How and Why to Fight the Next War

It’s been a clear, cool night in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where strangers are kind and beauty is overflowing.

The American government should sell its next war to the American people on economic grounds. Americans must be assured that their standards of living — adjusted for the values of the lives lost and broken — will see a sustained rise as a result. Will it be thanks to cheap oil or new trading opportunities with hitherto isolated or underdeveloped economies? Will the security of an average American be improved perceptibly enough that he or she would be willing to finance a war in exchange? If so, explain why. Show the work. Continue to present a periodic cost-benefit analysis as the conflict, once authorised, progresses.

If America gets richer with each war, it will maintain its cultural hegemony. It is the cultural hegemony — the music, the lavish lifestyles that grace the silver screen and gossip columns, and the aspirations and achievements of ordinary Americans — that inspire the citizens of oppressed regimes to demand more, or demand something different, from their rulers. The American dream inspires. Guns and economic sanctions do not. America did not have to invade the Soviet Union to see it crumble. All America had to do was to live well and loud.

Should, by contrast, America get poorer with each war… Who wants to imitate the poor man’s values? Americans will lose out, both in the short term and in the long term, economically and in cultural leadership.

You dislike how the unwashed masses dress overseas and want them to show more skin? You wish to rescue overseas girls from being sold into sexual slavery before they reach puberty? First show how this will improve America’s bottom line. Will persuading foreigners share Americans’ tastes and values make them more attractive trading partners? If so, go ahead: persuade. The chances are, in 99 out of 100 cases, the cost efficient way to persuade will be by opening up America to trade and targeted immigration, by offering scholarships to America’s universities and by teaching English on the ground, rather than by carefully aiming a red dot sight.

Thank you kindly.