The Second World War has been regarded as the Good War for many reasons, and many have defended the participation of the United States in it as morally and rationally justified. This justification is based on the belief that Germany and Japan were threatening the power balance of the world and would have posed an impending danger to America and the rest of the free world if they were not stopped.
The book was written in 1972, in a time where the United States had waged many other wars, and the public had started to question the stand taken by the American government by becoming a sort of global police.
One of the strongest, yet more difficult to accept, arguments in this book is that, in the grand scheme, America has no real control over the distribution of the world power. This might result shocking for those who are confident that the United States has the role of balancing the power of the world, or that America has a strong influence in the grand scheme of world politics. Russet makes use of something called macroscopic analysis to point out that even when the United States tried hard to intervene in the internal politics of countries like France or Iraq, these interventions did not have any great impact in the decision making processes of those countries. Even when there were major changes in their regimes, case in point would be the overthrowing of the Iraqi king in 1958 or the rise of Gaullism in France, their countries did not make any important shifts in their international stances. Those events were seen as major turning points by the international journalism and political analysts of the time, but later proved being not so important after all.
Based on this, Russet deems that day-to-day journalism offers just a microscopic point of view of the world and makes any decision made by statesmen look transcendental, giving them the appearance of being significant enough as to affect the stability of the world political system. But, as professor Russet notes, a macroscopic approach would reveal that the world is much more stable than people would like to think. He puts the replacement of Batista for Castro in Cuba as an example of this. Even when they were radically different leaders, and that Castro was very hostile to the United States, in the long run it did not affect American economy so much as to declare it an issue of vital importance. Of course, he does not mention the possible effects of a successful Soviet nuclear operation in Cuba.
The American policy towards Germany was different and could be regarded as correct to a certain extent. The United States policy of All Aid Short of War, was necessary for Britain and Russia to win the war against Germany, but the gradual decisions made by the government were making many of the strategic goals pursued by Hitler impractical. That was the case of the actions taken in the Atlantic by the United States. German submarines were trying to weaken British supply capabilities, and the United States started escorting merchant ships as far as Iceland. Germany could live with shooting supply boats that were farther from Iceland, but then Roosevelt extended that order to the whole Atlantic, making it useless for Germany to have submarines there unless they started shooting American ships. It has been proven that, despite the pressures imposed by the United States, it was not Germany the one who shot first. American ships had been harassing German U-Boats, when they decided to shoot back, and then Roosevelt deliberately created a discourse that made every American feel that the torpedoes fired by Germany were aimed at every one of them, driving the public opinion towards war. The same discourse was used to justify the war on Vietnam and, more recently, the war against terror.
However, Russet admits that if America had not gone to war in Europe, the conflict would have been longer, would have cost many more lives, and would not have ended with a clear cut victory for the allies. In fact, it might have ended with an uneasy peace and maybe Britain would have been threatened in the future by an expansionist and mostly German Europe.
In one other line of argumentation, Russet mentions the then existent fear of a German attack on American soil most people shared, but he realistically assesses Germany´s military range capabilities by that time, and demonstrates that even if they had won the war, they could not possibly pose any realistic threat to the United States. This could be reinforced by later works published after the cold war that indicated that it was only in 1957 that the Soviets developed intercontinental rocket capabilities that could pose a direct threat to the United States . The Germans were decades away from developing nuclear weapons and rocket capabilities, and they would have been too exhausted from a war with both Russia and Great Britain, had America not participated, to even dream of building such power. So, not only was America defending itself from a non-existent threat, but their participation in the war did not make them any more secure. In fact, it allowed Russia to develop their own military capabilities to the point of making them a world superpower, and it did not stop Germany from becoming one as well.
Lastly, the author evaluates the gains of the war. He deems that going to war against Japan and Germany did not make Americans fare any better. In fact, they might be a little worse off given that the investments made in war efforts could have been put to better use. Indeed, Russet believes that all the money and resources could have been directed toward the health and education system in the United States. But this is a statist point of view, it has been convincingly argued that, even when he is right about considering war a squandering of resources, taxing Americans for health and education systems did not really improve their lives . This last argument might be influenced by the welfare-state view most intellectuals had at the time.
Even when many would find the arguments given in this book hard to swallow, it really succeeds in putting some questions in the reader´s mind. Although the book consistently revolves around the point that the Second World War, and many other conflicts, were unnecessary, the conclusion reached in the final chapter is not meant to convince the reader of it. In fact, what the author convincingly expresses at the end of his work is the need to ask ourselves a series of valid questions when evaluating whether a war has a just cause or not, and that is a something that even a hardcore Second World War apologist would find hard to refute.
The book is well written and it can be read in one round. It also gives the reader lots of information and footnotes that are useful and very illustrative, though great part of the book is based on conjectures made about alternative political and economic outcomes that turn out to be useless speculative exercises. On the other hand, after reading this great work some can feel there are new facts that could be included to reinforce Russet´s case, and maybe it needs revamping. Nonetheless, the ideas expressed in this book are and, it appears, will still be valid in the near future.
References
Rothbard, Murray. What Has Government Done to Our Money? Auburn: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 2008.
Russett, Bruce. No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the U.S. Entry into World War II. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.
Stearman, William Lloyd. "Why the U.S. Still Needs Nuclear Weapons Superiority." 22 August 2013. The Wall Street Journal. 1 November 2013. <http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323829104578624573904812736>.
