Success Quote by John Kenneth Galbraith

Galbraith’s line lands like a verdict: war isn’t a tragic accident of history, it’s a policy outcome so catastrophic it deserves to be filed under “failure” rather than “fate.” That framing matters. Economists are trained to talk about incentives, trade-offs, and rational actors; calling war “decisive” flips the usual calculus. It’s not merely inefficient or costly. It’s the clearest proof that our supposedly advanced systems of governance, markets, and diplomacy still default to organized violence when pressure rises.

The intent is quietly prosecutorial. “Remains” implies repetition, even stagnation: after industrialization, after international institutions, after the modern state perfected logistics and bureaucracy, we’re still here. Galbraith’s subtext is that war is not just a failure of leaders but of imagination and design - a breakdown in institutions meant to channel conflict into negotiation, law, and trade. Coming from a figure associated with mid-century liberalism and the managerial state, there’s an implied rebuke to the idea that prosperity alone pacifies nations. Wealth can fund restraint; it can also bankroll destruction with terrifying efficiency.

Contextually, Galbraith lived through the era when war became both total and “managed”: World War II’s mass mobilization, then the Cold War’s permanent defense economy and proxy conflicts. “Decisive” nods to the brutal irony that war often decides borders and regimes precisely because so many other mechanisms fail. It’s a bleak metric of human progress: our most consequential decisions still arrive by the least civilized means.