Truth Out Loud

... clear victory can settle long-existing problems immediately in a way negotiated armistices cannot, as wounds are closed rather than allowed to fester for decades. Had George McClellan won the 1864 presidential election, a negotiated peace might have temporarily prevented another Antietam. But such a bellum interruptum certainly would have meant another generation of slavery and soon another round of fighting with weapons far more deadly than what finally appeared in 1865. In this regard, we should recall that the exhausted German army of 1918, perhaps qualitatively the most deadly infantry force the world had yet seen, surrendered in France, not Germany, later claiming it had never been defeated in the field but rather was "stabbed in the back" by "Jews, Communists, and traitors" in Germany. General John Pershing's idea of a victory march into and occupation of Germany was overruled by President Wilson. Such utopianism was not repeated by the Allies in World War 11, when the Third Reich and Japan were not merely defeated, but humiliated, their homelands occupied, and their machinery of government radically transformed.

Criticism is often voiced of stern demands for "unconditional surrender," firmness that purportedly causes needless casualties like at Hiroshima and prolongs the misery of war, as defeated powers dig in rather than have their homelands occupied or destroyed. Yet in the long run an insistence on abject surrender saves lives when truly evil regimes capitulate rather than bargain their way out of humiliation. Japanese citizens vote today because of the beating their grandfathers took on Okinawa and on the homeland from the U.S. Army Air Forces. Yet, had we brokered a deal after Iwo Jima, the wounded imperial government might well have recovered and been as provocative today as is North Korea-a regime that in fact never surrendered to the United States.

We should appreciate the frequent utility of war, or at least the use of military force to stop aggression, dismantle malevolent states, and kill leadership intent on harming tens of thousands of innocents. The great ills of the last three centuries were largely ameliorated by war, not mediation. Our own freedom from monarchy and tyranny was achieved at Yorktown, not through shuttle diplomacy with London. Without war, the United States, for good or ill, would today probably more resemble Canada, which nearly a century after 1776 was gradually and peacefully evolving toward independence, rather than our own unique and more vibrant culture of radical egalitarianism, individualism, and economic dynamism that was born from musket fire.

A series of compromises for most of the first half of the nineteenth century did not end chattel slavery in America, but rather only prolonged and perhaps in some sense exacerbated the divide between South and North. Instead, Lincoln, with his brilliant military captains, Grant and Sherman, at a cost of some six hundred thousand American dead and billions of dollars in property and capital losses, nevertheless subdued in less than four years the rebellious South-a region as large as Western Europe-and ensured an end to slavery and a united nation for good.

The four great plagues of the twentieth century-German nazism, Italian fascism, Japanese imperialism, and Soviet communism-were all ended either through outright fighting or the threat of war, the butcher's bill made worse by the delays in using force to thwart such murderous regimes in their infancies.

Perhaps ancient Greek philosophers were right, after all: War per se is not evil, but rather its morality hinges on the reasons for, and the manner under which, individual wars are fought. Appeasing Hitler in the 1930s ensured the Holocaust; standing up to him in 1936 might have saved millions of soldiers and civilians alike. Simply invading North Vietnam and destroying the Communist dictators in Hanoi would have been a more moral act than either carpetbombing South Vietnam or allowing a Communist victory and the subsequent murder and exile of millions.

Complete essay here.