The Cost of War

These posts explore the themes developed in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism, which is itself a real-world test of the central concepts of the Biocognitive Model of Mind for psychiatry.

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In an essay published a few months before he died of TB aged just 49, French economist and politician Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) introduced the concept now known as opportunity cost. He used a parable in which a window is accidently broken. The owner of the window calls the glazier who is paid 6 francs for repairing it. According to conventional economics, the payment increases economic activity in the village and everybody should be happy. So, the reasoning goes, if one broken window was a profitable exercise, then surely more would be better? If, once a year, all the villagers ran around and broke all their windows, producing a great deal of economic activity, then how could that not be wonderful for them? Obviously not, Bastiat pointed out, as it doesn’t take into account the loss incurred by not being able to spend the money on a profitable investment, such as buying hens to produce eggs or a spinning wheel to keep the wife busy. If we spend money on one thing, it means we have not taken the opportunity to invest the money in something else more useful or profitable. For every purchase or expense we incur, the cost of lost opportunities has to be taken into account.

I first heard of this many years ago when I was involved in a charity which financed development projects for the poorest of the poor in rural Indian villages. Those people were poor, believe it, but for them, weddings were an extra disaster. The bride’s family had to pay a dowry to the parents of the groom, and pay for a big celebration for the whole village that could go on for days. Invariably, they had to borrow money, which pushed them deeper into debt and made it impossible for them get ahead. They had lost the opportunity to put the money into something worthwhile, e.g. a cottage for the newly-weds, a new plough, a couple of goats to produce milk, whatever. When we saw this in action in a village near Nagpur, most of our group shook their heads at the folly but, of course, we clever and sophisticated Westerners do it all the time. Non-stop, with bells and whistles.

This came home last Friday, May 9^th, when, out of curiosity, I clicked on a YouTube channel and was taken to a tower overlooking Moscow’s Red Square. Lined up below, row upon perfect row, were thousands of troops assembled for the parade marking the 80^th anniversary of Victory Day. On May 9^th, 1945, German forces surrendered to Marshall Zhukov, bringing to an end the unalloyed horror of the European war. In Russia today, Victory Day is very important for two reasons. The first is the victory itself, over an enemy that everybody knew fully intended to wipe them out. The second is the immense gratitude the people feel for the armed forces for their sacrifice in absorbing the unbelievable savagery of the Nazi attack, then forcing them back. It’s often forgotten, or not known, that World War II was won by the USSR, not by the Western powers. At least 80% of German losses in men and material were on the Eastern Front. Yes, the US provided Lend-Lease equipment at a critical time, but it was only 3% of the total Soviet war time production. It’s also true that Britain’s Bomber Command weakened the Nazi war effort, losing 54,000 men in the process, but that shortened the war without ending it.

As a result, the USSR before, and now Russia, put a huge effort into the Victory parade. It’s one of the biggest military parades in the world, and probably the best organised. During the march past, squads of troops in brilliant uniforms marched twenty abreast down Red Square, all precisely in step in faultless lines, every movement executed perfectly. I used to march, many years ago, and I know how much effort goes into getting to that level of perfection. There would be a minimum of a hundred hours practice for each of the thousands of troops for that parade alone, plus all the effort of getting their uniforms just right, boots polished and so on, plus the endless organisation behind the scenes of getting everything in place or transporting troops across the vast country, just for a couple of hours of spectacle. They really looked stunning and the other thing was that despite their strenuous marching style, they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

But what a waste. What opportunities were lost in employing so many fit, healthy young men and women on what is essentially just another party? They had a march last year, do they need another this year? In the weeks beforehand, in marching up and down or practising the about-turn dozens of times, they weren’t doing something constructive. They could have been working on the farm or in a factory, studying or working in a hospital or school, anything, but they didn’t. All that amazing effort wasted, but that’s the military. And we all do it, all the time. Look at the coronation last year, or the Queen’s funeral the year before. They were military parades, simpliciter, as is the regular parade for the US presidential inauguration, or the French Bastille Day parade. These are the equivalent of the lavish and wasteful weddings poor people in India were forced to provide. However, there’s more, as the name of this column says: Narcisso-Fascism, which isolates and names the most dangerous single element in human affairs.

Narcisso-Fascism shows how the twin drives of self-centredness and the urge to dominate come together to produce the insatiable and insensate lust for power and glory at any price. Narcissism says: “Look at me, am I not the most beautiful of all? Tell me, I want to hear it, tell me again and give me more so I can look even more beautiful.” The uniforms worn by the troops in Moscow last week, and the gorgeous array of Britain’s Grenadier Guards or Life Guards, are designed to make the troops look beautiful, and they do. Their uniforms have to be seen as the functional equivalent of mating plumage in birds or antlers on deer, to make the male look grander and more attractive. It is part of the drive to dominate, mediated by the hormone testosterone, the purpose being to win as many mates as possible, to spread the powerful one’s genes around.

If that were all, that would be bearable, we could probably put up with narcissism like we put up with Mick Jagger, the Kardashians or (yerk) Elon Musk. We could have competitions for the most beautifully-uniformed young men, much like body-building or football teams, and everybody would be happy. That reminds me of a phenomenon from the 1950s and 60s which (mercifully) died out: marching girls. I’m not sure if they existed in other countries but marching girls were A Big Deal here, especially in country towns. Teams of girls got together, practised marching, put on skimpy sort-of-military uniforms and marched up and down in competitions (I just checked Google Images and OMG, there they are, truly horrific). And they were good. In one humiliating day, our air cadets marching team was beaten by a bunch of girls in stupid uniforms. Oh, the shame but secretly, we knew we were better because, beyond marching up and down and looking pretty, those girls had no purpose. That was all they did, that was all they could do whereas we were the military. Now, instead of pretty girls and spotty boys, we could have big international competitions like the bloody Olympic Games, but for men in gorgeous regalia with guns and swords and pikes stamping up and down to the sound of stirring brass bands. The mothers could get all dewy-eyed, the girls could swoon, the fathers feel proud and everybody would be happy. Except they wouldn’t. Periodically, the politicians would want the troops to load their guns and use them to dominate the other teams, then they would start on neighbouring countries. The problem is that word “stirring.”

Military parades aren’t intended to be the equivalent of a marching girls’ annual jamboree or the Olympics, because under the splendour and pageantry is the simmering message: “Look out, we’re dangerous, these guns aren’t just for decoration.” Military parades are intended to stir the blood, to make people feel “My god we’re good and the clods next door better know it,” and to want more. This leads to yet another war, which is the sophisticated equivalent of Bastiat’s window-smashing spree. The business cycle of war is to build up the arsenals and train the best young men, destroy them in an orgy of blood and devastation, wait a few months or years, then start again. It never ends. The rich get richer, the generals get more medals and the poor get killed.

The name of the game is domination, it’s everywhere but it has no end. Once it starts, it goes on and on until it is burned out, as the Nazi armies learned in Stalingrad or the Japanese in the smoking ruins of Hiroshima and Tokyo. Trouble is, the West has never learned it. By the West, I mean the US and its vassal states, such as Britain and Australia. By writing the USSR out of the narrative, the Western allies have convinced themselves that they won World War II and are therefore the most gorgeous, most powerful and most beatifically righteous males of all time who have the right and duty to dominate everybody everywhere for any reason, or even for no reason, as the fancy takes them.

The US surrounds first the USSR, and later China and Russia, with nearly 850 military bases reaching almost to their borders, not including its spy bases; it invades countries at the drop of a hat; it spies on everybody; encourages its vassals to invade or attack their neighbours in genocidal frenzy; uses its reserve currency to isolate and bankrupt nations that don’t want to be told what to do, on and on. It decides it needs to keep China down for no reason other than the US insists on being No. 1, so it imposes a long list of trade sanctions, the sort that used to be regarded as acts of war, with the direct and clearly stated intention of preventing China from threatening its self-appointed place at the top of the pile. For this, it needs a trillion-dollar military budget, more than the next nine nations in the world combined, plus vast sums for its 18 spy agencies and various deceptions such as the $25billion spent each year on propaganda hidden in the USAID budget (since shut down).

Unsurprisingly, countries that feel threatened by American weapons poking over their borders decide they need to be prepared for the very real possibility that they will be next for the chopping block. They then build up their military, hold parades to make the people feel a bit better, the US reacts with hysterical outrage at the sight of “Putin’s troops strutting and goose-stepping” across their own city’s squares (that by courtesy of The Economist), and the arms race is on, with all its unspoken opportunity costs.

All of this is true but the point is that this is no longer the 1950s and 60s when we were bombarded day and night with propaganda about the menace of the Reds Under the Bed, or the Yellow Peril getting ready to slide down the lianas of S-E Asia into our precious country. In those simple days, there was only one threat: the commies. Remember that word? It’s so evocative of Allen Dulles and Richard Nixon and Kissinger and all the gang, but the poor dumb commies fell apart. Now we have the faux threat of The Terrorists but they’re not in the same class as The Communists, you don’t need MIRVd nuclear submarines to fight a bunch of sunburned brigands in sandals. For a start, we don’t even know who they are. Is the new president of Syria, former head of Al Qaeda and of ISIS, a goodie or a baddie? Let me check the direction of the wind and I’ll tell you.

In fact, the real threat these days is something politicians weaned on the Red Peril, the “guns before butter” crew, either know nothing about it or don’t want to know, because it’s an opportunity cost and they don’t count them. It’s not even the cost of losing a war, like the $8trillion the US has spent losing the post 9/11 Wars Without End. This time, the threat is not the enemy, it’s not their “strutting troops” (as though ours don’t) or even their occasional nuclear subs sliding silently past our coasts. No, this time the threat is us. It’s the $2.8trillion spent on the military, plus the endless devastation of wars, plus the disease and starvation they bring.

The only figure I have seen for the total economic impact of militarism is US$19trillion per year (Global Peace Index), or 13.5% of global GDP. This includes all the deaths and injuries, the lives ruined, homes flattened, water supplies and power stations wrecked, hospitals bombed, children dying of preventable diseases, the farms burned out and cattle starving. This vast sum leads to the opportunity cost of militarism, the failure to do anything about the looming threat of climate change.

It is useless to tell today’s politicians they should stop spending money on bombs and bombers, and start to spend it on renewable energy and housing and industries for the poor, they’re incapable of adapting to the idea that we can actually live fulfilling and productive lives without destroying the competition. They can’t see that life without forcing your way to the top is not just feasible, but entirely satisfying. Their entire lives have been devoted to fighting to get to the top by any means possible, clouded by the inherent narcissism of people who think they should be on top because America, and Britain, and white people. The good news is that the rising generation can see this. They understand that the opportunity cost of being part of the dominant military alliance in the world is the death of the planet. It’s as simple as that.

The race is on: will the younger generations get power first and stop the insane competition, or will the old fools keep them out until it’s too late? I hope it’s the former because until we bring our lust for power under control, there is no hope for the human species. Or most other species.

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