This article was originally published by Mark Thornton at The Mises Institute. 

I’m not predicting WWIII; I am certainly not calling for WWIII; I’m doing everything in my power to prevent WWIII and illuminate the causes, risks, and general results of future war. We are in a quasi-war with Russia, with Europe planning to fight. We are at war in the Middle East with no end in sight. We have stolen China’s oil source in Venezuela and threatened Denmark with our might. The last decade has seen the entire globe turn from firm allies and admirers of America to disgruntled partners and enemies ready to fight.

What we do know is that this pathway to war can easily result in war itself, and once Shakespeare’s “dogs of war” have been released, that chaos and destruction follow on a massive scale and political actors are incapable of stopping it. War is harmful and provides zero benefits to the population. It only provides benefits to some politicians, the military-industrial complex, the deep state, and the global power elites, including the big bankers who finance both sides, only to be paid back by taxpayers.

Citizens typically have a very narrow view of the causes of past wars as well as the risks and results of war. This limited and often incorrect knowledge is created by the government, the educational systems, and historians who mostly glorify war.

War is caused by conflict within government and between states. The consequences are always horrific and greater than initial expectations. There are no good outcomes for typical, normal citizens who typically suffer the most as soldiers or non-combatants. War is not the only government policy that results in a large number of deaths, injuries, and ruined lives, but it is certainly the leading cause of those negative results. It also destroys homes, business capital, markets, and all types of networks that facilitate human interaction, including trade relationships.

Propaganda has convinced the American public that WWI (which the vast majority of Americans opposed at the time) was caused by the assassination of some Austrian Prince on holiday. Likewise, Americans (who also overwhelmingly opposed entering the war) have been led to believe that the normally sure-thinking Japanese just randomly decided to sucker punch the USA at Pearl Harbor. These and other supposed causes of other wars are entirely inadequate and factually laughable.

It seems that Americans (along with most people from all other countries) have been the dupes of war. Americans have also been taught to believe that WWII got us out of the Great Depression when, in fact, Professor Robert Higgs has shown quite factually that the economic and living conditions for Americans at home were just as bad during the War as in the Great Depression—they were just working much harder for the same result and doing without most of the normal comforts of family life. Americans forced into the war effort lived a hellish existence, and many died or were maimed mentally and physically. Many of those who survived domestically or lived to tell the tale of their forced adventures refused to speak of their experience or limited it to one or two “exciting details.”

There are plenty of propaganda efforts out there designed to conceal the real costs of war. One popular one is that government-funded research or wartime innovation helped win the war and/or had all sorts of secondary benefits for the general population. These obvious propaganda stories conflict with actual history and cause-and-effect analysis. President Dwight D. Eisenhower—the commander-in-chief of Allied Forces in WWII—specifically warned us that the prime beneficiaries of war, the military-industrial complex, would use complex propaganda and psychological warfare on citizens to ensure that the MIC clients would continue to receive a massive flow of taxpayers’ dollars.

Ludwig von Mises explained that the typical causes of war are only about the timing of war and these “causes” are often “false flags” initiated by one side in order to cast blame on the other side. The Mukden Incident of 1931 gave cover to the Japanese for a large-scale invasion of China, the Gleiwitz incident of 1939 was the excuse for Hitler to invade Poland, and the sinking of the Maine was the excuse used for the US to go to war with Spain. The same is true with Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, and all the wars in the Middle East.

Aside from the timing and the initial ignition switch discussed above, Ludwig von Mises wrote about the fundamental causes of war which were things we could make better or worse just by changing our minds. His thoughts are based on logical reasoning and the weight of history.

Statist ideology and state worship are primary causes. The basis and purpose of society is human betterment by allowing the greatest scope of human choice and action. Statist ideology says no. The purpose of society is the glorification and grandeur of the state. Here the state uses its resources to secure support through gifts, privileges, and power sharing arrangements like democratic voting.

Ultimately, the state wants to engineer the force to engage its chosen enemy with the power of total war (anything goes, civilians are expendable, unconditional surrender, and take no prisoners). Ideological conditioning and subtle propaganda techniques are used here to alter the meaning of true patriotism, which is the willingness to oppose your own government for doing evil things. Propaganda reconfigures that into false patriotism, where you are willing to tolerate harmful and unethical government behavior and actually support such policies.

Closely related to this concept is nationalism. People are constantly conditioned to accept whatever their nation does and to oppose what other people and other nations are doing. Nationalism gets priorities completely backward. Our first priority is to ourselves, especially if that means to be prepared and to persevere in the support of one’s family and friends. Good households are thereby in a position to be supportive of their schools and religious groups, their hospitals, charities and civic groups that in turn help hold together the local society. It goes without saying that entrepreneurs, companies, and workers in the community are automatically self-sustaining as long as the community practices a high degree of laissez faire. The economy provides the sustenance of the community. Virtually any community that practices full laissez faire (with no taxes and regulations and 100 percent property rights) in an otherwise interventionist society will thrive.

Nationalism has no priority. Patriotism for the nation is the indirect result of not impinging on individuals and communities, allowing individuals and communities to thrive. Such thriving communities are exactly the source of a nation’s ability and willingness to defend itself against foreign invasion.

Mises also wrote extensively on how statist ideology would lead to the adoption of all sorts of domestic interventionism in terms of government. Rather than competitive market regulation, progressive taxes on everything, controlling institutions such as central banks and public schools, establishing monopolies and monopolizing rules, and infusions of government money and red tape in industries like medical care. Everything that Karl Marx asked for in his Communist Manifesto!

As the domestic interventions weakened and sickened local economies, voters and politicians would reach out to interventions attacking “unfair” foreign competition, which in reality is a boon to consumers and domestic competitiveness. Here, tariffs, quotas, prohibitions of imports, trading blocs, and military alliances would harm us by dispensing with our competitive economic advantages while simultaneously constructing a list of foreign enemies. International conflict, foreign affairs, and heightened military preparedness thus emerge.

Let us not be the dupes of war; let us not unleash the dogs of war.