Breakdown of Nations

On the bigness theory of international order

First published in 1957, Leopold Kohr’s Breakdown of Nations presents a “bigness theory” of international order, government, and economic order. The thesis is preposterously simple: Bigness is the “one cause behind all forms of social misery” (21). This is the thrust of the title: States collapse because they get too large to manage: “the consequence of bigness is . . . always the same: the inability to cope with the problems it creates” (159).

Humans are aggressive. They’ll always take the opportunity to battle and triumph over their fellows. War can’t be eradicated, but it can be ensmallened by limiting the power of states. Ideologies don’t cause wars. Neither do fear, honor, and interest. Wars happen when states become powerful enough to prosecute war, and states become powerful enough to prosecute a war when they become big enough to afford the losses of war. If Hitler had taken totalitarian control of Bavaria, World War II would never have happened. The World Wars were terrible because of their scale, because world-girdling alliances clashed everywhere with other world-girdling alliances. Small states fight small wars. Along these lines, Kohr has some intriguing pages on the medieval Truce of God, which limited war by restricting the time when solders could fight (80-82), as size restricts the available space.

The Dark Ages, we’re told, were full of wars. Kohr agrees. But what kinds of wars?