What are wars for? There are quite provocative books that make us go against common sense and reveal inconvenient truths. One of them is “War! What's it good for?: Conflict and the progress of civilization from primates to robots”, by Stanford professor Ian Morris. Reading is light and stimulating, a walk through centuries of conflicts, from the Romans against the barbarians to medieval wars, from the great wars of the 20th century to the Cold War and, finally, the American Empire. The core arguments are simple and compelling as to the role of war in the development of civilization. Let's see: 1. Wars create larger and better organized societies. It is impossible for a society to fight (and win) without a minimum of organization. The greater the war effort, the greater the need to properly allocate resources - human and material - in order to achieve the military objective, be it conquest or defense of the territory. The necessary complexity demands the creation of a stronger and more active Government. The legacy of the conflict is a society that is more complex, more organized, and with a know-how on how to become even more complex. 2. Wars create larger and safer societies. While war is the worst way to create larger, more peaceful societies, it's pretty much the only way humans have found to do so. It seems counterintuitive, but conquerors need to ensure that the dominated peoples do not have weapons or the means to exercise violence, under penalty of compromising the conquest. This control and the corresponding monopoly of brute force by the State result in a more peaceful and secure society for all. The number of annual world deaths caused by armed conflicts is decreasing. Just a reference: that number dropped from 546,000 in 1950 to 87,432 in 2016. Furthermore, a European was more likely to die in a war in the 19th century than it is today. 3. More complex societies created by wars bring wealth. In the long run, by forming more peaceful and secure societies, wars lay the groundwork for development and, ultimately, promote greater wealth. The administration of the Roman Empire required the creation of a government and logistics infrastructure – roads and maritime lines – that favored inter and intra-provincial trade and the economy, generating wealth for entrepreneurs from all parts of the empire. It is also worth noting the rise of the United States as a superpower after World War II, which ended in 1945. 4. Wars are so efficient that they tend to be continuously reduced. Thousands of years of conflict have generated increasingly complex societies, increasingly strong governments and wealth for most of the world's population. Technological progress brought the possibility of weapons of mass destruction, capable of ending life on the planet. This makes large-scale clashes unlikely, maintains the peace, and limits warfare to small regional conflicts, with decreasing annual numbers. Moral of the story: we must get very close to the world imagined by pacifists, but for different, very different reasons. Video: Remember: vk.com/...050