Jacks of no trade, masters of war.

• Author: Stromberg, Joseph R.
• Position: Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal - Critical essay

You will probably never see Ralph Raico, professor emeritus of history at Buffalo State College, holding forth on the History Channel surrounded by wide-eyed naifs eager to improve their mastery of American Establishment gospel. His new book, Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010) shows why. Yet Raico has a well-earned reputation as a classical-liberal historian who has made important contributions to the history of German liberalism, translated Ludwig von Mises's Liberalism, broadened our knowledge of liberal class-conflict theory, and accomplished much more. There is more to a historian's achievement than superficial public acclaim.

In a typical Raico essay, the reader finds solid research, detailed knowledge of relevant sources, deft deployment of quotations, and careful interpretation, complemented by wit, devastating understatement, and an occasional outburst that might seem intemperate had he not just written several pages that render the point both inevitable and obvious. The materials in his new book have been published previously, but the first three chapters have been greatly expanded to good effect. Because they amount to 60 percent of the book, Ideal mainly with them in this review. Each of these three chapters provides an excellent overview of the main issues of the period under consideration as well as a good introduction to essential historical sources.

Wars, Wars, and Rumors of Wars

With superb moral clarity, Raico states in his introduction that the task of history is essentially one of "revisionism" and especially the undermining of "excuses for war" (p. vii). He notes the declension of Europe's nineteenth-century liberal parties into "machines for the exploitation of society by the now victorious predatory middle classes" (p. ix, a point also made in the foreword by Robert Higgs). From then to now, it has fallen to consistent and critical liberals such as Richard Cobden, John Bright, William Graham Sumner, Gustave de Molinari, Albert Jay Nock, H. L. Mencken, Frank Chodorov, Murray Rothbard, Leonard Liggio, and others to expose the motives of apparently "liberal" wars.

The First European Suicide Attempt, 1914-1918

Raico's first chapter, "World War I: The Turning Point," sees the war of 1914-18 as the Great Disaster that set the tone and course of the dreadful twentieth century. Given the mass slaughter, ideological extremism, and sheer state building that accompanied the war, this characterization is no exaggeration. Raico is of course concerned to sketch the war's impact on American politics and life--none of it good. Here his mastery of the relevant literature and his immunity to encrusted wartime myths, old and new alike, serve us well.

Raico does not shortchange the reader on essential background: the emerging alliance system that pitted Allied Powers against Central...