ZadekpediaThe war as a limit case for peace
In a discussion of what a peace-oriented institute means by peace, Bob Zadek raised World War II as the example even “the most peace-loving Americans” would concede was necessary, asking what limits exist on when peace can be had. Ivan Eland, described by Bob as director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute, agreed that nations have a right of self-defense and that in World War II the United States was attacked and answered that attack, and that most people would support the war. He added that his center’s purpose is to bring home the costs of war to people of all political persuasions, including domestic costs such as erosion of civil liberties and increasing executive power past what the Founders intended, producing what he called an imperial presidency United Iraq Falls: Ivan Eland on Partitioning for Peace (2014).
Root causes: World War I, Wilson, and Roosevelt
Eland argued that World War II was “World War I, Part Two,” and that World War I was the more historically important event because it took the United States down the road of a new foreign policy. He said the United States tipped the balance in World War I, let its allies impose reparations and war guilt clauses on Germany, and that Woodrow Wilson, in his zeal to get the League of Nations, let the French and British “rub Germany’s nose in the ground” and demanded the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, opening the path toward Hitler taking power later. He speculated that had the United States stayed out, Germany would probably have won “on a 15-round decision rather than a knockout” United Iraq Falls: Ivan Eland on Partitioning for Peace (2014).
On the war itself, Eland said Americans tend to say only “Pearl Harbor” and have no answer when asked why the Japanese attacked, just as they have none for why bin Laden attacked on 9/11. He said the United States needs to fight World War II if attacked, but also that Roosevelt declined to negotiate with the Japanese and had cut off their oil and metals, trying to starve them of fuel because he disliked their intervention in China United Iraq Falls: Ivan Eland on Partitioning for Peace (2014).
Conscription and the “popular war” question
Thaddeus Russell said that every country involved in World War II had universal conscription throughout the war, and that with 65 million dead he did not think it could be called a popular war or a people’s war if every army in it required what he called enslavement. He stated that two-thirds of the soldiers who fought in World War II were conscripts, listing it among the wars—the Spanish-American War, World War I, Korea, Vietnam—that depended on drafts, and argued that it is hard to call those the people’s wars if they all depended on a draft Thaddeus Russell on Renegades vs. Conformists (2018).
Bob Zadek observed that in the American Revolution and the Civil War a drafted young man could hire someone to serve in his place, so that those who served were not middle class, and that this caused riots during the Civil War because it was a poor person’s war. Russell agreed the practice existed but said a significant number of middle- and upper-class people still volunteered, that officers who lost limbs or lives in the Civil War almost to a man came from well-established wealthy families, and that roughly 600,000 died with perhaps twice that many coming home missing a limb or an eye. Bob credited Milton Friedman as probably the leading thinker who helped get rid of the draft; Russell said Friedman called it the worst thing a state can do and that he would not disagree, calling the draft temporary enslavement Thaddeus Russell on Renegades vs. Conformists (2018).
The decline of international war
John Mueller defined the war he studies as international war, the way nations fight each other to settle disputes, and observed that since 1945 there had been 75 years without a war among developed states—World War III never happened—with only about four international wars in the last 30 years. He attributed the decline mainly to a change in the idea that war is a good idea, or that war is really stupid, a change he dated to after World War I, when people said that had been stupid and should not be repeated; they tried unsuccessfully to prevent it because of Hitler, and the effort resumed after World War II with major success. Europe, he said, once the cauldron of wars, had had essentially no international wars since, the longest such period since the word “Europe” was invented about 2,500 years ago, though he noted problems with Ukraine might break the streak China & the Stupidity of War (2022).
Across episodes
World War II appears in the 2014 Eland episode, the 2018 Russell episode and the 2022 Mueller episode, but the episodes show no development of a shared argument across them: Eland treats it as the sequel to World War I and a case of unexamined root causes, Russell as evidence about conscription, and Mueller only as the boundary after which international war declined.