This is one of the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 18th, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The history of American foreign policy since the 1940s is one of over-exaggerated threats,

needless and costly foreign interventions,

and the threats we face today are relatively small and manageable.

That's the conclusion of Cato's John Mueller in his new book, The Stupidity of War. We spoke last week.

Well, the book basically sort of a biography of the idea that people have come to think it is stupid.

Before World War I, it was very common for people to talk about how glorious and wonderful and beautiful and uplifting and progressive war was

and how decadent horrible peace was.

My favorite statement about is somebody calling peace

is bovine content,

grass materialism, rampant and feminency, and so forth.

And so even though war had been around for a very long time

and even though it had been stupid for an extremely long time. It was not really very much appreciated. But after

World War I, that really changed. And during the, at least for wars between states and the international wars.

Is that because World War I was so very pointless?

No, if you want to find pointless wars, and you don't start in 1914, you go back about two or three centuries. I mean I

start out the book talking about the Greek Trojan War which is fought over

an errant wife, lasted 10 years,

and ended up with the annihilation of an entire city state.

And the whole reason for that was that,

that this woman had left her husband and ran off with a Trojan prince. So that's got to be pretty

...