Some Economics of Conflict
Drones, The Geneva Convention, and Other Ambiguous Goods
Any development that makes war appear to be easier or cheaper is dangerous and morally troubling. It lowers the political threshold of war. It threatens to weaken the moral presumption against the use of armed force. (David Cortwright, writing at CNN.com on drones)
The argument applies to many things other than drones. The Geneva Conventions, for instance, are designed to make war cheaper, not in dollars but in human costs. The pre-Napoleonic rules of parole, under which a prisoner of war could give his word not to try to escape and then spend his imprisonment in the town inn instead of the much less comfortable prison or even give his word not to fight until exchanged and then be sent home, were designed to make war less costly.
Any such change has two effects. One is to reduce the cost of warfare, the amount of damage to things that matter to human beings, including the human beings themselves, which is good. The other is to increase the amount of warfare, which is bad. There is no theoretical basis to say, in general, which effect is larger. It depends on the elasticity of supply of war.
In my Law's Order I discuss the same issue in a different context, whether contracts made under duress ought to be enforceable. When the mugger threatens to kill you if you don't pay him a thousand dollars and, since you are not carrying that much cash, you pay with a check, should you be free to call up your bank and cancel payment once he is out of sight? Being able to pay him may keep the mugger from killing you but it also makes mugging more profitable, so more of it happens. I am pretty sure that making that contract enforceable has, on net, negative consequences. But there is no good reason to suppose that the same is true for innovations, technological or otherwise, that make war less costly.
When I raised the issue on my blog, one commenter pointed out that the effect of drones on the cost of war is different for different sorts of states. Modern developed states are reluctant to accept substantial casualties, willing and able to pay large costs, so making machinery substitute for soldiers improves their position relative to poorer states where machinery is expensive and life cheap. The same point was offered by Adam Smith, who argued that the invention of gunpowder was favorable to civilization because it made warfare more capital intensive (his concept but not his terminology). Before that, the barbarians were a threat to the civilized. After, the civilized were a threat to the barbarians.
Rudyard Kipling, writing a century and a half later about the second Afghan war, pointed out that the advantages of the civilized might not always be adequate because the barbarians also had advantages:1
One sword-knot stolen from the camp Will pay for all the school expenses Of any Kurrum Valley scamp Who knows no word of moods and tenses, But, being blessed with perfect sight, Picks off our messmates left and right. (Arithmetic on the Frontier)
Perhaps in the future they will be.
Ottoman Advantages
For much of the early history of the Ottoman Empire, the succession mechanism was fratricide.2 A sultan’s death set off a civil war among his sons and their supporters. The winner became sultan, the losers dead, imprisoned, or in exile. That is an expensive way of choosing a ruler.
On the other hand … .
The early sultans commanded in battle, presided over the meetings of the council of state that made policy, played an active role in the running and expansion of the empire. After they abandoned fratricide the role of the Sultan shifted; the council of state was run by the Grand Vizier, who merely reported to and consulted with the Sultan, the armies were commanded by generals. The Sultan withdrew into luxurious isolation.
I suspect that there was a causal link between the two changes. Fratricide was expensive but it selected the claimant best able to win. The result was to put at the head of the empire able, aggressive, politically and militarily competent rulers. Abandon fratricide and eventually the ruler becomes a figurehead.
During the early centuries, when the Ottoman Empire was not engaged in a large war it was engaged in small ones, regular raids across the border to bring back loot. Such raids depopulated the border territories of nations adjacent to the Empire, making conquest easier. They also gave people living in those regions at least one reason to want to be conquered, to get to the side of the border raids were coming from instead of the side they were going to.
Raiders received tax advantages from the Empire but were largely motivated by the desire for loot. Poor peasants do not have much worth stealing but, in a slave society, the peasants themselves were worth stealing. The institution of slavery, by helping to make possible a cheap form of military force with which the Ottomans could harass their neighbors, gave a real advantage to an expansionary state.
Commitment Strategies Against Hijacking
On the face of it, almost all of the precautions to keep passengers from hijacking an airplane are unnecessary; all it takes is a sturdy locked door between pilots and passengers. One possible problem is that hijackers might persuade pilots to open such a door by threatening to kill off crew and passengers one by one until they do.
I am not sure that would work in the post 9/11 world, but suppose it would. The solution is to provide the pilots with a second lock that can only be unlocked by someone on the ground. At the first sign of a hijacking they lock it and are now immune to threats.
It would be prudent to make sure that potential hijackers know about the second lock.
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The British ended up winning most of the battles in the Second Afghan war but did considerably worse in the
first, known to them as the Disaster in Afghanistan. They badly lost the first round, with their army almost completely wiped out, won the second but failed to accomplish their objective of replacing Dost Mohammed with Shah Shujah as Emir.
Observations after reading Colin Imber's The Ottoman Empire.
Of course, the analysis of the effects of the costs of war is correct. However, individual weapons can have complicated results. Drones are a cheap, accurate technology. [So they confer stronger comparative advantage on the poor, but never mind.] Most interestingly, drones limit collateral damage, externalitites. Thus, one would think the technology makes war cheaper, and hence causes more war. While this may well be true, it also limits the destruction more to decision makers, making war less likely! Drones are more like an assassination weapon rather than area bombing.
There are other consequences of drones which make war more expensive. Used as surveillance they make surprise difficult. Hence, no Fall of France stuff. Instead, we get WW I stuff as in Ukraine. I doubt Putin would have done Ukraine had he had an inkling of the cost.
If war is intrinsically or objectively bad, why is there war at all? I mean, at least someone decides to start a war, i.e. they prefer war to peace. Perspectively, there could be a specific economic view that tries to optimize for more war.