Freer societies are better at defending themselves
From CroziervisionWiki
(Or, to put it another way: freer societies win their wars)
Some examples:
- Britain v France in the Napoleonic Wars
- Germany v The Allies in both World Wars
- NATO v the Warsaw Pact in the Cold War
Now, I appreciate that in the Second World War things are far from clear cut as one of the Allies was the Soviet Union.
I also appreciate that in the First World War, for the first three years Britain, France and Italy were allied with non-free Russia and in 1918, the Allies vastly outnumbered, in terms of men and material, the Central Powers. Though having said that it is worth dwelling on why the Allies outnumbered the Central Powers. One of them was the USA with a population of 100m up from next to nothing 200 years previously. And, yet, not only had it acquired those 100m people but it also managed to make them (on average) the richest people in the world. Freedom, perhaps?
However, the Cold War is a clear cut as you can get. Similar sizes, similar populations but in the end the Soviet Union simply couldn't compete.
This may not be a hard and fast rule. A really small free country against a really big unfree country eg Netherlands v Germany in 1940 or Finland v Soviet Union in 1939-40 hasn't got much of a chance. I would like to know more about what I understand was freeish Carthage against slavery-ridden Rome. Rome won, by the way. Oh, and 1066, of course.
Questions
Why is this? My guess is that is a couple of things. Freer societies tend to be richer and more technologically advanced. This means they find it easier to produce the weapons of war. Sure, the Allies may not have had anything as advanced as the V2 or the King Panther but neither of these made much of a difference. The Allies put their money into things that did, like the P51 Mustang, radar and the atom bomb. They also seem to have had the ability to make the right compromises between quality and quantity - the classic example being the Sherman tank. Another thing is that freer societies have more of a culture of debate. That means that they tend to come up with better solutions to their military problems. Perhaps another reason why the Allies settled on the Sherman. It may also be because in a free society almost everyone has a stake. This is particularly important when the chips are down. In 1918, the Germans surrendered in their droves.
But, surely the British Army performed very badly in the First World War? I think this is one of the great myths of the latter half of the 20th Century. British generals get a bad rap because the casualties were very high but everyone suffered heavy casualties. It was that sort of war. We may think of the Somme as a defeat but so did the Germans. They also get a bad rap because of some spectacularly poor tactics at the Somme and before. But again with the Schlieffen Plan and Plan XVII everyone was guilty of that. The important thing to remember is that in 1914, the British had a tiny army in comparison to the Continental powers, and that there were bound to be growing pains. The British also on more than one occasion found themselves having to bail out the French which invariably meant fighting a campaign at a time not of their choosing. Ultimately the British Army mastered trench warfare, pioneered mobile warfare and was the most powerful Allied army in the field at the end of the war.
