War: What is it good for?: The role of conflict in civilisation, from primates to robots

by Ian Morris

War is one of the greatest human evils. It has ruined livelihoods, provoked unspeakable atrocities and left countless millions dead. It has caused economic chaos and widespread deprivation. And the misery it causes poisons foreign policy for future generations.

But, argues bestselling historian Ian Morris, in the very long term, war has in fact been a good thing. In his trademark style combining inter-disciplinary insights, scientific methods and fascinating stories, Morris shows that, paradoxically, war is the only human invention that has allowed us to construct peaceful societies. Without war, we would never have built the huge nation-states which now keep us relatively safe from random acts of violence, and which have given us previously unimaginable wealth. It is thanks to war that we live longer and more comfortable lives than ever before.

And yet, if we continue waging war with ever-more deadly weaponry, we will destroy everything we have achieved; so our struggles to manage warfare make the coming decades the most decisive in the history of our civilisation. In War: What Is It Good For? Morris brilliantly dissects humanity's history of warfare to draw startling conclusions about our future.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, War, Military Fiction, Politics, Anthropology, Sociology

495 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[WarpDrive · Rating 3 out of 5]

In these troubling times when two intellectually challenged clowns, equally gifted with ridiculous hairdos and sharing the same emotional immaturity of a 10-year-old boy, keep exchanging infantile insults (such as "little rocket man" or "dotard") and insist on threatening each other with Nuclear Armageddon, I thought it quite apt for me to read a book about the role that war has played in the course of human history.

I really do not know how to rate this book: while this book is doubtlessly a riveting, well-researched, highly informative and well written history of the role played by war as a catalyst for the historical evolution of human society, on the other hand the author's overall thesis and some of his ideas are very speculative, overly simplistic, one-sided and frequently supported by only partial and carefully pre-filtered evidence, and they often left me utterly unconvinced.

The last chapter is totally in la-la land, when the author indulges the most hawkish power fantasies of the far right of the US Republican Party (as well as the most belligerent reveries of the US military-industrial complex), when he describes how the US must significantly increase its military presence overseas, and the associated military spending, in order to maintain military supremacy and dominate China and Russia, so to maintain world dominance until the "singularity" (when merging of humans with machines and with each other will negate the need for war) will finally arrive. It seems like the author must have been on some drug-induced trip when he wrote the last chapter. It also seems that the author is blissfully unaware of the full consequences of what happened in Vietnam or as a result of the illegal invasion of IRAQ.

The author's main thesis is essentially a rehash of the old Hobbesian idea that you need a "Leviathan" (a powerful state with a monopoly of violence) to make life less "random, brutish, and short" (a lesson that The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) has apparently not learned yet, willfully ignoring the ongoing massacres allowed by the gun culture still well and alive in the US); this idea is combined by the author with some modernized version of social/political pseudo-Darwinism, stating that the creation of powerful Leviathans has been enabled by the outcomes of war; therefore war is not necessarily a negative factor in human progress, but it can be seems as a catalyst for the creation of larger, "better", more complex, richer and more peaceful societies.
The author also tries to refine his thesis by positing a somewhat artificial dichotomy between "productive" wars and "unproductive" wars (with an example of the former being the expansion of the Roman Empire, and an example of the latter being the "Germanic" invasions that triggered the demise of such Empire).

There is definitely some merit in pursuing a nuanced and dispassionate analysis of the actual role played by war in the development of human progress and civilization, and it is undoubtedly true that war did enable in the historical past, in more than one occasion and at least indirectly, the creation of more sophisticated and relatively peaceful societies: and the author carries the reader through a well-written and exhilarating narrative description of the evolution of human societies and civilizations across the millennia of human history. So the book is thought-provoking and definitely worth reading.

But the author also leaves many unanswered questions, such as:
- he does not really address the problem posed by Leviathans that employ institutional and large amounts of structural violence - like Stalin's Russia, China of Mao's cultural revolution, Nazi Germany, even the Mongolian Empire of Genghis Khan.
- he does not take into account that large polities do not necessarily mean more sophisticated, more advanced, more progressive or more efficient societies: according to his own approach, the tiny and internally fractious Greek City States of the Classical Greek Civilization would probably not be classified as a highly rated type of society
- he thinks that a "globocop" like the British Empire is always a good and even a necessary thing for the progress of human kind, which is an extremely debatable thesis: the British Empire did serious damage to the structure of the economy of India, for example, and it can well be argued that it even damaged, in the long run, the industrial structure of England itself, promoting or at least allowing for the development of inefficiencies and its resulting lack of competitiveness in the international markets
- his main metric for the success of a society is its capacity to repress internal violence. I find this measurement only very partially informative in describing the overall "success" or desirability of a society (even though there is undoubtedly some correlation between such measurement and several other metrics that can describe the overall sophistication of a society). For example, the author does not consider that an "empire" might promote internal security and efficiently repress internal violence, but also at the same time choke, or at least seriously limit, freedom of exchange of goods, ideas and innovations, and therefore stifle cultural and economic innovation
- his theory that colonization was an example of productive war for the globe, and a good thing for the progress of human kind, is a theory that leaks like a sieve from many perspectives (to say the least)
- the dichotomy between productive and unproductive war seems very artificial: using the very approach and arguments of the author, you may for example argue (as a few historians have actually done) that the "Barbarian" invasions of the fifth century were an example of productive war because they ultimately enabled the creation of the successor polities from which ultimately the embryonic European states would emerge. It is ultimately all a question of perspective
- there is a big logical difference between stating that war might have in some occasions been a catalyst for societal development, and that war is a necessary ingredient in the recipe for economic and political progress. The author, quite disingenuously, conflates the two aspects and while his analysis may well prove the former assumption, it definitely does not go anywhere near proving the latter (which appears to be the more or less explicit overarching claim of the entire book). Science, rationality and democracy can be a creative force towards the development of political, cultural and economic progress without necessarily always having to bring into play some destructive wars. Moreover, there are several historical examples of "organic" evolution of societies, characterized by progress that did not necessarily requite the usage of military force as a primary element for development - aspect completely and conveniently ignored by the author in pursuing his personal theory
- in general, I am extremely wary of this type of mega-history analysis that adopt an overly simplistic, mechanistic, and ultimately reductionist approach to the complexity and sheer number of factors historically responsible for the evolution of human societies (and to the very different relative weight that such factors demonstrated in the different historical periods), reducing it to one single element. It is a simple truth that history is just not conducive to this type of simplifications.

Anyway, I think that, even with all its many weaknesses, it is a book worth reading, entertaining, well written and thought-provoking. Even if I found myself in disagreement with much of the the author's thesis and approach, I must say that I enjoyed reading it. 3 stars.

[Dave Schoettinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Professor Morris gives everyone a reason to dislike the premise of this book. Liberals will dislike his assertion that war has been a necessary evil, responsible for the cushy lives that so many of us enjoy. Conservatives will take exception to his conclusion that it is big governments that have created the preconditions for most of those cushy lives. However, I am increasingly becoming convinced that the only people in our society worth listening to are those who cannot easily be pigeonholed into liberal or conservative classifications. Morris's well-reasoned arguments will make you question many long-held assumptions about how the real world works and add perspective to our mostly parochial bickering.

[Kuszma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ha nagyon leegyszerűsítő akarnék lenni, azt mondanám: ez a könyv Huntington és Fukuyama főműveinek fúziója. Egyfelől azt állítja, hogy az emberi történelem alapja a civilizációk (pontosabb: kulturálisan eltérő embercsoportok) közti összecsapás, másfelől viszont hozzáteszi, hogy az ezekből fakadó háborúkon keresztül haladunk a "történelem vége", vagy ha úgy tetszik, a kanti "örök béke" felé.

De nem vagyok leegyszerűsítő. Miért is lennék, amikor Morris maga sem túl bonyolult, tulajdonképpen egyetlen lefegyverzően provokatív állítást igyekszik bőségesen megadatolni: hogy a háború nem is olyan rossz dolog. Jó, hát erről győzd meg a hadiárvákat, horgad fel erre a pacifista énem - de azt kell mondjam, Morris kifejezetten szellemesen érvel sejtése mellett.

Először is megkér minket, hogy felejtsük el a rövid távú gondolkodást, és igyekezzünk távlati perspektívába helyezkedni. Képzeljük magunkat a törzsi társadalmak korába, ahol egyes antropológusok (vagy épp Rousseau) állításaival ellentétben igencsak valószínű volt, hogy az egyén élete erőszakosan ér véget - egyes régészek szerint 10-20%-ukkal is megeshetett ez a malőr. Abban a világban az agresszió azonnali és egyértelmű haszonnal járt: ha leütöttél egy pacákot, akkor elvehetted annak ételét, asszonyát és barlangi lajhárszőr alsóneműjét. Igaz, az említett delikvens viszont mindent elveszített - ezt nevezik zéróösszegű játszmának.

Aztán eljött a mezőgazdaság kora, ami nem várt következménnyel járt. Ebben a világban is léteztek persze útonállók, de lassacskán észre kellett venniük, hogy az agresszióval járó nyereség csökkenni kezd. Hisz ha legyakják a földművelő parasztot, akkor esetleg holtában nem tudja learatni a termést, következésképpen hosszú távon az útonállónak is felkopik az álla. Megszületett tehát a "megállapodott útonállók" kasztja: azoké, akik monopolizálták az erőszakot, megvédték a parasztot, ő pedig cserébe ellátta őket élelemmel. Ezekből a megállapodott útonállókból lettek aztán a királyok.

A társadalom pedig ezen az úton-módon egyre diverzifikáltabb lett, aminek következtében megszületett a Leviathán: maga az állam. És minél nagyobb volt ez az állam, annál eredményesebben tudta megvédeni alattvalóit. És hogy lett egyre nagyobb? Hát háborúkkal. Egyre több földet hódított meg, és bár a meghódítottak ennek ritkán örültek, de hosszú távon észre kellett venniük, hogy az áldás rájuk is hull: közöttük is meredeken esni kezdett az erőszakos halálozások aránya.

Persze Morris sem állítja, hogy mindezt egy folyamatos fejlődésként kell elképzelnünk. Akadtak olyan esetek, amikor a hódítók valóban rosszabb világba taszították a meghódítottakat, mint amilyenben annak előtte éltek - említhetnénk Belga-Kongót, vagy a nagy indián birodalmakat. Az is tény, hogy nem minden háború termékeny - a lovas nomádok tevékenysége például évszázadokra visszavetette a folyamatot. Meg aztán még a termékeny háborúk is hajlamosak arra, hogy ha túl sokáig húzzák-nyúzzák benne az emberek egymást, akkor terméketlen háborúvá váljanak - olyasvalamivé, ami inkább leépíti, mint erősíti a Leviathánt.

De az általános tendencia azért világos. A Leviathánok mocskos dolgokat tesznek a felemelkedésért, de végső soron felemelkedésük általános hasznot hajt - elsősorban persze a birodalom polgárainak, de hosszabb távon a perifériának is csurran-cseppen valami. A Leviathán pedig végül világcsendőrré válik, akit ugyan senki nem szeret, de mégis: ő garantálja a szabad kereskedelmet, amiből mindenki profitál. Nyilván önös érdekből teszi ezt, és magasan az ő profitja a legnagyobb - de akkor is.

Azonban a világcsendőri státusz sem örökkévaló. Paradox módon pont azért, mert azzal, hogy a világcsendőr vállalja a béke (akár erőszakos) fenntartásának költségeit, lehetőséget ad arra, hogy leendő riválisai is gazdagodjanak, és egy ponton bejelentsék igényüket a világcsendőri szerep megosztására. Ez történt az első világháború előtt Anglia és Németország viszonylatában, és talán ez történik most is az USA és kihívói között. A hatalmi státuszok megkérdőjelezése pedig - ha nem elég bölcsek a felek - könnyen háborúhoz vezet, ami persze ismét visszaveti a folyamatot. De amint a csaták lecsengenek, a Leviathán (a régi, vagy akár az új) megint azt teszi majd, amit a Leviathánok tenni szoktak: monopolizálja az erőszakot, és ezzel békésebb világot teremt.

Bírtam ezt a könyvet. Morris érezhetően kedvvel ír, lendületes, helyenként humoros, és ha nem is értünk egyet vele, de mindig elgondolkodtat. Magam kissé csodálkoztam azon, hogy a Leviathán milyenségének fokmérője nála szinte egyedül az erőszakos halálozások aránya, a gazdasági aspektus pedig szinte végig háttérbe szorul. Ugyanakkor el kell ismerni, kevés egzaktabb dolog van az erőszakos halálnál, szóval védhető megközelítés. Külön értékeltem, hogy a szerző törekszik arra, hogy ne nyugati, ne angolszász válaszokat találjon a kérdésekre, hanem egyetemesen emberieket* - sőt: vizsgálódását még a csimpánzokra is kiterjeszti.

Ja, és Morris még jövőképet is felvázol. Ami érdekes elegye a pesszimizmusnak és az optimizmusnak. Valahogy úgy tudnám körülírni, hogy van remény az örök békére, csak épp sanszos, hogy addig kinyiffant minket valaki. De az csak apró döccenő lesz egy nagyívű folyamatban, ne is törődjünk vele.

* Ezzel együtt Morris úgy véli, Amerika mint világcsendőr lényegesen jobb opció, mintha ugyanezt a szerepet egy autoriter állam töltené be. De hát ezt én is így gondolom.

[Boudewijn · Rating 3 out of 5]

War is good for absolutely nothing; it means "destruction of innocent lives" and "tears to thousands of mothers' eyes" – according to the lyrics.

Paradoxically, Ian Morris comes to a different conclusion: he argues that humanity has actually benefited from centuries of warfare. Only through warfare has humanity been able to come together in larger societies and thus to enjoy security and riches.

The measurement that Morris takes throughout his books is the chance that you had for a violent death. The 20th century saw a sharp decrease in this chance, while in the past this was much higher. To prove his case, Morris reviews the history of warfare, carrying the reader confidently from bows and arrows to ballistic missiles, and sketching in the parallel development of social forms, from hunter-gatherer groups to the EU.

It is an enjoyable read, but I don't know how this book will stand against a (more) scientific research on the subject - but I don't care. Morris offers a fresh look on politics and war, and I liked the book.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to give this book four stars, because it's an enjoyable, thought provoking read on the role of war in the sweep of human history. I have at least a couple major concerns, however:

1) Much rides for Morris's theory on the distinction between "productive" war, which leads to increased social complexity, and "counterproductive" war, which leads to decreasing social complexity. Though he provides some suggestions as to the character of each, much of the distinction seems apparently only after the fact. But after the fact, this distinction is tautological -- by definition a war was productive if it led to increased social complexity.

2) After providing an overview of patterns Morris argues are visible only at the multi-century scale, he goes a bit off the rails in trying to say something useful about the 21st century. A single historical analogue (to the British Empire), he says, seems to suggest that the American-led global system will fall apart in a couple decades. Counterproductive war with modern technology would be extraordinarily counterproductive, so hopefully that won't happen. Then he pulls a rabbit out of a hat in the form of a technological Singularity, which will replace the Pax Americana with a globally-connected Mind and bring violence to zero.

However, if a Singularity is actually a Singularity, known laws break down and we can't say anything informative; moreover, the post-Singularity peacemaker Morris describes sounds like nothing so much as the Borg, though he apparently isn't familiar enough with science fiction to realize that attempts to assimilate humanity will probably provoke a very violent reaction...

I understand why Morris felt the need to say something useful, but he's already established that he is only talking about patterns that are visible at a time scale longer than the next few decades, so this chapter is largely groundless speculation. It's an unfortunate conclusion to an otherwise engaging book.

[blake · Rating 2 out of 5]

I went into this book optimistically, thinking it would substantiate a provocative notion—all the things war is good for—and, after a knowledgable but tenuous start, the whole thing went to hell then just plain got silly.

The premise is reasonably simple: In Man is "The Beast" (the desire to act destructively) and the only thing that can counter The Beast is Leviathan (government), and the Bigger The Better. Morris uses the (fake, literary) example of The Lord of the Flies as the exemplar of The Beast—a pretty dubious proposition given actual failed experiments (cf. Muzar Sherif) to actually create those kinds of situations.

But let's run with this. The first part of the book demonstrates a clear understanding of Generally Accepted History, and argues that primitive man was very violent (I didn't know people still believed in Rousseau-ian peaceful primitives, but he does a good job taking that apart) but not very warlike. War is dangerous and scary, relative to sneaking up on enemy tribes at night and murdering the men/raping the women. If you got in over your head—if an enemy tribe was too powerful for your tribe to overcome, you just moved! As a result, these cultures had violent death rates between 10-20% (his estimate).

So far so good. When man developed agriculture and real civilizations, however, he couldn't just run off: You can't pick up a farm and leave. So he got better at defending from nomadic barbarians, and The Leviathan was his tool. No argument here.

But if you're paying attention, it was agriculture that led to Leviathan, not really war. There's another sleight-of-hand here: Barbarians couldn't really wage war, goes the theory, but they were the ones that really stimulated the need for defense...so does that count as war or not? (Ultimately, in one of his many shifts, Morris calls this "unproductive" war. But who wants to read a book called "War! Sometimes the after-effects have a slightly positive side!"?)

OK, ok, but then Leviathan grew outward and pacified the barbarians, allowing for greater peace and greater trade. Which, in turn, led to the barbarians getting more and more adept at their models of violence. At some point, every Leviathan oversteps its ability to grow, and ends up collapsing, per Morris, and the violence resumes.

I kept waiting for Morris to really drive his point home. He had some facts lined up: The world is definitely decreasing in violence (per the stats) and has been for years. Stronger governments created stable environments for safety and trade (domestic and foreign), leading to greater prosperity. Sure. But leaning on the war-means-bigger-government-which-means-better-government argument? He can only make it past the ancient world and middle ages because he never considers the internal rot which presages any culture's fall.

Just when I thought he was going to blithely sail past the elephant in the room—The American Revolution, which was a war for less government—he goes right ahead and lampshades it. But it also proves his point, somehow, because Britain had to change and settle for a different kind of control, one based more on a common culture and set of agreements, than on overt violence. By World War I and II, all world events are nails he can use his W!WIIGF? hammer on.

Scholarship goes out the window in the late 20th century, presumably because Morris lived through those times. The Cold War struggle is reduced to two Leviathans (now called Globocops) and it really doesn't matter which was which. He grudgingly admits that Soviets killed 10,000 Jews—no word on the tens of millions of others they killed—but (while first tipping his hat to the notoriously bad statistics in the USSR) they DID reduce crime.

There's a (not) fun story about USSR whalers. They had to kill more and more whales every year because they had to be The Best In The World at whatever. They slaughtered far more than they could use, and far, far more than any reasonable steward would allow, and then they slaughtered hundreds of thousands of fictitious whales because there just weren't enough real whales around to meet quotas.

But, sure, they created a paranoid police state where your best bet was either to be a member of the Party or to keep your head down, so I'm sure they did a great job reducing violent death.

His inevitable conclusion: We need one world Globocop. Totalitarian government, bad government, tyrannical government, corrupt government—those may be unpleasant to live under but, golly, in the long run we all win.

He then goes on to completely muff short-term predictions—this being written in 2013, it was full of Obama-era ennui, like the USA never having a 3% GDP again—and ignore all the other elephants in the room, like the Leviathan-sponsored self-invasion. It's a book only an Elite Establishment guy could love, and Why You Got Trump.

It actually gets worse at the end: The final globocop, per Morris, will be cyborgs. Human-hybrids augmented with computers and the like. These transhumans will be so far beyond ordinary humans they will civilize us all. This is not at all creepy. This is also not at all a War thing.

Obviously, this book should be called "Government is Great and We Should Always Have More Of It!" but that is not so provocative or interesting a title. Morris seemed to have as a sub-agenda the deconstruction of Victor Davis Hanson's theory of civilization (which is Western favoring, I guess), but he neither seemed to use particularly apt quotes nor did he seem to understand Hanson's argument.

My radical counter-argument would be this: Order is good. There doesn't need to be a lot of it. There needs to be some organizations to put order in to place, including some government, but also religion and local civic groups. There needs to be enough force to keep it in place but not so much as to stop the community from growing.

Sometimes, yes, this comes out of war. But not always. I would think a historian would know that. And war is always a failure, at some level, of "Leviathan". It's a breakdown of the order Leviathan is supposed to provide.

And praying to the robot gods to save us probably won't immanentize the eschaton no matter HOW big they make the government.

[Fishface · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last thing I expected after reading the description of the contents was a book on archaeology, but that's what this is, and it's a totally gripping read. The authors whisks you all over the globe, across continents and through the centuries, matching up changes in the technology of war with changes in the societies affected by those wars. He never lost me once, which is saying a great deal -- he was literally covering the whole of known human history and it would have been easy for him to leave the reader in the dust. He makes a good case that war causes at least as much peace and prosperity as it destroys, probably more. I felt a little squeamish about his statements that we can really know how many cave people died violently, but in general his arguments make sense, and there is a great deal to back up most of what he is saying. Fellow Discordians will be utterly intrigued by what he says about the critical role of bureaucracy in societal change.

[Sherif Gerges · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Ian Morris delivers a provocative and counterintuitive thesis: that warfare, notwithstanding its inherent savagery and catastrophic repercussions, has, across the broad arc of human history, functioned as a principal mechanism for fostering peace and facilitating the emergence of increasingly expansive, centralized, and secure sociopolitical entities. Beginning with our hominin precursors and culminating in the geopolitical complexities of contemporary nation-states. Central to Morris’s argument is the paradoxical notion of “productive war”—a form of organized, state-level conflict that, through its capacity to establish order and eliminate decentralized violence, has ultimately contributed to a measurable decline in per capita violent deaths over the long term.

Morris initiates this analysis by scrutinizing pre-state human communities, in which interpersonal and intergroup violence was endemic, largely unregulated, and driven by localized disputes. Utilizing archaeological evidence, ethnographic parallels, and macrohistorical patterns, he contends that the advent and expansion of formalized states transformed warfare from a disorganized and perpetual condition into an instrument for the imposition of hierarchical authority and legal structures. This, in turn, facilitated significant reductions in homicide rates and intragroup conflict. By examining illustrative historical cases such as the Roman Empire, the British imperial system, and the post-1945 global order under U.S. hegemony, Morris argues that hegemonic powers have recurrently employed military force to construct and maintain zones of relative geopolitical stability and sustained economic development—though these outcomes have invariably been accompanied by profound human suffering and moral ambiguity.

I’m not sure I entirely buy the thesis, namely because several major conflicts—such as World War I, the Vietnam War, the Taiping Rebellion, and the Second Congo War—produced immense suffering without yielding stable, centralized societies or long-term peace, directly challenging Ian Morris’s thesis. Instead of reducing violence, these wars often led to prolonged further conflict; I would have loved to see Morris be less selective in his analyses, unless I’m missing something.

[Robert Morris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Be careful what you wish for. In a lot of ways Ian Morris is my kind of historian. He is unafraid to use what he has learned to teach big important lessons, which I admire. I have always thought that too many historians are overly cautious, and spend their time focusing on the minutiae of an era, rather than trying to apply the lessons of that era to our own. This book provides a pretty compelling illustration of why those historians might have the right idea.

Morris has done a number of unconventional things, and written a number of unconventional books. I very much enjoyed his "Why the West Rules for Now". In that book he attempted to present metrics for the relative performance of civilizations in different geographies across millennia. It's an essentially impossible task, but I took it as a useful and fun thought experiment. If his metrics are used in that capacity then they're harmless and fun, in this book he makes it clear that he thinks that they are a serious basis for policy recommendations, which is kind of frightening. As he partially admits, his data is patchy, impossible to verify, and at some points essentially made up. As a tool of science or policy it's significantly less valuable than a computer game.

Most of this book is an amusing and thought-provoking tour through human history. His thesis, that war has been a tremendously useful tool of development is, I think, largely correct. His analysis gets less persuasive as he gets closer to the modern era however. I don't think anybody reckons well with just how significant the industrial revolution was in terms of what we really want and need from war, and this book is no exception.

It's the final chapter of the book that took this from a four-star review to a one-star review, and illustrates the perils of being a "maverick" Silicon Valley historian. He takes the aforementioned fantastical data as proof that the singularity is near. The Singularity, known as "the rapture for nerds" is the idea that in the next 50 years or so we'll be replaced by super-rational artificial intelligence that will give us paradise on earth or something. For some reason I can't follow, he believes this means that we should indulge all of the Pentagon's most belligerent fantasies of containment against China and Russia, so that the US can maintain world dominance until the singularity arrives.

There's no basis for this in what he has written. It comes off as a profoundly troubling non sequitur. The ending of this book is unfortunate, but I suppose it provides a good cautionary tale.

[Jukka Aakula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kirjoitin artikkelin sodasta Sarastus-lehteen. Jutun loppuosa käsittelee Morrisin kirjaa

https://sarastuslehti.com/2015/05/19/...

[Gavin Armour · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seit Jared Diamond 1997 sein epochemachendes und immer noch als Standardwerk gehandeltes Buch GUNS, GERM AND STEEL: THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES vorlegte und darin u.a. eine stark geographisch/geologisch geprägte Theorie der Entwicklung menschlicher Zivilisationen ausarbeitete, wurden immer mehr Versuche unternommen, die Menschheitsgeschichte als Ganzes zu erklären, mal unter der Prämisse „Zivilisation“, mal unter der Prämisse „Reiche und Imperien“. Unter anderem untersuchte der in den U.S.A. an der Universität Stanford lehrende Brite Ian Morris 2010 die Frage WHY THE WEST RULES – FOR NOW. In weiten Teilen griff Morris auf Diamonds Basisarbeit zurück und kam zu durchaus interessanten Schlußfolgerungen. Größtenteils evolutionistisch orientiert, gelangte der Archäologe und Althistoriker zu der Ansicht, daß die Bedingungen unterschiedlicher Gesellschaften zu unterschiedlichen Zeiten unterschiedliche Entwicklungssprünge zuließen. Daraus ging u.a. die These hervor, daß Kriege eine wesentliche Rolle in den Entwicklungsstufen einzelner Gesellschaften spielten und enorme technische und damit zivilisatorische Sprünge zuließen. Aus dieser These ergibt sich die Kernaussage des hier vorliegenden Nachfolgebands WAR! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? CONFLICT AND THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION FROM PRIMATES TO ROBOTS: Krieg bringt mittel- und langfristig gesehen mehr Frieden und sorgt für höhere, bessere Lebensstandards in Gesellschaften – ganz gleich, ob es Siegergesellschaften oder besiegte Gesellschaften sind.

Angefangen mit den Primaten des Titels, also ca. 10.000 Jahren vor unserer Zeitrechnung, macht Morris sich daran, auf der Basis einer recht dünnen Quellen- und Faktenlage diese These zu untermauern. Der Leser lernt also über die Bedingungen und Voraussetzungen für Evolution, Entwicklung und das Bilden von Imperien, „stationären Banditen“, wie Morris sie nennt, weil sie in der Lage sind, statt marodierend durch die Lande zu ziehen Steuern zu erheben und im Gegenzug das Land zu befrieden und den Untertanen – oder den Eroberten, die darin leben – Schutz zu gewähren. So kommen Begriffe ins Spiel wie die „glücklichen Breiten“ – ein schmaler Streifen, der nie nördlicher als Nordspanien und nie südlicher als Nordindien reicht, bzw. von Südmexiko bis Südperu, wenn man sich die Amerikas anschaut. In diesem Streifen waren die Klima- und Witterungsbedingungen so, daß Menschen (oder ihre unmittelbaren Vorgänger) leben konnten, sich ausbreiten und Innovationen ausprobieren und vorantreiben konnten. Betrachtet man dazu noch die Spezifik Mesopotamiens – eine hohe Dichte an domestizierbaren Gräsern und Tieren, die den Ackerbau und damit die Sesshaftigkeit bevorteilen – versteht man schon ansatzweise, worauf Morris Argument hinausläuft. Er führt den Begriff „Caging“ ein: Der goldene Käfig, zu dem diese Breiten werden, denn natürlich steigt hier die Population, wird der Raum immer enger, bilden sich zunächst kleine Gruppen und Stämme, die gegeneinander Krieg führen (wenn der Begriff „Krieg“ hier schon angebracht scheint). Morris nennt diese kriegerischen Auseinandersetzungen „produktive Kriege“, denn sie führen mittelfristig für alle Beteiligten zu einem Mehr: Mehr an Wohlstand, mehr an Lebensqualität, vor allem ein Mehr an Sicherheit. Er versucht dies anhand von (hochgerechneten) Todeszahlen zu belegen. Wie oft wurde ein Mensch 2000 v. Chr. Opfer einer Gewalttat usw. Allerdings macht dies auch die entscheidende Schwachstelle des ganzen Unterfangens aus: Immer wieder muß Morris einräumen, daß die Quellenlage eher mau ist, er mit Hochrechnungen und oft einfach mit Annahmen operiert.

Dennoch – zumindest die ersten fünf Kapitel wissen zu überzeugen, bzw. zumindest zu unterhalten. Daß Disziplin eine der wesentlichen Errungenschaften der Kriegskunst war – ein zwar naheliegender Befund, dennoch muß auch dieser zunächst erst einmal getätigt werden. Die Entwicklung auf den Schlachtfeldern – der Einsatz von Pferden, Streitwagen und Bogen, alles wesentliche Fortschritte in der „Kunst des Krieges“ – förderte oft auch Entwicklungen in den Zivilgesellschaften, starke Potentaten mit großen und innovativen Armeen konnten im Lauf der Jahrhunderte immer wieder „Leviathane“ hervorbringen, die zumindest für Dekaden für Sicherheit, Ordnung und somit auch nachlassende Gewalt sorgen konnten. Schwieriger werden Morris´ Betrachtungen, wenn er sich der Neuzeit nähert, obwohl das 4. Kapitel, das den „500jährigen Krieg Europas gegen die Welt“ behandelt, einmal mehr erhellende Schlaglichter auf diese Frühphase der Globalisierung (wie Peter Sloterdijk den Aufstieg Europas in seinem lesenswerten Buch IM WELTINNERAUM DES KAPITALS. ZU EINER PHILOSOPHISCHEN GESCHICHTE DES TERRESTRISCHEN GLOBALISIERUNG [2005] zu nennen pflegte) wirft. Morris erklärt uns den Begriff der ‚Pax Britannica‘, jenes Weltreiches, das die Briten mit ihrer überlegenen Marine aufbauten, die wiederum eine Folge der in England früher und massiver einsetzenden Industrialisierung war, und welches nahezu 300 Jahre durchaus zu (weitgehend) friedlicher Koexistenz innerhalb dieses Imperiums führte. Allerdings – das läßt der Autor auch nicht aus – waren die Briten jederzeit zu enormer Gewalt fähig und bereit, wenn es darum ging, ihren Einfluß, ihre Interessen durchzusetzen. Ein beredtes Beispiel dafür ist der Burenkrieg in Südafrika (gemeint ist der 2. Burenkrieg, 1899 bis 1902), der unter Inkaufnahme hoher Verluste auf allen Seiten ausgefochten wurde.

Doch schon in diesem Kapitel macht sich bemerkbar, was danach überdeutlich wird und in der Rückschau vielleicht auch auf frühere Kapitel zurückfällt: Hoch- bis überkomplexe Zusammenhänge reduzieren sich bei Morris schnell auf rein technische Fragen. Zwar will er in einer Art Schnellverfahren in Kapitel 5 die Julikrise des Jahres 1914 behandeln und genau daran nachweisen, daß Geschichte eben auch immer „ganz anders“ hätte verlaufen können, doch wurden nun gerade zu Fragen des Ersten Weltkrieges in den vergangenen zwei, drei Jahren unglaublich viele und vor allem sehr viele gute Forschungen veröffentlicht, darunter das trotz aller Einwände sehr lesenswerte Buch von Christopher Clark zu eben dieser Julikrise THE SLEEPWALKERS. HOW EUROPE WENT TO WAR IN 1914 (2012). Hier, nicht in Morris´ dürren 20 Seiten zum Thema, wird dem Leser überdeutlich klar, wie viel gerade in der Moderne (oder auch einfach: Neuzeit, um eine weitere zeitliche Epoche zu fassen) die Psychologie eine Rolle spielt, wenn es darum geht, zu den Waffen zu greifen. Morris, der sich natürlich auf den Standpunkt zurückziehen kann, es ginge ihm eben nur um die technische Seite, bzw. die rein den Fakten zu entnehmenden Entwicklungen, wirkt manchmal doch etwas arg distanziert gegenüber den Gräueln, die ja nicht zuletzt seine Landsleute an der Somme, der Marne oder in Ypern erleben mussten.

Es sei an dieser Stelle noch einmal (und ein letztes Mal) klar und deutlich gesagt: Morris bewegt sich (und gibt das auch zu) auf dünnem Eis, was seine Quellen anbelangt. Daraus entstehen manchmal Lücken, die recht nonchalant übergangen werden. Da entstehen Reiche und gehen unter, hoppladihopp, egal ob im alten China, ob die Mongolenreiche die ja immerhin eine wahre Völkerwanderung ausgelöst haben, da wird über ganz andere, nicht dem Kriege dienliche Forschung und Entwicklung recht schnell hinweg gegangen usw. Diamond, der für diese Art der Metaschau auf Geschichte ja so etwas wie der Doyen ist, geht da doch genauer, ruhiger, weniger enthusiastisch zu Werke, erzielt aber für den Leser bessere und genauere, weil nachvollziehbarere Ergebnisse (u.a. indem er dem Zufall – Feind aller an „geschlossenen“ Erklärungen Interessierten – den ihm gebührenden Raum gibt, gerade was die Entdeckung und Entwicklung von Nahrung betrifft). Dennoch kann man Morris gut folgen und allerhand Interessantes aus seinen Thesen und Darlegungen filtern. Anders sieht es dann mit den Kapiteln sechs und sieben aus. Das eine ist schlicht ärgerlich, weil es an einem Punkt der Argumentation auf biologistische Thesen zurückgreift, die teils als schwach belegt gelten, teils im Forschungsstand noch gar nicht weit genug entwickelt sind. Gerade was die Frage zum Verhalten verschiedener Affenarten betrifft, deren unterschiedliches Aggressionsverhalten hier als Erklärungsmuster auch für menschliches herangezogen wird, kann der interessierte Leser schon mit den Wissensseiten der seriösen Tagespresse – SUEDDEUTSCHE oder FAZ – verfolgen, wie rasant sich auf diesen Gebieten die Forschung entwickelt, wie schnell aber auch einige Ergebnisse wieder über den Haufen geworfen werden. Sich dann in der Frage nach Kriegen auf diese Forschungen zu stützen und daraus abzuleiten, daß wir bis zu einem gewissen Grade eben determiniert seien, das „Tier“ in uns eben „Gewalt“ schreit, wenn es sich benachteiligt fühlt – sicher, niemand, der sich ernsthaft mit moderner, interdisziplinärer Wissenschaft beschäftigt, würde ernsthaft genetische Disposition etc. von der Hand weisen – wirkt dich arg verkürzend und teilweise auch apologetisch. Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders…? [1]

Morris leitet sein Werk mit den Zeilen des Protestsongs WAR! ein, den Edwin Starr 1969 populär machte und der von Bruce Springsteen in den 80er Jahren erneut aufgegriffen wurde. Morris stellt den Song als naiv hin, und will ja genau die Frage „What is it good for?“ beantworten. Doch kommt ihm nie in seinem ansonsten sowieso eher naturwissenschaftsgläubigen Werk die Idee, daß eben genau DAS den Unterschied zum Affen ausmachen KÖNNTE: Daß wir in der Lage sind, reflexiv unsere Verluste zu beklagen und daraus den Schluß ziehen, daß wir – kulturell – nicht weiter diesen gewaltsamen Weg beschreiten wollen. Morris Antwort würde wohl lauten: Das ist naiv, der Mensch ist nicht so und wird immer wieder zur Waffe greifen, um seine Interessen durchzusetzen. Und wahrscheinlich hat er damit auch nicht Unrecht. Doch sind es heute doch ganz andere, viel komplexere Zusammenhänge, die uns in den Krieg ziehen oder eben genau davon Abstand nehmen lassen. Und – das erwähnt auch Morris wieder und wieder – wir unterliegen eben nicht nur einer biologischen Evolution, sondern auch einer kulturellen. Und es ist ein Fehlschluß, dem Menschen jedwede Lernfähigkeit, auch kollektive Lernfähigkeit, abzusprechen. Wir sind in der Lage, wahnsinnig schnell technische Neuerungen in unser Leben zu integrieren. Keine Generation weiß das besser, als die heute 45- bis 55jährigen, die ihre Kindheit mit 3 TV-Programmen und einem Testbild nach Sendeschluß, mit Bakelittelefonen und Science-Fiction-Geschichten über Raumflüge verbracht haben und ihr Berufsleben größtenteils mit einstmals als Hochleistungsrechner bezeichneten, tragbaren Laptops, Handys mit Spracherkennung und 75 rund um die Uhr sendenden TV-Kanälen voller Mist verbringen. Und ihr Alter womöglich in einem fürchterlichen Krieg, der am Horizont aufzieht.

In den letzten Kapiteln seines Buches widmet sich Morris einerseits den „modernen“ oder eher „postmodernen“ Kriegen, die möglicherweise gar keine Menschenopfer mehr fordern, weil sie komplett von Robotern ausgefochten werden, andererseits der ‚Pax Americana‘, die mehr oder weniger seit Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges herrscht. In beiden Zusammenhängen kann man sich nicht des Eindrucks erwehren, daß der Autor voller Bewunderung davon erzählt. Ja, was die Hochtechnologiekriege angeht, die uns zukünftig ins Haus stehen, drängt sich momentweise der Eindruck auf, da berichtet ein kleiner Junge von seinen neuesten Entdeckungen im Chemiebaukasten. Da reiht sich muntere Spekulation an muntere Spekulation und es werden konkrete technische mit hochspekulativen philosophischen Fragen vermischt. Welches Recht gilt beispielsweise, wenn eine Drohne im Jahr 2050 selbst entscheidet, ob sie es mit feindlichen Kämpfern oder einer Hochzeitsgesellschaft zu tun hat? Und sich FALSCH entscheidet? Gilt dann internationales Kriegsrecht? Oder muß man konstatieren, daß die Heiratenden dann eben schlicht Pech gehabt haben - falscher Ort, falsche Zeit - und sowieso kein Mensch mehr dafür zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen ist, weil wir es mit einer künstlichen Intelligenz in diesen Waffensystemen zu tun haben, die unserer nunmal weit überlegen ist? Vielleicht konnte die Drohne berechnen, daß das Kind, das aus dieser Vereinigung der Heiratenden hervorgeht, einst ein bedeutender Terrorist wird? Es gibt ein weites Feld philosophischer wir juristischer Theorien dazu, aber eines nur ist sicher: Es ist ein Thema, bei dem man nicht mal eben, auf 70 Seiten, auch nur die Problematik wirklich umfassen und darlegen kann. Morris jedoch kann eine gewisse Bewunderung, ja, sogar Begeisterung, für eben diese „postmodernen“ (posthumanen?) Kriege nicht unterdrücken.

Ähnlich geht es ihm bei der Beschreibung der ‚Pax Americana‘. Wir wissen, wieviel Elend und Not dieser „Amerikanische Frieden“ der Welt gebracht hat. Und es drängt sich dann doch erneut der Eindruck auf, daß hier einer vor allem die eurozentrische Sicht einnimmt. In Tagen, in denen sich eine Gruppierung namens Islamischer Staat (ISIS oder IS) im Nordirak und Syrien breit macht, der Iran möglicherweise die Atombombe baut, Nordkorea selbige bereits sein Eigen nennt, Rußland unter Putin erneut sein imperiales Haupt zu erheben scheint und die Chinesen ja sowieso vollkommen unberechenbar sind, würde die Mehrheit der Menschen weltweit bei einer „absoluten Abstimmung“ wahrscheinlich dennoch auf die Frage, wen sie am meisten fürchten, die U.S.A. nennen. Es sind die U.S.A., die nolens volens beschließen können, daß irgendwer als Terrorist einzustufen und eben genau so zu behandeln sei – und die im Besitz des technischen Rüstzeugs (Bsp.: Drohnen) sind, jeden überall auf der Welt jederzeit zu erreichen und, wenn gewünscht, zu vernichten. Etwaige sogenannte Kollateralschäden sind dabei eben in Kauf zu nehmen (siehe: Hochzeitsgesellschaft). Es waren die U.S.A., die allein zwischen 2001 und 2007 zwei Kriege begonnen und dabei massiv verbrannte Erde hinterlassen haben und die etliche verdeckte Kriege führen, um sich ihre Hegemonialmacht als ‚Globocop‘ (ein weiterer Begriff der Morris´schen Terminologie) zu sichern.

Produktive Kriege? Sicher, wenn man mit dem entrückten Blick des Großhistorikers (man sollte sich natürlich auch mal fragen, warum das Fach bei vielen solch schlechten Leumund besitzt) über Zeitspannen von Zehntausenden von Jahren hinwegblickt, gleicht sich Vieles wieder aus, kann man natürlich durchaus feststellen, daß da immer weniger Gewalt sich ausbreitet. Doch mit dem Blick des Politikwissenschaftlers oder gar Psychologen, sieht man vor allem, was für fürchterliche Not all diese offenen und verdeckten Krieg über ganze Weltregionen bringen. Und man hat ein wenig den Eindruck, daß das vielleicht dem Historiker gefällt, weil er ja (vermeintlich) weiß, wozu es gut ist. Für die, die diese Kriege zu durchleiden haben, sieht es schlicht danach aus, daß eine sterbende Großmacht den Rest der Welt ganz gern destabilisiert sähe, um den eigenen, längst überkommenen Machtanspruch aufrecht zu erhalten.

So hat man es bei Morris Buch mit einem dieser Hybriden zu tun, die zu lesen durchaus unterhält, denen man manch wissenswerte Detailkenntnis entnehmen kann, die uns auch allerhand über die großen Zusammenhänge zu erzählen haben, die dann aber weit übers Ziel hinausschießen, weil sie sich in Spekulation und kaum verhohlener Begeisterung ergehen. Lesenswert ist das allemal, ob es wirklich zur Erhellung beiträgt, sei einmal dahin gestellt.

[1] An dieser Stelle sei auf Steven Pinkers Großstudie THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE: WHY VIOLENCE HAS DECLINED von 2011 verwiesen. Pinker bedient sich durchaus ähnlicher Modelle und Untersuchungen der Primatenforschung, Morris verweist auch auf ihn. Doch allein eine Begutachtung des Apparats der jeweiligen Bücher, des Karten- und Bildmaterials, sowie der mit vielerlei Statistiken belegten Aussagen gerade zur Gewaltforschung im Tierreich zeigen, wie unterschiedlich beide Autoren an diese Fragen herangehen. Und es zeigt – so hart das klingen mag – den Unterschied zwischen einem, manchmal nur schwer zu lesendem, akademischen Werk und einem eher populärwissenschaftlich gehaltenem, wie Morris es vorlegt. Wobei KEINSFALLS die populärwissenschaftliche Literatur diskreditiert werden soll, sie ist bitter nötig, da sich akademisches Leben in weiten Teilen ansonsten wirklich in der viel bemühten „Blase“ abspielen würde.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

More like 4.5.

Morris's premise is that war reduces violence by creating bigger and better societies which constantly improve their military capabilities. All the technological advances in organized violence, from barbed arrows and chariots to stealth aircraft and nuclear weapons, make war deadlier. To avoid those wars societies have to be better at cooperating, have to work toward being internally peaceful and prosperous. The new stability makes a governed unit which produces a better, more peaceful life for its citizens. The paradox of war is that its violence makes the world safer and richer by reducing violence. The problem is the process of progress and civilization being cyclic. When governments find their influence declining they also lose the ability to prevent the mass organized violence we call war.

He uses most of his book to present a general history of warfare. The course of history illustrates his hypothesis. I believe in his argument while realizing his line of thought is only one way of presenting it, the distinction between productive war and unproductive war, the use of Hobbes's Leviathan to demonstrate productive governance versus Carroll's Red Queen effect in which a conflict results in little progress. My only quarrel with the book is its tone. His style is chatty, informal and given to the arch aside accompanied by a wink and an elbow nudge. Though his lessons and conclusions are convincing and backed by serious thought, he's chosen a way of explaining I find a bit flip and jargon-driven. This observation is in line with the--I think--unfortunate title. In fact, I'd tried to read his earlier study of civilizations, Why the West Rules--for Now, and had abandoned it halfway through because of this offhand style.

I did make it to the end of War! What Is It Good For? Though offering little new information, his perspectives became more interesting as he approached the 20th century, his analysis more thought-provoking. And by the time he was discussing conflict in my lifetime, I was seriously caught up. Part of our reasons for reading such a book is to learn what we already know. Morris may be a flip writer and a little redundant at times, but he clarifies circumstances and focuses views we already have. His analysis of the 40-year spiral toward WWI is probably as good as you'll read anywhere. Related to that particular era is our own. He thinks America's decline of power in the last 20 years of so parallels that of the British Empire as the 19th century ended and carries the same historical scope and magnitude. The idea of the globocop is an important one to Morris's thesis. One nation maintaining global order through military strength and trade alliances is an essential role in providing peace and prosperity and in moving us all in the direction of Denmark, Morris's ideal nation. The decline of the globocop encourages mischief and makes for instability that may ultimately result in war. Morris thinks the declines of such world orders, Pax Britannica and Pax Americana, take a very long time and can even, if the right steps are taken, be reversible. His book was published in 2014. At that time Trump was just a gleam in our TV sets.

The promise of his title is kept. Following his history of warfare he discusses violence among primates. It's no wonder we're violent, he says. Look where we came from. He ends by showing where we're going: robotics. He sees in the decades not too far in our future such technologies as brain-to-brain interfacing and the transhuman. We can be optimistic because he's shown that technological advance brings a reduction in organized violence.

[Tzu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Morris makes some fair points, especially those based on Pinker's theory on the pay-off of death. But overall I found the book to be proposing a lot of weak arguments for an already strong statement, that War is benefitial and thus "good"-indirectly of course, and looking retrospectively at it and not at war itself (for those that would misunderstand me, cus obviously experiencing war is not nice). Personally I believe Leviathans (as Morris calls them) have won over time because of their higher moral ground, which was founded on the freeing of the individual man, and thus gathered many many volunteers to fight for its values (democracy, capitalism,...). Morris doesn't really cover these morals, or the fact that winners of history have always had the higher moral ground. Instead he keeps his arguments as numerical as possible, which I can appreciate, but hence I say it's a bunch of weak arguments for an already strong statement.

Near the end Morris went off on a tangent about technological change, (after we already passed biological and cultural changes) and how it would influence the future. He argues that because of humans merging with computers, human society will become like one super organ. Which is something I strongly doubt, especially concerning the near future, mainly because of cultural differences and our use of technology. Computers and the way they are personal tools will only enlarge those cultural differences--unless Morris' new globocop is meant to control all humans over the internet, which I find a scary idea which I don't think he meant by the merging of technology and humans and thus begetting a world without war.

It's needless to add then, that a future without war is impossible, which he suggests is possible. Because war-much like the concept of poverty-is a term fixed on a scale or spectrum, and not fixed in time or definition. Poverty has in itself become less bad over time-the poor are less poor relatively to those in the past, but that doesn't mean there aren't any poor people left in today's age. There will always be a new kind of poor although we increase our living standards overall. And like so war, like poverty, will always be with us, as war reaches new dimensions as we as humans change and develop over time.

In the end I think the Russian strategist (whose name I forgot) came closest to explaining why wars are fought and will keep being fought-over ideas. As long as we have cultural differences/ideas, war on a global scale will persist. Those to defend the freedom of men will have the loyalty of men, and so win, that until all men have come to accept that any individual is free and not to be dictated by another. But that too sounds way too utopian to my own liking. And so I can only conclude that war is a given, that will never vanish.

[AnnaG · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant strategic level look at why we have wars and why it is important to be good at winning them. Very refreshing viewpoint that helped me to understand how great things can come out of seemingly the worst tragedies.

[Clay Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of wisdom about war. The writer made a good argument for both peace and conflagration.

[Robert Jeens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has two parts. The first is an argument about the utility of war in organizing human society and the second is a prediction based upon this argument. I want to put aside the predictions and concentrate upon the historical analysis. Morris claims that war has been the most important factor that has decreased human violence by a factor of 20. That is, for twenty people who died a violent death in the distant past, only one dies now. Now, I want to present his argument and look at possible criticisms of it.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had very few constraints upon their violence towards each other. Small groups interacted with other small groups and murder happened. At that time, probably 10 to 20 percent of all people died a violent death. After agriculture emerged, people started gathering in larger concentrations of people and this set up a “caging” effect. People couldn’t easily move away from enemies and so disputes could be more brutal. This led to larger political units as the stronger absorbed the weaker, through war. The first states emerged and with them a “Leviathan”, a central tyrannical power that had a monopoly of violence within the unit and organized violence against other units. If you opposed the tyrant, you were in trouble, but if you acceded to the demands of the Leviathan, you were protected. Violence decreased. Some of these states became empires through the conquest of other states. These larger entities created zones of peace that allowed commerce and learning and cities and civilization and all the good things we like now. This was terrible for those killed and displaced and who died of starvation and disease in the making of those states and empires, but worth it for the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who survived.
Morris also makes a distinction between productive war and unproductive war. Productive war creates Leviathans, while unproductive war is squabbling among societies that does not result in larger political entities. When steppe societies created large cavalry armies, they beat the ancient empires, the ancient empires collapsed, and the Dark Ages lasted a thousand years, until gunpowder came on the scene and allowed the civilized world to fight back. This set up the modern empires for success. Particularly, European empires expanded worldwide, again setting up zones of peace after terrible carnage. Finally, by the 19th Century, Britain emerged as a globocop and brought in the most peaceful century in the history of humanity because of its ability to beat all challengers. This fell apart with World Wars I and II, after which the Cold War created a balance of terror between the USA and USSR, though they created relative zones of peace in their own areas. After 1989, the USA became the new globocop and the world entered a new era of peace. In 2012, the worldwide violent death rate was 6.2 per one hundred thousand people. As for the future, read the book.
There are several important points that he makes in support of his argument. First and most importantly, this is a very long-term argument that operates at a different level of analysis than, for example, narratives of war or analyses of strategy. Those studies have their place, but this is not it. For a parallel, think of the difference between physics and chemistry. I can use both of them to analyze my hot cup of coffee but I am asking fundamentally different questions and so get very different answers. Another is that large, prosperous and peaceful societies are not a Western peculiarity. The Chinese, Aztecs, Incas, and Ottoman Turks were successful in their own ways. It is not an apology for a “Western way of war” or “Western rationality” or other such arguments. Lastly, he is looking at cultural evolution. The very high rates of violent death among our hunter-gather ancestors are probably a baseline of what human beings are capable of as a result of biological evolution. The gains made have been as a result of cultural evolution, as societies found better ways to control our natural violent proclivities. He uses Hobbes’ idea of the Leviathan, a tyrannical, centralized power that has a claim to a monopoly of violence in the state. It is important to remember that this power operates mostly as a check on violence; it is only violent if someone breaks the ban on violence. His idea of the globocop operates in the same way: the globocop only becomes violent when another state breaks the peace or balance of power.
Morris disagrees somewhat with Steven Pinker’s claims in the Better Angels of our Nature. Pinker says five factors have decreased violence, Leviathan, commerce, feminization, empathy, science and reason. But Morris says that Pinker only looked at evidence for the past 500 years, and if we look at all of human history, then there is really only one factor –war – which has made Leviathans. The others are consequences of the existence of the Leviathan.
As I read the book, I was in a moral quandary. Everyone knows that war is terrible. Everyone knows that imperialism is terrible. So how can they be good? I came to look at it like this. First, there is a difference between what is and what ought to be. We need to explain reality. And then we can talk about how society should be ordered. Humans are certain type of animal, and war is something humans have done. So even if our description of reality is uncomfortable, the test is whether it is an accurate description, not how it makes us feel. That comes later.
So the first way to criticize the book would be to declare that his facts are wrong. Are they? Larger political entities have always been created by violence. And they then created zones of peace in which agriculture and trade could flourish and in which technical inventions could occur and spread. In the end, even the descendants of conquered people were better off. Even if we include the bloody twentieth century, we can reach the same conclusion. So think about this, if we look at modern day Canada, we need to prove that the descendants of the native people who lost their lands are better off for being displaced. The same is true for the descendants of African slaves in the USA or Brazil. Africans in Africa are better off because of European colonization. Morris has evidence for all this, the most compelling of which is that in all those places and for all those peoples, rates of violence have dramatically decreased and standards of living have dramatically increased. If you have evidence to prove that he is wrong, then the book is wrong.
Here is another way to criticize the book. Morris says that the reason that we are not still stone-age warriors engaged in incessant murder today is because of war in the past. Maybe that is not the reason. If you can find another reason other than war and support it, then the book is wrong.
We can criticize some of the assumptions Morris makes. Hobbes distinguished between “Commonwealth by acquisition,” which is the merger of political entities by force, versus “Commonwealth by institution,” which is a voluntary agreement of people to have their political entities come together. Morris claims that only commonwealth by acquisition actually happened. This generates many “What if” arguments. What if people had agreed to voluntarily have peace among them and build larger political units without the use of force? The problem is that the “What if” history is impossible to prove. Morris is trying to describe how history actually unfolded rather than conjecture upon what might have been if not for this.
So despite the moral qualms I might have in accepting his argument, I could think of only three ways to criticize it. First, is looking at long-term, big history a less valid way of looking at human societies and history than close-up studies of, for example, the actual victims of a particular attack? Well, it strikes me that both are valid levels of analysis, depending upon the questions we are asking. Another way to criticize the book is to find his facts wrong, which will take much more research over a long time by many different analysts. Finally, we would need to play “What if” history as opposed to the history that actually happened. This might be a fun intellectual game, but it is not grounded in facts. This is a counterintuitive, interesting book and I recommend it if you wish, like me, to have your illusions burst.

[Diego · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es un libro francamente decepcionante, si bien esta muy bien documentado y es útil como un libro de fuentes, la forma en que se presentan muchos de sus argumentos es francamente débil o completamente especulativa. El argumento central bien podría resumirse como una extensión de la teoría belicista clásica que ve en las guerras una de las fuentes de fortalecimiento de las capacidades de los estados, algo argumentado por los autores en la tradición de Mann y Tilly.

El problema es que el argumento se extiende demasiado y se busca sostener recurriendo a evidencia que sale completamente de las áreas de dominio de Morris. Por ejemplo, sus recurrentes referencias a la biología evolutiva o a la robótica e inteligencia artificial en el terriblemente accidentado capítulo final donde el autor presenta como predicción una fantasía especulativa que bien podría haber salido de alguna de las mentes más rancias del partido republicano.

Los primeros 4 capítulos del libro valen la pena por sus fuentes y por presentar una argumentación histórica bien construida, los conceptos de "guerras productivas" y "guerras no productivas" son útiles y sirven para pensar las diferencias reales entre las ideas de la teoría belicista clásica y su aplicación al mundo Europeo y los efectos poco positivos de las guerras en otras partes del mundo. Los últimos 3 capítulos se pueden omitir perfectamente, hay mucho mejor ciencia ficción disponible en el mercado.

[Laurent Franckx · Rating 1 out of 5]

The thesis of the book is almost a truism: a. In the absence of strong central power, societies are violent b. War is the most common route to a strong central power.
Whether this means that War is the optimal route to less violence in any ethically meaningful way, is more debatable.
Morris tries to convince the reader of his point with a "world history of war", but the discussion will strike anyone with knowledge of the topic as extremely superficial. I have also identified several inaccuracies in the discussion of the economic aspects of War and conflict.

[Rumi Bossche · Rating 3 out of 5]

War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing,
Edwin Starr

In War What is it good for Ian Morris dissects the history of warfare and what its actually good for. This is a really interesting book so far! As Morris prose is very good to follow and engaging. And shows what kind of things have changed humanity because of war.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every now and then a nonfiction book comes along that you know will stick with you. Two examples for me are Jared Diamond’s 1997 Guns, Germs, and Steel, the story of why civilization and riches developed in the “Lucky Latitudes,” and Douglas Hofstadter’s 1979 classic Gödel, Escher and Bach on the role of reflexivity in math, music, and dynamics.

Now there’s also War: What Is It Good For? on the subject of how war has shaped human social and political institutions since the earliest times. The author, Ian Morris, is a professor of Classics at Stanford. His credentials as both a classicist and as an historian make him a credible thinker on a topic close to his heart—military history, both ancient and modern.

Morris does an outstanding job of drawing on archeological, anthropological, biological and historical research and presenting it in accessible and entertaining language. His evidence comes from records of the scattered primitives of the pre-Roman Near East, the wars that created, pacified and ended the Roman Empire, the rise and fall of China’s Han Dynasty, the Egyptian and Indian civilizations and a number of other war-prone areas and episodes in human history; it even delves into Margaret Mead’s erroneous interpretation of Samoan society that it is peaceful, just like chimpanzees (also erroneous). It is remarkably far ranging, and well worth the time. (Listed at 550+ pages, the last third being endnotes it’s text runs to only 400 pages.)

Morris’s principle argument is that over the span of humankind war has been generally improved the wealth of civilizations and has brought less violence. No, Morris is not lauding the joys of rape, murder and pillage. Nor is he arguing that we should happily engage in wars for the benefit of our descendants. He fully recognizes the pain and horror of war for those involved. Still, he claims, wars can be classified as “productive” or “unproductive,” and the productive kind has been dominant. He also acknowledges that negotiation and peaceful resolution of conflict (what he calls “jaw-jaw”) is preferable to violent resolution (“war-war”). But Morris is a Hobbesian, and his long view of history tells him that mankind will almost always choose war-war over jaw-jaw when the stakes are high. He buttresses his Hobbesian view with evidence from evolutionary biology and primatology to reach the conclusion that when violence pays off, violence is used.

This is a remarkably provocative book, raising to the fore a simple observation: we are each individually too myopic—too caught up in the news and events or our time—to appreciate the effect of today’s events and actions on our perceptions about the direction humanity is heading—we see the future as like the present: in a period of war we see the pain but don’t consider the possibility of future benefits. He sees productive war as “creative destruction,” bringing us that much-needed longer-term perspective on the field of human conflict.

Morris believes that over the entire span of human history war has reduced the scale of human violence, by which he means the share of involved population (not just direct combatants) killed by war. Yes, as time has passed wars have typically increased in their deadliness—the 1916 Battle of the Somme clearly made the death and destruction hit list, WWII topped the charts with an estimated 100 million global deaths, and the potential for global nuclear war tops that by magnitudes. But adjusted for population size the “scale of violence” has actually decreased while the planet has become more civilized, richer and more peaceful.

More importantly, Morris doesn’t see this as happenstance—he advances a mechanism by which this strange consequence emerges. There are two central features in his argument. First, primitive wars occurred when humans clustered in small groups—clans, tribes, and villages—each with tiny populations by modern standards. These small enclaves were “roving bandits” constantly at war with each other for access to land, food, brides, slaves and so on. Frequent raids occurred, each involving few people but each with a relatively high rate of death and maiming—Morris’s analysis of archeological and anthropological evidence places the death rate at 5-10 percent of the involved population in the Stone Age.

As this roving banditry evolved, people began to clump together into larger groups for self-defense, for the advantages that scale provides in agriculture and production of goods, and because war resulted in consolidations of rival groups—the losers merged with the victors. The shift in population to fewer and larger groups required organization led, which led to the development of institutions designed to create peaceful interaction among the group’s members—that is, to centralized government; Morris calls a strong central government “stationary banditry” in recognition that governments and bureaucracies live on the people’s taxes and contributions of military resources. These “city-states” have standing armies that maintain internal peace and resist external incursions. The rise of power centers such as Rome, China’s Han Dynasty, and modern nations, reduces the frequency of wars and the incidence of wartime deaths.

In short, Morris argues, wars create consolidation, consolidation requires governance, and government—a stationary bandit—creates both internal peace and protection from roving bandits. Yes, wars still continue, but they are of a different kind—they are between larger groups (city-states, states and nations). While each war is larger in terms of numbers involved than in previous wars, and, seen in isolation, there appears to be an escalation of violence, the wars are less frequent and each involves a smaller portion of the population—generally the standing army and citizens caught in the path. The scale of violence measured by deaths per capita declines. A strong centralized government—what he calls Leviathan in a nod to Hobbes—is an essential element of peace.

Second, as human history lengthens and the number of wars increases, the technology of war changes: rock-throwing gives way to spears, spears give way to smooth-bore firearms, smooth-bore firearms give way to rifled bores with greater accuracy and distance, rifled bores give way to heavy artillery, heavy artillery gives way to nuclear bombs, and so on. Each of these advances appears to work against the first thesis by creating a larger scale of violence—we are now fearful of global nuclear war, no longer of a rock being thrown. But new institutions to rein in the use of new war technology are created; examples are the balance-of-powers doctrine instituted in the 17th century after Europe’s Thirty Years War, Wilson’s ill-fated and defunct League of Nations, and the still-extant United Nations.

This second consequence of war—the creation of new peace-keeping institutions—is reinforced by the enormous increases in the financial costs of war—the cost of standing armies, of powerful munitions, of transportation by rail, ship or aircraft, and of the complexities of logistics. Thus, Louis XIV, Stalin, and Hitler all bankrupted their nations by war making and war-mongering. While each succeeding war might be more costly in terms of resources used, those costs buttress institutional adjustments to reduce the probability of war. War has changed from a win-lose activity to a lose-lose activity.

The World Wars seem to be counterexamples. World War I was the “war to end all wars” largely because the arrival of heavy artillery made another war too devastating to be conceived. But twenty years after the Treaty of Versailles came WWII. Why? Where was the productive era after WWI? The answer is not found in natural processes—there was no inevitability of a follow-on war. Rather, it lies in the sad fact that WWI never really ended because of the failure to develop a lasting settlement (the Treaty of Versailles was a one-sided punitive disaster), because of the failure to develop new institutions to mitigate the prospects of a next war (The League of Nations was a failure), and perhaps because Germany created the fiction that it had not really lost, thereby carrying its myth of victory to the next war. Not until WWII was completed did we begin to see the benefits of WWI.

Just as “productive wars” create Leviathan and its periods of peace and prosperity, so “unproductive wars” initiate periods of collapse and austerity. The central character of an “unproductive war” is that roving bandits shatter a stationary bandit (Leviathan). This happened for Rome when the people of the steppes—Goths, Vandals, Mongols, and other nomadic groups—moved westward into Europe and destroyed the aging Roman Empire, already burdened by the costs of its own administration. As the Roman Empire collapsed, cohesion turned to disunity and conflicts multiplied to create further disunity. Thus, Morris’s story runs both ways: productive wars lead to Leviathan, then an aging Leviathan encourages unproductive wars that destroy it.

Morris does not argue that we should abandon efforts to prevent war: just the opposite, by working to prevent war we build the necessary institutions. Morris argues that we should not blindly follow the idea that humans don’t effectively act to mitigate wars, that wars occur randomly and that we will inevitably be drawn into the nuclear holocaust. But he certainly doesn’t buy into the Rousseauian idea that at his core man is an inherently peaceful creature, but that man’s true nature is warped by civilization. As noted earlier, Morris is in the Hobbesian camp—man is an acquisitive predator who is destined to violence unless tamed by the power of government.

Morris almost entirely neglects one of the factors that contributed to the declining incidence of wartime deaths, at least since the 18th century. He notes that second only to old age, disease has always been the primary cause of death, both military and civilian. Morris places the beginning of the age of medicine to 1880, but he ignores the major advances in hygiene and medical knowledge that came a century earlier with the start of the industrial revolution.

If you pick this book up, leave your preconceptions at the doorstep, at least until you’ve finished.

Five Stars.

[Raimondas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dangerous book that shouldn't have ever been published if truth is to be protected. the book, that institutionalised some false narratives woven into its ideas and search of facts….
Santa claus is a complete opposite of war (no matter what dimension of those four, mentioned in the book you take) in my opinion he is a symbol of dreams (not the ones we see while sleeping, but the ones we actively create), miracle, joy, togetherness, kindness, all sorts of love, goodness, selflessness, naiveté (the kind, one ought to loose too often too soon), playfulness. All of them are the opposites of the properties war carries to the world and seeds in Homo sapiens. I wonder what the world would look like, if people would not loose the belief in Santa Claus... What place would war have then in our social structure..? For me, war carries all the qualities, one tries to avoid meeting: manipulation, exploitation, lies, theft, greed, selfishness... everything opposite of Santa Claus. When, how and why does this switch between these two happen..? - I continued reading the book thinking, that maybe the author disclosed the answer to at least some of the questions...
in the book he states that rulers steal. and the only difference between them and robbers - rulers cannot run away after a crime. it is only true for systems, tat do not have temporary rulers (i.e. elections), because after a term, the temporary ruler is gone. one might argue, that they have an incentive to be re-elected and get another opportunity to steam, but given the short-term gain chase, operating on that assumption can lead to big errors. furthermore, it, again, reminded me of the game theory and showed that homo sapiens are horrible at marginal value theory and long-term modelling. and again i question the morale and honour of both the masses and individuals. are the "flexible morale" people, the ones who go to try to become rulers? or is it the dumbbed down, manipulated with information flash-flood, but with little ability to employ critical thinking, electorate? "you get , what you deserve"..? or is it that the absolute majority have only the flexible morale and limited amounts of honour..? bushido code should be universal.
however it is, the "rulers cannot run away from the crime scene" has been proven wrong, at least in modern world.
- great britain is basically usa on a small scale happening 1000 - 400 years earlier. even the words of tacitus on page 49 describes usa even at modern times well.
and also this book points out at the exact problem with anthropology and anthropologists - lack of objectivity. a scientist (or a person, pretending to be one, simply because he/she/they/whatever carries or want to carry "dr." in front of the name), referring to their study of objects as "my people" cannot produce objective science and, therefore, whatever they write is only suitable stories for a yellow page dumpster, but not scientific journal.
- moving to second chapter. i disagree, that literacy or the presence-absence of writing language can be used as an indicator of life quality. written word as a mean for information exchange becomes important only when spacetime between communicators increases. and then runners (also widely used between 1914 - 1918 due to limited availability, effectiveness and reliability of wired communication), smoke signals, shouting, becomes ineffective or even error prone. however, in a small spacetime setting (e.g. town), spoken word can be enough to convey all important messages between decision makers and decision implementers to have a prosperous society (e.g. dutchy of lithuania managed to become kingdom without having an established written language - just one example, but there are more). furthermore, if you look at the mythological atlantis, utopia, modern utopia or real-world buthan, you will see that all are small scale, isolated societies. this doesn't indicate their literacy level though - with that i agree, but it also does not point out literacy as a "must have" indicator for a prosperous society. i would argue, that in a small prosperous socium, written language can emerge as a side effect. in a large socium, however, it is a necessity for communication between distant corners of the territory (e.g. great dutchy of lithuania, not having lithuanian written language, employed literate ruthenians, which, basically, made ruthnian an official written communication language in the GDL). however, it does not indicate a level of satisfaction/happiness/peace/etc/ within the social units.
- Ok, now the comparison between roman, han and mauryan. Of course all of them, like any other large spacetime unit, were born from blood and oppression. "all under heaven". The three unifiers of Japan, one and only lithuanian king Mindaugas, even the first emperor of Chinese Tang dynasty - all used "sword and blood", and that is easy to explain, as nobody would voluntarily change their lifestyle and suddenly submit to someone.
- So climate change and civilisation vs. War. There actually have been studies made to investigate the relationship between climate change and wars. Of course, wars increased with increased pressure due to forced lifestyle changes from climate (homo sapiens are not into changes - who would have known (<- sarcasm).). e.g. egyptian civilisation could have been established by people, who were forced to move closer to the nile due to desertification. plato already in his time wrote about the environmental overexploitation (and the global population was what? 100 million..?). as my professor put it: "we fuck up the environment and move on to a new place to fuck it up. Problem now is, we are too many and there is nowhere to move on to."
- The domestication of plants and animals brought pros with cons, and decisions are made based on the cost-benefit analysis (always. Even 'to get, or not to get ice cream'). problem is - we are not very good at it, as the parameters we do our analysis on, are, again, usually short term or "less painful" (i.e. we choose the parameters subjectively based on the outcome we want here and now and not on long-term morale or whatever).
- In pages 78-89 he points out the obvious - hunter-gatherer communities, while for sure suffering from the same dishonourable qualities as "modern homo sapiens", had less chances to employ them, as the population was sparse and so clashes between different groups should have happened rarely (unless they were evolving close to each other). violence within the group, on the other hand, is beyond my guess and modelling capabilities, but it is usually always connected to competition (intraspecies, or, in this case, intragroup)..
Also, there are a lot of war description in his book, which, if you notice, are basically the same as now: rape the women, torture the prisoners (including rape), kill all men. Beheading and display of the heads is also an old war custom...
- Oh, and going back to overpopulation during first agricultural expansion, there is a hypothesis, that crusader wars were a mean to decrease the population (not sure how deeply it is developed): i found it interesting and intriguing, especially, since war is the only "legal" mean to control Homo sapiens population, as everything else is either homicide or results in loud voices of human rights (e.g. former chinese one child policy)
- of course no discuss about ruling /governing can avoid mentioning emperor Tang Taizong (page 140). There is a book by Chunghu Tang "The ruler's guide: China's greatest emperor and his timeless secrets of success" (i read lithuanian translation). Loved the book as the dude employed many necessary rules of good governance. What is even more important to me, that he held himself to the same standards as others - double standards are very wide spread, as you might have noticed, and not only in the ruling class.
- Reading the next chapter "no way out", especially its second part, the scene from "the messenger: the story of joan of arc", where the english raid Joan's village, kill and then rape her older sister, still being held by the sword to the wooden door, behind which, Joan was hiding, came to my visual memory centre. i don't get it. This behaviour. I mean, i sort of do, but it is so disgusting. i don't want to get it.
- Page 151 mentions akira kurosawa's "seven samurai" - very good film, as kurosawa went for historical accuracy, to the degree, that actresses in "ran" were wearing traditional japanese make-up from that era. But i found his films very complex and hard to digest, as each of the layers carries something to be understood or known. sill love him for the historical accuracy and ability to present eras of the past. Highly recommend.
- Another thing about the japan part - japan had "three unifiers" - the author forgot to mention tokugawa ieyatsu. usa forced itself onto japanese land (i know - very unexpected <- sarcasm), and i wonder whether japan would have been involved in "outside" wars if it wasn't for meiji reconstruction and usa/outside influences.
- It (that chapter in general) shows a sad tendency of cultural deletion by the occupying/colonising forces. i wonder how the world would look like if all of them would have been able to evolve freely.
- I find it mind-blowing, that at some point, all Homo sapiens spoke the same language. even looked the same (to a degree). we hunted down other Homics (i.e. Homo genus species) (like still is being done with pygmies), and some of Homo sapiens bred with them (probably at the expense of social acceptance - but this hypothesis can be influenced by the modern "forbidden love" stereotypical stories).
So many articles analyse racism as a form of specieism. it makes so much sense then. wars on native populations with different lifestyles, as well.
- When i saw the map on page 171, i had a feeling, i will come to a triggering text and page 177, third paragraph of chapter (section) "payback" was exactly that text. I have no idea what kind of training must a historian - a seemingly professional in his field - undergo, to get simple facts wrong. what kind of narrative and by whom is it being pushed..?
1) there were no russians in xiii - xvi centuries. They were moskovians (or muscovians, as the author correctly names the duchy at the start of the first sentence).
2) in xiii - xvi centuries muscovians were fighting grand dutchy of lithuania and not poland, as they did not have a border with poland. It is those fights that forced lithuanian dukes to sign the commonwealth treaty/union in 1569, which created the lithuanian-polish commonwealth - first ever attempt of a federation (polish never saw lithuanian as equal and still don't. The 1569 union still has political implications and polish imperialistic fart smell). i get that it is hard to get this topic and reaction to it might seem as "overreaction", but this view can only be by those, who never experienced an attempt to be erased from being...
195 - .."..savage struggles with the native americans..".. .... i mean....i am speechless....this sentence implies, that the arriving ones, who brought with themselves death in many forms, have superior rights to the lands, they just set foot at, compared to those, who inhabited them for centuries. or this can be a conscious word choice to stress the self-image europeans had (some-many colonial descendants still have..) over natives (like when referring to a woman as a walking incubator). i hope it is the second one, but i am afraid the chances are in favour of the first one....
196 - so he did eventually mentioned, that the slaves from africa were not stolen, but traded by their chiefs and the ruling culture in african countries experienced little change (maybe not just africa). somehow this fact gets lost during the black people right movement. by the way, at least in brasil, the social hierarchy is the following:
White (i.e. descendants of conquistadors) > white + black (i.e. descendants of conquistadors + slaves couples) > white + native, if native is not very easily detectable > black (i.e. slave descendants) > black + native couple offsprings > natives - yep, at the bottom-bottom.
201 - the horrible, extremely violent, mutilating deaths, experienced by the described towton 25 and 32, as well as richard III can make one think, that the invention of firearms and ability to kill over longer distance, made the war "humane". however, i would highly disagree. I think it requires higher degree of mastery to survive a close combat with a sword/spear/halberd/mace/etc. Similar weapon, than to pull a trigger. one might argue that: "definitely not everyone can shoot a person from 1 km distance to the head" - true. But i would prefer to watch the person, who wants to kill me, in the eyes and stain his face and clothes with my blood, than get a bullet to the back of my head while opening my house/flat doors dreaming of a warm cup of tea or cacao. if one cannot kill while looking in the eyes, one is nothing more than a coward, hiding behind gunpowder. So i would rather fight in that bloodshed army, than in the one, where one kills and gets killed without seeing the face of the enemy. (maybe it is the kendo training and code of honour that is showing here a bit or masking of cowardness).
...is there a war, that was not about resources/money...?
209 - third paragraph is a perfect description of american self-image. it made me recall the now-dead john mccain and his reference to usa as a "moral compass" of the world and "american political and moral leadership". looking at the increasing rates of obesity, substance abuse/use, american language replacing english (even this book is written in american, even though, the author is british), mcdonalds/kfc/whatever shitfood; decreased levels of critical thinking and education requirements , makes me issue a reassurance to the dead mccain that usa is indeed leading the world down the same slope.
I find Kant antithetical to mccain, and it is interesting to read him being mentioned on page 211. I often remember his piece "what is enlightenment?". in lithuanian it can be understood as "education", as, how kant rightly noted, enlightenment comes only through education. Seeing the more-than-not global downward trend of education, I am happy kant is dead. dude was such an incurable optimist.
216 - the rising and falling wages is exactly what is happening now: banks (including central ones) have to have the equivalent to the actually valueless (yes, I am inventing new words. I do that in all languages I know and I like "valueless" better than "worthless" in this context) paper as an insurance. If one has 1 kg of ice, one can use it to properly cool self, or can smash it with a hammer into many small pieces and give it away to several people, none of whom would be properly cooled, but all would be happy to receive the attention and the intent to be cooled. Same with money and the gold: the amount of gold is the same, printing paper just diffuses the value and that's inflation. Then there is the market competition: cannot pay too much for labour obviously. And some studies showed that even though the amount of paper received now is bigger, the actual value of that amount is less (hence the problems of buying property, even though population in some developed countries is declining <- population is agglomerating, plus immigration, therefore the demand for property in certain places is increasing, therefore this is a false statement, therefore worthy one of this book). E.g. in germany the amount of digits in e-bank account has been increasing for several years, but I read an article, where they argue, that the purchasing power has not changed a lot for quite a number of years. so not much changed in the governing and economy since the xviii century.
219 - the perry expedition of 1853, for me, shows very well the usa policy - not much has changed (yet again..). i wonder, what japan might have looked like in an alternative history without perry...
225 - 226 ….so many things…dude basically praises cultural deletion���.the current world state is not that different: usa rules, with china and russia wanting a piece, usa not letting and europe being like an old unhealthy and barely walking grandperson, trying to catch up, but unable to decide what and, therefore, in which direction….feels weird to defend (ok, more like stand on the same side) as putin on this one. (in "interview with putting" by oliver stone, putin presents his very dangerous mix of truth and delusion - most effective portion of propaganda. But what he is opposing so vocally is the unipolar world, where people watch usa films, music, follow their lifestyle throwing their own out of window, give in to usa politicians (pretty sure it's all about the last bit, as he wants to be the one, who is listened to.).). anyhow I disagree with that "such a nice world it was, when france, germany, uk, ruled the world!" and I disagree that by xix century usa was a global player - it emerged as such (or as minimum, consolidated its position as a global superpower) after the great war
226 - "american holocaust" - nope. "american genocide" - yep. by the way, the invaders wiped out not only native homo sapiens, but other species as well. passenger pigeon probably the best known example.
235 - 236 - my topic - the great war (i hate the name "first world war", as if there had been more. especially since the active war phase of 1939 - 1944 gets too much of the one-sided coverage).
the ideas of angell reads like something germany based its "realpolitik" towards soviets (russia in the 1970s to "zeitenwende" in 2022. and this already shows how wrong the dude was. there is a reason "DON'T CUT THE BRANCH YOU ARE SITTING ON!!!" has to be shouted many times, and yet a call for an ambulance for this reason still happens on too often of occasion. homo sapiens are irrational and often give in to their impulses, which is why we know they are hedonistic and really bad at future anticipation.
dude writes how peaceful and prosperous 2010 was. he clearly has some specific social layer in his mind, because 2010 was just 2 years after the global financial crisis (a point to angell.but there all, but one "western" countries started to follow usa's example by bailing banks, instead of holding them accountable (point for hedonism, impulsivity and "and after me - flood"). in 2010 greed required bailing loans; long-term unemployment has increased by 20% in usa (26 -> 46%); growing state debts (happens every year, as homo sapiens like their beer, pizza, gelato and fancy underwear with the latest i-mePhone, to signify their social status and be "in the gang"). low/middle class was crushed.
full review too long

[Golding · Rating 5 out of 5]

He doesn't go into how it's done, but basically war is good for taming bad systems, and forcing them to be more productive. History goes well when there is a strong Leviathan to control things. It starts getting bad when the central state starts failing and losing control.

The book is a good summary of how war has changed in the last 5k years - the various ages of chariots, cavalry, archers, etc. and how they changed the balance of offensive/defensive war. I wish he would have gone into actual social changes of dominated & dominating people How does being a controlled member of an empire change a group of people?

So I enjoyed the unique perspective, and the broad historical overview of war.

[Rossdavidh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Subtitle: "Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots".

Ian Morris is trying to tackle a Big Topic here: what are the long-term impacts of war? He has a lot of successes, and then he ends with one big failure.

His first success is in addressing whether or not his question is even proper to ask: what is war good for? The obvious answer is, 'nothing'. Maybe this is the right answer now, but it wasn't for most of human existence, and that is so for a non-obvious reason. Prior to the invention of war, we did not have peace.

What we had was widespread, endemic violence. Something like 10-20% of human males died a violent death in the Stone Age, and almost certainly (although this is harder to measure) a majority of them participated in killing someone else. Given the low population densities of the time, this was easy to miss. Up through the 1970's, the Margaret Mead style of thinking (wherein technologically primitive human society was thought to be peaceful) dominated most intellectual thought.

Over the last few decades, though, the evidence has piled up that humans are, and have always been, violent when they are allowed to. From Jane Goodall's research on chimpanzees, to the skeletons of ancient humans which show frequent signs of violent death, to the work of anthropologists among pre-technological hunter/gatherers, it appears that humanity spent most of its existence in a state which led to much higher rates of violent death than war than occurred in Europe during the 20th century (which includes both World Wars and a lot of other nasty goings-on). Even the ancient Roman empire, a very violent place compared to modern America, was an order of magnitude less violent.

It's a fact that most people are not aware of, and Morris spends a lot of the book walking us through the evidence. The biggest problem is the "pacification of the past", in which modern readers are unaware of just how violent the past was, because it is too grisly and cruel for most of them to stand to read. Morris does not drive this point home with as much thoroughness as, say, Stephen Pinker in "The Better Angels of Our Nature", but he does a good survey of all that has been discovered in the last few decades.

Next, he attempts to draw a distinction between "productive war" and "unproductive war". Essentially, the former leads to peace, while the latter just leads to more war later. For example, WWI was "unproductive", which is why WWII came less than a generation later. WWII, on the other hand, was "productive", in that it resulted in a stable system (albeit a tyrannical one, for eastern Europe) that drove violent death down to unprecedented levels in the latter half of the 20th century. The wars of the Roman and Chinese imperial expansions were "productive", and the wars of the Huns and Mongols to tear them down were "unproductive".

This is all interesting stuff, and I especially appreciate that Morris makes serious efforts to look at the Chinese, Indian, and American empires as well as the normal Euro-centric focus on Rome. Whether his analysis of why one military technology (e.g. the chariot) leads to productive war, whereas another (e.g. the warhorses of the Eurasian steppes) leads to unproductive war, is open to question. The comparison of how different parts of the world went through broadly similar cycles of empire building and disintegration was worth reading.

Then, Morris comes up to the present day, and he tries to explain why we are on the cusp of a new day. Within the next 40 years or so, he seems to think, if we can avoid a last apocalyptic world war, we will arrive safely on the other side of war. He then goes on to a lot of techno-prediction, along the lines of Kurzweil's Singularity. I don't have much time for this, not least because not many people have a good track record of making predictions as to how technology will or won't impact human society.

As a broad-sweep history book, it's good. As a real attempt at making a theory of war that holds up to close scrutiny, I'm afraid I'm not totally convinced. I'd call it "semi-productive".

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar in spirit to Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, this book presents something of a compressed Grand History of humanity, and attempts to draw from it answers to big questions. Its author, who received his Ph.D. in Archaeology, now teaches History and Classics in sunny Stanford and in his spare time, per this engrossing Chronicle of Higher Ed piece, consults to CIA spooks and Kissingerian foreign policy realist types (von Clausewitz, the father of them all, gets name-checked repeatedly).

In sum, the argument put forward is that - contra the song lyric that gives this book its title - war is actually very, very important in the Whiggish march toward peace and prosperity. Taking the side of Hobbes over Rousseau, and eliciting Jane Goodall's warring chimps as evidence, Morris claims that the natural state of human beings is relentlessly violent, and that it is only through the rise of governmental Leviathans (Morris likes the term "stationary bandits", and later, "globocops") able to monopolise violence, that periods of peace can (and invariably do!) develop. Thus the Roman or Ming Empires, through ruthless conquest and iron fists, ultimately brought about much more peaceful societies than those that had preceded them.

Morris' theory, like all such ambitious ones, will have plenty of critics, who will find much to critique in the generalisations and inaccuracies found in any such a coarse-grained history. However, he goes much further. The last section of the book lays out a picture of the geostrategic issues facing today's world, and some predictions about how technology, and political forces, might play out over the next few decades. It has been my experience that in the social sciences, forecasts beyond the immediate term, even by complete experts, are always wrong. (This is my First, and Last, Law of Forecasting.) Myriad confounders and "unknown unknowns" always arise to surprise even the most logical expectations. I was thus disappointed that Morris decided to go down this route at all. His last chapter reads like imaginative, over-excited science fiction, setting aside caution and predicting a world of post-human AI and nuclear battlefields. Even gazing into the past, as this book illustrates, is a complex and difficult task. Gazing into the future is for fools.

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ian Morris has tackled a taboo subject here. "Everybody" seems to agree that war is; undesirable, causes immense suffering, disruption of societies, destruction of lives, families and property....in fact, there are no winners and everyone loses in a war. But Morris steps back from the picture of war as experienced from those involved and takes the big-history view. His main thesis is that stone age man (read persons) ....maybe 10,000 years ago had a 10-20% chance of dying a violent death. During the period of the ancient empires .....around 2000BC to 600AD the chance of dying a violent death had dropped to around 2-5% and in modern times, despite the carnage of WWi and WW2, the chances of dying a violent death have dropped to around 1-2%. He then pursues the question; Why? what has happened to drop the violent death toll?
He concluded that there have been (what he terms) "productive wars" where the "winner" has been able to unite a large number of previously warring tribes or states. These smaller warring states were rather dangerous for individuals.....with high rates of violent deaths. But the peace brought by a larger, united empire (and the need to tax the empire and gain benefits from it) meant that international trade could expand, agriculture could be developed, cultural accomplishments were expanded, travel was safer, investment could be made in infrastructure, ...roads water supplies, irrigation etc. The Pax Romana is the archetypal example of this. On the other hand, there have been unproductive wars where the reverse happened: central authority broke down, war-lords emerged, travel was unsafe, trade plummeted, wars increased in frequency, investment in infrastructure declined.
He refers frequently...maybe too frequently to the Hobbsian idea of Leviathan.....a super powerful monarch or leader...who could intimidate all the would-be threats to their power. Ideally they would be elected by consensus. It is this state of Leviathan that leads to the benefits described by Morris.
But the path to these states has not been smooth nor continuous. The ancient empires; Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Mauryan, Han. All seemed to fall prey to nomadic tribes without fixed headquarters.....which subsequently brought about the collapse of these empires.
There are some real issues with Morris's methodology. He acknowledges that his numbers for just about all the "violent-death-rates" are pretty much speculative. He also (conceptually) averages out death rates over a long period. So death rates from a medieval siege, for example, might have been very high....especially when the Mongols killed every living thing in the city....but Morris tends to estimate them over the lifetime of the empire that emerged from such conflict. Likewise, Australian deaths, in WWI were about 62,000, and wounded gassed etc., were about 156,000 from a population of 5 million. (or a simple death rate of 1.2% but if you include injuries it rises to over 4%...and Australia had no civilian casualties). Mind you, if you were around 18-44 years old in Australia in 1915 then your chances of a violent death would have been much higher. Some 39% of the male population between the ages of 18 and 44 enlisted for service in WWI and 65% of those who "embarked" were killed or injured. This would indicate a killed or injured rate of around 25% for this group. The injury figure is interesting because, presumably, a number of the injured later died from their war wounds (it has been estimatesd as around 60,000)...and certainly the "cost" to the nation in terms of the personal trauma, and shell-shock etc, was probably as significant as the direct deaths on the battlefields. Morris also makes the point that the majority of deaths in war were often caused by disease (dysentry, cholera, plague, etc.) and I wonder how these are accounted for. Are they regarded as "violent deaths? Basically, his numbers look very "approximate" to me. They are both difficult to define and difficult to measure. However, one curious thing is, that even with the deaths of, say, 75-85 million people in WWII, ..this only represented about 3% of the world population at that time. Though Belarus lost about 25% and USSR lost about 12%. The UK only lost about 0.8% and USA only 0.3%....Australia 0.4%. And, of course, Morris takes the long term average say of somebody born in 1900 and having a life expectancy (at that time) of say 60 years....and calculates their chances of a violent death over that period. So the world population approximately doubled over that time from 1.6 Billion to 3 Billion (despite two world wars) ...and Morris, of course is looking at the chance of a violent death with this vastly increased population. Anyway, despite dodgy data he is talking about order of magnitude differences so probably the basic thesis is reasonable.
He manages to encapsulate a lot of really interesting facts, including such things as the development of the first guns and their rapid spread throughout the world.The fact that the world was very close to nuclear annihilation in 1983 when a Soviet Deputy Chief for combat algorithms named Stanislav Petrov took the decision that their early warning system (showing a Missile launch by the US and recommending that they launch a counter attack) was a false alarm. They guy basically saved us all. But it highlights the extreme danger that we all live under from the nuclear weapons available and the fallible humans with their fingers in the trigger. One other interesting section was about the decline of the UK as a "Global cop" and its replacement by the USA.
He also suggests that all areas of the world went through roughly similar stages of development with warfare:
1. Cultivation
2. Domestication
3. Fortification
4. Cities-states-bronze
5. Discipline (Phalanxs etc)
6. Chariots
7. Empires and massive numbers (Though the americas hadn't reached stages 5-7).
He is a bit repetitive ...his diagram of death rates over time is repeated at least three times. And I found myself scratching my head and wondering whether he was putting forward a recommendation for wars. Though, I guess, what he would say he is doing is taking a completely objective view of wars and concluding that there have been "productive" wars that have led to long term peace and prosperity...and there have been unproductive wars that have led to the opposite effects.
Quite a thought provoking book with a lot of interesting information ...and close to 100 pages, of notes, further reading and bibliography. Happy to give it 4.5 stars.

[Santi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite entertaining and certainly thought provoking. Morris gives an overview on the role of war from the Stone Age to 2100. The part dedicated to the future is unusually bold.

However, it verges too often in the justification of Western imperialism. His arguments are subtler than Niall Ferguson's ones but it is clear that a book like this could only be written by someone in the victorious side: An Englishman living in the US. I wonder whether Morris would think the same had, for instance, the Arabs conquered the UK in the 9th century and stayed there until the 20th.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book about the place of war in the history of the world, especially Eurasia. Where the author will draw unwelcome attention is their reading of wars that were productive and those that were unproductive. Ian Morris is probably correct in his assessment, but the pacifists [aka aging Counter Culture nutters and their ideological descendants], a loud and obnoxious group, have already taken him to task for this insight.

This is unfair and unwarranted.

Setting aside the psycho-drama, this is a must read book for hobbesians (those believing in a strong centralized government with empiric tendencies) and for those who believe empires, or centralized governments, are destructive to freedom and innovation.

Whether you agree or disagree with him it is a tightly argued and accessible piece of work.

The author follows in the line of Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker, and Azar Gat amongst others.

Highly recommended for those interested in geopolitics and futurism.

5 out of 5 stars.

[Allan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ian Morris challenges the narrative that war is always detrimental to society, and divides such conflicts into two categories: productive wars, and unproductive wars. He uses statistics to convincingly argue that productive wars have led to increasingly large and centralized societies, which has resulted in ever lower rates of violent death.

The idea that war can result in less violent deaths, not more, is very much counterintuitive, so for most people this book is an eye-opener. In addition to examining countless historical outcomes, Ian Morris relates his ideas to the current geopolitical context, and makes fascinating predictions.

One of the best books I've ever read. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in geopolitics and anthropology.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, Ian Morris presents a fascinating, well-researched insight into how conflict is 'written' into our societal/physiological DNA; frequently to the overall betterment of mankind.

The book can be somewhat dense at times, with repeated statistics in some chapters (which can seem a bit over-explained to a granular level of detail); but the author clearly has gone to great lengths to quantify his research.

Chapter 7 probably best summarizes the end-to-end evolution of conflict, and has some interesting correlation with Homo Deus (Yuval Noah Harari); complementing Morris' analysis of what it means to be a 'Globocop' moving into the future.

[Lynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author offers a different explanation for the decline in violence that I first encountered in Stephen Pinker's "The Better Angel's of Our Nature.' According to Morris, violence has declined because we have gotten good at war,which lead to the rise of powerful nation states that could control violence. He often overstates facts to support his position and goes completely into la-la land in the last chapter, where he speculates that within 30 years violence will end because we will have merged with our technology and become immortal. I think Pinker got it right. Read his book instead.