War and the Rise of the State, by Bruce D. Porter, covers ground that may not be new, but it is different ground than traditionally covered by modern academics with respect to the nature and relationship between war and the state. Porter’s work shows that, contrary to the opinions held by the majority of hawks or doves, politics is merely war orchestrated in a different manner. The author is not occupied with the causes of war, but rather what wars cause. His argument contends that war is responsible for territorial consolidation and has represented through 500 years of history the single biggest force for increasing bureaucracy and expanding government. More insightful and of higher originality is his depiction of the simple truth that is the real foundation of the origin of the modern state and modern politics-throughout history it has been demonstrated that all societies must develop a means of controlling internal and/or external threats from the reality of man’s inherent capability for violence.
Porter argues that the state may make war, but war makes the state. If war represents the ultimate chaos and destruction of society, it also represents the zenith of that same society’s ability to unify. If the battlefield symbolizes disorganization and chaos, then the political machinery and state behind it are the apotheosis of organization and order-as glorified by the central government controlling the conflict, “A central government directs the whole of this vast effort, using extraordinary, and often extralegal, wartime authority to tax, regulate, confiscate, ration, conscript, and otherwise mobilize the resources required to wage the contest” (xiv). As the author argues, at no time do the separate and fundamentally different aspects of a society unify as much as when they must fend off an internal or external threat. The very nature of the large scale of a major war basically suggests a ready field for the ex...