OPINION:
Thomas Cromwell, destined to become prime minister under King Henry VIII, gave a speech in Parliament in 1523 opposing war with France, a war Henry was eager to pursue.
Cromwell’s decision to speak out against the war might appear odd. Warfare was endemic in that age; some nations were forever fighting other proto-states in Europe. Besides, Cromwell rose to power by facilitating King Henry’s wishes, not flouting them.
Cromwell’s reasoning was simple: Wars are expensive and unprofitable. England would be better off trading with its French neighbors than plundering them. Cromwell recognized a trend that has grown: Modern states seldom prosper from territorial aggrandizement.
Contemporary Washington is abuzz with schemes of conquest. Until recently, this trait was associated with our adversaries, not us. Russia coveted its neighbor’s territory and used force to take it, resulting in massive losses on both sides. Much like his predecessors in monarchical Europe and early America, President Trump publicly entertains territorial acquisition: Greenland, the Panama Canal, Canada and even the Gaza Strip, by force if necessary.
Humans supply their needs in three basic ways, whether as individuals or nations. One can make, trade or take. Each of these approaches has upsides and downsides. Although the details are complex, history’s basic logic and flow are not. Over time, as people and societies have become more productive, plundering one another has made less and less sense. Instead, wealth is created and accumulated by being productive, especially when combined with international commercial markets in goods and services.
Land and the things in and on it have become less valuable as the true scarce input to wealth has increasingly become innovation, such as human capital. Making America or any other country great has more to do with unleashing the creative forces between our collective ears and our toil than rooting in the ground or conquering tangible assets.
When bank robber Robert Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that is where the money is.” Mr. Sutton was fond of expensive clothes but did not rob tailors. Instead, he paid for his suits like everyone else. The cash he used for these purchases was most probably part of the plunder from his bank robberies.
Modern economies are more like tailor shops than banks. There is not a vast amount of stuff that is readily plunderable. The value in such economies is in sustaining productivity by incentivizing and otherwise encouraging the creativity and toil of willing workers. As the things we want become more complex and technological, obtaining them on a large scale through conquest becomes increasingly impractical.
Theft still works at the margins, as long as predation does not blot out the incentives of the majority to remain productive. Even Vikings understood this. Although chroniclers noted them as the most rapacious raiders, Vikings were the primary traders in Europe. Stealing a farmer’s crop worked once. Buying it yielded a more durable relationship.
However, not every leader got a memo concerning modernity. Russian ruler Vladimir Putin’s anachronistic thinking about the relationship between territory and power is running his country into the ground. Adolf Hitler sponsored rapturous conceptualizations of lebensraum, or “living space,” to the east at the very time when the German Volk were migrating to the west, to factory jobs in Hamburg and the Ruhr. Nostalgia is not the truth.
Someone is bound to end up on the wrong side of history, at least occasionally. With the increasing pace of change in world affairs, many opportunities exist to misconstrue. While the case in the past — Attila the Hun and the Mongols knew what they were doing — getting rich by getting bigger is no longer suited to modern world affairs. Indeed, power today stems as much or more from quality than quantity. Societies that reward creativity, intellect, effort and commerce are richer and stronger.
Wealth and power in the modern world come from talented people and increasingly from the knowledge they produce and harness. As companies such as Google and Microsoft recognize, this “intellectual capital” is created through “carrots” rather than “sticks.”
History once favored the bold. Kings such as Henry could grow rich and powerful by what they took and dominated. Even in Henry’s time, this was changing. Henry’s kingdom was prosperous because of what the king did not control. Parliament was increasingly constraining the sovereign at home and abroad. The very processes of modernity that enriched Henry also made his lust for predation anachronistic and unprofitable.
The time is long past when taking and holding territory will make a great country greater. Sovereigns who mistake this threaten the welfare and livelihoods of their citizens, as even Cromwell, eager to flatter and advance himself 500 years ago, recognized.
• Erik Gartzke is a political science professor and director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at the University of California, San Diego. The views expressed here are entirely those of the author. They do not reflect the opinions of any institution, public or private.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.