Marginal Utility of War

   The more you have of something, the less use you get from each additional unit. In formal terms, economists call that concept diminishing marginal utility. It applies to every human endeavor, including war, because the more control a nation acquires over another, the more resistance is built up against the domineering power. So while the dominant nation may nominally own more assets, the return on those assets diminishes. And while the dominant few may build wealth through force, the cost in terms of lost life and destroyed property rises. Put another way, the return on investment falls.

Marginal Utility

   When a person is hungry, one potato chip helps to dull the sharp edge of hunger, and each additional morsel eases the pangs a bit more. Eventually noshing slows as the marginal utility -- satisfaction -- of each extra chip diminishes. When the hunger is sated, the person stops eating -- marginal utility has reached zero, since no more satisfaction is gained from more food. In fact, the effect can be negative.
   Eat enough, and you are satisfied; you have conquered hunger.
   Eat too much, and you get sick.

   Buy one car, and you enhance your ability to get to work or travel for leisure. Buy a second car and you expand the mobility of others in the family. Soon, when every one in the family has a car, buying another would serve no purpose -- it would have zero marginal utility.
   As a person acquires wealth, more money provides more enjoyment. However, there comes a time when that person has more money than he or she can spend. In fact, when most wealth of a nation is held by a few, the many have less, and must depend on the few for either employment or charity.
   And if the many do not feel charitable, the many suffer. So it was in the so-called Golden Age of the late 19th Century.
   In time, the many became resentful of the few, and a new balance was sought. Not only could the few fail to gain more satisfaction or use from additional wealth, but the disparity or imbalance became too wide and too costly to maintain. As it was then, so it may be again today.
   So also on an international power scale. When one nation acquires so much wealth and the rulers become so removed from the ruled, the imbalance causes the dominant nation to topple of its own weight. To maintain control, it must invest more and more of its resources on controlling what it perceives to be its possessions. The cost -- in terms of military expenses and loss of life and property -- becomes too high, The marginal utility of war -- spending more to expand or maintain control, declines to zero. The cost of a military operation is not justified by the benefits in acquiring more territory or assets.
   The principle applies equally to those nations that have no imperialist or colonial ambitions. There comes a time when major nations that have assumed the mantle of peacekeeper decide that the benefits of being the world's referee do not balance with the costs.