Sick of Endless Wars? Raise Taxes

In a marvelous new book, Sarah E. Kreps surveys the shifting relationship between democracy, defense, and finance, and finds the health of all three shaky.

Kreps, a Cornell professor who is currently an adjunct scholar at West Point's Modern War Institute, is trying to explain both the public's propensity for sacrifice and leaders' strategies to pay for conflicts abroad. Mostly she examines histories of the Quasi War (1798-1800), the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq—but the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, and the Cold War make cameos. The penultimate chapter uses surveys and experiments to collect cross-national evidence, primarily from the United States, Britain, and France, but secondarily from India and Israel.