Saturday, August 30, 2014  Financial Crisis and War     Walter
Bagehot’s 1873 classic Lombard Street described the City of
London as “the greatest combination of economic power and
economic delicacy that the world has ever seen.” In one
influential interpretation, popularized by the novelist, Labour
Party MP, and future Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Angell in
1910, the interdependency of the increasingly complex global
economy made war impossible. But the opposite conclusion was
equally plausible: Given the extent of fragility, a clever twist
to the control levers might facilitate a military victory by the
economic hegemon.  The aftermath of the 1907 crash drove the
hegemonic power of the time – Great Britain – to reflect on how
it could use its financial clout to enhance its overall
strategic capacity. That is the conclusion of an important
recent book, Nicholas Lambert’s study of British economic
planning and the First World War, entitled Planning Armageddon.
Lambert demonstrates how, in a grand strateg