The Transformative Power of War
The Transformative Power of War
By MARGOT TUDOR
, by Margaret MacMillan
Is it morally condemnable to propose the beneficial—as well as the damaging— repercussions of war? This is the question that Margaret MacMillan encourages us to ask as she introduces this series of essays, expanded from her 2018 BBC Reith Lectures. MacMillan does not think so, positing that we should see “war and society as partners, locked into a dangerous but also productive relationship” (2). As MacMillan’s book shows, war has contributed to a dizzyingly diverse set of changes upon human, animal, and environmental societies, both shaping us and being shaped by our needs. However, despite this impact, she argues that post-war Western societies have become detached from the experiences of warfare, ignorant to its destruction but also its overwhelming power to alter our lives. “Wars have repeatedly changed the course of human history, opening up pathways into the future and closing down others,” MacMillan hypothesizes through a series of counterfactual thought experiments (3). Rather than as an exclusively regressive, “destructive, cruel, and wasteful” event, MacMillan suggests that we conceive of war as a transformative process, capable of inspiring technological innovation and political revolution as well as violent aggression (2).