Recovering from War

Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business on the long-run economic consequences of war and ethnic division:

Count Ethnic Divisions, Not Bombs, to Tell if a Nation Will Recover From War, by Austan Goolsbee, Economic Scene, NY Times: ...[P]erhaps it is worth looking at the long-run prospects for ... nations once ... wars actually end... The good news is that history suggests that the destruction of war has no lasting impact on economic prospects. The bad news is that most of these countries, especially Iraq, are filled with ethnic divisions and civil discord. The evidence shows that these problems, unlike bombs, cause lasting damage to the prospects for a nation’s economy, even if they do not boil over into civil war.

The negligible long-term impact of war itself is rather startling but has been noted in numerous studies. The recent work of ... Edward Miguel and Gérard Roland — for example, “The Long Run Impact of Bombing Vietnam,” starts from the fact that some 10 percent of the 584 districts in Vietnam received nearly three-quarters of the total bomb tonnage. No matter how they sliced the data, they did not find that heavier bombing during the war corresponded with any major differences in poverty rates, access to electricity, literacy, population density or consumption in the 1990’s and 2000’s.

Similar studies have documented that the long-run population of Japanese cities was not affected by whether they were destroyed in World War II (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose destruction was radioactive, to boot) and likewise for cities in Europe. After suffering the enormous immediate costs of war, it seems that people rather quickly return to where they left off. In the long run, things return to normal...

But for the optimists hoping that war in the Middle East will soon end so the rebuilding can commence, there is a serious problem. The political boundaries of these countries, especially Iraq, make the long-term prospects bleak. The existence of ethnic division in the countries will probably mar them permanently in a way that bombs never could.

Boundaries between many countries of the Middle East, like those in Africa, were haphazardly put together in negotiations by European colonizers who had little regard for ethnic realities. Indeed, they sometimes even lumped enemies together on purpose, hoping that ethnic hatreds might reduce anticolonial feelings. In a new study, three economists — Alberto F. Alesina and Janina Matuszeski of Harvard University and William Easterly of New York University — document how important internal cohesion is for the health of a society.

Their study, “Artificial States,” creates two measures of how “artificial” a nation’s boundaries are. The first measures whether the country’s political borders partition ethnic groups into separate countries...

The second measures how squiggly the borders of a country are. Straight lines are usually the sign of an arbitrary colonial mapmaker. Natural barriers like rivers and mountains seldom look tidy. ...[T]heir study compares the performance of countries with natural borders to those with artificial ones and finds, overwhelmingly, that artificial nations suffer terribly — lower income, horribly ineffective and corrupt governments, less respect for the law, low literacy, limited access to clean water, poor health care, you name it. ...

Viewed from this perspective, the long-term economic prospects for Afghanistan and Iraq do not look good. It is not the destruction of war. That will end and the countries can be rebuilt. It is the fragmentation and ethnic hatred. That, typically, never goes away. Iraq, especially, is a straight-edged, ethnically partitioned nation wracked with internal strife. And having oil wealth is unlikely to save the day. Fragmented countries with natural resources often do worse because civil war rages over who gets to keep the money. ...

After Katrina, it was noted that the long-run economic impact of destructive natural disasters such as hurricanes is minimal in most cases (see "Rebuilding After Natural Disasters"). Just want to add the obvious that, even if there is a full economic recovery for a country, some costs of war or natural disasters will persist. For example, there will be people who will never fully recover from the terrible losses they suffered during the war housed and working in those brand new buildings. It's not so clear that "In the long run, things return to normal" for them.

Comments

[bakho]

WTF Despite claims about bombing countries into the stone age, in reality, war does not destroy a majority of a countries assets. Japan is not a good choice because very little of the physical fighting took place in Japan. Far more fighting took place in China. ArialWTF

1. Arial or naval bombardment is the wrong measure of destruction in war.
2. The total costs of war are not considered.
This is a very incomplete analysis.

Despite claims about bombing countries into the Stone Age, in reality, most war does not destroy a majority of a country’s assets with some exceptions like Dresden and Hiroshima and Nagasaki (even these 3 cities were a minor component of Japanese or German assets). Japan is a bad choice because very little of the physical fighting of WWII took place in Japan. Far more fighting took place in China. Arial bombing indeed causes devastating destruction but that devastation is within a very limited area and the quantity of explosives that can be delivered is limited. Areas with more WWII destruction such as China and Eastern Europe have taken far longer to recover and that required a lot of help from less damaged economies.

The opportunity cost is also missing. While most of Europe was fighting the 30 years war, the British were busy colonizing North America and elsewhere. This enabled Britain to emerge as the top economy of the 1800s to the detriment of the war participants. It is one reason why most North Americans speak English instead of French or Spanish.

The part about ethnic tensions causing economic problems is closer to the mark. He could add racism in the US as contributing to economic losses.

[Betsy L. Angert]

Dearest Mark . . .

Recovering from war, that is the question. I believe we have never returned to good health after a combat. There are physical, financial, and emotional scars. We continually recycle these.

Before we began our most recent bombing spree in Afghanistan, this country had already been blasted back to the Stone Age. In a nation where fifty percent of the population was under the age of fifteen years, we saw fit to smash their lives to further smithereens . . . all in the name of fighting terrorism, or was it to find Osama Bin Laden.

When persons point to Japan or Germany and speak mostly of economics, I have to wonder.

I offer my perspective on the silliness of war and the deep wounds it creates . . .
• "Iraq, Israel, Lebanon; Trees of Life in a Wilderness of War. ©"
• "War in the Wind, Blast Buries New York City Building ©"

Please feel free to share your comments, thoughts, opinions, and perspective. I think this is a discussion worth having. Too often, it seems, we accept the cycle of violence that has existed for centuries.

May you live long, learn much, and feel fulfilled . . . Betsy
Betsy L. Angert Be-Think

[piglet]

Please go to http://julywar.epetition.net and sign the Save the Lebanese Civilians Petition.

Lebanese civilians have been under the constant attack of the state of Israel for several days. The State of Israel, in disregard to international law and the Geneva Convention, is launching a maritime and air siege targeting the entire population of the country. Innocent civilians are being collectively punished in Lebanon by the state of Israel in deliberate acts of terrorism as described in Article 33 of the Geneva Convention.

*** http://julywar.epetition.net (Warning, the server is often overloaded)

This is from Juan Cole (http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/israel-targets-milk-medicine-factories.html):

"Only for those with really strong stomachs. This is what some of the hundreds of civilians killed by the Israeli military in Lebanon look like. Very graphic and disturbing. I disavow the labeling in the site. But this is a war, and this is what war looks like, and I think it is necessary to stare it right in the face:"
*** http://fromisrael2lebanon.com/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora had this to say:

' "As I speak, the trauma, the desperation, the grief and the daily massacres and destruction go on and on. The country has been torn to shreds.
"Is the value of human life in Lebanon less than that of the citizens of other countries? Can the international community stand by while such callous retribution by Israel is inflicted on us?
"Will you allow innocent civilians, churches, mosques, orphanages, medical supplies escorted by the Red Cross, people seeking shelter or fleeing their homes and villages to be the casualties of this ugly war?

"Is this what the international community calls self-defense?
"Is this the price we pay for aspiring to build our democratic institutions? Is this the message to send to the country of diversity, freedom and tolerance?
"Only last year, the Lebanese filled the streets with hope and with red, green and white banners shouting out: Lebanon deserves life!
"What kind of life is being offered to us now?
"I will tell you what kind: a life of destruction, despair, displacement, dispossession, and death.
"What kind of future can stem from the rubble?
"A future of fear, frustration, despair, financial ruin and fanaticism.
"Let me assure you that we shall spare no avenue to make Israel compensate the Lebanese people for the barbaric destruction it has inflicted and continues to inflict upon us, knowing full well that human life is irreplaceable.
"You want to support the government of Lebanon? Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, no government can survive on the ruins of a nation.

"On behalf of the people of Lebanon, from Beirut, Baalbek and Byblos, to Tyre Sidon and Qana, to each and every one of the 21 villages at the Southern border, declared a no-go zone by Israel, to Tripoli and Zahle, to every other town, I call upon you all to respond immediately without reservation or hesitation to this appeal for an immediate cease-fire and lifting of the siege, and provide urgent international humanitarian assistance to our war-stricken country. '

[piglet]

"No matter how they sliced the data, they did not find that heavier bombing during the war corresponded with any major differences in poverty rates, access to electricity, literacy, population density or consumption in the 1990’s and 2000’s."

And what if the whole Vietnamese population has been paying the price for the destruction of part of the country? Maybe there were no major differences between Vienamese regions - after all, Vietnam is a socialist country - but does the author really think Vietnam hasn't suffered in the long run from that monstrous war? Does the author think the damage has mended itself, the wounded and long time suffering have cared for themselves? Does he think the dead have been reborn? Is he seriously saying that Vietnam, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Congo, or Nicaragua, or Lebanon, would be no better off today if they had not recently suffered from monstrous wars?

The methodology of that study is completely bogus. To test the hypothesis, you'd have to compare different countries that have suffered more or less from war, not districts or cities of the same country. E.g. compare Vietnam to Thailand. Estimate the war damage inflicted on each country during a certain period and compare this data to poverty rate and other indicators. I would be very surprised if there were no correlation. For example, a fact that is consistently overlooked in discussions about the Soviet Union is that the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries have suffered far worse damage from World War II, both in lives lost and in material destruction, than any of the Western European (incl. Germany) or North American combatant nations.

[yartrebo]

What is probably overlooked is that resources are generally shifted from the better off parts to the devasted parts of a country after a war, or there is international aid (ie., the Marshall Plan).

The country as a whole is definitely hurt by the bombing, though it will recover if enough resources are invested to undo the damage. In countries that don't have the resources or are too corrupt to repair the damage (like Iraq in between the two Gulf Wars or North Korea to this day), the economy will limp along for a long time.

War damage also wastes a lot of resources, with very little recycled (labor is at a premium during a successful reconstruction, so this is to be expected in a market economy as recycling takes labor as its primary input). A country undergoing massive construction, whether to repair damage or new construction (ie., China), can easily triple its needs of goods like steel, copper, and concrete over a country just barely replacing and repairing its capital stock (ie., USA).

[t11]

Looks like the University of Chicago Business school should stick to business.

Bahko - don't quite agree - Germany lost a big chunk of territory in WW2 - and lots of Germans were booted out of the east - And Japan is pretty much a US vassal state to this day. Most wars do involve exchange of physical territory.

This article seems to be a justification for the bombing of Iraq / Afghanistan / Lebannon, blaming lost economic opportunity on ethnic divisions.

[yartrebo]

Katrina is a very poor example of a natural disaster that is recovered from. Several hundred thousand people have been permanently displaced and entire neighborhoods will not be rebuilt. The number of homeless will be elevated for decades to come.

All this from a hurricane hitting a city of somewhat over a million. If just a little money had been spent on prevention, or a modest amount spent on disaster relief and basic reconstruction (how much could cleaning up the large stock of public housing and instituting a temporary double occupancy policy until additional local housing could be built cost??? Perhaps $100M for basic repair to the existing public housing stock, and perhaps $10B to add 100,000 apartments/cheap houses - enough to house all the homeless including the ones that were homeless before the hurricane.

On another note, oil and natural gas production has been permanently reduced by several hundred thousand barrels of oil equivalent. Many of the mature fields will not be repaired and will be capped and abandoned, as building hundreds of new rigs to tap mostly depleted fields is more expensive than the oil is worth.

[piglet]

"This enabled Britain to emerge as the top economy of the 1800s to the detriment of the war participants. It is one reason why most North Americans speak English instead of French or Spanish."

Correct, and the fact that Britain itself has not been seriously attacked on its own territory since about the Armada goes a long way explaining the long-lasting British hegemony. Similar the USA which have fought most of their wars, except the civil war - outside their territory.

"In countries that don't have the resources or are too corrupt to repair the damage (like Iraq in between the two Gulf Wars or North Korea to this day), the economy will limp along for a long time."

Korea is another case in point. It was among the most devastating wars in history. According to estimations, 11.1% of the total population of North Korea perished. More than 80% of the industrial and public facilities and transportation works, three-quarters of the government offices, and one-half of the houses were destroyed. If this is true, - one half of the houses! Try to imagine that! - we shouldn't be surprised about the sad state of this country to our days. Obviously, not everything can be blamed on a war 50 years ago but pretending that destruction on that order has no long-term effects is in the best case naive, in the worst case pure cynicism.

"This article seems to be a justification for the bombing of Iraq / Afghanistan / Lebannon, blaming lost economic opportunity on ethnic divisions."
I suspect you are rght.

[Bruce Wilder]

Like t11, I can't help to read this article, as a covert apologia for the reckless policy of the U.S. First, he tells us the bombing does not do that much permanent harm (other than, presumably, to those it kills and maims), and then he tells us that long-term prospects depend on an ethnic homogeneity, which (implicitly) is not much affected by policy. What connects the disparate parts of this narrative, other than a desperate need to cover Bush's fat, ugly ass?

Three years ago, the right-wing morons were all hot to convince us with magical thinking. Blow things up, kill and maim in a show of resolution, scaring away the wicked witch of the East or West, and Iraq will blossom into a democratic paradise, an inspiration to its neighbors. There was no concern at any level for the social, political and economic mechanisms of change; reconstruction planning at the Pentagon was completely neglected, which just confirms the magical quality of the thinking.

Now, three years later, magical thinking has been replaced with the selective impotence of the passive voice. Bombs are no longer fairy dust sowing democracy; now the bombs have no effect at all, what matters are factors like history and ethnic conflict, over which we have no control. Reconstruction just happens, I guess; Vietnam supposedly proves that.

There are some things, to which political policy must simply adapt. One is geography. Get a good topographical map of Iraq, tell me where the boundaries could be less arbitrarily drawn, than in the desert wastelands and along the mountain ridges. The valleys of the two great rivers argue for political and economic integration -- you might as well try to divide Egypt or amazonian Brazil or China's two great rivers, or Italy's Po Valley. The British cartographers knew perfectly well what they were doing. Okay, sure, maybe one could carve out a Kurdistan, with some massive relocations of Turkmen and Arabs, but, somehow, I think Turkey and Iran might have views on that. So, let's store the high-minded arrogance concerning "arbitrary" maps as the source of Iraq's problems.

Iraq's ethnic divisions are a fact, to be sure, but one, which a sensible war and reconstruction policy would address. Critical objectives would have been to strengthen national institutions and the secular business economy. I suppose that professors at the University of Chicago business school face restrictions on the use of the active voice, which prevent them from taking notice of the Bush reconstruction policy. Otherwise, I would expect someone to notice Rumsfeld's preference for magical "thinking" over planning. Notice that disbanding the Army, neglecting security and bungling economic reconstruction badly enough to put that whole unfortunate country through a paroxysm of massive looting might not have been wise moves. Do you suppose 60+% unemployment might be related to the fact that Baghdad enjoys less than 6 hours per day of electricity?

(How much more do you suppose a U of Chicago b. school prof understands about business and electricity than he does about what distinguishes shia from sunni, or what tribal loyalties mean in modern Iraq? Which do you suppose he choose to wave his hands over, in an op-ed?)

Maybe, with the best will in the world, and an intelligent application of the massive resources applied, Iraq would still be a hopeless cause. Could problems posed by ethnic and religious divisions have been overcome or substantially meliorated by wise policy? Neither Professor Goolsbee nor I can say, because neither of us have any evidence. The U.S. did not run that particular experiment.

We have before us, instead, the example of bad policy in synergy with a difficult situation. What we have is proof that corrupt and incompetent morons applying inadequate resources can make a bad situation worse.

Did any of us really need that lesson? The Republican voter pool evidently did. Perhaps, Prof. Goolsbee could write it up as a Case Study, and teach a useful seminar at the next Republican National Convention.

[piglet]

Well said, Bruce!

[johnchx]

t11 & Bruce Wilder:

Wow...I guess you read the article differently than I did. I don't see anything that Goolsbee wrote that merits unloading on him with both barrels like that.

Maybe it's his affiliation with the dreaded University of Chicago (cue Darth Vader music). But really, the GSB is a pretty inoffensive outfit. If "Chicago" makes you think of George Stigler and Milton Friedman...well, Stigler is dead and Friedman has been at a research institute affiliated with Stanford for many years now. If "Chicago" makes you think of Becker and Heckman, that's the econ department, not the GSB. And, of course, there's the Committee on Social Thought (erstwhile home to -- deceased -- betes noires Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom). But don't pick on the poor business school.

As to the substance of the article itself, I don't see anyone disagreeing with the major points. (1) History suggests that it *is* indeed possible to rebuild cities devastated by war; Nagasaki and Dresden are real. (2) Sectarian and ethnic strife pose a long-term challenge to any effort to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.

Are these point controversial?

In particular, there's nothing whatsoever in the article that suggests that the mere fact that it's possible -- with years of effort and whopping investments of capital -- to rebuild devastated cities, that it's "OK" to drop bombs on cities. If you read it that way...you read it wrong.

[bakho]

I think t11 misinterpreted my post. If you overestimate the amount of damage at the end of the war, the results of the analysis don't make much sense. Relatively little of the Japanese infrastructure was destroyed. There were no land battles in Japan home islands other than Okinawa. War is bad for people, but most of the infrastructure is left intact.

The thesis that war causes large damage to the infrastructure of a country misunderstands the intent and conduct of most wars.

[t11]

"The thesis that war causes large damage to the infrastructure of a country misunderstands the intent and conduct of most wars."

Sorry Bahko, but I am not clear what you mean. Are you saying most wars don't have any effect on the infrastructure of the countries fighting? Or are you saying most wars have the intent of not damaging infrastructure, only people?

Thanks, t11

[t11]

Johnchx - thanks for the defence of the University of Chicago. I'm sure it is an excellent university with an excellent business school. However, the two business professors could use some time in multi-disciplinary studies learning from their colleagues in other departments, or maybe they should travel outside the midwest. Of course cities are re-built after war - it might be diffciult to beleive this when you live in a place that has never had a major war, but travelling to Europe or Asia makes this point pretty obvious. Hey - even a trip to Atlanta might be enlightening.

As far as the ethnic divisions go, then how do you feel about unlimited Mexican immigration? Or unlimited immigration period? If you agree that the economic prospects are poor in Iraq because of multi-ethnic rivalries, then why can this not happen to the US?

[hj]

I think the results of overthrowing the Saddam Hussein regime,---in effect a civil war,---make it now very clear why he exercised dictatorial power. Only such a regime could hold Iraq together. Whether this is good or bad, or whether civil war is better, is a question each person needs to answer for himself. But the idea that one could remove SH and install a "democracy" in Iraq is one of the stupidest, silliest ideas to have been hatched in the last decade or so. So stupid and so silly that one has to doubt whether the people who proclaimed it did so in good faith. One suspects they had other motives.

[Betsy L. Angert]

Dear Bruce Wilder and piglet . . .

I appreciate the comments each of you shared. It seems as a Psychiatrist friend of mine said of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV; those that work daily in the deluge of what is are not those that are funded for research and reports. Thus, we have it, the selective skewing of statistics. How lovely the world can be when you commune with those that have ample capital to prove their idea is ideal.

May you live long, learn much, and feel fulfilled . . . Betsy
Betsy L. Angert Be-Think

[johnchx]

t11 wrote: "As far as the ethnic divisions go, then how do you feel about unlimited Mexican immigration? Or unlimited immigration period? If you agree that the economic prospects are poor in Iraq because of multi-ethnic rivalries, then why can this not happen to the US?"

An interesting question. I think there are a number of key distinctions between immigration into the US and the sectarian & ethnic conflict in Iraq.

The major difference is that immigration into the U.S. is voluntary and -- as near as I can make out -- largely based on realistic expectations. (There's a lot of communication between Mexican immigrants and their friends and relatives back home, etc.) It's also not terribly difficult to return to Mexico if life in the U.S. isn't what was expected. So the immigrant population isn't seething with resentment of the surrounding culture and doesn't feel that it's been forced to live under an intolerable foreign goverment.

Some resentment runs the other direction, of course, but it's not tinged by the fear that Mexican immigrants will seize control of the government and send the gringos to extermination camps.

(For an example of a different pattern, in which the immigrant population was *not* in the U.S. voluntarily, and in which the surrounding native population *did* fear violent reprisals, see reconstruction.)

The American multi-ethnic / multi-faith state was largely put together in this way, by successive waves of voluntary immigration into a pre-existing more-or-less stable social and political system. It was *not* constructed by an external power deciding that more or less arbitrary "peoples" would now share a government. And even so, it hasn't been easy, and it hasn't been anything like perfectly successful. (But it's no Iraq.)

[juan]

War-in-general, which it seems the author imagines, is mere concept, and ahistoric at that, since it fails to differentiate context. What social structures of production and reproduction existed prior to?

Vietnam was, for example, a semi-capitalist nation while Japan had experienced its capitalist revolution during the 19th century -- which makes *relative* cost and ability to rebuild distinct,,Otherwise an erasure of history in favor of this or that hypothetical, this or that apologia.

Iraq, so well as I can understand, had already developed as a state capitalist formation, or, exactly the form that the neoliberal project, aka Washington Consensus, has for decades sought to destroy,,to be replaced with so-called free market capitalism.

Social tensions exist within *all* societies. The question then should be what releases and intensifies these, and with what consequences. From this perspective, ethnic division in Iraq was obviously not created by war but, rather, we stand guilty of having transformed them from controlled to borderline uncontrollability and, almost without doubt, an 'uncontrollability' which the fading imperial center believes militarily beneficial just as the massive unproductive expenditures even as the center's social and physical infrastructure further decay.

Did this happen in Europe? Yes,,intensified class tensions and responses to such.

"Wars [do not] actually end" but, at best, fade away. Our war on Iraq is also a war on ourselves.

[bakho]

Posted by: t11 | Jul 20, 2006 2:46:13 PM

Are you saying most wars don't have any effect on the infrastructure of the countries fighting? Or are you saying most wars have the intent of not damaging infrastructure, only people?

I am not saying that there is no damage. I am saying that it is much more difficult than many people think to destroy infrastructure, even in war. Much of what is done in war is to "disable" infrastructure. Transportation and communications links are severed in order to divide the opposing force into numerous smaller forces that can be outnumbered and rolled up separately. This does not require "destruction" of infrastructure, only that it be temporarily disabled.

While the power of bombs is increasing (bombs today can do more damage than previous bombs) so has construction equipment and ability to repair damage improved. Someone above mentioned Atlanta which General Sherman depopulated and destroyed its industrial capacity in 1864. There were still buildings standing when Sherman left and the streets were not destroyed. A frequent complaint of General Sherman was that cavalry sent to destroy enemy railroads did not do so in a way that prevented their repair shortly after his troops left. Sherman put a lot of effort into developing ingenious methods to twist rails (Sherman neckties) so they would have to be re-rolled rather than being able to pound them back into shape. This disabled railroads for a longer period of time but was not permanent.

On his 1864 Atlanta campaign, Sherman prepared for attacks on the rail line from Chattanooga to Atlanta by stockpiling replacement ties and rails and even prefab bridges. Depite cutting the rail lines numerous times, the Confederates were often frustrated at how fast Sherman was able to repair the rails.

If a country was hell bent on destroying the infrastructure of another country, they could do so, but at great cost and at the requirement of a lot of weapons (assuming they did not use nukes). However, in most wars, countries don't have the luxury of spending armaments or manpower on the total destruction or necessarily want to destroy an asset. Many of the island airfields used by the Japanese in WWII were temporarily disabled, but rapidly restored to use once the Americans had displaced the Japanese. Many of the Saddam palaces in Iraq were bombed, but once under American control were rebuilt for use by Americans.

This is not to say that there is NO damage to infrastructure or that there is NO cost to war or war damage. I am merely pointing out that the destruction of infrastructure is much more difficult than the authors image and the ability to repair the damage much greater than the authors imagine.

They write, "After suffering the enormous immediate costs of war, it seems that people rather quickly return to where they left off."

NOT. While there are enormous costs in loss of life and disruption of daily activity, the underlying infrastructure is often only minimally damaged. They write, "The negligible long-term impact of war itself is rather startling..." No it isn't. The primary targets of war are military assets that contribute very little to an economy (some would argue they are a drag on an economy) while the economic assets are at most temporarily disabled and relatively easily reconstructed. The exceptions occur when a concerted effort is made to destroy the underlying infrastructure or when two armies are bogged down and spend a long time shelling each other's positions. Even then the damage is usually to a limited area.

The authors seem to underestimate the capacity to rebuild infrastructure. This view fails to take into account the ongoing repair and rebuilding of infrastructure that takes place daily. The average American home is replaced piece by piece every 40 years or so, on average by remodeling, upgrading and repair. Even buildings hundreds of years old get constant repair. After a war, the repair cycle increases in speed and rebuilding takes place. What happens once the repair stops is evident in abandoned houses that rapidly deteriorate.

That said, the authors kind of get the point that the real costs of the war are the human costs and those can extend for generations beyond the war itself.

[piglet]

johnchx: "As to the substance of the article itself, I don't see anyone disagreeing with the major points."

Now, please, dont tell us what we think. Read our posts. I and several others have very clearly indicated that, and why, we disagree. The major point of the article is not that "cities get rebuilt" (not always, by the way). The major point is that "history suggests that the destruction of war has no lasting impact on economic prospects". That claim is imply ludicrous.

[DJM]

Piglet, I don't have an especially strong stomach but I believe we have to face the consequences of our actions or inaction in order to truly understand what is happening...and how impossible it will for those who live through it, to ever forgive or forget (it also gives a little insight into the psychological damage that so many soldiers are coming home with)
The hatred that has been cultivated in so many generations of those in the middle east and formulated by many of our own war hawks and arms dealers needs to be looked at in all the horrific details, the site you gave the link to has pictures that are bad but truth is often very ugly these days.

[bakho]

Restated another way, the economic disincentives for going to war and the potential destruction are apparently not large enough to stop countries from going to war. War often produces big economic losers and economic winners within both the winning and losing side.

Applied to the current Israeli bombing of Lebanon, the authors would conclude that it can not create an economic incentive so powerful that the Lebanese will lick the Israeli's boots. No amount of bombing would cause worse destruction and economic loss than another Civil War in Lebanon.

[piglet]

Lebanon is the wrong example. There is nothing in the world the Lebanese government could do to stop the bombing. Lebanon is currently in the state of a prisoner being tortured, with the "international community" standing by and watching.

In general, applying the concept of "economic disincentives" to war is problematic as we all know that those decisions are only partially based on rational criteria. Parties go to war and often continue to fight even though the potential or actual destruction is "large enough". In part due to irrational motives, in part also due to the fact that those making the decisions are usually less affected by the consequences than are the common people.

[anne]

Piglet, you have argued well and I promise never to tell "you" what you think :) for even though I may not know quite what I think I never liked the idea of being told what I thought by anyone else as my parents learned early on. There is a certain, likely unintended, coldness to the essay by Austan Goolsbee that is distortive and saddening.

[anne]

As for Iraq, I have wondered whether urging that we immediately leave is still the proper course after the war in Lebanon and I am convinced that leaving Iraq is even more important now for we seem incapable of reaching for a ceasefire in Lebanon given our position in Iraq.

[piglet]

Thanks Anne. Those who are interested in understanding war might find interesting the article 'Tribal, "Ethnic," and Global Wars', by R. Brian Ferguson, available on his web site http://www.rutgers-newark.rutgers.edu/socant/brian.htm.

Also author of "Materialist, Cultural, and Biological Theories on Why Yanomami Make War" and "The birth of war" (you can google it).

[johnchx]

piglet wrote: "Now, please, dont tell us what we think. Read our posts."

My apologies...I did indeed overlook your post. (I never meant to tell you what you think; I agree that that would be both rude and unuseful.)

piglet also wrote: "The major point is that 'history suggests that the destruction of war has no lasting impact on economic prospects'. That claim is imply ludicrous."

Well...between t11, who finds the result obvious, and you, who find it ludicrous, it sounds like there might be some room for a little empirical investigation.

Personally, I think that the claims made in the various research referenced by the NYTimes article are being mis-understood. In particular, there is a difference between saying that war has no cost and saying that it doesn't permanently impair a country's development prospects. The basic finding is that, typically, a war is a one-time setback in a country's development (sometimes a very large setback) rather than a permanent change in the "slope" of its development path.

That's good news, but it doesn't somehow excuse or minimize the magnitude of the cost in the first place.

To understand what these papers are talking about, it's probably helpful to understand the question they're really addressed to. (This also helps explain why the two sets of results, one on war and one on the arbitrariness of post-colonial boundaries, are being discussed together.) As I read them, the papers are part of the effort to understand why some underdeveloped countries remain persistently underdeveloped, while others are more successful. In that context, it's actually rather useful to be able to rule out "having a war permanently slows a country's economic growth" as a hypothesis. And it turns out that having borders drawn more or less at random by an occupying colonial power is something that *does* help to explain persistently low rates of development, and why some countries recover relatively rapidly from wars while others do not.

[johnchx]

I'd like to pull a few quotes from the Miguel & Roland paper on bombing in Vietnam, just to give a better idea of whether it's fair to accuse these researchers of downplaying the human costs of that campaign:

From the abstract: "The Vietnam War featured the most intense bombing campaign in military history, and had massive humanitarian costs."

The first two sentences of the paper: "The horrors inflicted by war are clear to all, and so are its disruptive effects for people's lives. Indeed, war displaces population, destroys capital and infrastructure, disrupts schooling, and can produce negative environmental impacts, damage the social fabric, endanger civil liberties, and create health and famine crises."

And from page four: "To be absolutely clear, the human welfare costs of the war in Vietnam -- which lead to the deaths of millions of civilians by all accounts -- were massive even if there are no detectable long-run economic growth impacts."

War bad. I don't know how they could have said it any more clearly.

[piglet]

This is from the conclusion of Miguel and Roland:

"As discussed above, our econometric approach compares more heavily bombed areas to others and thus cannot estimate any nation-wide effects of the war on Vietnamese economic development. The counterfactual – Vietnamese economic performance in the absence of the war – is impossible to reconstruct. If the regions not greatly affected by the war assisted the more heavily bombed regions through postwar resource transfers, as our state investment data suggest, then differences between the more and less heavily bombed areas would be dampened but overall Vietnamese living standards could still have fallen. In that case, the actual aggregate effects of U.S. bombing on long run Vietnamese economic performance would be more negative than our estimates imply... (sic!!!)

Caution is called for, however, in drawing broader lessons regarding war’s impacts on economic growth in general. Unlike many other poor countries, postwar Vietnam benefited from strong, centralized political institutions able to mobilize human and material resources in the reconstruction effort. Vietnam also emerged successfully from war out of a long struggle for national liberation7 against a series of foreign occupiers (first the French, then the Japanese briefly, and finally the United States), an experience that provided its postwar leaders considerable nationalist political legitimacy. In contrast, the bulk of wars in the world today are internal civil conflicts, which may exacerbate political and social divisions and weaken national institutions rather than strengthen them. The world’s most conflict prone region is Sub-Saharan Africa, where state institutions are notoriously weak (Herbst 2000). In such a setting, postwar reconstruction may drag on far longer than in Vietnam (or in Japan, where postwar political institutions were also strong) leading to more persistent adverse legacies of war. Civil conflicts may be inherently more damaging for local institutions and social cohesion than external wars, since the civil war’s winners and losers continue to interact in politics and in everyday life. Due to the uniqueness of each society’s institutions, politics, and history, in our view further empirical evidence accumulated across a variety of cases is needed before making general claims about the effects of war on long run economic performance."

[piglet]

I don't want to be harsh but this isn't good science. The authors admit more or less that their methodological approach is invalid to address the question of the long-term impact of war on a country's economy, for the very reason that was already discussed above. Already in the introduction they state: "It is important to note an important limitation up front. While this econometric strategy provides estimates of differences across districts, the approach is unable to capture any aggregate nation-wide effects of the war on subsequent Vietnamese development." The authors cite four other studies, of which at least two share the same methodological limitations. Golsbee, in contrast, claims: "The negligible long-term impact of war itself is rather startling but has been noted in numerous studies." That's bad science.

[anne]

Piglet, again, you argue thoroughly and well and I have learned quite a bit from your argument and agree completely. Simply in its sweep the essay is poor, a sweep that if tempting to an economist a sociologist or historian would likely have avoided. History is just messier.

[piglet]

Here's another gem: "[T]heir study compares the performance of countries with natural borders to those with artificial ones and finds, overwhelmingly, that artificial nations suffer terribly — lower income, horribly ineffective and corrupt governments, less respect for the law, low literacy, limited access to clean water, poor health care, you name it."

I don't doubt the correlation but instead of using "artificial" (non-squiggly) borders as a variable (like, that 49th parallel), they could as well have measured the "victim of colonialism" variable and found an even stronger correlation with poverty. That, of course, was not the desired result.

[t11]

Hi Piglet. 'Tribal, "Ethnic," and Global Wars', by R. Brian Ferguson is very enlightening. In particular the part about nation state and tribal wars.

[anne]

Later, I will look to the paper on conflict by R. Brian Ferguson

http://www.rutgers-newark.rutgers.edu/socant/brian.htm

Tribal, "Ethnic", and Global Wars (2006)

[anne]

Still, and also worth considering and expanding on:

http://www.idst.vt.edu/modernworld/d/Einstein.html

September, 1932

Dear Mr. Einstein:

When I learned of your intention to invite me to a mutual exchange of views upon a subject which not only interested you personally but seemed deserving, too, of public interest, I cordially assented. I expected you to choose a problem lying on the borderland of the knowable, as it stands today, a theme which each of us, physicist and psychologist, might approach from his own angle, to meet at last on common ground, though setting out from different premises. Thus the question which you put me--what is to be done to rid mankind of the war menace?--took me by surprise. And, next, I was dumbfounded by the thought of my (of our, I almost wrote) incompetence; for this struck me as being a matter of practical politics, the statesman's proper study. But then I realized that you did not raise the question in your capacity of scientist or physicist, but as a lover of his fellow men, who responded to the call of the League of Nations much as Fridtjof Nansen, the polar explorer, took on himself the task of succoring homeless and starving victims of the World War. And, next, I reminded myself that I was not being called on to formulate practical proposals but, rather, to explain how this question of preventing wars strikes a psychologist.

But here, too, you have stated the gist of the matter in your letter--and taken the wind out of my sails! Still, I will gladly follow in your wake and content myself with endorsing your conclusions, which, however, I propose to amplify to the best of my knowledge or surmise.

You begin with the relations between might and right, and this is assuredly the proper starting point for our inquiry. But, for the term might, I would substitute a tougher and more telling word: violence. In right and violence we have today an obvious antinomy. It is easy to prove that one has evolved from the other and, when we go back to origins and examine primitive conditions, the solution of the problem follows easily enough. I must crave your indulgence if in what follows I speak of well-known, admitted facts as though they were new data;the context necessitates this method.

Conflicts of interest between man and man are resolved, in principle, by the recourse to violence. It is the same in the animal kingdom, from which man cannot claim exclusion; nevertheless, men are also prone to conflicts of opinion, touching, on occasion, the loftiest peaks of abstract thought, which seem to call for settlement by quite another method. This refinement is, however, a late development....

[piglet]

"piglet also wrote: "The major point is that 'history suggests that the destruction of war has no lasting impact on economic prospects'. That claim is imply ludicrous."

Well...between t11, who finds the result obvious, and you, who find it ludicrous, it sounds like there might be some room for a little empirical investigation."

I should emphasize that what I find ludicrous is the generalization. I think that the long-term impact (economic and otherwise) of war depends on many different factors. It is certainly worthwile studying what factors favor long-term recovery from war damage.

[anne]

Ah, the letter above on whether war is preventable was written to Albery Einstein by Sigmund Freud.

[anne]

What would Austan Goolsbee make of the parts of the deep South, these 140 years after the end of the Civil War? I wonder whether the effects of the war have yet been set aside, and if not why not, or is it the effects of the terrible ethnic divide before the Civil War and the persisting divide after? How would we begin to answer the question for Mississippi?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/arts/television/22brok.html

July 22, 2006

In ‘Separate and Unequal,’ Tom Brokaw Presents a Sadly Familiar Picture of Life in the Deep South
By ANITA GATES

There is not a single movie theater in Jackson, Miss. This seems an outrageous contention, but the mayor ought to know.

Mayor Frank Melton, a black man, shares this distressing information with Tom Brokaw on “Separate and Unequal,” an NBC News special tomorrow night. Mr. Melton’s city is now 70 percent black. Poverty is rising.

The point the program makes is that four decades after Lanier, the local high school, was integrated and James Meredith was admitted as the first black student at the University of Mississippi, nothing much seems to have changed for poor blacks.

“Separate and Unequal” plops itself down in Jackson for eight months and follows a few young African-Americans through most of the 2005-6 academic year to see how they will fare in this culture of near-hopelessness. The results are largely distressing and sadly familiar.

Alicia Ruffin is the teenage girl who had a baby, living with her mother and her stepfather because her baby’s daddy is in jail. Manuel Sturghill is the talented young basketball player who could use his athletic skills as a ticket to college if only he can make good enough grades to stay in high school. Fameika Thomas is the success story, a crack addict’s daughter who managed to get a master’s degree and become a social worker.

“Separate and Unequal” has very little new to say. It notes that when school integration came to Jackson in the 1960’s, resistant whites created private schools for their children and fled to the suburbs, and that many black households don’t include a father, setting an example of irresponsibility for boys.

Mr. Brokaw talks with Randy Agnew, the black executive editor of a local newspaper, The Clarion-Ledger; a white daughter of the segregationist Governor Ross Barnett, Ouida Barnett Atkins, who taught at Lanier; Charles Norton, a white teacher who came to Lanier young and idealistic and has stayed for 36 years (he blames hip-hop for the young people’s problems); and other concerned adults. All agree the situation is dire....

[DJM]

For those that didn't see this, and for those who need to be reminded that there is more than one side to a story and we don't get unbiased news;
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7828123714384920696
a video an hour and 19 minutes
called: Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land