Economics is the Sine Qua Non of Waging War
In their three-volume Military Effectiveness set, Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray argue that political effectiveness involves a nation’s ability to obtain and allocate resources for military activity.
This might be the most critical factor in determining a nation’s ability to succeed in a great power war. Throughout the works, they demonstrate that those powers who successfully managed economic resources toward the conduct of war fared better than those who did not manage to marshal those resources.
Wars and armies cost money, and figuring out how to pay for the men, equipment, and other resources has been a prevalent theme across history, whether during the civic militarism of Greece and Rome, the medieval and early modern periods of the Condottieri, or the modern era of mass armies of citizen-soldiers.
According to Williamson Murray in The Making of Strategy (1994), the implementation of any strategy is wholly dependent on the economic means available. Economic factors are inherently strategic constraints, but overwhelming economic might is of little help when implementing a flawed strategic vision.
In The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (1976), Edward Luttwak argues that Roman Legions were clustered at strategic points within client states during the Julio Claudian period, which allowed the Romans to outsource day-to-day defense to their clients. This arrangement provided a financially stable method of projecting power far beyond its borders. During the Flavian period, Luttwak argues that the Roman Empire paid for expanding its military apparatus through the security it provided far-flung provinces and the subsequent tax revenue that allowed.
Perhaps the best example of the confluence between economic development and warfare resides in the military revolution era. Paul Kennedy argues that European rivalries stimulated a constant search for military improvements, which interacted fruitfully with the newer technological and commercial advances that were also thrown up in the competitive, entrepreneurial environment of the early 16th century.
On the other hand, Ming China, the Ottoman Empire, the Mogul Empire, Muscovy, and Tokugawa Japan suffered from centralized authority, which insisted upon a uniform belief structure in religion, commerce, and weapons development.
Throughout The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers(1989), Kennedy argues that economic strength and military power correlate with the rise and fall of powerful nations since 1500. As states increase their power, they devote more resources to maintaining power. If too many resources are allocated to national defense, this n the long run.
In The Pursuit of Power (1982), William McNeill argues that a commercial transformation of world society in the 11th century caused military activity to respond increasingly to market forces and commands of rulers. John Brewer attributes Britain’s economic and, therefore, military success since 1688 to its ability to harness its vast resources efficiently through a strong, central administrative government.
Throughout The Sinews of Power (1989), Brewer demonstrates how integrated commercial and military interests became. He argues that Britain’s expansion would not have happened without a coinciding increase in taxation alongside a surge in deficit spending and growth of public administration.
Therefore what Brewer calls the “Fiscal-Military State” developed as a result of the political crisis after the Glorious Revolution; but owed configuration to three earlier developments: centralization between the 10th and 13th centuries; Britain’s avoidance of involvement in major international conflicts on the continent between the mid-15th and late-17th centuries; and its success in avoiding the development of venality, which became a feature in other fiscal military states desperate to pay off the mounting costs of protracted wars.
The strength of Parliament, likewise, put a check on Royal prerogatives. Further — the development of the Bank of England and the acceptance of a large national debt funded by heavy direct and indirect taxation allowed England to withstand the pressures of far larger nations such as France or Spain.
In War and the Rise of the State (1994), Bruce Porter shows that the modern state’s rise is inextricably linked with violent conflict and military power. For Porter, European continental imperialism led to the rise of total war and the Collectivist state, which resulted from two world wars.
Only the full-scale wars fought amongst industrialized powers permanently changed virtually all European states’ internal organization and structure. The collectivist state contained three intertwined states: a regulatory state (extensive state intervention in the national economy), a mass state (political participation and privilege were divorced from class or economic status), and a welfare state (assuming direct responsibility for the well-being of its citizens).
World War II provides some of the best examples of economics’ power over effectiveness. Scholars often argue that the Allies won by sheer force alone; however, in Why the Allies Won, Overy suggests that the Allied victory ted on material and force alone but that they turned economic strengths into effective fighting power.
If effectiveness is how militaries convert resources into combat power, as Allan Millett and Williamson Murray argue. In that case, the decisions made about where to allocate resources in World War II were a deliberate melding of economics with effectiveness.
Peter Mansoor concurs in The GI Offensive in Europe (1999) by arguing that the American Army’s ability to regenerate combat power continuously was critical to winning the ground war of attrition in Europe.
In Wages of Destruction (2007), Adam Tooze argues that after slow recovery during the Weimar years was slow, the Nazi armaments program — made possible only by defaulting on US loans and other reparation payments — was the most significant transfer of resources ever made in a peacetime capitalist economy.
Rearmament was the driver behind economic policy after Hitler came to power. Tooze further argues that Hitler was convinced that American and Soviet power was predicated on their latent economies’ size. Resources and labor forces that Germany had no chance to match.
This thought process influenced Hitler’s ideas about an expansionary war. Hitler’s primary “strategic” aim was lebensraum, yet he could not connect that to economic and military policy. Lebensraum would give Germany enough resources to match the Americans in North America. Even with this effort, Germany lacked the resources to sustain an army that could defeat all the enemies it created.
In his work, Keep from All Thoughtful Men (2011), historian James Lacey makes the case that contrary to popular belief, economists were instrumental in winning World War II. Economists, namely the three detailed in the book, reoriented American planning around achievable goals rather than the wish lists of military, politicians, or civil servants. The feasibility of meeting requirements during World War II depended on merging existing production and financing capabilities with realistic possibilities for expanding these capacities.
Economists pushed the military toward ambitious plans, but the military, jaded by World War I experiences, was unwilling to provide workable guestimates before Pearl Harbor. In 1942, economists armed with statistics and in-depth, professional knowledge of the complexities of finance.
They conducted feasibility studies and determined possibilities and priorities. They organized endless money flows to finesse war’s age-old problem: how to keep the cash from running out. All told Simon Kuznet’s August 12, 1942 feasibility study saw American material reaching capacity for cross-channel invasion capabilities by late spring 1944. US Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall and his lieutenants thus altered their plans for a cross-channel invasion to reflect the forecasted realities of American industrial production made by Kuznet and his team of economists.
A nation-state’s ability to marshal its economic resources into combat power is critical to wartime effectiveness. Of course, examples of small wars or counterinsurgencies abound that demonstrate methods for less economically viable belligerents to defeat great powers; economics are nevertheless critical to winning large-scale wars in the great power arena.
No matter how well an army performs tactically — without the resources to see a war to its end, it will not succeed. Those powers that successfully harnessed their economies’ power toward violent ends found success in the battles they fought.
