Why We Fight

February 1, 2022
A bracing look at the many reasons nations go to war. "There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefitted." So wrote Sun Tzu, whose The Art of War is a classic text. Blattman, a professor of global conflict studies at the University of Chicago, concurs--but he also notes that while there are countless reasons for individuals to fight individuals and countries to fight countries, war is rarer than it might be. The reason, as he brightly puts it, is simple: "Even the bitterest enemies prefer to loathe one another in peace." Of course, war has always occurred, and Blattman identifies five principal reasons. One is "unchecked interests," meaning that the goals of the ruling class are out of alignment: They gain power and wealth while ordinary people lose their property and lives. The author argues persuasively that these unchecked interests account for much of the world's organized violence, but another is just as opportunistic: the "commitment problem." If a rival nation seems to be growing in power, then why not crush it now, before it gets too strong to defeat with any certainty? (Think Vietnam.) Blattman attributes much warfare to what might be considered venal causes rather than the usual explanations of conflict as emanating from the quest for resources or ethnic divisions, though they certainly figure. More to the point, as he writes, "there is seldom one reason for a war." Against modern theories of intervention, the author observes that aims such as regime change are often unrealized, but there are useful nonmilitary weapons that can be deployed in place of actual arms--targeted sanctions, for instance, and decentralizing authority, the latter of which is difficult for bureaucratized world police officers such as the U.S. government and the United Nations. Valuable for readers interested in understanding matters of war and peace.

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February 21, 2022
Game theory shows why violent conflicts start and how to forestall them, according to this penetrating treatise. Noting that the high costs of violence almost always make peaceful agreement a better solution to antagonisms than violence, University of Chicago economist Blattman analyzes forces that often counteract that logic, including the self-interest of leaders, ideological passions, miscalculation of an opponent’s strength or motives, and mistrust. On the flip side, he contends, considerations of costs and benefits suggest ways to avoid violence through constraints on leaders’ power, credible enforcement of rules by the police and other authorities, and interventions that can be as simple as getting people to talk. Blattman explores these dynamics in conflicts ranging from turf battles among Chicago’s gangs to WWI and the American Revolution. (He compares White Flower, a Liberian warlord with a financial stake in perpetuating civil war, to George Washington, whose land speculations prospered thanks to the rebellion he led, but whose power was constrained by the Continental Congress and state legislatures.) Blattman uses lucid, easy-to-follow diagrams to explain the game theory underlying his ideas, and from it derives pithy, often counterintuitive insights (“The more destructive our weapons, the easier it should be to find peace”). This stimulating discussion of violence illuminates a fraught subject with sober reason.