Generals know nothing about the economics of war.
Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.
War is a racket. It always has been... A few profit - and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn't make that in a year at a guy who doesn't make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.
Make wars unprofitable and you make them impossible.
There are no straight line projections of cost in a war.
It may safely be asserted that the art of war will soon be reduced to a simple question of expenditure and credit, and that the largest purse will be the strongest arm.
What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?
So actually war is politically profitable, financially profitable, morally depraved.
The adverse economic events following the First World War turned me toward economics.
If it is true that wars are won by believers, it is also true that peace treaties are sometimes signed by businessmen.
There is no more cruel illusion than that war makes a people richer.
