Castles, Battles, and Bombs: How Economics Explains Military History Book

Strategy requires a head of state to match his means against his ends, hoping to obtain a desired outcome. So why is it that when a country is confronted with a problem, the strategy that was pursued seems baffling to the reader? Looking at military history from the viewpoint of economics, Jurgen Brauer and Hubert van Tuyll come up with some rational answers that a reader may not expect in their work, "Castles, Battles and Bombs."

More of a collection of case studies, the authors give examples of basic problems in economics as they relate to national security. Take castles. The authors offer them up as a study in opportunity costs. A medieval ruler has the means to build them, or build an army, but not both. Which is a more cost-effective way of controlling the countryside? The castles are expensive to build, but once they are up, cost little to maintain and man--as opposed to keeping an army of thousands in the field for the same span of time.

And so the authors trip down their list of illustrations--the principal vs. agent problem (mercenary recruitment), battle (cost-benefit analisys), the cost of information (reconnaissance), the law of diminishing returns (strategic bombing), and economy of force (France's modest nuclear arsenal standing in for a larger army). The authors struggle to make ends meet in some of their end-of-chapter matrices that cross-check economic with military factors. Overlook this--the real meat is in the chapters. While an economic viewpoint of warfare is not the last word in strategic analysis, readers should be cognizant of economics as a major factor among many that define strategic choices. Brauer and Van Tuyll succeed in explaining economics in layman's terms, thus challenging the reader to look at military history from this angle. Choices that may seem puny and baffling make sense (French nuclear forces), while strategies that seemed necessary and urgent are made to look like folly (bombing Germany in WWII).

If the reader comes away from this book with second thoughts, then the authors did their job right.