War is the Health of the State

“Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness.  Peace builds, war destroys.” – The World at War

The oft-used adage that War is the Health of the State originated from a 1917 essay, “The State,” by anti-war progressive writer Randolph Bourne.  Noting how war is used to manipulate the patriotism and cooperation of the citizenry, the state’s influence and wealth would only grow as herd mentality began to accept its collectivist policies.  Bourne believed the state existed only under the spell of war.  Without war, the state had no inherent power and returned to a government formed for civic living.

In Ralph Raico’s 2024 book, “The World at War”, Raico provides a classical liberal response to the causes of perpetual war in the twentieth century, focusing on World War I and World War II.  The book is, in fact, Raico’s 3-hour 1983 lecture at a Cato Institute seminar reprinted with annotations.  As founder of the short-run libertarian publication, the New Individualist Review, Raico was a historian of liberty and professor emeritus at Buffalo State University.  A student of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard, Raico focuses on the relationship between war and the disastrous rise of the state.

While classical liberalism and the Industrial Revolution created a working class that was becoming richer by the decade, its decline in the late nineteenth century was replaced with growing interest in central planning and welfare states worldwide.  Governments, by appeasing the needs of the people, became distributors of benefits in exchange for their continuous wars.  Then, as state control took effect in the West, chronic wars led to tyranny over the people at home.  Imperialism spread through expansionism across Europe, as standing armies grew into a century of conflict. 

Often referred to as the “Great War”, World War I would lead to a rise in both communism and fascist movements worldwide.  In the deadliest war at the time, nearly 40 million soldiers and civilians lost their lives, while millions more were wounded.  While the war resulted in the collapse of four empires, the ensuing rise of fascism and Naziism in Germany would initiate another “Great” war, World War II. 

America entered the second war through its Anglophile elites, who fell for European propaganda that kept the conflict going.  A War Industries board took control of the American economy through price controls and allocation of supplies, resulting in a growing state domestically as political structures were expanded to finance the war internationally.    

Under the guise of a national emergency, warfare was increasingly tapped to advance the state.  More federal spending, surveillance, and bureaucracies resulted.  While lost lives typically measured the costs of wars, growing empires worldwide, public debts totaling into the trillions, and the acceptance of government dependence were its unintended results.  Today, the newest iteration of war is the proxy war.  By providing weapons and provisions to another country willing to do our dirty work, why put our soldiers at risk?  As such, war-hungry, interventionist politicians keep the Military Industrial Complex in business, whether our troops are involved or not. 

The interventionist policies that led to the World Wars in the twentieth century were the opposite of the noninterventionist policies of the founders, which were wholly incompatible with the empire-building that followed.  Instead, the founders limited government to keep it from overstepping its original role.  Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural speech in 1801, called for “peace, commerce, and honest friendships with all nations, entangling alliances with none”.

War continues to be the lifeblood of the State today, with the US Pentagon, the largest single employer in the world, employing 6 million people.  The alternative to a state bent on warfare is a return to a federated government, with a potent separation of powers between the states and their central government.