Why The West Rules - For Now

If you want to grasp the argument that threads through Ian Morris’s sweeping history, start with the paradox at its center: war builds peace. Over ten thousand years, warfare—though horrific in its immediate toll—has repeatedly created larger, stronger governments. Those governments, in turn, make everyday life less violent. You must therefore hold two timescales in your head at once: the short-term carnage of battle and the long-term reduction of violent death that follows centralized rule.

Morris calls this pattern the rise of the Leviathan, echoing Thomas Hobbes. His thesis combines anthropology, archaeology, and political science: from Stone Age bands to modern states, war has been the mechanism that transformed small, violent human groups into large, organized societies capable of suppressing internal conflict. That transformation, however, always comes at a moral and human price.

From Stone Age chaos to organized coercion

Prehistoric evidence tells you that life in small-scale societies was far more dangerous than in modern ones. Skeletal analysis of Crow Creek (South Dakota) or the Ice Man shows frequent trauma and killing. Ethnographic data from Lawrence Keeley’s studies suggests violent-death rates around 10–20 percent per generation, far higher than the 1–2 percent typical even during bloody modern centuries. Why the change? Because war created rulers with incentives to pacify subjects—stationary bandits who tax rather than loot.

The logic of the Leviathan

Morris borrows Mancur Olson’s distinction between roving bandits and stationary bandits. When groups settled and began farming, they discovered that violence destroyed what they valued most—their land and stored food. Farming cages people in place, and that caging alters the payoffs to war. To prevent perpetual raiding, communities empower rulers to monopolize force. Those rulers, however coercive, end up reducing homicide rates and permitting trade, roads, and law. Rome’s Pax Romana, Ashoka’s remorse after Kalinga, and Han legal structures exemplify how conquest birthed enduring peace.

Productive vs. counterproductive war

War is not always productive. Morris introduces cycles of empire and collapse—most strikingly when mobile nomads from the steppes topple agrarian states. Between A.D. 200 and 1400, waves of horseborn warriors like the Xiongnu and Huns shattered empires that once seemed secure. Clausewitz’s idea of a “culminating point” fits here: beyond a certain reach, the costs of conquest exceed its benefits. Productive war builds Leviathan; counterproductive war breaks it.

Modern extensions: gunpowder, industry, and deterrence

By 1415, gunpowder and oceangoing ships allowed Europe to replace the steppe highway with a global network of coercion. Artillery, disciplined infantry, and finance forged modern Leviathans—the Dutch fiscal-military system, England’s Bank of England, and later the Atlantic empires. Industrialization multiplied that power, producing steam-driven global order and imperial inequality. Yet the same technological progress that fueled expansion also bred deterrence: nuclear weapons and computing turned war’s logic upside down. After 1945, the threat of annihilation began to suppress direct great-power war even further.

Where humanity stands now

Morris’s long-run statistical argument is empirical, not moral: violence rates have fallen as states have grown, but the path has been drenched in blood. The twenty-first century poses a new question—can technology complete the pacifying pattern without another global convulsion? The rise of China tests U.S. leadership as globocop; automation and climate change test planetary resilience. The future Leviathan may not be a nation-state but a web of algorithms that make violence obsolete, if humanity can bridge the transition safely.

Core paradox

Over the long run, the very wars that horrify you have often been the crucibles that produce peace. Each new Leviathan emerges from bloodshed, and each pacification carries its own moral contradictions. Morris forces you to confront both scales of history at once—how war kills individuals but saves civilizations.

Morris’s concept of caging explains why organized violence first became useful. Once humans began domesticating plants and animals, they lost mobility. In a foraging world, you can flee conflict; in a farming world, losing your land means ruin. The shift created incentives to consolidate and defend territory, and those incentives birthed formal politics.

Why some places got lucky

The “lucky latitudes”—the Fertile Crescent, China’s river valleys, and parts of Mesoamerica—had abundant domesticable species. Jared Diamond’s ecological argument complements Morris’s: geography determined where farming could start and thus where caging occurred. Population density grew, producing competition pressures that made coercive governance viable.

Stationary bandits and cooperation

In caged environments, “stationary bandit” rule emerged. Think of early kings as resource managers: maintaining peace protects their tax base. Uruk’s walls, Narmer’s Egypt, and Caesar’s consolidation of Gaul embody that logic. You see a clear pattern—ecology drives settlement, settlement drives protection, and protection drives government.

Institutions and inequality

War among caged societies was rarely altruistic. Winners enslaved and extracted; yet the resulting states curbed local feuds and allowed markets to form. Over time, Leviathans refined their structures: bureaucracy in Han China, legal codes in Sumer, and fiscal organization in medieval Europe. Morris stresses environmental constraints but also human agency—leaders built systems because they benefited from the order those systems created.

Insight

Caging is both tragedy and triumph: confinement breeds conflict but also civilization. Once humans traded mobility for surplus, they began the long, paradoxical path toward organized peace.

To understand how war built Leviathans, you need to follow technological and tactical evolution. Morris maps five military revolutions—from fortifications and bronze weapons to cavalry and iron—that reshaped how societies could command, supply, and legislate. Each new technique expanded control, but also invited counterinnovation.

Productive war and discipline

Discipline turned violence into policy. Sargon of Akkad’s armies, classical phalanxes, and Qin China’s coordinated infantry demonstrate how training converted raw force into organized power. Bureaucracy followed battlefield innovation—the ability to feed and pay troops bred administrative states capable of peacekeeping.

The Red Queen effect

Arms races never stopped. When walls rose, siegecraft improved; when chariots appeared, cavalry overtook them. The Red Queen metaphor captures war’s accelerating dynamic: rivals must constantly evolve just to survive. Sometimes that drive spurred progress; sometimes it drained states into collapse.

Counterproductive war on the steppes

From A.D. 200 to 1400, nomadic cavalry reversed earlier gains. Han campaigns against the Xiongnu and Rome’s defense against Huns and Goths reveal how steppe ecologies undermined sedentary empires. Clausewitz’s “culminating point” appears repeatedly—war that once integrated regions becomes too costly, precipitating collapse.

Lesson

War can produce order when it enables strong institutions—but when mobility, disease, or climate overwhelm logistics, it erodes them. Productive war and counterproductive war are two sides of history’s same forge.

By the fifteenth century, the lucky latitudes gave way to gunpowder and oceans as the new engines of state power. Europe’s fragmented geography encouraged competition and diffusion: while China invented gunpowder, Europe integrated firearms into sieges, ships, and disciplined infantry faster. That tactical adaptation created global empires.

The closing of the steppes

Artillery and muskets neutralized cavalry’s mobility. The Ottomans at Chaldiran (1514), Russia under Ivan the Terrible, and Mughals at Panipat (1526) show how firearms transformed regions. Gunpowder made stationary governance more secure and ended the millennia of steppe raids. Guns imprisoned nomads within new imperial borders.

Ships and the Atlantic system

Meanwhile, oceangoing ships expanded the theater of productive war. Portuguese voyages from Ceuta to India (1415–1498) opened global trade corridors. Maritime empires armed ships with cannon, projecting violence and exchange together. This fusion built what Morris calls the Atlantic System—commerce enforced by firepower.

Money and militarization

Professional armies demanded finance. Dutch bond markets and England’s Bank of England converted credit into coercion. Fiscal institutions gave Leviathans endurance: they could borrow, pay, and tax systematically. Low interest rates and credible repayment replaced brute exaction. (Note: this mirrors Charles Tilly’s “war made the state.”)

Historic pivot

Gunpowder made empires global, finance made them sustainable. The paradox survives: instruments of destruction became foundations of civilization.

The Industrial Revolution multiplied both wealth and weaponry. Machines and steam power gave a handful of states unprecedented reach, creating asymmetries that defined nineteenth-century imperialism. Morris treats this as an extension of productive war—but one whose benefits were vastly uneven.

Technological leverage

Britain’s high wages drove invention—spinning jennies, mules, and steam engines—creating industrial dominance. Steamships (the 1838 Atlantic crossing) and railways shrank continents. Armored vessels like the Nemesis projected power into Asia; repeating rifles and Maxim guns made conquest disproportionately easy.

Violence and “civilization”

Industrialization enabled pacification at home but exploitation abroad. Colonial famines, forced labor, and resource extraction underwrote European prosperity. The Opium Wars epitomize the dynamic—technological superiority turned trade disputes into coerced submission. Yet internally, industrial states saw homicide rates fall and life expectancy rise, reinforcing Morris’s pattern of declining violent death per capita.

Creative destruction and global inequality

Empires institutionalized a new paradox: creative destruction raised aggregate productivity while erasing local autonomy. Angus Maddison’s GDP estimates confirm post-1870 income surges amid colonial disasters. Peace for some meant suffering for others. Morris’s argument doesn’t glorify it—it explains it: violence, even unequal, imposed orders that eventually stabilized markets and curtailed interpersonal brutality.

Moral insight

Industrial pacification reduced homicide, not injustice. Understanding progress means confronting how the same machinery that enriched billions also enslaved millions.

The final movement of Morris’s story lands on the concept of the globocop—a hegemon maintaining global order. Britain played the role until 1914; the United States inherited it after 1945. Today, that position teeters under economic and technological strain as new forces reshape warfare and deterrence.

When power peaks

Clausewitz’s culminating point applies again. The U.S., like late-imperial Britain, may be losing the financial capacity to sustain universal policing. Rising debt ($16.7 trillion by 2013) and defense cuts mirror Britain’s pre-1914 exhaustion. China’s rise shifts strategic gravity; its A2/AD buildup aims to frustrate American force projection in Asia.

New forms of deterrence

Nuclear weapons ended total war but introduced fragile peace. The Second Nuclear Age involves multiple small arsenals, imperfect defenses, and regional anxieties. Cyberwarfare and space systems add volatility. Deterrence depends less on numbers than perception—whether rivals believe mutual destruction is still assured.

Computerization and the Pax Technologica

Morris looks beyond current politics to the transformation underway. Drones, autonomous weapons, and brain interfaces shorten decision loops and blur boundaries between human and machine. If computing removes the usefulness of violence—creating a Pax Technologica—humanity might escape war’s logic entirely. But the danger is transitional: if the globocop collapses before technology matures, chaos may return.

Climate and fragility

Climate change amplifies instability. Dwindling water tables on the Nile or Euphrates already provoke conflict. The same technological prowess that could pacify humanity must also address environmental survival. War’s decline won’t matter if climate-induced scarcity reignites violence.

Final prescription

Keep global enforcement credible long enough for technology to make it unnecessary. If Pax Technologica arrives before chaos, humanity wins the “endgame of death.” If not, old war logic could return—with drones and nukes as tools of ruin rather than peace.