In the Stone Age, ten to twenty per cent of people died at the hands of other people. Yet in the twentieth century only one to two per cent of the global population died in war. The violent death rate has fallen by ninety per cent over ten thousand years. What was the cause of this dramatic change? Morris argues that it was war itself. Wars led to the formation by the winning side of larger controlled groups whose members did not often kill each other. These larger groupings placed more inhibitions on the use of force by their competitors, so the frequency of major wars slowly decreased. They were becoming too expensive to be used in the way that they once were. When one looks at the state of international relations today, Morris’s theory seems soundly based. Wars still occur but in a more limited way, and the great powers, vulnerable to attack by nuclear weapons, exercise great care in not confronting each other directly.

Morris uses several metaphors to make his case more comprehensible. He shatters illusions by asserting that many rulers can be characterised as ‘stationary bandits’. They continually steal from the people whom they subdue and they do not go away. They are motivated by self-interest, but they learn that there are limits on what they can take from their subjects if they are not to be thrown out or killed by those under their authority. They become competitive with other stationary bandits, and their capacity to dominate or fend off their competitors depends on their ability to manage the people, provinces and other resources under their command. How much money can they afford for armies and navies? How can they keep their people healthy so that they can support a powerful military force? Hence they need settled, productive societies from which, incidentally, the members of those societies benefit.

As we look across the span of the past few millennia, it is interesting to consider how many rulers and governments fall into the ‘stationary bandit’ category. Until the advent of real democracies, in which the electors could unseat their governments by voting against them at the next election, most governments fell into the ‘stationary bandit’ category, when they were not being ‘fully mobile bandits’ like the Mongols or the European imperial powers of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.

Morris also utilises Hobbes’s concept of the Leviathan, which in a way balances the idea of the stationary bandit. The Leviathan in this sense is large government, the anathema of the Tea Party in the United States. It rules by establishing and maintaining peace within its borders. Its great virtue is that its citizens generally feel safe. Rule of law is established and criminals are brought to justice. As one proceeds up the ladder of states with large, comprehensive governments, one is also moving in the direction of rising prosperity for the individual citizens. Larger, comprehensively governed states are in themselves richer, stronger, and better able to go to war with others for their own benefit.

In a world made up of several such states, the costs of going to war become horrifyingly huge, and the gains diminish in many ways. Large numbers of people are killed, destruction of towns and cities is immense, economic life, including the production of food and other essentials is insufficient for public needs, and social order may be overthrown with long-term consequences, as in the case of Germany after 1918. War, having fulfilled the useful functions of pacifying tribes, villages, and towns, and reducing the overall death rate due to violence, does finally, for most people, turn into an event whose consequences are very undesirable.

Wilhelm II of Germany

 When this increase in the destructive power of war is understood by those over whom, or against whom, it is waged, it begins to be seen as a very undesirable policy instrument for states to use against one another. Unfortunately old habits and attitudes of mind die hard. When the key decisions on opening hostilities were being taken in European capitals during the July crisis of 1914, the influence of the major European wars of the nineteenth century was a powerful factor. Kaiser Wilhelm II, with all his complexes and desire to assert himself, must have been driven by the image of his grandfather in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars. Wilhelm I, counselled by Bismarck, took decisive action rapidly and successfully in military terms in both cases. Unfortunately, the Prussian post-war settlement in 1871 included the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, which was to prove a running sore for Franco-German relations over the following forty-three years. The combined effect of all these influences was to narrow Wilhelm II’s options in July 1914 and to increase the power of his military leaders. On the French side, President Poincaré was very mindful of the need to mobilise his forces quickly when under threat and move them rapidly to defend France’s eastern borders. Thus the experience of a past war had a bad effect on the outcome of the July crisis.

Similarly, it can be argued that the main cause of World War II lay with Adolf Hitler’s experience in World War I and the following two decades. It is possibly just as well that World War II was concluded by the use of nuclear weapons, for they showed any government which was mindful of using force that it would be taking a huge gamble in so doing.

While nuclear weapons may have deterred conflict between the major states which possess them, they have not deterred nationalist and revolutionary leaders in Asia and Africa from using force. While I agree that the rate of violent deaths has decreased, we are still a long way from a situation where wars rarely occur. And as weapons of mass destruction proliferate, the chances that a major destructive war could happen are still significant, especially in the Middle East. However, it is not only the Middle East that we need to think about: the United States, as the most active of the major powers on the international scene, continues to attract enemies, albeit mainly at the sub-national level. If every nuclear warhead that has ever been produced is not either destroyed or kept securely beyond the reach of radical groups of one kind or another, the chances are that some US cities will be subjected to powerful, terrorist attacks in the future.

But even if complete nuclear disarmament proves possible, force will still have a role to play, Morris concludes. World order will depend on the United States. The conclusion to the book is not as strong as its mid-section. It is very unclear that the United States will be capable of bearing the burden that Morris, full of optimism, believes it can. He does not devote enough analysis to climate change and resource depletion, which are likely to cause conflict between the haves and the have-nots.

Nonetheless, this is an excellent book to read and think about. It is stronger in its historical analysis and less convincing in dealing with future international security problems. But that disparity is hardly surprising, and the quality of the future-oriented chapters makes them well worth reading.