"To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war....
"If you want to abolish war, you must eliminate its causes. What is needed is to restrict government activities to the preservation of life, health, and private property, and thereby to safeguard the working of the market. Sovereignty must not be used for inflicting harm on anyone, whether citizen or foreigner....
"Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly....
"Only one thing can conquer war--that liberal attitude of mind which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation, and which can never wish to bring about a war, because it regards war as injurious even to the victors."~ Ludwig Von Mises, composite quote from his books Human Action; Omnipotent Government; Nation, State, and Economy; and Theory of Money and Credit (collected here at the post 'Mises on War')
Tuesday, 25 April 2023
"To defeat aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war...."
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And almost two hundred years earlier...
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
That's true in a fundamental philosophical sense - but it takes a long time, and arguably you'll never convince everyone. There are more concrete actions a victorious (and relatively free) power can take against a defeated aggressor to force peace over a shorter timeframe, without necessarily proselytising an explicit idealogy.
In short you need to give the enemy no viable option but to adopt peaceful ways. They need to know that it's either be peaceful, or face annihilation. John Lewis does a convincing job of showing in his book 'Nothing Less Than Victory' that this is the only way an aggressor will become peaceful - and when you don't do this, they invariably come back at you again. He uses numerous examples from ancient times to the 20th century showing this - the US victory over Japan being the strongest and most recent example.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8225153-nothing-less-than-victory
@MarkT: I agree with your a John Lewis, but seems to me their views are compatible. Three additional words make the point, I think:
To FULLY defeat an aggressor, you need to FORCE them to discard to the ideology that generates war. And to DEMONSTRATE to them, as Lewis explains, that there is nothing in war but destruction and annihilation.
@ Peter Cresswell: I agree, both Mises and Lewis's views are fully compatible. But the former is often taken to mean you must rely on ideas and philosophy alone to change people's explicit ideology. Many, if not most Objectivists believe this too - i.e. that to change history you must start with the abstract philosophy - the so called 'top down' theory. Robert Tracinski argues convincingly that whilst it can happen this way, it usually doesn't.
Better explicit philosophy can lead to improved concrete outcomes, but improved concrete outcomes also lead to better ideology. They operate in a self-perpetuating circle of virtue and either can kick the process off. For instance the Americans occupying Japan didn't launch an ideological campaign against the state religion (Shintoism), even though that religion under state control had been used to promote aggression. Nor did they focus on promoting Enlightenment ideals in an explicit way to my knowledge. Instead they focused on things more concrete - allowing them to keep Shintoism, but banned any connection between Shintoism and the state. That combined with the threat of nuclear annihilation if they continued aggression, and positive incentives put in place for free market development eventually led to a change in implicit ideology, and remarkable and surprisingly quick transition from warlike to peaceful.
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