The misconceptions behind national security are numerous. It’s about time they were called out.
Editor’s Note: In their new book How to Run Wars, Christopher Coyne and Abigail Hall unpack the many problems with the national security state. FEE recently conducted a written interview with them to discuss the book. Our questions and their answers are presented below.
What are the biggest misconceptions the American people have about the ability of our “national security elite” to plan wars?
There are many, but we will highlight two. The first is the belief that the national security elite (which broadly refers to the array of public and private actors involved in the US government’s national security sector) act in the “public interest.” The reality is that interests are tied to individual people and that there is no pre-defined and given “national” or “public” interest. Ultimately, decision-makers must impose some desired hierarchy of ends that they seek to accomplish through their policies. They might believe that this hierarchy of ends is desirable or that it benefits a segment of the population, but it is their judgment of which ends are important that is pursued. The field of public choice economics, which studies the various pathologies of democratic policies, provides insight into the many ways through which a wedge can form between the interests of individual voters and the policies that are enacted. This wedge is likely to be especially large in matters of national security, given both the sheer size of the government apparatus and the ubiquitous secrecy baked into the system.
The second is the idea that order and peace are the result of top-down control by a small group of elites. This treats order and peace as a designed outcome that can be known and planned. But one of the key ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers (e.g., Adam Ferguson, David Hume, Adam Smith) and those who followed (e.g., F.A. Hayek) was that a complex system of order is possible without central design. Not only is it possible, these thinkers argued, but because of limits on human reason, the ability of even the smartest human beings to design institutions is severely limited. Emergent orders—those resulting from the interactions of many dispersed people pursuing their own ends—allow people to take advantage of far-reaching abstract arrangements which would not exist if we relied solely on human reason.
One reason this matters is that the dominant, top-down vision perpetuates the myth of the “person-in-charge” which holds that the absence of a concrete person controlling the world means that we are doomed to chaos and disorder. This biases institutions and policies toward centralizing discretionary power in the hands of a small group of government decision-makers while neglecting the immense power of ordinary people to contribute to order. This also biases discussions of foreign policy toward more government involvement, since it is associated with order, while downplaying the various negative effects that can result from government interventions into complex systems.
Is it true that we must choose between liberty and security? How can we maintain security without sacrificing liberty?
Discussions of national security are often framed in terms of a “security versus liberty” trade-off. The underlying logic is that citizens can have more security or more liberty, but not both simultaneously. In order for the government to provide more security, it is argued, citizens must be willing to give up some liberty. It follows that if citizens want more liberty, they will be less secure. In our view, this framing is too simplistic and overlooks other possibilities.
For instance, it is possible that citizens might give up liberty only to become less safe because of ineffective or counterproductive government policies. Here the trade-off is less security for less liberty. Also important is that security is a nuanced concept covering many margins. For example, even if trading off liberty led to more security against an external threat, the government’s new security policies might create a new potential threat (e.g., the surveillance state, the militarization of police) against citizens. Finally, more liberty might lead to more security as the freedom of association between people can foster ties that make the world more peaceful, both domestically and internationally. Human association both requires and cultivates methods of navigating conflict situations peacefully, rather than through violence.
As economists, you’re particularly well positioned to analyze the economic impacts of warfare and of the maintenance of a standing military. What are the most important facts you want people to know about the military-industrial complex’s impact upon our economy?
The military sector is an example of non-comprehensive planning, which refers to government efforts to employ the means of economic planning (hierarchical control by the managerial-administrative state and the forced redirection of resources and labor to meet the goals of planners) to a specific industry. The military sector is a massive nexus of public-private partnerships that touches almost every aspect of the American economy. It isn’t just the well-known top defense contractors (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing), but also the wide array of goods, services, and labor that is required to run the military sector. Pulling these resources into the military sector necessarily means that they are pulled out of their alternative private uses, which reduces wealth creation by redirecting entrepreneurial alertness from private consumers to the gatekeepers of the military purse.
The military sector is political capitalism writ large. “Political capitalism” refers to a distinct economic system defined by entanglements between the political elite and a small group of private economic actors. These “insiders” are able to use the political system to feather their own nests at the expense of “outsiders” (ordinary citizens) who foot the bill. The well-known economist Kenneth Boulding nicely summed it up in testimony before Congress, when he noted, “The war industry is a cancer within the body of American society. It has its own mode of growth, it represents a system which is virtually independent and indeed objectively inimical to the welfare of the American people, in spite of the fact that it still visualizes itself as their protector.” This is as true today as when Boulding first said it in 1969.
I notice a lot of affinity between your argument and the critique of wartime planning that Hayek discussed in The Road to Serfdom. How have Hayek and other writers in the libertarian tradition impacted your outlook on these matters?
There are many thinkers in the liberal traditions—Hayek and other thinkers in the broad liberal tradition (Adam Smith, Richard Cobden, Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Robert Higgs, among others)—who have influenced our thinking. Many thinkers in this tradition analyzed the limitations of government planning based on an appreciation of the knowledge constraints and incentives facing political decision-makers. Appreciating these factors pushes one toward genuine humility regarding the human ability to shape the world according to one’s wishes. It also leads one to appreciate the various dynamics of intervention associated with government policies. In the realm of war-making, the consequences and costs are far-reaching and real. The benefits, however, are highly uncertain, encouraging a very high bar to justify foreign intervention.
On top of these consequentialist aspects (the products of the action), there are deontological and ethical aspects (the nature of the action itself) of war-making. Many would consider it wrong to forcibly reallocate resources to produce tools for harming people; they would also consider it wrong to maim or kill an innocent person to potentially save other innocent lives. But this is what the enterprise of war-making does. It involves forcibly redirecting resources to produce the tools of war to attack a target which will almost certainly harm innocent people. In doing so it legitimizes and normalizes what, in any other walk of life, would be considered repugnant and criminal behavior.
I understand you wrote your book as a satire, pretending to be one of the “national security elite” you criticize. What led you to choose to write in this style?
Satire uses humor and sarcasm to highlight the absurdity of widely accepted behaviors. When done correctly, satire serves as a mirror in which the writer asks the reader to reflect critically on these behaviors. We chose this style because it is a way of taking a serious topic—war-making—and presenting various tensions and issues in an accessible way. We ask the reader to laugh at the absurdities of war-making, but also hope that they feel uncomfortable doing so. With so many widely accepted tacit presuppositions about the ubiquity of war-making and the need for the national security state to provide peace and order, our hope is that the reader will critically reflect upon the war-making system and all that it entails. Finally, writing satire is extremely fun!
Looking at the big picture, if you were made leader of the “national security elite” and could change American policy however you saw fit, what would you do?
This is a challenging question to answer. Because we appreciate the ever-present knowledge constraints on policymakers and the political pathologies inherent in the war-making enterprise, we appreciate that changing US foreign policy isn’t a matter of the “right” or “different” people in positions of authority. To offer bold, detailed policy suggestions would mean that we fall victim to the same critiques we levy.
One of the themes from this book is how difficult it is for members of the broader public and others (journalists, other officials, etc.) to obtain accurate information, much less to debate it. We highlight how controlling and delivering the preferred narrative is of paramount importance to the national security elite. The use of secrecy limits the availability of information that people can debate. The use of repressive tools, like threats of jail or ruined careers, can stifle people from bringing forward information that helps inform the broader public. In our ideal world, such tools and tactics would be removed.
Given the myriad of immediate and long-term costs, and the margins of those costs (life, liberty, money, etc.), the bar we need to get over before engaging in war-making should be set for pole vaulting, not a limbo stick you can walk over. The burden of providing sufficient evidence to pass this bar lies with the proponents of war, not its opponents.
To return to where we started, we realize many of these suggestions are implausible within the current system. Because of this, it is also important to consider alternative arrangements, outside of state force, whereby people can live peacefully together by learning how to navigate conflict situations without resorting to violence.
How to Run Wars was published by the Independent Institute on June 18, 2024.
