War Is Still a Racket

Originally published in Reason.com

Professor Christopher Coyne reviews the book, "Useful Enemies: When Waging Wars is More Important than Winning Them," by David Keen.

They say war is a fight between forces seeking victory. But sometimes the conflict is more complicated than that. Professor Christopher Coyne reviews the book "Useful Enemies: When Waging Wars is More Important than Winning Them," by David Keen. 

The way out of this situation is by no means simple or clear. But it will surely help for citizens to become more skeptical of governments' intentions when it comes to war. This would require the realization that international interventions, more often than not, do more to undermine citizen safety than to enhance it. Shifting public opinion requires the reiteration of Smedley Butler's message, and Useful Enemies does that nicely.

Read the full review at Reason.com.

To speak with a scholar or learn more on this topic, visit our contact page.

Mercatus AI Assistant
Ask questions about this research.
GPT Logo
Mercatus AI Research Assistant
Ask questions about this research. Mercatus Chatbot AI More Details
Suggested Prompts:
Ask us anything. We use OpenAI's ChatGPT 4o base model to answer any question about Mercatus research.