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Capital versus insurance
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Photo: AP
For better or worse we are stuck with the reality of the artificial, political, nation state until such time as humans get lucky enough to gain (or regain) a survivorship bias toward virtuous egoism. The existence of the state “legitimizes” the need for a government to provide for the common defense of its citizens. That in turn spawns war.
Statists, minarchists and Objectivists will argue common defense is the moral justification for government: anarcho-syndicalists and anarcho-capitalists will say “Not so.” My personal view is the state (and nationalism itself) is inherently dangerous and most likely fundamentally evil.
How do we make for the better in this reality? National defense means preparing for and fighting wars. We must accept this burden’s necessity and view it as insurance that both purchases our freedom and preserves this nation as a bastion of individual liberty.
How should any nation fulfill its obligation to defend itself and its citizens? The moral answer is to deter war and to win wars that do start quickly. “Winning” in war should be understood to mean minimum total death and destruction with maximum change in the enemy’s mind toward favoring peaceful cooperation (i.e., decisiveness).
We must destroy the dual fallacy that armaments and armies are capital and that war can be monetized. We must acknowledge the fact that the insurance premiums for Liberty are enormous and are sunk costs. Then we must work to minimize overall costs through smarter war-fighting.
How do we win wars? The conventional fallacy, “proved” by the historical narratives and mythologies of 20th Century wars is that ponderous, predictable, massive force both deters and wins wars. Well, that seems to be common sense and 18 years ago was hailed as “The Powell Doctrine.”
The Powell Doctrine was the new lipstick on a very old, very ugly pig however. Massive force works only through mutual attrition and massive costs both in materiel and lives: disproportionately and intentionally including non-combatant civilian lives and property.
It is encouraging to see the Powell Doctrine tossed onto the ash heap of history and a new doctrine of limited, small scale, decisive warfare that protects the civilian population starting to take its place. Thank you Capt. Travis Patriquin, Lt. Col. Nagl, and General Petraeus and the warriors who implement this doctrine!
Now we need to work on risk factors to reduce the cost of our insurance premiums.
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