Wikipedia identifies Benjamin Ginsberg as a libertarian political scientist, professor at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of twenty books. I read his new book, The Worth of War, because I hate the thesis: “Although war is terrible and brutal, history shows that it has been a great driver of human progress.”

No, I thought. War is a terrible destroyer. But there’s more.

“War selects for and promotes certain features of societies that are generally held to represent progress. These include rationality, technological and economic development, and liberal forms of government.”

“Preparation for war often spurs on economic development.”

This is a short book – 175 pages in the body of my Epub version, mostly focused on Europe and America since the 17th century.

Ginsberg uses some terms idiosyncratically. He is fond of “ensorcelled”, which I think is a neat word. But his odd use of “Lamarckian” to mean lessons learned and taught to the next generation may befuddle biologists.

There is much discussion of military techniques and organization – does it really matter if brigades are divided into regiments commanded by colonels, further subdivided into…

But I did learn some interesting tidbits. Between WWI and WWII the US had color coded war plans – ranging from War Plan Black for Germany to War Plan Crimson for Canada; that Rome preferred its legionaries to be at least 5′ 10″ tall; and that modern training techniques have resulted in 90% of soldiers firing their guns in battle versus 15% in WWII.

Via the “curriculum of war” winners learn rationality and develop skills in planning, organizing, and engineering that “spillover” beyond the military. Errors in judgment can be corrected, but countries committed to magical thinking disregard facts and become losers.

Ginsberg presents examples from ancient Greece and Rome [1],China, the European Crusades, Aztecs, and the Soviet Union, but Nazis receive considerable analysis.

The bizarre Nazis ideology of racism led them to believe “mongrel” Americans could pose no military threat, that Slavic peoples were “subhumans,” and that Jews should be exterminated. They diverted war materiel to exterminating the Jews and turned Slavs who initially welcomed them as liberators from Stalin into enemies. The Nazi rejection of “Jewish science” and Jewish professionals created an “enormous transfer of intellectual capital” to their enemies. Thus their adherence to ideology led to their defeat. Continue reading →