Challenging Conventional Wisdom in Defense and National Security

Abstract

Over a 20-year period, Peter Berck and Jonathan Lipow coauthored six papers that focused on defense and national security, including three that can be regarded as influential contributions. The first of the important contributions responded to the argument that conscription is a suboptimal use of human resources and showed that conscription can be more efficient than an all-volunteer army under many, and perhaps even most, circumstances. The second contended that the real appreciation of the Iraqi dinar relative to other currencies, rather than the “surge” of coalition forces to Iraq in 2008–2009, explained the defeat of the insurgency, because the insurgents depended on foreign funding. The third showed that African-Americans were far less likely to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and explored various explanations for this—concluding that the most likely cause was not racial discrimination within the military but continued racial discrimination in the civilian labor market.