The
State
Conventionally,
the state is defined as an agency with two unique characteristics. First, it is
a compulsory territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction).
That is, it is the ultimate arbiter in every case of conflict, including
conflicts involving itself. Second, the state is a territorial monopolist of
taxation. That is, it is an agency that unilaterally fixes the price citizens
must pay for its provision of law and order.
Predictably,
if one can only appeal to the state for justice, justice will be perverted in
favor of the state. Instead of resolving conflict, a monopolist of ultimate
decision-making will provoke conflict in order to settle it to his own
advantage. Worse, while the quality of justice will fall under monopolistic
auspices, its price will rise. Motivated like everyone else by self-interest
but equipped with the power to tax, the state agents' goal is always the same:
to maximize income and minimize productive effort.
Instead
of concentrating on the internal consequences of the institution of a state,
however, I will focus on its external consequences, i.e., foreign rather than
domestic policy.
For
one, as an agency that perverts justice and imposes taxes, every state is
threatened with "exit." Especially its most productive citizen may
leave to escape taxation and the perversions of law. No state likes this. To
the contrary, instead of seeing the range of control and tax base shrink, state
agents prefer that they be expanded. Yet this brings them in conflict with
other states. Unlike competition between "natural" persons and
institutions, however, the competition between states is eliminative. That is,
there can be only one monopolist of ultimate decision-making and taxation in
any given area. Consequently, the competition between different states promotes
a tendency toward political centralization and ultimately one single world
state.
Further,
as tax-funded monopolists of ultimate decision-making, states are inherently
aggressive institutions. Whereas "natural" persons and institutions
must bear the cost of aggressive behavior themselves (which may well induce
them to abstain from such conduct), states can externalize this cost onto their
taxpayers. Hence, state agents are prone to become provocateurs and aggressors
and the process of centralization can be expected to proceed by means of
violent clashes, i.e., interstate wars.
Moreover,
given that states must begin small and assuming as the starting point a world
composed of a multitude of independent territorial units, something rather
specific about the requirement of success can be stated. Victory or defeat in
interstate warfare depend on many factors, of course, but other things such as
population size being the same, in the long run the decisive factor is the
relative amount of economic resources at a state's disposal. In taxing and
regulating, states do not contribute to the creation of economic wealth.
Instead, they parasitically draw on existing wealth. However, state governments
can influence the amount of existing wealth negatively. Other things being
equal, the lower the tax and regulation burden imposed on the domestic economy,
the larger the population will tend to grow and the larger the amount of
domestically produced wealth on which the state can draw in its conflicts with
neighboring competitors. That is, states which tax and regulate their economies
comparatively little — liberal states — tend to defeat and expand their
territories or their range of hegemonic control at the expense of less-liberal
ones.
This
explains, for instance, why Western Europe came to dominate the rest of the
world rather than the other way around. More specifically, it explains why it
was first the Dutch, then the British and finally, in the 20th century, the
United States, that became the dominant imperial power, and why the United
States, internally one of the most liberal states, has conducted the most
aggressive foreign policy, while the former Soviet Union, for instance, with
its entirely illiberal (repressive) domestic policies has engaged in a
comparatively peaceful and cautious foreign policy. The United States knew that
it could militarily beat any other state; hence, it has been aggressive. In
contrast, the Soviet Union knew that it was bound to lose a military
confrontation with any state of substantial size unless it could win within a
few days or weeks.
From
Monarchy and Wars of Armies to Democracy and Total Wars
Historically,
most states have been monarchies, headed by absolute or constitutional kings or
princes. It is interesting to ask why this is so, but here I have to leave this
question aside. Suffice it to say that democratic states (including so-called
parliamentary monarchies), headed by presidents or prime-ministers, were rare
until the French Revolution and have assumed world-historic importance only
after World War I.
While
all states must be expected to have aggressive inclinations, the incentive
structure faced by traditional kings on the one hand and modern presidents on
the other is different enough to account for different kinds of war. Whereas
kings viewed themselves as the private owner of the territory
under their control, presidents consider themselves as temporary caretakers.
The owner of a resource is concerned about the current income
to be derived from the resource and the capital value embodied
in it (as a reflection of expected future income). His interests are long-run,
with a concern for the preservation and enhancement of the capital values
embodied in "his" country. In contrast, the caretaker of
a resource (viewed as public rather than private property) is
concerned primarily about his current income and pays little or no attention to
capital values.
The
empirical upshot of this different incentive structure is that monarchical wars
tended to be "moderate" and "conservative" as compared to
democratic warfare.
Monarchical
wars typically arose out of inheritance disputes brought on by a complex
network of inter-dynastic marriages. They were characterized by tangible
territorial objectives. They were not ideologically motivated quarrels. The
public considered war the king's private affair, to be financed and executed
with his own money and military forces. Moreover, as conflicts between
different ruling families, kings felt compelled to recognize a clear
distinction between combatants and noncombatants and target their war efforts exclusively
against each other and their family estates. Thus military historian Michael
Howard noted about 18th-century monarchical warfare:
On
the [European] continent commerce, travel, cultural and learned intercourse
went on in wartime almost unhindered. The wars were the king's wars. The role
of the good citizen was to pay his taxes, and sound political economy dictated
that he should be left alone to make the money out of which to pay those taxes.
He was required to participate neither in the decision out of which wars arose
nor to take part in them once they broke out, unless prompted by a spirit of
youthful adventure. These matters were arcane regni, the concern of
the sovereign alone. [War in European History, 73]
Similarly
Ludwig von Mises observed about the wars of armies:
In
wars of armies, the army does the fighting while the citizens who are not
members of the army pursue their normal lives. The citizens pay the costs of
warfare; they pay for the maintenance and equipment of the army, but otherwise
they remain outside of the war events. It may happen that the war actions raze
their houses, devastate their land, and destroy their other property; but this,
too, is part of the war costs which they have to bear. It may also happen that
they are looted and incidentally killed by the warriors — even by those of
their "own" army. But these are events which are not inherent in
warfare as such; they hinder rather than help the operations of the army
leaders and are not tolerated if those in command have full control over their
troops. The warring state which has formed, equipped, and maintained the army
considers looting by the soldiers an offense; they were hired to fight, not to
loot on their own. The state wants to keep civil life as usual because it wants
to preserve the tax-paying ability of its citizens; conquered territories are
regarded as its own domain. The system of the market economy is to be
maintained during the war to serve the requirement of warfare. [Nationalökonomie,
725–26]
In
contrast to the limited warfare of the ancien regime, the era
of democratic warfare — which began with the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars, continued during the 19th century with the American War of
Southern Independence, and reached its apex during the 20th century with World
War I and World War II — has been the era of total war.
In
blurring the distinction between the rulers and the ruled ("we all rule
ourselves"), democracy strengthened the identification of the public with
a particular state. Rather than dynastic property disputes which could be
resolved through conquest and occupation, democratic wars became ideological
battles: clashes of civilizations, which could only be resolved through
cultural, linguistic, or religious domination, subjugation and, if necessary,
extermination. It became increasingly difficult for members of the public to
extricate themselves from personal involvement in war. Resistance against
higher taxes to fund a war was considered treasonous. Because the democratic
state, unlike a monarchy, was "owned" by all, conscription became the
rule rather than the exception. And with mass armies of cheap and hence easily
disposable conscripts fighting for national goals and ideals, backed by the
economic resources of the entire nation, all distinctions between combatants
and noncombatants fell by the wayside. Collateral damage was no longer an
unintended side-effect but became an integral part of warfare. "Once the
state ceased to be regarded as 'property' of dynastic princes," Michael
Howard noted,
and
became instead the instrument of powerful forces dedicated to such abstract
concepts as Liberty, or Nationality, or Revolution, which enabled large numbers
of the population to see in that state the embodiment of some absolute Good for
which no price was too high, no sacrifice too great to pay; then the 'temperate
and indecisive contests' of the rococo age appeared as absurd anachronisms. [ibid. 75–76]
Similar
observations have been made by the military historian and major-general J.F.C.
Fuller:
The
influence of the spirit of nationality, that is of democracy, on war was
profound, … [it] emotionalized war and, consequently, brutalized it; ….
National armies fight nations, royal armies fight their like, the first obey a
mob — always demented, the second a king, generally sane. … All this developed
out of the French Revolution, which also gave to the world conscription — herd
warfare, and the herd coupling with finance and commerce has begotten new
realms of war. For when once the whole nation fights, then is the whole
national credit available for the purpose of war. [War and Western
Civilization, 26–27]
And
William A. Orton thus summarized matters:
Nineteenth-century
wars were kept within bounds by the tradition, well recognized in international
law, that civilian property and business were outside the sphere of combat.
Civilian assets were not exposed to arbitrary distraint or permanent seizure,
and apart from such territorial and financial stipulations as one state might
impose on another, the economic and cultural life of the belligerents was
generally allowed to continue pretty much as it had been. Twentieth-century
practice has changed all that. During both World Wars limitless lists of
contraband coupled with unilateral declarations of maritime law put every sort
of commerce in jeopardy, and made waste paper of all precedents. The close of
the first war was marked by a determined and successful effort to impair the
economic recovery of the principal losers, and to retain certain civilian
properties. The second war has seen the extension of that policy to a point at
which international law in war has ceased to exist. For years the Government of
Germany, so far as its arms could reach, had based a policy of confiscation on
a racial theory that had no standing in civil law, international law, nor
Christian ethics; and when the war began, that violation of the comity of
nations proved contagious. Anglo-American leadership, in both speech and
action, launched a crusade that admitted of neither legal nor territorial
limits to the exercise of coercion. The concept of neutrality was denounced in
both theory and practice. Not only enemy assets and interests, but the assets
and interests of any parties whatsoever, even in neutral countries, were
exposed to every constraint the belligerent powers could make effective; and
the assets and interests of neutral states and their civilians, lodged in
belligerent territories or under belligerent control, were subjected to
practically the same sort of coercion as those of enemy nationals. Thus
"total war" became a sort of war that no civilian community could
hope to escape; and "peace loving nations" will draw the obvious
inference. [The Liberal Tradition: A Study of the Social and Spiritual
Conditions of Freedom, 251–52]
Excursus:
The Doctrine of Democratic Peace
I
have explained how the institution of a state leads to war; why, seemingly
paradoxical, internally liberal states tend to be imperialist powers; and how
the spirit of democracy has contributed to the de-civilization in the conduct
of war.
More
specifically, I have explained the rise of the United States to the rank of the
world's foremost imperial power; and, as a consequence of its successive
transformation from the early beginnings as an aristocratic republic into an
unrestricted mass democracy which began with the War of Southern Independence,
the role of the United States as an increasingly arrogant, self-righteous and
zealous warmonger.
What
appears to be standing in the way of peace and civilization, then, is above all
the state and democracy, and specifically the world's model democracy: the
United States. Ironically if not surprisingly, however, it is precisely the
United States, which claims that it is the solution to the quest for peace.
The
reason for this claim is the doctrine of democratic peace, which goes back to
the days of Woodrow Wilson and World War I, has been revived in recent years by
George W. Bush and his neo-conservative advisors, and by now has become
intellectual folklore even in liberal-libertarian circles. The theory
claims:
Democracies
do not go to war against each other.
Hence,
in order to create lasting peace, the entire world must be made democratic.
And
as a — largely unstated — corollary:
Today,
many states are not democratic and resist internal — democratic — reform.
Hence,
war must be waged on those states in order to convert them to democracy and
thus create lasting peace.
I
do not have the patience for a full-blown critique of this theory. I shall
merely provide a brief critique of the theory's initial premise and its
ultimate conclusion.
First: Do democracies not go to war against
each other? Since almost no democracies existed before the 20th century the
answer supposedly must be found within the last hundred years or so. In fact,
the bulk of the evidence offered in favor of the thesis is the observation that
the countries of Western Europe have not gone to war against each other in the
post–World War II era. Likewise, in the Pacific region, Japan and South Korea
have not warred against each other during the same period. Does this evidence
prove the case? The democratic-peace theorists think so. As
"scientists" they are interested in "statistical" proof,
and as they see it there are plenty of "cases" on which to build such
proof: Germany did not war against France, Italy, England, etc.; France did not
war against Spain, Italy, Belgium, etc.. Moreover, there are permutations:
Germany did not attack France, nor did France attack Germany, etc.. Thus, we
have seemingly dozens of confirmations — and that for some 60 years — and not a
single counterexample. But do we really have so many confirming cases?
The
answer is no: we have actually no more than a single case at hand. With the end
of World War II, essentially all of — by now: democratic — Western Europe (and
democratic Japan and South Korea in the Pacific region) has become part of the
US Empire, as indicated by the presence of US troops in practically all of
these countries. What the post World War II period of peace then
"proves" is not that democracies do not go to war against each other
but that a hegemonic, imperialist power such as the United States did not let
its various colonial parts go to war against each other (and, of course, that
the hegemon itself did not see any need to go to war against its satellites —
because they obeyed — and they did not see the need or did not dare to disobey
their master).
Moreover,
if matters are thus perceived — based on an understanding of history rather
than the naïve belief that because one entity has a different name than another
their behavior must be independent from one another — it becomes clear that the
evidence presented has nothing to do with democracy and everything with
hegemony. For instance, no war broke out between the end of World War II and
the end of the 1980s, i.e., during the hegemonic reign of the Soviet Union,
between East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania,
Estonia, Hungary, etc. Was this because these were communist dictatorships and
communist dictatorships do not go to war against each other? That would have to
be the conclusion of "scientists" of the caliber of democratic-peace
theorists! But surely this conclusion is wrong. No war broke out because the
Soviet Union did not permit this to happen — just as no war between Western
democracies broke out because the United States did not permit this to happen
in its dominion. To be sure, the Soviet Union intervened in Hungary and
Czechoslovakia, but so did the United States at various occasions in
Middle-America such as in Guatemala, for instance. (Incidentally: How about the
wars between Israel and Palestine and Lebanon? Are not all these democracies?
Or are Arab countries ruled out by definition as undemocratic?)
Second: What about democracy as a solution to
anything, let alone peace? Here the case of democratic-peace theorists appears
even worse. Indeed, the lack of historical understanding displayed by them is
truly frightening. Here are only some fundamental shortcomings:
First, the theory involves a conceptual
conflation of democracy and liberty (freedom) that can only be called
scandalous, especially coming from self-proclaimed libertarians. The foundation
and cornerstone of liberty is the institution of private property; and private
— exclusive — property is logically incompatible with democracy — majority
rule. Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of
communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything
else. Incidentally, before the outbreak of the democratic age, i.e., until the
beginning of the 20th century, government (state) tax-expenditures (combining all
levels of government) in Western European countries constituted somewhere
between 7–15% of national product, and in the still young United States even
less. Less than a hundred years of full-blown majority rule have increased this
percentage to about 50% in Europe and 40% in the United States.
Second, the theory of democratic peace
distinguishes essentially only between democracy and non-democracy, summarily
labeled dictatorship. Thus not only disappear all aristocratic-republican
regimes from view, but more importantly for my current purposes, also all
traditional monarchies. They are equated with dictatorships a la Lenin,
Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao. In fact, however, traditional monarchies have
little in common with dictatorships (while democracy and dictatorship are
intimately related).
Monarchies
are the semi-organic outgrowth of hierarchically structured natural — stateless — social orders. Kings are the heads of extended
families, of clans, tribes, and nations. They command a great deal of natural,
voluntarily acknowledged authority, inherited and accumulated over many
generations. It is within the framework of such orders (and of aristocratic
republics) that liberalism first developed and flourished. In contrast,
democracies are egalitarian and redistributionist in outlook; hence, the
above-mentioned growth of state power in the 20th century. Characteristically,
the transition from the monarchical age to the democratic one, beginning in the
second half of the 19th century, has seen a continuous decline in the strength
of liberal parties and a corresponding strengthening of socialists of all
stripes.
Third, it follows from this that the view
democratic-peace theorists have of conflagrations such as World War I must be
considered grotesque, at least from the point of view of someone allegedly
valuing freedom. For them, this war was essentially a war of democracy against
dictatorship; hence, by increasing the number of democracies, it was a
progressive, peace-enhancing, and ultimately justified war.
"Democracy
has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and
rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else."
In
fact, matters are very different. To be sure, pre-war Germany and Austria may
not have qualified as democraticas England, France, or the United
States at the time. But Germany and Austria were definitely not dictatorships.
They were (increasingly emasculated) monarchies and as such arguably as liberal —
if not more so — than their counterparts. For instance, in the United States,
anti-war proponents were jailed, the German language was essentially outlawed,
and citizens of German descent were openly harassed and often forced to change
their names. Nothing comparable occurred in Austria and Germany.
In
any case, however, the result of the crusade to make the world
safe for democracy was less liberal than what had existed
before (and the Versailles peace dictate precipitated World War II). Not only
did state power grow faster after the war than before. In particular, the
treatment of minorities deteriorated in the democratized post–World War I
period. In newly founded Czechoslovakia, for instance, the Germans were
systematically mistreated (until they were finally expelled by the millions and
butchered by the tens of thousands after World War II) by the majority Czechs.
Nothing remotely comparable had happened to the Czechs during the previous Habsburg
reign. The situation regarding the relations between Germans and southern Slavs
in pre-war Austria versus post-war Yugoslavia respectively was similar.
Nor
was this a fluke. As under the Habsburg monarchy in Austria, for instance,
minorities had also been treated fairly well under the Ottomans. However, when
the multicultural Ottoman Empire disintegrated in the course of the 19th
century and was replaced by semi-democratic nation-states such as Greece,
Bulgaria, etc., the existing Ottoman Muslims were expelled or exterminated.
Similarly, after democracy had triumphed in the United States with the military
conquest of the Southern Confederacy, the Union government quickly proceeded to
exterminate the Plains Indians. As Mises had recognized, democracy does not work in multi-ethnic
societies. It does not create peace but promotes conflict and has potentially
genocidal tendencies.
Fourth and intimately related, the
democratic-peace theorists claim that democracy represents a stable
"equilibrium." This has been expressed most clearly by Francis
Fukuyama, who labeled the new democratic world order as the "end of
history." However, overwhelming evidence exists that this claim is
patently wrong.
On
theoretical grounds: How can democracy be a stable equilibrium if it is
possible that it be transformed democratically into a
dictatorship, i.e., a system which is considered not stable?
Answer: that makes no sense!
Moreover,
empirically democracies are anything but stable. As indicated,
in multi-cultural societies democracy regularly leads to the discrimination,
oppression, or even expulsion and extermination of minorities — hardly a
peaceful equilibrium. And in ethnically homogeneous societies, democracy
regularly leads to class warfare, which leads to economic crisis, which leads
to dictatorship. Think, for example, of post-Czarist Russia, post-World War I
Italy, Weimar Germany, Spain, Portugal, and in more recent times Greece,
Turkey, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, and Pakistan.
Not
only is this close correlation between democracy and dictatorship troublesome
for democratic-peace theorists; worse, they must come to grips with the fact
that the dictatorships emerging from crises of democracy are by no means always
worse, from a classical liberal or libertarian view, than what would have
resulted otherwise. Cases can be easily cited where dictatorships were
preferable and an improvement. Think of Italy and Mussolini or Spain and
Franco. In addition, how is one to square the starry-eyed advocacy of democracy
with the fact that dictators, quite unlike kings who owe their rank to an
accident of birth, are often favorites of the masses and in this sense highly
democratic? Just think of Lenin or Stalin, who were certainly more democratic
than Czar Nicholas II; or think of Hitler, who was definitely more democratic
and a "man of the people" than Kaiser Wilhelm II or Kaiser Franz
Joseph.
According
to democratic-peace theorists, then, it would seem that we are supposed to war
against foreign dictators, whether kings or demagogues, in order to install
democracies, which then turn into (modern) dictatorships, until finally, one
supposes, the United States itself has turned into a dictatorship, owing to the
growth of internal state power which results from the endless
"emergencies" engendered by foreign wars.
Better,
I dare say, to heed the advice of Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn and, instead of
aiming to make the world safe for democracy, we try making it safe from democracy
— everywhere, but most importantly in the United States.
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