With the exception of the Great Depression of the 1930's, major social and political changes have come to the United States of America by way of its wars. In all cases, the irreversible result has been the expansion of the power of the federal government.
There is no good history of America's wars. One of the problems is that of all forms of history, the history of warfare is the most difficult to organize. That is because there is no overall theory of how wars start, how they are fought, and what the results are. More than any other kind of historiography, the history of warfare is tied to individual battles and political decisions. Historians of warfare just cannot agree on the existence of any pattern of decision-making and battlefield success that would enable them to sort out what happened retroactively. The history of warfare is, in the words of Tony Abbott, just one thing after another.
But there is a pattern to the results of warfare. The best book on this is by economist Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan. It was published by Oxford University Press in 1987. It is still in print. Not many academic books stay in print this long. I regard the book as a classic. Higgs shows that war always centralizes the central governments of the victors. Higgs has written half a dozen other books supporting this theory. I would begin my study of the history of America's wars with a detailed study of all of Higgs's books on warfare and the expansion of political power.
I would also use two other books: Arthur Ekirch's The Decline of American Liberalism (1955) and his support volume, The Civilian and the Military (1956). They are both published by the Independent Institute.
I would adopt of this outline for each of the volumes. Each volume would be in three parts. Part one would be origins of the war. Most of this would have to do with foreign policy. Part two would be a discussion of how the war was financed, how the government increased power over the economy and society in general, and a brief description of key battles. I would not focus on the battles. Battles are too individualistic. The results very often could go either way. The question is this: why does one side stick to it long enough to gain a victory over the other side? Part three would be on the repercussions of the war, in taxation, bureaucracy, debt, and politics. Here is where Higgs's research becomes crucial. In no case did taxes ever get rolled back to where they were before the war broke out. That at least is my theory, and I would spend a lot of time looking for evidence to support the theory. But I would also pay attention to evidence that said otherwise, although I would not expect to find any.
Then I would begin the series. I would begin with the Seven Years War, also called the French and Indian War. It began in 1754, when an inexperienced George Washington launched an attack on French forces in western Pennsylvania at what in retrospect has been called the battle of Jumonville Glen. I would then cover the following wars: the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican war, the Civil War, the wars against the Plains Indians, the Spanish-American War, the war against Philippine insurrectionists, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
I would try to keep each volume to about 250 pages. I would probably publish larger books in PDF to support the printed volumes, so that interested students could pursue the details of the particular war. I would heavily emphasize bibliography in these support volumes. They would basically be annotated bibliographies of the key books and scholarly articles in the field. But I would not publish these separately. A PDF is adequate. Not many people will ever read the support volumes. But they should be there in order to add credibility to the shorter, more tightly written, less footnoted printed editions.
At the end of the whole process, I would write a textbook on America's wars. The textbook would be based on extensive research and publication. The textbook would be mainly narrative, plus links to primary source documents. I would not get involved in any academic debates over this or that aspect of a particular battle or trend. The debates would be covered in the larger support volumes.
I think this would take, on average, two years per printed volume. In other words, it would take an entire career to do this project right. I don't think anybody's going to do this. The advantage would be this: once somebody does it, it will take an entire career for somebody else who disagrees with the thesis to write his version of the history of America's wars. This goes back to one of my favorite slogans: you can't beat something with nothing.
I adopted this strategy, beginning in 1973, to make a case for Christian economics. I published 31 volumes of economic commentaries, 1982 to 2012, plus about eight support books. I am now in the process of publishing five full-length books summarizing my findings. Most non-Keynesian Christian economists who read my final books will find that they like the conclusions, but they won't like my approach to coming to the conclusions, an approach based on a study of the biblical texts, not the study of academic journals. Non-Christian economists will pay no attention. But anybody who criticizes my interpretation of Christian economics had better have a comparable body of material that shows exactly why my interpretation is incorrect. Nobody has ever attempted this before. I doubt that anybody else is going to do it, and certainly not in my lifetime. Therefore, I have about a one-generation headstart on my critics. It would be a lot easier for them just to ignore my work. After all, this is what they have done for over 40 years.
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