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How war has made the world safer and richer

War has made the world a safer and richer place, a prominent academic told a meeting at the Royal Society of Arts in London on Thursday.
War has made the world a safer and richer place, a prominent academic told a meeting at the Royal Society of Arts in London on Thursday.
November 1st - Cross

November 1st - Cross

Image by Stephen Train

The basic argument of Ian Morris, professor of classics and of history and a fellow of the Archaeology Centre at Stanford University in the US, was that through war bigger and more united societies had been created – “and these societies have reduced the risk of dying violently.”

Ten thousand years ago, he said, all people lived in small groups: there were few big battles but violence was common. People had a 10-20 per cent risk of dying violently.

In the 20th century – despite major wars and genocides – the risk of dying violently had fallen to only 1-2 per cent.

The change occurred because over thousands of years the gangs running the new, bigger societies (“really violent people”) suppressed violence among their populations. They did so because internally pacified societies strengthened the state and enabled productivity to rise.

His second claim in a talk publicising his latest book, War! What Is It Good For?, was that although war seemed to be the worst possible way of creating these bigger societies, “we haven’t found a better way.”

In addition, bigger societies created the preconditions for greater prosperity by, for example, enabling division of labour and specialisation to occur.

He argued that violence was an evolved adaptation, common to almost all species, and each species had evolved an equilibrium of violence. Humans, too, had an equilibrium: if you are too violent you are likely to be killed and your genes will drop out of the pool. The same result may occur if you are not violent enough.

But for humans there was another factor – our brains and our culture. “Our behaviour has changed dramatically, because it was controlled by the larger societies created by wars.”

“We can’t wish away war,” he argued. “But we are very good at responding and dealing with it.”

Looking ahead and applying his arguments to geopolitics, Morris argued that if you wanted a safer, richer world you should support the US remaining as the dominant global power.

Just as Britain had once run a worldwide system in which it was a sort of global Robocop, until it was challenged by the US and Germany, today the US’ dominant position was challenged by China. On present trends the US will be in the position of Britain in 1910:“So the next 40 years may be the most dangerous in history.”

In a more multipolar world without a single dominant power, the leaders in another country might decide that the way is open for the use of power – which he suggested was probably President Putin’s calculation over Crimea.

·         http://www.thersa.org/events Royal Society of Arts Events

·         http://www.oneworld.org/events OneWorld’s Global Justice Events listing

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