Look Out: Ukraine Will Cost More than Half a Trillion More if the War Ends Tomorrow— Stephen Bryen

"Military Keynesianism." (article by Jan Taporowski, Professor of Economics and Finance, SOAS

Visiting Professor of Economics, University of Bergamo, and Professor of Economics and Finance, International University College)

Weapons and Strategy
Look Out: Ukraine Will Cost More than Half a Trillion More if the War Ends Tomorrow—Will US Voters Support More Huge Outlays?
Stephen Bryen

Also

Barbara Ehrenreich was a remarkable writer and thinker. Her book, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War (1997), is one of the most original and thoughtful studies of war and its nature. She traced humanity’s affinity to war, our predilection for it, not to our vaunted status as predators but to our vulnerable status as prey to other predators in the wild. Our early human ancestors were fearful creatures, and for good reason. Humans learned to band together as a way of conquering other predators and controlling their fear; once those predators were mostly banished to fleeting memories and occasional nightmares, we could turn on each other, becoming predators (and prey) to ourselves.

If you haven’t read her book, I urge you to check it out. Stimulating it is. And so too is an afterword she wrote to the paperback edition of the book, available at TomDispatch and which I read last night. Once again, Ehrenreich doesn’t disappoint....

Robert Ardrey's The Territorial Imperative is also relevant here. Can humans rise above their evolutionary traits? David Sloan Wilson,  SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology (Emeritus) at Binghamton University, argues, yes, in his work on prosociality as an evolutionary trait, agreeing with Aristotle that humans are a prosocial species as a matter of their evolutionary development. 

Prosociality is a requirement for civilization, for instance. Ironically, conflict is now becoming civilizational consciously as Western liberalism attempts to impose its civilization on other civilizations. This is one underlying factor in the development of BRICS+.

Bracing Views

Atavistic War

W. J. Astore, Lieutenant Colonel (USAF ret.), taught at the Air Force Academy, the Naval Postgraduate School, and currently at the Pennsylvania College of Technology