Most wars seem to create costs that far outweigh their benefits, but is war ever justified?

Bryan Caplan is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling author.

Caplan is the author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, named “the best political book of the year” by the New York Times, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, The Case Against Education, Open Borders (co-​authored with SMBC’s Zach Weinersmith), Build, Baby, Build (co-​authored with Ady Branzei), Labor Econ Versus the World, How Evil Are Politicians?, Don’t Be a Feminist, Voters As Mad Scientists, You Will Not Stampede Me, and Self-​Help Is Like a Vaccine. He is currently writing Unbeatable: The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets.

Caplan is the editor and chief writer for Bet On It, the blog hosted by the Salem Center for Policy at the University of Texas. His work has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Newsweek, Atlantic, American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Law and Economics, and Intelligence. Caplan blogged for EconLog from 2005-2022, and he has appeared on ABC, BBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN.

An openly nerdy man who loves role-​playing games and graphic novels, he lives in Oakton, Virginia, with his wife and four kids.

Jan Ting is professor of law at Temple University. He teaches courses on national security, taxation, and immigration law.

In this Learn Liberty debate, Prof. Bryan Caplan and Prof. Jan Ting disagree on whether war is ever justified. Prof. Caplan argues that pacifism should be U.S. policy as the costs and benefits of war are too difficult to predict and innocent lives are almost certainly going to be lost. Prof. Ting argues that there are occasions in which war is necessary, such as against ideological or religious perspectives that cannot be reasoned with. He uses World War II as an example when U.S. military intervention did more good than harm. Prof. Caplan contends that this is difficult to measure.