor meant less, not more, in the era of mustard gas and the artillery barrage. To show valor, one has to face a danger and in some sense exert a force against it. To be placed in a hole and left to wonder helplessly about one’s fate, while everyone around you randomly falls dead, isn’t valorous. It’s horrid and nothing more.
I know I will get some pushback on this, but I will say it anyway — personal valor means even less in the face of nuclear war, in which one minute you are there, and the next you can be unmade. Few if any in the nineteenth century appreciated what industrialism would do to war, but this was it. As Ludwig von Mises put it, “[I]n the long run war and the preservation of the market economy are incompatible. Capitalism is essentially a scheme for peaceful nations… If the efficiency of capitalism is directed by governments toward the output of instruments of destruction, the ingenuity of private business turns out weapons which are powerful enough to destroy everything. What makes war and capitalism incompatible with one another is precisely the unparalleled efficiency of the capitalist mode of production.”
To have an industrial capitalism is to have the ability to wage war on a scale that obliterates all pretense of humanity. That is what we commemorate today — an appalling sacrifice, and an appalling responsibility that we can never again be free of.
Here here. Apocalypse now.Report
(It’s always a little bit 1915 in my living room.)Report
I can’t remember how many years ago there was an article in The Atlantic charting the ever rising worldwide casualty rate from war. Then suddenly in 1945 it plummets and for the next 50-odd years has held steady at a dull roar.
Free DVD of your choice to the person who can name the black swan.Report
Integration of the Military?Report
Nookleear Freaking BombsReport
Ding ding ding.
My search fu has failed me, so a friend at The Atlantic is try to scare up the article. I remember the infographic as being stunning.
Send e-mail to claim your prize!Report
The black swan (if it even exists) is not so obviously nuclear weapons. Fat Man and Little Boy were pathetic nothings compared to Czar Bomba invented nearly twenty years later. The death toll from their combined employment in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which we missed) was paltry compared to the conventional firebombing of Japan that preceeded nuclear attacks. There is a case to be made that peace has prevailed for so long because of the sheer dominance of global affairs by at first two relatively balanced superpowers, then one, and of course an ever-increasing economic interdependence.
There is also a more practical case to be made that the Soviets who were then approaching Tokyo from the north assumed the U.S. supply of the “new bombs” was limitless and chose to simply not make an ill-fated land grab. I’m not really familiar with the situation in Europe in 1945 but imagine it was equally nuanced. Anyways, my point is that it probably didn’t happen that everyone saw the bomb, said, wow, let’s not start anything with America, and then denounced war forever. There is a solid case to be made that the nuclear peace theory is overrated.
And what this has to do with Armistice Day is that Armistice Day celebrates an armistice, not a surrender. World War II will be seen by future historians as merely an extention of WWI after every party involved had time to rest and regroup (and a few switched sides). Because it was a complete surrender from both Germany and Japan with occupying victors and everything, it can be compared with the last time such a thing happened, which was after the Napoleonic Wars; the Council of Vienna more or less held for the entirety of the 19th century, minus a few scuffles and proxy wars, which is far longer than the post WWII order held.
My third point: given the huge death tolls from dictators killing their own people (think Pol Pot, Mao, Saddam Hussein) which spiked after WWII but wouldn’t be included in the definition of “war casualties”, is it at all fair to say that such a chart is misleading?
Taken altogether I think there’s enough evidence to cast serious doubt on the nuclear peace theory.Report
Who’d have noticed another madman ’round here?Report
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.~
Percy Bysshe ShelleyReport
Why would I listen to some English loser that led a privileged life and never had to sacrifice anything to protect his country’s way of life.Report
You assume Shelley’s life was inconsequential because your definition of strength is war?
I’m quoting that English loser in 2010. I doubt anyone will be quoting you in 300 years time.Report
Shelly’s opinion is inconsequential because he makes claims without any knowledge of what he speaks about. His opinion is just as inconsequential now as it was 300 years ago. I put my money where my mouth is and I joined the Army Reserve, in fact I just got back from five months of active duty.Report
Have you ever committed murder, Scott?
If not, then your opinion is inconsequential. You haven’t any knowledge of what you speak about.
Either put your money where your mouth is — go kill someone — or stop spouting off about how you think murder is wrong.Report
I joined the military during a time of war to defend my country. While I was at the Army’s JAG school I learned that that there is no international law or otherwise that labels one combatant who kills another combatant as a murderer. So it that really the best you can do, Jason?Report
Finding something written in a lawbook doesn’t necessarily make it right. But I’m sure it’s satisfying to believe it so.
And again, have you ever committed murder? I mean, out of uniform, not in it. If not, murder could well be just fine — and you’d have no way of knowing it. At least going by your own argument. Put up or shut up!Report
Where in any of my posts did I say murder was wrong or right for that matter? At least read what I actually wrote before you twist it to try and make a point. By the way, Shelly never served in the army so by what right does he call what soldiers do murder?Report
So murder really is okay then?
See, your entire line of argument depends on the implicit premise that murder is wrong. If murder isn’t wrong, then what Shelley said is not a reproach. You have taken it to be one, so you appear entirely committed to the premise.
A simple yes or no will suffice: Is murder wrong?
And after that, I ask again, how can you possibly know? If you haven’t done murder, then you are in the same boat with poor Shelley, an ignorant man who speaks of things he doesn’t know.Report
Shelly was ignorant in calling soldiers murders. He didn’t serve his country but merely relied on the protection others afforded him and in return he called them murders. I have served my country unlike Shelly (and apparently yourself) and don’t consider soldiers to be murderers. You keep focusing on whether murder is right or wrong but that is irrelevant to the question of Shelly’s opinion that soldiers are murderers.Report
Very well. If you can’t bring yourself to call murder wrong, then I will let it drop (for now). I’ll just do my best to remember it the next time you badmouth our good friend Osama bin Laden. Is murder right or wrong? You say it’s irrelevant!
But anyway, if you haven’t been a murderer, how can you know that being a soldier and being a murderer are unlike one another? It once again seems that you, like Shelley, know not whereof you speak.Report
Jason:
How gracious of you to let this drop (for now). At least I’ve been a soldier unlike you or Shelly.Report
Still, if you haven’t been a murderer, then you don’t know whether killing in uniform is the same thing as killing out of uniform. At least, by your own stated standards.
And besides, I didn’t imagine that you wanted my kind serving in the military anyway. It’s rather unfair to prevent me from ever knowing what I’m talking about… and then dismiss me for not knowing what I’m talking about!
But…. while we’re still on the subject, I did — in actual fact — apply for the U.S. Army ROTC out of high school. They offered me a full scholarship and then withdrew it, not because I was gay, but because I had and still have, asthma. I flunked the physical, but I would certainly have gone otherwise.
So anyway… I suppose asthma is to blame for my invincible ignorance, and my second-class status in the knowledge game we’re playing.
But then… how on earth did I know that I wanted to join the army, when I’d never been in it? (And how did you?)Report
you are in the same boat with poor Shelley
Was that deliberate?Report
I’m glad someone caught it.Report
Way blame industrial capitalism? Isn’t industrial totalitarianism just as bad or maybe you think it is better? It isn’t the ingenuity of private business that makes weapons more lethal but the ingenuity of humanity. If the deciding factor was the ingenuity of private business then it stands to reason that weapons made by communist govts would be inferior and they clearly are not.Report
Jason is a libertarian and certainly not arguing against capitalism, I take his point as -capitalism with technology is very effective at getting us what we ask for so we’d better not ask for destruction unless we really mean it.Report
My point still stands, what about totalitarian govt’s with technology. Aren’t they effective at getting what they ask for? Is the system of gov’t important or is it human ingenuity that is important?Report
Totalitarian governments were not terribly good at anything except making weapons of war. A Soviet nuke will kill you just as dead, but Soviet toilet paper was terrible.
Anyway, Matty got my point. Ludwig von Mises was one of the greatest champions of capitalism who ever lived, but even he saw the danger here. In this case, market discipline impels us to peace.Report
Totalitarian gov’t are also very good at killing both there own people and others with those weapons. Are you are willing to admit that human ingenuity is more important than the system of gov’t?Report
I view totalitarian governments here as being more parasitical than anything else. Stalin did steal American nuclear secrets, after all.
And in any event, the question of how totalitarian states perform is extraneous. Capitalist states develop enormous capacities, and sometimes these are capacities for war. Nothing you’ve said makes this at all untrue.Report
But the USSR developed the hydrogen bomb all on their own, and they built some damned good tanks and warplanes too. Totalitarian government are very good at focusing resources, and the military is their most common beneficiary.Report
Soviet toilet paper was excellent, but very hard to get.Report
I had a friend who visited in the mid-80s, when we were kids. His report was that the toilet paper was really, really bad. In previous eras, they used newspapers, which would also qualify, I’d say.Report
“in previous eras” 🙂 We were still using newspapers in ’92, and I’ve heard rumors from friends who’ve gone back since of newspapers being used at the Bolshoi.
Funny thing is that we saw it as simple common sense – why waste good paper on shit? Every once in a while I lapse and the western style again seems wasteful.Report
Moreover, it must be remembered that capitalism is not a system of governance but rather an economic system – a country need not be democratic or republican to be capitalist, nor vice versa. LvM’s point here is that the industrial might of capitalism provides a useful tool for a government (whether authoritarian, totalitarian, or democratic) inclined to war to achieve its aims. That is not “blaming capitalism” in any meaningful sense but rather an acknowledgement that those inclined to war will have no compunction about utilizing capitalism as a particularly effective tool to achievement of those ends, even as they destroy capitalism in the process.
Nor does the fact that capitalism provides a uniquely efficient tool for military capacity necessarily mean that capitalist countries will have inherently superior weapons than non-capitalist countries (although it must be pointed out that this does seem to generally be the case). Rather it means that capitalist countries can maintain or create a tremendous amount of military capacity with comparatively little effect on the economy at large.Report
Yes, state-capitalism can create big swords, turned to butter through anti-statism.
The State orders the swords — free, peaceful consumers under a non-interventionst, limited government order butter.Report
Their propaganda was pretty diesel. And so was their sublime sense of the absurd. There was one Soviet law that every paper produced in psychology or neuroscience had to cite Pavlov at least once. It became kind of an unofficial contest who could most creatively and indirectly reference Pavlov.Report
I had grandparents that I never knew serve in WWI and uncles serve in WWII. One of them was on the Murmansk run, a particularly awful and dangerous assignment running supplies from England to Russia. He never ever spoke of his experiences, but when he died his obituary revealed a long list of impressive medals.
The famous book “The Cruel Sea” is about that theater of combat. Captains of boats that evaded the torpedoes were, according to the book, known to run down men in the water, because they were (a) burning to death in the flaming oil; (b) choking to death on the raw unburned oil that was in their faces and lungs; and (c) freezing to death in the Artic waters, simultaneously. Stopping to pick up the men was impossible due to the threat of torpedoes.
The idea that there is glory in war was created by someone who had forgotten or never faced combat.Report
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori. Report
“Zeus sees to it that from our youthful days
to our old age we must grind away
at wretched war, till, one by one, we die.”
HomerReport
Most excellent summary Jason. Well done.Report