Will a Global Depression Trigger Another World War?

By many measures, 2020 is looking to be the worst year that

humankind has faced in many decades. We’re in the midst of a

pandemic that has already claimed more than 280,000 lives,

sickened millions of people, and is certain to afflict millions more

before it ends. The world economy is in free fall, with unemployment

rising dramatically, trade and output plummeting, and no hopeful

end in sight. A plague of locusts is back for a second time in Africa,

and last week we learned about murderous killer wasps threatening

the bee population in the United States. Americans have a head-inthe-

sand president who prescribes potentially lethal nostrums and

ignores the advice of his scientific advisors. Even if all those things

magically disappeared tomorrow—and they won’t—we still face the

looming long-term danger from climate change.

Given all that, what could possibly make things worse? Here’s one

possibility: war. It is therefore worth asking whether the combination

of a pandemic and a major economic depression is making war more

or less likely. What does history and theory tell us about that

question?

For starters, we know neither plague nor depression make war

impossible. World War I ended just as the 1918-1919 influenza was

beginning to devastate the world, but that pandemic didn’t stop the

Russian Civil War, the Russo-Polish War, or several other serious

conflicts. The Great Depression that began in 1929 didn’t prevent

Japan from invading Manchuria in 1931, and it helped fuel the rise of

fascism in the 1930s and made World War II more likely. So if you

think major war simply can’t happen during COVID-19 and the

accompanying global recession, think again.

But war could still be much less likely. The Massachusetts Institute of

Technology’s Barry Posen has already considered the likely impact of

the current pandemic on the probability of war, and he believes

COVID-19 is more likely to promote peace instead. He argues that the

current pandemic is affecting all the major powers adversely, which

means it isn’t creating tempting windows of opportunity for

unaffected states while leaving others weaker and therefore

vulnerable. Instead, it is making all governments more pessimistic

about their short- to medium-term prospects. Because states often go

to war out of sense of overconfidence (however misplaced it

sometimes turns out to be), pandemic-induced pessimism should be

conducive to peace.

Moreover, by its very nature war requires states to assemble lots of

people in close proximity—at training camps, military bases,

mobilization areas, ships at sea, etc.—and that’s not something you

want to do in the middle of a pandemic. For the moment at least,

beleaguered governments of all types are focusing on convincing

their citizens they are doing everything in their power to protect the

public from the disease. Taken together, these considerations might

explain why even an impulsive and headstrong warmaker like Saudi

Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman has gotten more interested in

winding down his brutal and unsuccessful military campaign in

Yemen.

Posen adds that COVID-19 is also likely to reduce international trade

in the short to medium term. Those who believe economic

interdependence is a powerful barrier to war might be alarmed by this

development, but he points out that trade issues have been a source of

considerable friction in recent years—especially between the United

States and China—and a degree of decoupling might reduce tensions

somewhat and cause the odds of war to recede.

For these reasons, the pandemic itself may be conducive to peace. But

what about the relationship between broader economic conditions

and the likelihood of war? Might a few leaders still convince

themselves that provoking a crisis and going to war could still

advance either long-term national interests or their own political

fortunes? Are the other paths by which a deep and sustained

economic downturn might make serious global conflict more likely?

One familiar argument is the so-called diversionary (or “scapegoat”)

theory of war. It suggests that leaders who are worried about their

popularity at home will try to divert attention from their failures by

provoking a crisis with a foreign power and maybe even using force

against it. Drawing on this logic, some Americans now worry that

President Donald Trump will decide to attack a country like Iran or

Venezuela in the run-up to the presidential election and especially if

he thinks he’s likely to lose.

This outcome strikes me as unlikely, even if one ignores the logical

and empirical flaws in the theory itself. War is always a gamble, and

should things go badly—even a little bit—it would hammer the last

nail in the coffin of Trump’s declining fortunes. Moreover, none of the

countries Trump might consider going after pose an imminent threat

to U.S. security, and even his staunchest supporters may wonder why

he is wasting time and money going after Iran or Venezuela at a

moment when thousands of Americans are dying preventable deaths

at home. Even a successful military action won’t put Americans back

to work, create the sort of testing-and-tracing regime that competent

governments around the world have been able to implement already,

or hasten the development of a vaccine. The same logic is likely to

guide the decisions of other world leaders too.

Another familiar folk theory is “military Keynesianism.” War

generates a lot of economic demand, and it can sometimes lift

depressed economies out of the doldrums and back toward prosperity

and full employment. The obvious case in point here is World War II,

which did help the U.S economy finally escape the quicksand of the

Great Depression. Those who are convinced that great powers go to

war primarily to keep Big Business (or the arms industry) happy are

naturally drawn to this sort of argument, and they might worry that

governments looking at bleak economic forecasts will try to restart

their economies through some sort of military adventure.

I doubt it. It takes a really big war to generate a significant stimulus,

and it is hard to imagine any country launching a large-scale war—

with all its attendant risks—at a moment when debt levels are already

soaring. More importantly, there are lots of easier and more direct

ways to stimulate the economy—infrastructure spending,

unemployment insurance, even “helicopter payments”—and

launching a war has to be one of the least efficient methods available.

The threat of war usually spooks investors too, which any politician

with their eye on the stock market would be loath to do.

Economic downturns can encourage war in some special

circumstances, especially when a war would enable a country facing

severe hardships to capture something of immediate and significant

value. Saddam Hussein’s decision to seize Kuwait in 1990 fits this

model perfectly: The Iraqi economy was in terrible shape after its long

war with Iran; unemployment was threatening Saddam’s domestic

position; Kuwait’s vast oil riches were a considerable prize; and

seizing the lightly armed emirate was exceedingly easy to do. Iraq also

owed Kuwait a lot of money, and a hostile takeover by Baghdad would

wipe those debts off the books overnight. In this case, Iraq’s parlous

economic condition clearly made war more likely.

Yet I cannot think of any country in similar circumstances today. Now

is hardly the time for Russia to try to grab more of Ukraine—if it even

wanted to—or for China to make a play for Taiwan, because the costs

of doing so would clearly outweigh the economic benefits. Even

conquering an oil-rich country—the sort of greedy acquisitiveness

that Trump occasionally hints at—doesn’t look attractive when

there’s a vast glut on the market. I might be worried if some weak and

defenseless country somehow came to possess the entire global stock

of a successful coronavirus vaccine, but that scenario is not even

remotely possible.

If one takes a longer-term perspective, however, a sustained economic

depression could make war more likely by strengthening fascist or

xenophobic political movements, fueling protectionism and

hypernationalism, and making it more difficult for countries to reach

mutually acceptable bargains with each other. The history of the

1930s shows where such trends can lead, although the economic

effects of the Depression are hardly the only reason world politics

took such a deadly turn in the 1930s. Nationalism, xenophobia, and

authoritarian rule were making a comeback well before COVID-19

struck, but the economic misery now occurring in every corner of the

world could intensify these trends and leave us in a more war-prone

condition when fear of the virus has diminished.

On balance, however, I do not think that even the extraordinary

economic conditions we are witnessing today are going to have much

impact on the likelihood of war. Why? First of all, if depressions were

a powerful cause of war, there would be a lot more of the latter. To

take one example, the United States has suffered 40 or more

recessions since the country was founded, yet it has fought perhaps

20 interstate wars, most of them unrelated to the state of the

economy. To paraphrase the economist Paul Samuelson’s famous

quip about the stock market, if recessions were a powerful cause of

war, they would have predicted “nine out of the last five (or fewer).”

Second, states do not start wars unless they believe they will win a

quick and relatively cheap victory. As John Mearsheimer showed in

his classic book Conventional Deterrence, national leaders avoid war

when they are convinced it will be long, bloody, costly, and uncertain.

To choose war, political leaders have to convince themselves they can

either win a quick, cheap, and decisive victory or achieve some

limited objective at low cost. Europe went to war in 1914 with each

side believing it would win a rapid and easy victory, and Nazi

Germany developed the strategy of blitzkrieg in order to subdue its

foes as quickly and cheaply as possible. Iraq attacked Iran in 1980

because Saddam believed the Islamic Republic was in disarray and

would be easy to defeat, and George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003

convinced the war would be short, successful, and pay for itself.

The fact that each of these leaders miscalculated badly does not alter

the main point: No matter what a country’s economic condition

might be, its leaders will not go to war unless they think they can do

so quickly, cheaply, and with a reasonable probability of success.

Third, and most important, the primary motivation for most wars is

the desire for security, not economic gain. For this reason, the odds of

war increase when states believe the long-term balance of power may

be shifting against them, when they are convinced that adversaries

are unalterably hostile and cannot be accommodated, and when they

are confident they can reverse the unfavorable trends and establish a

secure position if they act now. The historian A.J.P. Taylor once

observed that “every war between Great Powers [between 1848 and

1918] … started as a preventive war, not as a war of conquest,” and that

remains true of most wars fought since then.

The bottom line: Economic conditions (i.e., a depression) may affect

the broader political environment in which decisions for war or peace

are made, but they are only one factor among many and rarely the

most significant. Even if the COVID-19 pandemic has large, lasting,

and negative effects on the world economy—as seems quite likely—it

is not likely to affect the probability of war very much, especially in

the short term.

To be sure, I can’t rule out another powerful cause of war—stupidity—

especially when it is so much in evidence in some quarters these days.

So there is no guarantee that we won’t see misguided leaders

stumbling into another foolish bloodletting. But given that it’s hard to

find any rays of sunshine at this particular moment in history, I’m

going to hope I’m right about this one.

nowadays , most countries have nuclear weapons.

nowadays , most countries have nuclear weapons.

the thought of having another world war using bombs etc is not going to happen.

it is going to be a war using money, media etc

To be a war it literally has to involve violence..

Maybe a proxy war, the larger powers aren't really big fans of proper wars anymore.

I hope so. I hate existing