Kogan: I was actually responding mostly to Rictus's post. I was a little unclear what you were saying in the first paragraph of the post just after his.
I am not disagreeing that war helps drive innovation, and we are in agreement that this is because of the huge sums of money that are poured into the military industrial complex. This of course leaves the question, if the same amount of money was poured into other forms of research, would we still have innovation?
You brought up Japan in World War 2, lets discuss that.
Pre World War 2, the US controlled the pacific islands, and the rubber production that occured there. Japan invaded China, but needed rubber to maintain its military. The US refused to trade with Japan because of their war with China. The US Pacific navy was the backbone of the US military presence in the far east, and in order to prevent the US from defending their Pacific assets the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, expecting to destroy the Pacific Fleet. They were successful in destroying the US's battleships, and taking the Pacific Islands from the Americans, giving them a much needed supply of rubber.
The US was not only retaliating for the destruction of their Navy, but were also fighting to regain an economic resource that had been taken from them, that they also needed. So although there were in fact economic reasons for the US to participate in the war, the profit/loss should not be applied to the defenders, as they are involuntary actors.
The Japanese expected to be better off because of their wars, they were incorrect, and had they known the eventual costs of going to war, surely they would have taken a different course. The bar has been set for the level of destruction to be expected by war, and it has quickly become a non-option to many countries.
There is a reason why the most advanced countries no longer go to war with each other. However the Military Industrial Complex would be out of work if we did not have a use for their weapons, so every 15 years we go to war with a relatively defenseless country. Again we are left with the question, is this in our Nation's best interest, or is it in the best interest of war profiteers?
Being in a war doesn't change the way the human mind works so as to allow more creative thought, the difference is how many people are being paid to think.
The New Deal is an example of a non-war infrastructure project that gave the same economic boost to the US that the Rearmament of the 3rd Reich gave to Germany.
History is filled with non-war innovations that are later applied to warfare, airplanes, hot-air balloons, electricity, the telephone immediately come to mind. And many inventions we consider military in nature were actually invented by some guy who considered himself a professional inventor. The Military simply came along and bought the invention from him. (i.e. the arc trasmitter)