For your consideration:
Below is a short page of thoughts a prof of mine had asked us to prepare on a weekly basis on a given question. This is obviously not a footnoted, scholarly work, just an outline of thoughts to serve as a starting point for class discussion. I think parts of it touch on topics near and dear to our hearts, so I thought I'd toss it out here for commentary. Here are reviews of Ferguson's Cash Nexus (http://www.helleniccomserve.com/ferguson.html) and Kennedy's Rise and Fall (http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/176/Rise%20and%20Fal.htm) for context.
***********************************************************
"Is the recent decline of the warfare state likely to be temporary or permanent?"
I believe that the question is mis-specified in that it confuses the structure of the warfare state for the level of mobilization that currently obtains amongst the largest Powers, and thus presupposes a decline.
The "warfare state" is not characterized by a constant requirement for high levels of mobilization (i.e. military spending as a percentage of budget in the 60-95% range for the major combatants in 1917) The entire point of the fiscal and economic apparatus subsumed within Ferguson's term "warfare state" is the ability to cover a rapid increase in the proportion of GDP the state needs to capture in times of military emergency without causing such disruption that the overall productive capacity of the nation is damaged. In other words, it is designed for a relative sprint rather than a marathon. I will note that Kennedy's thesis includes the idea that coalition warfare is more protracted due to the ability of failing states to draw resources from still-viable coalition partners, but even in "Rise and Fall" the tests opposing coalitions undergo tend to alternate between relatively short, sharp conflicts and longer periods of "cold" war. The war-financing systems of the Great Powers are thus usually running on idle, with the twin hopes being that they are not currently causing damage or distortion to the economy and that they will be able to perform properly when the state once again goes to war.
I would thus argue that the general decline in mobilization levels and military expenditure is merely a return to the less disruptive idle mode which states tend towards when war between the Great Powers is not imminent. Note that U.S defense spending as a percentage of GDP between the Civil War and WW2 (that is, when no threat seemed imminent) ran on average below 1%. Spending for the European Powers, most of which arguably did face an imminent threat once railroad-driven mobilization and logistics became a reality, still only ran at between 3% and 4% for the same period. The Cold War period appears to have been an aberration, with both sides concerned that general war might be imminent, but with no such general war breaking out.
Why did this aberration take place? I would argue that the novelty of nuclear warfare played a large part. It required the creation of an entirely new infrastructure during peacetime, with huge R&D expenditures involved in the design of new and more powerful bombs and delivery systems and large capital investments required for new production lines. This created upward pressure on spending that would not have otherwise existed in the immediate post-WW2 era. Further, a great deal of uncertainty as to whether a nuclear conflict could be fought successfully coupled with the unprecedented speed with which a nuclear attack could be mounted meant that the Powers simultaneously felt that war could occur at any moment but were unsure as to what the payoff would look like or whether they would need conventional forces in the post-nuclear environment.
Does the period of aberration still hold? Possibly not. The demise of the USSR and the ascent of the EU removed much of the immediate threat of general war, which meant that the Powers could once again return to idle mode. This is highly evident in European spending patterns, but can be seen at work even during the first Gulf War, where some American units were being disbanded even as others were heading out for combat duty. The growth of new Powers (i.e. China) will presumably go hand-in-hand with the development of effective nuclear first-strike capabilities, which could then return the world to a mobilized-yet-not-at-war "Cold War" state. It could be argued, however, that in the short-term a serious nuclear option will remain the province of a handful of Powers that still have little reason to go to war with each other. This could, paradoxically, mean a return to the older "sprint" model of the "warfare state". A hypothetical war between China and the United States over the fate of Taiwan, for instance, need not rise to the level of a regime-threatening Gotterdammerung like the World Wars. Rather, the Crimea might be a better model, with the involved Powers mobilizing in a more traditional manner and accessing resources via standard fiscal techniques. Why? China's ability to fatally damage the U.S.' productive capacity and ability to mobilize is suspect, and the U.S., while possessing such a capacity, has good reason for not wanting to.
Looking to the long-term, a stable return to the old model might even be possible. The U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative can be seen as a technological attempt to move in that direction. Remove the possibility of a fatal nuclear strike and warfare returns to a slower affair where a premium exists on a stronger economy that can be mobilized via traditional fiscal methods. |
