We begin this new season of International Horizons with an interview by RBI Director John Torpey with Neta Crawford from Oxford University and the Cost of War Project. Prof. Crawford argues that conflict is less lethal than in the past, although the overall costs of war exceed the duration of previous wars in many dimensions. The conversation delves into the possibilities of a conflict with China and Crawford’s concern that the U.S’s overreaction to the Chinese challenge could be extremely perilous. That said, misperceptions and misconceptions of the so-called “China threat” can be mitigated through diplomatic exchanges. Finally, Professor Crawford discusses the costs of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, arguing that war has both domestic and external causes and consequences – a point that needs to be better understood when we think about war today.

International Horizons is a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly expertise to bear on our understanding of international issues. John Torpey, the host of the podcast and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute, holds conversations with prominent scholars and figures in state-of-the-art international issues in our weekly episodes.

John Torpey 

Since October 7 of last year, all eyes have been on the conflict in Israel- Palestine between the Israeli military and Hamas. The conflict in the Middle East displaced the previous attention, at least in the west, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as to conflict in Sudan, Syria, Yemen and other countries around the world. Indeed, it seems that war is very much back on our minds and on our radar. What’s happened? My name is John Torpey, and I’m director of the Ralph Bunche. Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Welcome to International Horizons, a podcast of the Ralph Bunche institute that brings scholarly and diplomatic expertise to bear on our understanding of a wide range of international issues.  We’re fortunate to have with us today Neta Crawford, who is the Montague Burton Chair in International Relations and also holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College at Oxford University. Her research focuses on war, ethics, normative change, emotions in world politics and climate change. She was elected a member of both the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023. In 2018, she received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the International ethics section of the International Studies Association. And she was previously a co winner of the 2003 American Political Science Association Jervis-Schroeder Award for Best Book in International History and Politics for her book Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, Humanitarian Intervention  published by Cambridge University Press in 2002. Neta Crawford is co-founder and co-director of the Costs of War Project, which is based at Brown University. Her opinion pieces have appeared in The Washington Post. Thanks for joining us today, Neta Crawford.

Neta Crawford 

Happy to be with you.

John Torpey 

So you’re involved with an ongoing research project, as I’ve mentioned, based at Brown University, and called the costs of war project, and maybe we could just start by having you tell us a little bit about what that that enterprise does.

Neta Crawford 

The Cost of War project began in 2010, as an effort to understand the human economic, political costs and consequences of the post 911 Wars began by the United States after the attack of September 11. So the project involved from the beginning in interdisciplinary group of scholars looking at these various aspects of post 911 wars, and has continued since then, to publish short papers, and analyses, which have been used by policymakers and journalists to understand the many consequences of any war, but in particular, these wars.  And what we hoped was that it would be a way to broaden the conversation away from just for instance, looking at the budgetary costs of the US war in Iraq and Afghanistan, or looking at the number of soldiers who were killed or injured, but to have a larger conversation about costs and consequences of war.

John Torpey 

So it sounds like it’s a very interdisciplinary kind of project. I mean, costs is a term that we usually associated with economists, but it’s obviously not the only participant in this, or are there are there in fact, economists involved as well.

Neta Crawford 

Right. There are economists that have… Linda Bilmes, who’s at Harvard University,  Heidi Peltier, who was then at the University of Massachusetts, who’s now at Brown, and other economist involved in the project, but we’ve also had political scientists, anthropologists, historians, physicians, and journalists as well engaged in the project, there have been attorneys at times, looking at different elements of the way and the consequences of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and then broadening out to other war zones as well.

John Torpey 

So, I mean, one of the things that has to be sorted out when you undertake a scholarly effort of this sort is what exactly is a war?  How do you define a war at the costs of war project? And you know, how much of it would you say is around these days?

Neta Crawford 

Well, social scientists have a kind of standard definition of war, which is back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s was thousand battle deaths. And that came from the correlates of War Project. And…

John Torpey 

A 1000s battle deaths over what period of time?

Neta Crawford 

You know, I think it was indefinite, though. That’s a good question. And then…

John Torpey 

I thought it was for per year, but…

Neta Crawford 

Perhaps, yeah, I don’t I don’t remember. That’s a good question. You know, some, some conflicts that are significant, never rise that high. But mostly, it’s sustained conflict between two organized groups, two or more organized groups. That’s how I understand it. And and it’s sustained armed conflict.

John Torpey 

Right. So, I mean, I guess my perception is certainly a non specialist in this, but my perception is that in the post Cold War period, after more or less the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the collapse of the Soviet Union, great power conflict declined in favor of what I guess are generally called Eternal wars that have had relatively low levels of casualties compared to wars between major powers. And then, of course, all that changed with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and, of course, may get worse if the possible conflicts between China and the United States that some are worried about, actually materialize. So is that the way you understand the trajectory in the last 30 or so years? And, if so, like, what’s going on? I mean, have I described correctly that it basically is about the decline of great power conflict?

Neta Crawford 

Right. So after the end of the Cold War, it does look like what you said, in terms of interventions by the great powers, and direct conflict between States declined somewhat, there was a decline in interstate war, then there was an increase in what’s called intrastate or civil conflict of some kind, which then in 2024, the incidence of interstate war and intrastate or is about the same. So there’s been an increase in both kinds of conflict. And roughly the last 10 years or so.

John Torpey 

Right. So, I mean, what would you say is going on? I mean, why is it? At some level, obviously, the major conflict in the world before 19, whatever 92 was the that between the USSR and the United States and their various allies, I suppose. But, what happened to change the count of different kinds of wars and the end of the resulting costs of war?

Neta Crawford 

I actually think about this a lot. For one thing, I think that there was a kind of constraining effect of the great powers in the sense that when the United States and the Soviet Union war in the Cold War, there was kind of a regional sphere of influence that sort of kept conflict down. You know, for instance, in in Eastern Europe, and also in the Western Hemisphere, and in Africa, there was Cold War conflict, and certainly a lot of deaths if you’re living in a place like Vietnam, where the Cold War exploded into a hot war.  But there was a sort of constraining effect of the two great powers. And I also think that some of the norms that we had constrained in conflict sort of eroded in a sense. There’s a book by Mary Kaldur, called New and Old Wars, and she argues that there was a kind of new identity war that came to the fore in the late 1990s. And these are the new wars. The old wars were about territory, and ideology and so on. I think that we’re fighting a bit different things in the 21st century. And in general, though, I think, even though there are more wars, most of the wars in the recent years have been smaller in scale in terms of people killed.  So you know, it’s a kind of good news, bad news story. Yes, there’s more conflict in the last decade, there’s about 50 armed conflicts each year, in the last decade, but in many instances, the number of people killed are smaller than previous decades. And maybe that’s too little comfort. Some long-term conflicts have been resolved, for instance,  there was peace in Northern Ireland that’s been enduring since the 1990s. There is now peace of a sort in Kosovo and Bosnia. So some things have settled. And, of course, other conflicts have not been resolved, for instance, the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

John Torpey 

Right. So I mean, I think you just said that we’re fighting about are over other things now (which I think you meant, after the Cold War). Could you say a little bit more about what that’s about if I understood you correctly?

Neta Crawford 

Well, Kaldor’s argument is that we’re fighting over identity. I think a lot of war is about legitimation crises, in the sense that domestic conflicts are sometimes about who deserves to be in power, and the lack of recognition of people. And sometimes, international conflicts are about that, and that may spill over into hot cold conflicts spilling over into hot conflicts are also about domestic legitimation crises proving that you deserve to be on top.  So for example, in North Korea. The North Korean regime essentially doesn’t have a lot going for it in terms of prosperity for its people. But what it does have is a consistent enemy, South Korea, and United States. And that’s how it maintains its legitimacy (in part, it’s how it maintains its legitimacy, to the extent that it has some). So I think some of these conflicts are actually driven by very complex internal dynamics. And that’s some of what’s going on. I also think that in recent years, what we’ve seen internally in countries is what some social scientists call democratic backsliding, or a weakening of democratic norms. And the way I look at it, democracy is kind of antipodal breaks for conflict and war. In other words, it’s kind of like Kant’s democratic peace, that the more the country is governed by the norms of democratic or non violence, conflict resolution, the less likely it is to see international uses of force as legitimate.  And the more breaks there are internally and going to war. But the democratic backsliding that we’ve seen, that is the dimunition of democratic norms of the peaceful resolution of internal conflicts has, I think, coincided with increased willingness to use force abroad. Now, that’s just my impression. There’s a lot of social science that would either be used to prove or disprove those that those correlations are actually causal. But I think we need to think in these political science terms about breaking apart the sharp distinction between international relations and domestic politics and look at how the uses of force that we see in the world are driven by domestic dynamics and how the international conflicts change the politics of the societies that are engaged in them.

John Torpey 

I see so we have to look at the inside to understand the outside more than we’ve been doing. I think both they’re interrelated, right, I’d say. So I did want to go back though, to something else you said, which was, if I understood correctly, that during the Cold War, there was a kind of balance of power, and there were two sides that kind of had their hinterlands or their areas of regional hegemony that they kept more or less out of conflict, is that?

Neta Crawford 

Yeah, I think that’s true. Yeah, to a certain extent. But in Europe, at the same time of the Cold War, there is the development of a European identity, and essentially a European zone of peace. Kind of with the European community, which is an economic and political union there was an increase in the belief that you don’t have to, in fact, resolve conflicts through violence, you can trade peacefully, and work together to advance your goals of human rights, democracy, trade, prosper, general prosperity. And that is a post world war two development that I think is very positive.  So, if we look back 100 years, or 150 years, there was more conflict in Europe than there certainly is today. Of course, there are exceptions to that. And one of the reasons why we see the conflict increased in the former Soviet Union is because of this notion that Putin is advanced, and I think sincerely believes that Russia was once a great power deserves to be enormous and important, influential power in the world today. And they’re sort of looking to reproduce that Imperial vision and reality. And that wasn’t necessary during the Cold War, because they already had control of that sphere. Right. So what they’re trying to do to get back to the the pre-post cold war, period, if that makes sense.

John Torpey 

Right, well, but the world has changed in the meantime, and what you say about Russia seems to me correct. But at the same time, there’s another sort of major power on the scene, which is, of course, China. And so I wonder, how would you describe the world scene today, insofar as you saw a certain virtue in the situation that obtained during the Cold War that kept certain things in check, I understand everything in check, but how do we how should we think about the world as it’s currently developing?

Neta Crawford 

Well, first of all, I don’t want to give the impression that I saw the Cold War as all rosy. It wasn’t, if you were in Vietnam, or Korea, for example, that the two major post World War Two conflicts, were the great powers are playing out their desire to dominate, or at least, not to lose prestige. But, you know, China’s rise is really interesting and important. In this sense, the United States sees China as I think primarily an economic rival. But it does look to China’s aspirations to control Taiwan and say, there’s a manifest desire to take control of Taiwan to make the revolution complete in a sense, and sees that as a threat that that must be countered with increased military forces in the Far East and Pacific and sees the Chinese economic activity as part of this aggressive design of China.  I don’t see China’s economic activity, its growth, and its alliances, the Belt and Road Initiative, any of that as a strategic military threat. And I think that we do ourselves a disservice when we look at Chinese growth and say, “well, they’re coming for us.” That’s a real threat. But I do see that it’s important for Taiwan to remain independent, and it has been important for the United States to be willing to back up Taiwanese independence. China has been deterred from aggression in Taiwan. They may well have learned from the Russian experience in Ukraine that taking and holding territory against the people who are determined to do not hold their territory is very difficult.  And that I think, is the proper lesson to learn from the Russian experience. So I think that we’re looking at from the United States perspective, we’re in danger of overreacting to a possible Chinese threat. And we’re in danger of perhaps prompting the Chinese to increase. In fact, we have, their nuclear and conventional forces, because of the way that the United States has pivoted, or swerved and moved forces from the Persian Gulf and Middle East towards the Indo Pacific Command region. I think that’s something we have to look very carefully at and see whether or not the forces are there now, or have been in the past to adequately deter China from taking Taiwan, which would which would be very risky in their part, and, and try to think about how not to be initiating or bolstering an arms race between the United States and China. I think that’s a extremely expensive proposition, and likely quite risky in the long run.

John Torpey 

Right. And yet, there seems to be at least a current of thinking out there that a confrontation of a hot war between China and the United States is almost inevitable. I mean, there’s the Thucydides trap by Graham Allison, in like today’s foreign policy, there’s an article by Hal Brands and Michael Beckley basically arguing that the alarm lights are sort of flashing red. And there’s all these reasons to think that there’s going to be a hot war between the United States and China. And, I mean, you’re suggesting that would be a mistaken way to think about things. But clearly people are thinking about in these terms. Yeah.

Neta Crawford 

And I think there have been members of the US military to think that’s coming to a neighborhood near you this hot war, in the next couple of years. I think that we can make it so by building up US and allied military forces in the Pacific, by engaging in rhetoric, which is hostile, we can ratchet up the conflict. That’s largely if you think about it, in material terms, now rhetorical, too much more physical. And we can defend access to the Straits of Malacca, or we can defend access to the Taiwan Straits, we can engage in brush backs of Chinese ships, and they can engage in Brinkman ships with US ships, we can make war happen. That is, so. I don’t believe that the scenarios that that people talk about can’t happen. They could. But that’s not necessary. We could engage in diplomacy, we could have a policy that could defend Taiwan that is not provocative. So instead of having nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, defending Taiwan, we could bolster the the Taiwanese air defenses and help them have a kind of defense and deterrence by denial. So in other words, what good would it do China to take Taiwan and try to hold it if they can’t hold it? Right, if they are denied control of the territory, then there’s no incentive for them to be aggressive.  So that what you have to have is it a military and political strategy of denial that is not provocative. So yeah, I think, sure it’s possible, and we can make it more likely that we’ll go to war with China, but we don’t have to and we should work in every way to make that much less likely. I think that the this reminds me of the way that people talked about the likelihood of war in the late 19th century, early 20th century in Europe, that war was inevitable, that there was a reciprocal incentive to mobilize. So, if France mobilized or Germany mobilized or Russia mobilized, then the other side had to mobilize, and there was a buildup of forces. And yes, they made more war more likely, through this mindset, that it’s inevitable. We don’t have to go there.

John Torpey 

Right. And let’s hope we don’t. In any case, there is another hot war that I sort of started my introduction with, and that is what’s going on in Israel Palestine. And, there’s a lot of talk about possible widening of this war. At first, Biden and Blinken were insisting that they didn’t want a wider war, but and now there have been attacks on American soldiers, and they felt the need to respond to that and have done so. You know, it seems as though there may be more where that’s coming from. So I wonder what’s your sense of where this is all going in the Middle East, which, as you say, at some level, the United States wanted to get out of the business of policing, the Middle East for a variety of reasons. But now suddenly seems drawn back in, although in some ways, we’re, of course pushing the whole process forward. Despite the fact that even Joe Biden has described, some of the bombing that the Israelis have done in Gaza is indiscriminate.

Neta Crawford 

Well, the war in Gaza is a tragedy. And it’s a tragedy for the people of Gaza, who had a regime in Hamas that started this war, or from the Hamas perspective, continued the war by escalating it. And the Israelis have responded with tremendous and devastating power, the use of force on a scale and a speed that has not been seen in the Middle East for a long time. The Biden administration, from the beginning should have urged restraint. That’s an opportunity lost. And now to say, the more discriminating with the weapons that you use the choice of targets or the timing of the attack or don’t keep going consider ceasefire, all of this. I’m happy to see it. I wish that there had been more thought about giving what it means to give the Netanyahu government the green light. Again, I think the dynamics of conflict for both Hamas and for Israel, there’s a lot of internal things happening for each side. The reasons why Netanyahu felt both empowered and the necessity to react to Hamas in the way he did not just because he believes that Hamas is a threat, but because he has a domestic constituency to his right that wanted dramatic action, and to crush and eliminate Hamas. So I think he’s got his own concerns about maintaining his very tenuous hold on power. Think he was pleased to get a government of national unity out of the conflict early, and he wants to maintain this unity. It’s fracturing because of the loss of the hostages. There, the deaths of hostages that his own forces perpetrated but also the deaths of hostages who have not been able to get released. So it’s a tragedy on all sides. You know, the beginning of the war, and its continuation

John Torpey 

So, so it is.

Neta Crawford 

Yeah. You know, John, I’m not sure that there’s any one thing that’s that’s striking to me other than we can think about war in sort of little packages, or that focus on little discrete costs of conflict, we can say, well, what’s the military budget, what’s the war budget, or we can say, how many soldiers were killed, or we can say, how many civilians died during the war. But what the cost of war project has shown, I think, is that war isn’t any one of these discrete things. It’s all of it.  And an important part of understanding war is that the costs of war don’t end when the fighting stops. That the costs and consequences on the soldiers and on the civilians continue. Infrastructure is destroyed. That means that it will take years sometimes maybe a decade or more for that infrastructure to be rebuilt for hospitals and roads and water and sanitation to come back online. And that itself leads to immiseration and death, that the pollution and the greenhouse gases associated with conflict stay beyond the fighting. That the economic toll of paying for war or even not paying for whereas the United States did, but borrowing to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. reverberates through the entire budget and puts pressure on other parts of what governments do. You know, infrastructure, health care, education. So what I think we’ve done is tried to give a sort of Gestalt picture of the costs and consequences of war. It’s not one thing, it’s sort of thinking about war more holistically. That’s been the aim. And I hope that we’ve done that.

John Torpey 

Well, I’d say that’s a pretty profound assertion or claim, you know, not perhaps exactly a finding but something that we should all be thinking about a lot. I mean, it’s hard not to look at these pictures coming out of Gaza, and not seeing enormous amounts of just rubble. I mean, how is that cleared away? How do you rebuild everything, it just, and of course, people are on the brink of starvation. I mean, as you say, it is one kind of enormous, enormous catastrophe. But that’s it for today’s episode of International Horizons. I want to thank Neta Crawford of Oxford University for her insights about war and its costs and about contemporary international affairs generally. I also want to thank Oswaldo Mena Aguilar for his technical assistance and to acknowledge Duncan Mackay for letting us use his song International Horizons as the theme music for the show. This is John Torpey saying thanks for joining us, and we look forward to having you with us again, again for the next episode of International Horizons.