In fact, modern welfare states, inadequate as they may be, are in no small part the product of war—that is, of governments' attempts to appease soldiers and their families. In the U.S., for example, the Civil War led to the institution of widows' benefits, which were the predecessor of welfare in its Aid to Families with Dependent Children form. It was the bellicose German leader Otto von Bismarck who first instituted national health insurance.

Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, loc. 603