BECKER AND POSNER BLOG!….I promise not to make a career of this, but Gary Becker and Richard Posner have finally started up their long awaited blog (actually, more like a weekly column than a blog, but whatever), and all I can say is, huh?
Today, Posner argues that sometimes preventive war is justified and sometimes it isn’t. It all depends on the cost of going to war vs. the likelihood that you’re going to be attacked in the future if you don’t. I daresay he’ll get little argument about this.
Becker, writing on the same subject, says that preventive war is justified because deterrence doesn’t work against terrorist groups and rogue states, especially in an age of WMD. He then inexplicably suggests that this is an argument that hasn’t received enough attention in recent years.
These aren’t exactly keen insights. Hopefully it’s just startup jitters.
