Explaining War: The Cultural Evolution of War PDF

11/3/2022 3:01:46 PM Journal Title: War, peace, and the social order U21 2 F63 2000 Volume: O'Neill Stacks Issue: Chapters Month/Year: 2000 primo.exlibrisgroup.com-ALMA-B...

11/3/2022 3:01:46 PM Journal Title: War, peace, and the social order U21 2 F63 2000 Volume: O'Neill Stacks Issue: Chapters Month/Year: 2000 primo.exlibrisgroup.com-ALMA-BC > 01 Pages: 45-80 "oj Article Author: Fogarty, Brian E. Spencer Johnson (JOHNSABA) Q 69 Newton Street 4-' c Apt 9 O) Article Title: Explaining War Waltham, MA 02453 3 o o Imprint: primo.exlibrisgroup.com-ALMA-BC Q OJ CUD This material may be protected by "5 CD Copyright Law (Title: 17 U.S. Code) u 00 c CM sj- o fN 1/1 rsi o CO War, Peace, and the Social Order Brian E. Fogarty College of St. Catherine ew 1 is 8 A Member of the Perseus Books Group All rights reserved. Printed in the United Statesof America. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, in­ cluding photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieved system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Copyright © 2000 by Westview Press, A Member of the Perseus Books Group Published in 2000 in the United States of America byWestview Press, 5500 Central Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80301-2877, and in the United Kingdom by Westview Press, 12 Hid's Copse Road, Cumnor Hill, Oxford 0X2 9JJ Find us on the World Wide Web at www.westviewpress.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fogarly, Brian E. War, peace, and the social order / Brian B. Fogarty. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8133-6659-3 (he).—ISBN 0-8133-6660-7 (pbk.) l.War. 2. Peace. I. Title. U21.2.F63 1999 355.02—dc21 99-41891 CIP The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Stan­ dard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. 10 987654321 O'NEILL LIBRARY BOSTON COLLEGE  ExplainingWar The Cultural Evolution of War Humans have not always engaged in war as it is now defined. This state­ ment should not be surprising, since humans have not always engaged in any of the activities assumed to be inherent in their nature. All of the cultural institutions that seem so naturally to form a part of human exis­ tence had to be invented by human ancestors; there was a time in hu­ man history before the idea of government was invented, before nations and schools and writing and laws. There was a time before humans had arrived at the idea of planting crops or domesticating animals. Anthropologists refer to this time in human history as the Paleolithic era; the Old Stone Age. It is so called because the most important tech­ nology of the time was the fashioning of tools fi'om stone, using nothing but wood, bone, and other stones. The ability to make such tools and hunting weapons kept a community alive, for it was the hunting of ani­ mals and their processing (cutting meat, scraping hides, and the like) that kept people alive. These cultures are called foraging, or alternatively, hunter-gatherer, cultures. Foraging was the only way of making a living that humans knew for most of human history. From the time of the earliest hominids, about 2.5 million years ago, until roughly 10,000 years ago, every culture took for granted that the way to live was to hunt meat and gather wild vegetation. Not that these cultures were alike in every respect, for there were many other circumstances that determined how people could live. For example, woodland peoples developed elaborate techniques to trap and hunt small mammals and rodents and to build shelters out of forest products. Plains Indians, on the other hand, hunted buffalo and processed the animals for use of virtually every piece in some way. Pa­ cific Island peoples fished and navigated, and Arctic peoples lived mostly off the sed and whale. 45 46 / ExplainingWar Yet there were commonalities among foraging cultures. Despite their varying ecological circumstances, they tended to develop fairly similar systems of social control, kinship structures, and religions. Their overall worldviews were markedly similar. For one thing, foragers tended to view themselves as coequal inhabitants of the world with other species. Their animistic religions reflected this view, emphasizing as they did the spiritual nature of animals, plants, and even inanimate natural objects. Social organization showed similarities too. Because they hunted for a living, foragers needed tremendous amounts of room to support them­ selves. Consequently, humans lived by necessity in very small bands, seldom greater than fifty in number. When a band's size became too large because of natural population growth, a group would split off from the band (possibly precipitated by an argument over leadership) and move on to another territory. It should come as no surprise that the lan­ guages of many foraging peoples today still use terms like "the people" or the "human beings" to refer to their society; they may well have thought they were the only humans on earth. For practical purposes, they were. There were very few humans around in the Paleolithic—only a few hundred thousand the world over, and widely scattered—so people generally had little knowledge of other humans outside their own bands. There was so much land and so few people that it was seldom necessary to contest hunting grounds. Fur­ ther, population growth was extremely slow during the Paleolithic, ow­ ing to nutritional deficiencies, disease, the hazards of predators and the elements, and low birth rates. Because they had to range widely to hunt and forage, these peoples traveled light. Few items were privately owned, since the more one owned the more one had to carry and tend to. Consequently, foragers were sharers. This does not mean that foragers were inherently docile or tdtruistic. Rather, they developed strong norms of sharing and reciproc­ ity because such norms were functional for the survival of the group. The need to share was essentially a form of credit and banking that helped avoid the waste of perishable resources. If one hunter was fortu­ nate enough to bag a large animal, he would share the meat with others, creating an obligation against the day when he would be less lucky. Hav­ ing shared a kill was money in the bank, which could be claimed later if necessary. In this way, meat was completely consumed while fresh. Sim­ ilarly, the sharing of tools and other commodities meant that not every­ one had to have a particular tool of his or her own. Only the minimiun necessary supplies needed to be carried around. Moreover, the hunting of larger animals was by necessity a group ac­ tivity. Buffalo hunts, for example, required cooperation of the group in stalkdng, then stampeding a herd either into a gauntlet of waiting  ExplainingWar / 47 archers or, more simply, over a cliff. Seal hunting by Arctic peoples in­ volved a large group of hunters to man all of the seal's breathing holes in the ice. In this way, one hunter would be sure to get a shot when the seal came up for air. Since the seal's choice of breathing hole was beyond the control of the hunters, it was a matter of pure chance who got the kill; thus, no one could reasonably claim the result for himself. When these characteristics of foraging cultures are summarized, it comes as no surprise to learn that hunter-gatherers were generally free of war as has been defined here. First, since enemies were few and far between, competition for hunting grounds was rare. Second, intragroup conflict was fairly easy to settle, since bands could split up and go their separate ways. Third, there was a general tendency to cooperate rather than compete, solely because cooperation was of greater survival value in such small groups. Fourth, people possessed few personal items to fight over; in fact, one might say the concept of "possession" was largely unknown since nothing could be locked up or hidden anyway. Finally, all the people in a band were typically kinspeople, related in one way or another by blood. Even the authority of a chief or "big man" was more like the authority of a parent than a magistrate or president. Since social control was imposed by relatives rather than strangers, the enforcement of that authority was informal, through humiliation or shame rather than punishment. This should not be taken as evidence that humans were inherently less violent or aggressive then than now. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that people fought and killed for many reasons. Among many peoples, for example, infanticide was one of the methods by which pop­ ulations were kept low. But organized, collective killing for abstract goals was not often practiced. Nor should it be assumed that foraging is a "dead" way of life. Even today foraging cultures are distributed around the globe, still thriving with cultural tools they developed hundreds of thousands of years ago. These peoples provide modern-day evidence of the relative peacefulness of the foraging way of life. David Fabbro (1978) made use of this evidence in attempting to determine the characteristics of peaceful and warlike societies. What he found was that most peaceful societies in existence today are hunter-gatherers, held together in rela­ tively small groups through kinship bonds. About 10,000 years ago, an earth-shaking change took place. As the world's human population slowly grew and the best food supplies began to dwindle, humans reluctandy took to growing food themselves, "reluc­ tantly" because the evidence seems clear that the foraging life really was a much easier way of living than was growing food (as many farmers will agree). Communities hard pressed for subsistence began to collect seeds from what they ate and to cultivate the seeds to produce food. They also 48 / ExplainingWar began coaxing animals to live with them, probably by feeding them scraps and then penning them in. Diamond (1997) suggests that the transition to horticulture was a gradual one. He notes that there are cul­ tures even today that are living somewhere between foraging and horti­ culture, encouraging the growth of wild plants by clearing nearby brush and overhanging branches or directing water toward them. The consequences of these developments changed the world pro­ foundly. For one thing, the planting of seeds and the keeping of animals made staying in one place a necessity.i Consequently, the land in which one's seeds were planted had to be tended and left undisturbed until the crop came in. This meant that members of other bands had to be pre­ vented from taking the crop themselves. In short, the idea of ownership had been invented. This must have been a period of tremendous up­ heaval, as foragers spying a nice dog or goat inside a crude fence were inexplicably confronted by a stranger pressing the claim that it "be­ longed" to his people. Even though growing was more arduous than hunting and gathering, it was a much more efficient source of food for large groups (Diamond 1997). It was almost as easy to grow lots of food as it was to grow a little, and this was especially true if there were many hands to help. Conse­ quently, the human population exploded in these regions, because larger bands had become more efficient than small ones. Where roam­ ing hunters had to keep their populations low so as to travel, farming people found that a larger group could grow a bigger crop. In fact, each new member of the community had become an extra pair of hands, rather than another mouth to feed. Suddenly (by cultural evolution standards) the world had changed. People now found it expedient to live in ever larger communities, clus­ tered around the best growing or grazing regions. Because one person could produce more food than was necessary to feed him- or herself, it was possible—and in fact necessary—for many people to perform tasks other than getting food. Specialization of tasks in a division of labor arose, with some people farming, some making tools, others milling or trading. Some specialized in performing religious functions, because the new way of living had given rise to new, more formally-organized forms of religion as well. And since some people were performing roles other than growing food, they became dependent for their livelihood on those who did. Food became a commodity that was traded. It could be owned, and was used to control other people. This and the division of labor were lActually, pastoral cultures (those that live by herding animals) tend to be nomadic, fol­ lowing seasonal changes in pastureland. But these lands typically are recognized as the territory of one group or emother.  ExplainingWar / 49 prerequisites to social inequality, whereby some people owned much and others owned little. The final component of this change in human organization was the result of both the complexity of the social order (consisting now of many specialists rather than just hunters and gatherers) and the increasing density of populations. This was the rise of government by strangers. No longer was social control achieved by the word of the patriarch or chief. Now there were too many people to control, and most of them were not kinfolk. Further, there were too many disputes to settle: who owned a patch of land, the worth of a bushel of wheat, determining the miller's fair share. Clearly, people needed a new way to organize themselves. The result was the rise of specialists in social control; political rulers whose task it was to tell people what to do and to enforce those orders. Their rise was probably not orderly. Rather, the ruler of the new urban community was probably created through bloody fighting among rival family heads. As kinsmen fought other clans over territory or goods, vic­ tors took control of the vanquished. Gradually, warlords consolidated ever larger populations under their rule, until whole cities were formed into autonomous communities under a single ruler or ruling family. This was the case of the Mississippian cultures of North America, for exam­ ple, where very large cities were established around the production and trade of corn. Impressive evidence of this culture can be found in the Cahokia Mounds, just outside St. Louis. The Mayans also are well known as a large urban culture, which integrated far-flung cities into a regional empire. The pyramids and other monuments of the Nile valley are evi- \V dence of even greater feats of social integration by the Egyptians. Nisbet (1973) refers to this development as "the fall of kinship," and identifies it as the beginning of the age of war. Where social identity had previously been based on family heritage, it now came to be based on residence on a given piece of territory. Consequently, social organization came to be rooted not in a network of kinship obligations among groups of people but in the loyalty of individuals to leaders unrelated to them. The rise of agriculture and the need for dense living also created what must surely be considered the greatest ecological disaster ever, for this was the re^ beginning of the human population explosion. Prior to the rise of agriculture, humans were hut minor players on the world scene; a rare species, thinly spread over the globe, and having insignificant im­ pact on it. But the agricultural revolution changed all that. Humans now are so dense in population that there is scarcely a place on earth where one does not see evidence of human presence. A substantial proportion of the world's surface has been converted from natural prairie, rain for­ est, or pampas to monoculture, the growth of a single crop in place of the dense variety that naturally arises. The view from the typical airline 50 / ExplainingWar flight across the American Midwest will confirm this, as one gazes down at perfect rectangles and circles of agricultural production, bounded by straightened rivers and streams and punctuated only by the occasional town or city. Evidence of human habitation is visible even from space: At night the lights of large cities can be seen, and the Great Wall of China (itself an artifact of citification and the control of territory) is visible. The very temperature of Earth is rising as a result of human activities on it. This is not to mention the elimination of many species of plants and an­ imals, and also the radical modification of others through selective breeding and, more recently, genetic engineering. When people became growers rather than gatherers, their view of the world and their role in it changed. Because they now controlled the re­ production of plants and animals rather than letting nature take its course, they developed cultural beliefs and practices that viewed it as "natural" that humans should dominate the earth. Their religions re­ flected these beliefs in the recognition of gods who controlled the hu­ man world and, by extension, the recognition that governments could impose laws and sanctions on individuals. They also included the doc­ trine that it is all right to kill people when at war. In the end, it is the de­ velopment of civilization—the urbanization of humankind made both possible and necessary by the invention of agriculture—^that is responsi- ^ j ble for the development of war. It is the close connection between civi­ lization and war that moved Dyer to refer to them as "Siamese twins" (1985). In light of the Gulf War and its aftermath, it is a sad irony that the origin of agricultural living and urbanization—the "Cradle of Civiliza­ tion"—^lies between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, roughly in the area of Baghdad. Approaches to ExplainingWar Functional Theories Early sociologists pondered war in light of its contribution to and origin in cultural evolution. Functionalism has deep roots in sociological the­ ory and remains a useful intellectual tool for thinking about war, for the beauty of functionalist thinking is that it attempts to make sense of oth­ erwise irrational and even nonsensical human behaviors and institu­ tions. Why do people commit suicide? Why is there deviance in all soci­ eties? Why do societies keep having wars? Functionalism is a powerful paradigm for thinking about social evils, because it begins with the as­ sumption that such evils must do some good. The earliest and crudest forms of functional thinking began with the social Darwinist assertion that societies evolve through an ongoing  ExplainingWar / 51 struggle with their environments and competing societies. Those soci­ eties best suited for their ecological niche thrive; those ill-suited either die out or are conquered or absorbed by others better adapted. Like bio­ logical organisms, a process of natural selection governs the predomi­ nance of one society over another, of one way of living over another. One consequence of this selection process is that societies that are best able to dominate other societies tend to survive, whereas those less aggressive die out. Nisbet's description of the decline of kinship is a more spohisticated version of this. In his view, the command structure of military organization was always able to defeat the traditional clan or­ ganization when the two came into conflict, and the military commu­ nity gradually overtook the kinship community as the primary means of organization in the Western world. Thus there is a process of natural selection by which militaristic soci­ eties proliferate. It follows that the most successful societies maintain value systems, religions, and social institutions that encourage and jus­ tify militarism and aggression. Herbert Spencer took this approach ex­ plicitly, arguing that the struggle among societies had naturally favored the most militant, because the more peaceful societies had over time been conquered by them. Only in the modern era had peacefulness ac­ quired survival value.2 Others extended the logic to suggest that even the inherent characteristics of the human species would be affected over time, as evolutionary forces gradually favored the more aggressive indi­ viduals over the meek, in a reversal of the promise of scripture. William Graham Sumner (1911) took a subtler approach, for he recog­ nized that the real survival skill that humans have over other species is the ability to contrive cooperative, not competitive, systems. He began with the observation that there seemed to he a natural tendency for hu­ man groups to increase in size, because larger groups are better able to survive than smaller ones. Larger groups could provide better mutual protection against predators and enemies than smaller groups, and they could produce a greater food surplus and allow for greater division of la­ bor. Thus there were ecological pressures for humans to form ever larger "peace groups" as he called them; groups of people who cooperated with one another in competition or conflict with other groups. But by what processes are groups enlarged? For one, increased birthrates could enlarge groups. Of course, ever-larger groups might sooner or later erupt in conflict, which could be resolved by the applica­ tion of force by a strong leadership. But a second way groups grow larger ^Spencer was actually a strong opponent of the militarism he saw in contemporary Britain. A particularly clear discussion of the inconsistencies in his position can be found in Wilt­ shire (1978). 52 / ExplainingWar is by subsuming other groups within them; that is, by conquest of rival groups. Either kind of growth could bring about warfare. Force employed to hold large groups together may be viewed as one or another form of in­ ternal strife, civil war, oppression, or simply social control. And of course, force used to incorporate other groups within one's own amounted to intergroup warfare, which generally would be followed by a process of assimilation by which the conquered group is incorporated into the victorious one. After a time, the social structure of the incorpo­ rated group gradually dissolves, its members identifying themselves as members of the larger group. Generally, this is the way warfare has historically assembled nations and empires. The states of Europe, for example, were formed in the Mid­ dle Ages when powerful landholders fought each other for land and con­ solidated ever-larger holdings until one could claim dominion over all /' others in a region. This process came to its ultimate conclusion in 1648 with the Westphalian system, which formalized the idea of the state, de­ fined by geographical boundaries and headed by a sovereign. Japan was formed in much the same way, but more recently. The United States, for that matter, can be viewed as a large "peace group" (in Sumner's sense) formed from thirteen original independent units that found it advanta­ geous to band together for their mutual protection and the advance­ ment of joint interests. Even that consolidation required in the end a bloody civil war, further expanded by the mostly violent annexation of other territories in the west. Historical evidence suggests that there are limits to how large a peace group can become. The decline of various empires—the Roman, Holy Roman, British, and recently the Soviet—may be viewed as the result of an inability to assimilate, or "digest" groups previously subsumed. This can have many causes; The various parts of the empire may be too widely scattered geographically, as was the case of the Roman and British Empires. They may be so diverse culturally that they cannot be made to dissolve into the larger group's culture. In the case of the Soviet Union, for example, it is possible that there were simply too many sub­ cultures and ethnic groups to incorporate at one time (scores of lan­ guages were spoken in the various republics of the former Soviet Union). Further, there is always the possibility of rival empires attracting away the various components of one's own, of which the reunification of Ger­ many is a good example. The expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a coalition of European states is an interesting hybrid case. It has grown over the past decade mostly through peaceful means, by inviting former Warsaw Pact states to become members. The recent bombing campaign  ExplainingWar / 53 waged by NATO against Serbian forces in Kosovo adds a new dimension, however. Although those in theWest are encouraged to regard the war as an attempt to persuade the Serbs to stop "ethnic cleansing" and dis­ placement of civilians, the Russian government views the bombing as a bald territorial grab by NATO itself; that is, an attempt to enlarge its "peace group." The social Darwinist approach to war, then, suggests that violence and large-scale killing are simply the ugly but inevitable by-products of cultural evolution. War is the means by which societies are "selected" by the environment for survival; peace is a loser's strategy. It is an appealing perspective for pessimists. It implies a certain inevitability to the in­ creasing militarism of societies, as the evolutionary process seems to fa­ vor the aggressive. And it does seem to fit well with the facts: Societies appear to have become more militarized over the centuries. They have evolved ever more destructive technologies, and their conflicts have come to involve ever greater numbers of noncombatants. It certainly seems that the unavoidable direction of human history is toward self- destruction. But there are weaknesses as well. First, some of these "self-evident" observations might not be true. Have societies actually become more militarized? For example, it is true that the United States spends a high proportion of its Gross Domestic Product on the military, but what per­ centage of the production of medieval England or France was spent for war? Or of the Roman or Egyptian empires? Moreover, it might be more appropriate to take the average military expenditure of all the world's nations as the baseline for comparison. In such a case, it is at least possi­ ble that the world overall does not spend substantially more of its effort on warfare than it did in the past. Nor is violence the only way that peace groups are enlarged. Many na­ tions have been formed more peaceably. There is the contemporary ex­ ample of the European Union's consolidation of what some are calling a "United States of Europe" by entirely peaceful means, despite the occa­ sional outburst of nationalist fervor by constituent states. Other peace groups have been formed out of mutual interest, arising from advanta­ geous trade patterns, for example. More common, such groups some­ times band together for common defense against an outside enemy. Further, there is evidence that people are not really more aggressive than they used to be. Barbara Tuchman's (1978) fascinating account of life in the fourteenth century reveals a level of violence that will shock even the most world-weary reader. The day-to-day treatment in those times of women, children, animals, criminals, heretics, and of course enemies is enough to actually encourage faith in the progress of hu­ mankind. Mueller (1994) has suggested, in fact, that cultural evolution 54 / Explaining War has moved steadily toward more peacefulness, and that warfare is mov­ ing into "terminal disrepute." A further weakness of social Darwinist theory is that it is inherently historical in nature; that is, events are thought to be caused sequentially by those preceding them. This is the very nature of evolution: Change occurs by the system's adaptation to what has come before. So while it is strongly implied that the historical trend will continue indefinitely—for example, that the world will move toward increasing militarization— there is no reason to assume that this must be so. There could be an in­ terruption in the evolutionary process of change; a revolutionary change could take place. An observer in the Paleolithic could not have imagined the agricultural and civil revolution that was coming. For that matter, few imagined in 1980 that the Cold War would be forgotten by 1999. Finally, these theories fail to account for the role of purposeful human action in changing human destiny. It is reasonable to make this objec­ tion; If it is known that social evolution favors the militaristic societies, why can't something be done about it? Why not, for example, create a real "world order" like a United Nations, but with the recognized author­ ity to enforce peace universally? Why could humankind not construct a universal "peace group"? The human race is not totally manipulated by history, and it is for this reason that students of peace find social Dar­ winist theories unappealing and useless. A more useful application of functionalism to the problem of war goes beyond the "natural selection" idea, beginning with the assumption that since war is so prevalent (even though everyone hates it) it must serve latent functions for societies. Thus William James suggested in his fa­ mous essay "The Moral Equivalent of War" that war enhances cohesive- ness in societies and moreover helps encourage the "ideals of hardi­ hood" that every society must have. For James, war's "dread hammer is the wielder of men into cohesive states, and nowhere but in such states can human nature adequately develop its capacity. The only alternative is'degeneration'" (1910/1985). The solution, says James, is to find a substitute that will serve the same important functions of war without the carnage and waste. In the end, he actually suggested something like the Civilian Conservation Corps, a conscripted national service organization in which young men would work at hard labor for the public good as they developed their manly qualities. Nisbet (1973) extended his analysis of the military community in this direction. Historically war has provided a means of social integration and solidarity at times when other institutions were too weak or unde­ veloped. The integrating effects of war and preparation for war, in this  ExplainingWar / 55 view, make mass-based society possible, and create the sense—or at least the illusion—of community. Others have taken a similar tack. For example, some have suggested that war, or at least preparation for it, can be good for the economy (for example, Benoit 1972; 1973; 1978), although this is strongly contested by others (Deger and Smith 1983; Grobar and Porter 1989). It is even some­ times proudly announced by politicians that this or that weapon con­ tract will bring jobs and investment to one's community. Others look fa­ vorably on military research and development as the source of valuable new products that sooner or later enhance the quality of life. The home computer is one example, but automotive, communication, navigation, medicine, weather forecasting, and food packaging technologies are cited as other less obvious innovations. Marxian Theories A second major sociological approach to explaining war springs from the theories of Karl Marx. For Marx, the whole of human endeavor, in­ cluding the very creation and maintenance of the social order, is re­ ducible to the struggle of people against one another for material advan­ tage. This struggle has taken various forms through history: master versus slave, patrician versus plebian, lord versus serf. In the industrial age, it is between capitalists and those who work for them, and it is the ongoing conflict between the two classes that drives human history throughout this period. It was V I. Lenin who most clearly articulated the effects of this strug­ gle on war and peace. This is not surprising since it was partly Russia's hardships in World War I that gave the final impetus to his revolution against the czarist Russian regime. The problem with capitalism, ac­ cording to Lenin, is that it requires a constant drive to maximize profit and minimize costs. A simple, steady-state condition, in which a capital­ ist's cost to produce goods is a little lower than the price received for them, cannot be sustained because competitors will always enter the market and sell the same goods a little cheaper. This cost reduction is accomplished in two ways. The first is the use of labor-saving machinery (today, largely by information technology and computerized manufac­ turing), which makes it possible for fewer laborers to produce more goods. The "increased productivity" reduces the demand for workers overall, which reduces the market power of labor. The second way the capitalist reduces costs is by finding new labor markets abroad, in countries where workers have lower living standards and lower expectations. When capitalism first evolved a few centuries ago, this process took the form of colonialism and empire. Holland, 56 / Explaining War Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal divided up much of the world among themselves, establishing colonies that supplied both raw materi­ als and cheap labor for the newly-expanding industrial economy. Today the exploitation of new labor markets is accomplished by slightly more subtle means. Most of the old colonies are politically inde­ pendent now, but their economies may still depend heavily on the ex­ traction of natural resources such as minerals or timber by foreign in­ dustries. Or they may be based on the exploitation of huge populations of laborers, who have been made available partly by having been re­ moved from the very land taken by the miners and lumberers.This is the global economy, in which an American, German, or Japanese consumer is surrounded by the fruits of cheap Third World labor at the local shop­ ping mall. The consequences for peace are obvious. The capitalist economy, in its search for ever larger markets, has to involve itself in the economic and social affairs of other societies. In the name of "development" it drills for oil in the Middle East. It finds copper in Chile. It builds rubber plantations in Asia and tea and spice plantations in India. In doing so, the cultures of these areas are wrenched from their traditional moor­ ings. Economies based on foraging, herding, or agriculture are suddenly (within decades) changed to urbanized, job-oriented cultures. This is the picture of "modernization": the congestion and pollution of Mexico City, the burning rain forest of Brazil, the astonishing poverty of Manila. Traditional cultures that had thrived for millennia are destroyed in a trice. Isbister (1995) gives an excellent account and explanation of this process in several modern instances. These wrenching changes make for cultural and social instability— the very definition of peacelessness. There is political and social unrest, revolution is in the air, and the plantations, mines, and factories of the foreign capitalists are threatened. Before long, the capitalists are clam­ oring for something to be done about the insurgents, terrorists, revolu­ tionaries, Communists, or whatever the current threat is called. Fur­ ther, they are by now assisted by the wealthy elite and puppet government they have installed in the developing country. It is by this logic that the United States has supported brutal regimes in Chile, Iran, Iraq, the Philippines, Panama, EI Salvador, and elsewhere. And it is by the same logic that half a million American soldiers were called on to defend Saudi Arabia and reclaim "our" oil in the Middle East, while. Kuwait, the world's richest nation, cheered them on. Finally, militaryHi bases have to be established around the world to protect the national interests of the capitalist power—the resources, markets, and client governments that control them—and with these bases come a host of social ills, from prostitution to economic plunder to ecological abuses  ExplainingWar / 57 to the sheer insecurity of being a potential military target (Gerson and Birchard 1991). Thus the Marxian view regards war as the result of the imperialism that is inevitable in a capitalist economy (Vigor 1975). Capitalists cannot mind their own business, because capitalist economies must continu­ ally expand. Parenti (1989) gives an especially detailed and cleeir discus­ sion of this imperialism, observing that almost one out of every three employees of American multinational corporations live in foreign coun­ tries, and that many of the consumer goods most cherished—televi­ sions, VCRs, stereos, motorcycles, and computers—are almost entirely manufactured by those workers. The Marxian view has a compelling logic, well developed over the course of many volumes of the writings of Marx and Engels, as well as by a large following of contemporary scholars in many disciplines. Marxian and neo-Marxian theory remtdns one of the main thrusts of sociological thought today. This perspective also fits well with much of what can be observed empirically. There do often seem to be strong links between the interests of American corporations, for example, and American for­ eign policy. Oil companies are the most obvious example; refiners de­ pend on a steady supply of foreign crude. Oil must also be regarded as an important resource on which the American economy depends. If oil were to double or triple in price, what would happen to the profits of auto manufacturers, airlines, trucking firms, plastics manufacturers, travel and tourism operators? Large agricultural and food-processing firms also have an interest in maintaining export markets, as do com­ puter and software makers, aircraft manufacturers, and tobacco compa­ nies. It is no wonder that China retains its favorable trade status with the United States in spite of its poor record on human rights. But there is contrary evidence too. Wars are sometimes fought on ide­ ological grounds, rather than to protect economic interests. Vietnam, one notable example, offered no real natural resource or labor market, relative to what was spent trying to secure it. Of course, one could object that control of Vietnam by the United States was motivated by longer- range capital interests. The domino theory, widely held by pro-war ad­ ministrations, hypothesized that if Viemam "feU," more immediate and important economic interests would be severely threatened and ulti­ mately would fall to Communist aggression. Nor did the war serve the interests of the defense industry—defense spending actually increased after the war's end, as production capacity was finally made available for djCvelopment of new, more expensive, weapons. "^Ano&er problem with Marxian theory is that it does not account very well for the aggression of noncapitalist states. If war is caused by in­ evitable capitalist expansion, then why did the Soviet Union invade 58 / ExplainingWar Afghanistan? Why did China find it necessary to attack peaceful Tibet? And if the objection is raised that the USSR and China were really capi­ talists in Communist clothing, then one need only to look to history for more evidence. There was plenty of war in the classical period and in the Middle Ages, before capitalism was even invented. Alexander the Great was not driven by the corporate interests of the Macedonian elite. In spite of these objections, Marxian theory remains a powerful means of explaining and understanding war, or at least some war. No theory, even one as grand and encompassing as Marx's, should be ex­ pected to explain every case. It is even possible that there are different types of wars, and that each type might require a different sort of expla­ nation. Feminist Explanations Another approach to understanding war parallels closely the conflict perspective of Marx. Like the Marxian view, the feminist approach takes as its starting point the recognition that war is an instrument of domina­ tion by one group over another. The difference is that the two groups are classes defined not in economic terms but by gender, the oldest and most basic social division of all. It is the dominance of men over women, not of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, that accounts for war. There are many varieties of feminism; for example, the "liberal" type regards simple equity with men as its primary goal. Liberal feminists view the social order as fundamentally legitimate but the position of women in that order as disadvantaged, marginalized, and disempow- ered. Their agenda for change is simply to remove obstructions to parity that have held women hack. A much more powerful and comprehensive feminism asserts that the achievement of parity alone does nothing to bring the sort of fimda- mental social change needed to end violence and war. Gender inequity is, in this view, only one manifestation of a widespread pathology of the human condition, most often referred to by the shorthand term "patri­ archy." Patriarchy is regarded as a fundamental organizing principle of all human institutions, or at least of Western institutions, which are characterized by domination, competition, and violence. This ethos pervades life for both men and women, through virtually every social institution. For example, the family is a system of domina­ tion of men over women and children, enforced by both legal rights and traditional values and beliefs. The widespread incidence of domestic vi­ olence and child abuse are evidence of this, as is the unequal position of women in both the marriage contract and the dissolution of marriage in most societies.  ExplainingWar / 59 The economy is another institution through which patriarchy is ex­ pressed. It amounts to a competition-based arena in which men—pre­ dominantly white men—exploit others in a rigged struggle for material as well as symbolic gain.The labor conditions in theThird World, partic­ ularly those of women, affirm this, but so does the existence of sexual la­ bor in the pornography and prostitution industries worldwide. Religion is both a tool and a symbol of the same human malady. Reli­ gions prescribe gender roles; for example. Islamic fundamentalism re­ stricts the rights and activities of women, as do many elements of Chris­ tian and Jewish thought. Most religions divide clerical labor within their hierarchies; only the most recent and most progressive sects allow women to take on central clerical roles. Moreover, religion very strongly proscribes sexual behavior and obligations, and these proscriptions dis­ proportionately restrict women. Finally, the polity is handily dominated by men and more important, by male virtues and values. The state system itself is, in the feminist view, an inherently male formulation, founded on the assumption that every nation seeks to maximize power and domination over the others in a never-ending contest of force. The possibility of cooperation among states, or among people at all, is dismissed by the patriarchal system as sentimental idealism. Reardon (1996a; 1996b) uses the term war system to refer collectively to the integration of all of social life under the ethic of oppression and domination. Under this system, war is hut the ultimate expression of the ethos of sexism that lies at the very basis of social order: The profoundly sexist history of the human species indicates that the so­ cially induced and prescribed separations and differences between the sexes... may well be the psychic origins of war, sexism, and all structures of violence and oppression. Various feminists have pointed to the oppres­ sion of women by men as the first and most fundamental form of structural oppression It is clear that for both hoys and girls the first socially en­ countered other, a person they perceive as being different from themselves, is usually of the othter sex; and our experience indicates that it is others, those different from us, who threaten us and instigate the fear that gives rise to the notion of enemy and, ultimately, the practice of war. (Reardon 1996a: 7) The military institution builds on and benefits from the ethos of patri­ archy in virtually every aspect of its operation. Enloe (1983) offers an ex­ haustive analysis of the importance of patriarchy and the exploitation of women to the maintenance of the military, both historically and in con­ temporary times. Women have been and still are widely used as "camp 60 / Explaining War followers," for example. In earlier times women actually traveled with armies, providing important support services; today they still do in civil­ ian and military positions as cooks, clerks, nurses, maids. They also are recruited or coerced to perform sexual services, since sexual exploita­ tion is a deeply-imbedded military value. These services include the offi­ cial and unofficial use of pornography as recreation for troops, as well as the establishment, often officially negotiated, of brothels adjacent to foreign bases (Enloe 1991). Enloe also observed the supporting role of military wives as both emotional support and mechanisms of motivation and control of sol­ diers. They also provide unpaid labor for a variety of needs both of their husbands and of the military communities they inhabit. Finally, and perhaps most important, women account for much of the lower-paid industrial labor needed to keep the military machine running. The heroic image of Rosie the Riveter is carefully nourished not because it symbolizes the emancipation of women from traditional gender roles, but because it encourages women to make themselves available for the lowest paid defense work when the need arises. "Rosie the Engineer" and "Rosie the Executive" were less common than their famous counter­ part. In short, war and sexism go hand in hand. Militarism could not exist without sexism and the misogyny that elevates the explicitly male virtues above all others, and war could not be easily waged without the exploitation of women as military assets. This cannot be explained solely by social processes and actions in the economic or political sphere independently. According to Enloe, the idea of patriarchy is es­ sential to explaining the existence of militarism: Disarmament may be too limited an objective. Militarism disarmed is mili­ tarism still. The structures of militarisation are only partially dismantled even if nuclear weapons are "frozen" and arms companies convert to more socially useful products. If ideas entailing men's dominance and women's subservience—patriarchy—remain, the victory over militarism maybe sur­ prisingly short-lived. Patriarchal militarism disarmed is only temporarily disarmed. (Enloe 1983:208) The beauty of the feminist synthesis is that it is able to tie war to virtu­ ally all social evils under the umbrella of patriarchy. War, violence, in­ equality, poverty, exploitation are clearly and persuasively shown to be manifestations of the same thing—the patriarchal system. It is a power­ ful generalization, more inclusive even than Marx's indictment of capi­ talism in its ability to tie social problems to one another. Furthermore, many of the mechanisms by which these evils are perpetuated are also  ExplainingWar / 61 identified. For example, early gender socialization creates a disdain in the male world for feminine values like accommodation and emotional thinking. The educational system of patriarchal society elevates ratio­ nalism as the legitimate way to address problems, rather than reflection, biography, and sentiment. In some ways, this very inclusiveness is a weakness in feminist theory. The feminist view borders on tautology, a self-proving theory. There seem to be no contrary examples, at least since the beginning of civiliza­ tion, to patriarchal societies. In fact, for most feminist theorists the his­ tory of humankind is always and essentially patriarchal. One is left with "thought experiments," hypothetical exercises in which one might ask "what would happen if women ran the world?" One answer to this ques­ tion is that many women have held positions of great power—Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Madeleine Albright, and so on—and none has shown any less exploita­ tive or aggressive qualities than their male counterparts. Feminist the­ ory dismisses these as examples of women who have learned to excel in an inherently male system, and that it is the system tmd not the gender of the individual that matters. Underlying this question is the assumption that the patriarchal world is rife with war, conquest, and violence because the males that run it are inherently warlike, competitive, and violent. The question is whether patriarchy is a characteristic of "maleness"; that is, whether the structure of societies is determined by the ideas and ideologies of their masters or vice versa. Enloe illustrates the first approach, which attributes patri­ archy and militarism squarely to maleness itself; This approach conceives of militarism as somehow woven into the very fi­ bre of maleness. Violence against women by men is so pervasive, across so many historical eras and cultural differences, that it seems only explicable by reference to something intrinsic in men as men, some fear, some insecu­ rity or aggressiveness which also inclines men to sustain formal institu­ tions—military forces—^which embody and legitimate those violent atti­ tudes and behaviours. Chinese footbinding, seventeenth-century New England witch burnings, 1980s "Yorkshire Ripper" assaults, the Falklands war and America's imposition of nuclecir missiles on Europe aU seem rooted in a common source: the intrinsically hostile character of men simply be­ cause they are men. (Enloe 1983:209) There is direct evidence, too, that men's experience of war is not inter­ preted as entirely negative. In addition to the comradeship and adven- tiue shown in B movies, Broyles (1990) suggests that there are deeper satisfactions in combat. In fact, he suggests that it is the secret love of 62 / Explaining War war, and not the horror of it, that makes it so difficult for veterans to dis­ cuss their combat experiences. Reflecting on his experience, he notes that war is an experience of great intensity, one in which anything might be witnessed.The thrill of seeing the unthinkable might be thought of as a parallel to the thrill of seeing car chases and various sorts of mayhem at the movies, but magnified hundreds of times. War can also offer a measure of freedom unattainable in normal life—the freedom to violate even the most deeply internalized prohibitions. And to make that free­ dom easier to handle, war also provides a clarity of purpose unseen in ordinary life. Enemies and friends are clearly defined and the soldier is given the means to deal with both. Conversely, many feminists have asserted that peacemaking and nur­ turing are inherently female traits.This view has deep roots, tracing back as far as the first conference of the National Committee on the Causes and Cure of War in 1924. Building on Florence Allen's claim that women had "more consistent ethical standards" and a stronger sense of ideal­ ism and practicality, Carrie Chapman Catt, a suffragist and early peace activist, claimed that the "abolition of war is women's work" (Schott 1996). But York (1996) says that this claim is built on two "hackneyed argu­ ments": first, that women's role as mothers makes war antithetical to women's nature; and second, that the intrinsically "feminine" traits of caring and nurturing are better than the "masculine" traits of competi­ tion and aggression. She suggests that these arguments lead to accep­ tance of women's subordinate role as mothers and caregivers, and actu­ ally support patriarchy by characterizing the masculine world as the norm. Further, this approach suffers firom reductionism, attributing most ele­ ments of social structure to the psychological traits of men, and this raises problems. For one, it begs the question of how men get that way. Boys are raised to be men through the process of socialization; they are made as ex­ ploitative and aggressive as they are by a whole array of social institutions. To assert that those institutions are in turn male institutions because they are headed by males leads to the question of how they were raised with male values, and hence to an infinite regress of nested questions. Such an approach also ignores the often active role of women in maintaining patriarchy. To attribute the participation of women in ex­ ploitation, competition, and aggression solely to their own victimization and exploitation by men is just too great a stretch, as Scheper-Hughes (1996) suggests. In times of crisis, bell hooks notes, women fight and "show no predisposition to be nonviolent" (1995: 63); she points also to the active role of women missionaries in spreading the domination of European culture throughout the world. She also recognizes the wide  Explaining War / 63 variation in the aggressiveness and bellicosity of men themselves, recall­ ing that not all the men of her childhood glorified war. She concludes that feminist thinking must abandon the idea that women are inher­ ently more life-affirming than men, and recognize that women and men alike are trapped in a social system that "embraces social domination in all its forms" (1995:61). Tickner (1995) offers a resolution to the dilemma by suggesting that although militarism is "deeply gendered" this is not owing to the inherent traits of men. Rather, there is a cultural link be­ tween soldiering and masculinity that is rooted in history and tradition rather than in hormones. The other problem with the reductionist approach is that, as Enloe recognizes, it offers no hope for change. She notes that "an approach which traces militarism back to patriarchy and patriarchy back to the fundamental quality of maleness can be demoralising and even peuralysing," because it implies change can only come if the basic char­ acter of men is altered (Enloe 1983:210). If militarism is not caused by the imposition of inherently male quali­ ties on social structure, why call it patriarchy? Why not simply call it "militarchy," and recognize that men are as trapped in it as women? Boys don't particularly enjoy being socialized into the machismo role they are stuck with; they don't like being pushed around by scoutmasters, coaches, and drill sergeants any more than anyone else. And it has been men themselves all these millennia who have suffered and died on the battlefields. Why not let them off the hook? It's a legitimate question, but there is one powerful answer to it: The subjugation of women, through sexual violence and economic exploita­ tion, does seem closely tied to military values. Military training really is loaded with misogynist content, from the use of sexually exploitative marching cadences to the demonization of women in drill and instruc­ tion. Foreign military bases really do encourage prostitution operations on their periphery. Rape really is a widespread act of terror and conquest by victorious troops. The U.S. Navy's "Tailhook" scandal is not a shock­ ing exception to military virtue; it is shocking because it is unexcep­ tional. But this need not lead to the despair that Enloe suggests. Although there can be little doubt that military virtues are indeed male virtues, this does not mean they are inherently so. Miedzian (1991) observes that though males do seem to be more aggressive than females at a very early age, this is not the cause of violence and war. Rather, it is society's tacit acceptance of male behavior as the norm that is at fault. She makes the issue clear by asking what would happen if 90 percent of all violent crimes were committed by women—replying that violence would be re­ garded as a horrible aberration. 64 / ExplainingWar Militarism and maleness are correlated not because militarism is sim­ ply the expression of inherent male traits. Rather, they have proven to be mutually reinforcing value systems over the course of history. But as stu­ dents learn in research methods classes, correlation does not imply cau­ /I sation. In fact, it is as likely that militarism causes patriarchy as it is that patriarchy causes militeirism. The practice of socializing boys to become aggressive, exploitative, calculating, and obedient to authority can be changed, and this will have a salutary effect on the level of militarism. Likewise, society can work to reduce war directly through economic, political, and cultural change—^which will likely result in a reduction in the war socialization of boys. The two forces are intricately entwined, but probably neither has primacy in determining the structure of the social order. International Relations Approaches Another kind of explanation views war purely as an aspect of the rela­ tionships among states. This approach, called the "realist" paradigm in political science circles, regards states as if they were individuals, irre­ ducible to any smaller component parts, and interested in their own ag­ grandizement (Betts 1994a; Levy 1996; Waltz 1994a). War and the events leading up to it can be explained in much the same way as conflicts that arise between individuals. In fact, principles from small-group theory are sometimes borrowed for the purpose. One specific approach to the international relations of war is called "balemce of power" theory. This has been the ruling paradigm in political science (Blainey 1994), partly because it has been the approach gener­ ally taken by modern political leaders in the conduct of foreign policy. Simply stated, this view regards war as the result of imbalances of power—economic, political, or military—between rival states. Thus, the Gulf War would be explained by the excessive buildup of Iraqi forces that led inexorably to the invasion of Kuwait. This view has commonsense appeal. It certainly seems consistent with much of the history of states, inasmuch as a good deal of that his­ tory involves the conquest of powerless nations by more powerful ones. It is based on the assumption that possession of military advantage itself leads to its use. As it happens, there is evidence to support this assump­ tion. Wallace (1979) used historical data to show that arms races be­ tween nations tend to lead to the outbreak of war. Of course, the ques­ tion of which is the cause and which is the effect is a good one. Wolfson and Shabahang (1991) similarly conclude that economic competition tends to stimulate arms races, and that such races in turn can lead to open war. The most obvious specific example of this is World War I,  ExplainingWar / 65 which saw a tremendous growth in arms and armies during a period of intense industrial development in Eiurope. The mere existence of these huge and cumbersome armies made the war difficult to head off, as their mobilization plans required a hair-trigger response to the possibil­ ity of invasion. Virtually all nuclear deterrence theory relies on this model. This idea is based on the view that parity in nuclear capability between the two great powers ensured against either one attacWng the other. This point of view is clearly put by Saperstein (1991), who concludes that the bipo­ lar era of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War really has preserved the peace since Wofld War II. Huntington (1994) too has suggested that the world system is more unstable now than during the Cold War. The clear implication of "balance of power" thinking is that peace can be kept by maintaining equity of military power among nations. What this implies for policy, then, is that peace can be maintained by bolster­ ing the military power of the weaker nations in a region, or by reducing the power of the stronger ones. And this is pretty much the basis of for­ eign policy among the major world powers. Since it is generally in their interests to maintain peace among less-developed nations (Marxian theory provides a rationale for this assumption), it follows that stronger nations will spend a great deal of effort and resources to maintain the balance of power among them. So the powerful states send arms to their "clients" in troubled regions of the world, or they take the more indirect tack of sending economic aid that, in turn, frees up the client state's re­ sources so it can purchase arms in the world market. This sort of policy has the added benefit to the powerful nations of keeping the various states in a region fearful and suspicious of one an­ other. To take the Gulf region for an example, the maintenance of a bal­ ance of power among Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Jordan, and Syria keeps them all wary enough of each other to prevent them from forming a strong alliance against U.S. interests. For that matter, this mutual dis­ trust even helps keep them dependent on U.S. arms for their own secu­ rity. This has been considered essential since the Arab oil "boycott" of the 1970s, which was the last time the Tfrab oil-producing states were able to form such an alliance and ftx the price of oil. It should not be sur­ prising, then, that the United States led the world in turns exports in the year following the Gulf War, much of it amounting to payoffs to allies in the region. Similar considerations have guided American policy in its interven­ tion in Croatia and Bosnia. Supporting the Croats against the stronger Serb army discouraged further incursions by the Serbs. The only prob­ lem, of course, is that the Serbs simply moved on to Bosnia and then to Kosovo. 66 / ExplainingWar There is an inherent problem in this approach as a way to maintain peace. On the one hand, it is relatively easy to get a client state to accept arms or money, especially if its neighbors are arming at the same time. But it is difficult to take arms away from a client. Even attempts to re­ duce the flow of arms can lead one's client into the "enemy" camp. For example, refusal by the United States to send weapons to one nation of­ ten led the nation to seek help from the former USSR. Since the only practical way to influence the balance is to add to the armaments of client states, there tends to be a "ratcheting" effect in the troubled areas of the world, whereby a number of regional powers engage in a vicious cycle of arms buildup. In the end, the "balance of power" approach to understanding or reducing war is self-contradictory, for it tends to imply ever-increasing levels of militarism and warmaking potential. This has certainly been the result in the Middle East, but the same principle ap­ plies to the global proliferation of nuclear weapons. Curiously, there is a theory of war that proposes almost exactly the op­ posite hypothesis as the "balance of power" view, which may be called the "uncertainty" paradigm. In this view, imbalances in power are not a threat to peace, so long as they are clearly recognized by the competing states. Rather, it is uncertainty about relative military strength among states that is the cause of war.War becomes necessary when competing nations are unable to determine which is stronger than the other; the is­ sue is "resolved" by the test of military strength. Quigley states this per­ spective by analogy: When two boys first come together, they have no idea of their relative power. Eventually, they will disagree about something, and this disagree­ ment will be resolved in some fashion. They may fight each other, or they may simply square off and one will yield, or one may simply intimidate the other by superior courage and moral force. In any case, if there is no outside interference, some kind of resolution will demonstrate to both what is their power relationship, that is, who is stronger.... From that day on, they may be good friends and live together without conflict, each knowing that, when an acute disagreement arises and the stronger insists, the weaker will yield. Within and around this double relationship, each has the freedom to act as he wishes. It is this freedom of action within a framework of power relation­ ships which are clear to all concerned that is security. (Quigley 1983; 17) Note that this view places great emphasis on the appearance of power, for it is the mutual understanding that the two rival states share that pre­ sumably keeps the peace. One could paraphrase W. I. Thomas's famous dictum by stating that power relationships that are perceived as real are real in their consequences; that so long as both states agree on the nature  Explaining War / 67 of the relationship, the underlying "true" balance of power is irrelevant. This implies, of course, that appearances are important in the interna­ tional arena, and this is consistent with much of what can be seen in in­ ternational relations. In the early years of the Cold War, for example, the Soviet Union was "bluffed" into submission to U.S. demands by the belief that the United States had a much larger nuclear capability than it really possessed. Later, the Soviets were able to convince the Americans of a much faster buildup in their own arsenal than was actually the case. In any event, this view does seem to explain the onset of certain kinds of war. Colonial relationships, for example, might tend to remain peace­ ful so long as the subordinate state remains clearly weaker than the dominant one. Problems arise, though, when the power relationship be­ tween the two states changes (for example, when the subordinate state becomes economically or militarily strong). When this happens, the consensus regarding the relationship between the states is called into question, and the two parties, "acting on different subjective pictures of the objective situation, come into collision" (Quigley 1983:18). The out­ come of the ensuing war reestablishes the consensus. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 is a case in point. These two countries were of roughly equal military strength, or at least close enough so that neither could break the defenses of the other; thus their war dragged on for years with almost no exchange of territory but great loss of life. Had either side shown a clear superiority of power over the other, one ex­ pects the war would have ended quickly with a negotiated settlement, or perhaps would never have begun. World War I is a larger but similar case. It began with both Germany and France convinced of their own in­ vincibility; the Germans were certain that they could enter Paris by au­ tumn, the French that a swift counterattack would cut off the head of the German advance. Neither side was right, and Europe settled into a pro­ tracted war of attrition involving dozens of countries. It seems curious at first that there can be two nearly opposite theories to explain the same thing. Such dilemmas can occur, however, for a number of good reasons. Often one theory prowdes a good explanation for one kind of war while the other fits a different kind. In this case, it ap­ pears that the relative effectiveness of "balance of power" theories and "uncertainty" theories depends on the offensive or defensive orienta­ tion of the states involved. "Balance" theories make the most sense when one assumes that the states in a region are worried about defend­ ing themselves from attack from the others. Where all states take this ba­ sically defensive stance in relation to one another, peace is kept by en­ suring that neither can overwhelm the other. But when states are most occupied with expansion rather than preser­ vation, the "uncertainty" theory becomes more useful. When the parties 68 / ExplainingWar involved are willing to take risks, then the only deterrent to war is certain defeat. Because the international-relations approach regards states as ratio­ nal individuals acting in their own interests, it has spawned a whole body of literature based on individual players' behavior as participants in various games, (see, for example, Langlois 1989; Rapoport 1992; Bom- stein, Budescu, and Zamir 1997). The games are metaphors for the forces and problems that states face in expanding or protecting them­ selves from the expansion of others. The most commonly-used of these games is the "Prisoner's Dilemma." This game (referred to as "PD" by its devotees) presents two individuals with a paradox of cooperation. The game is very simple: Each partici­ pant is given two choices for behavior; to cooperate with the other player or to refuse to cooperate (without knowing what the other player's choice is). The two players' actions jointly determine the "pay­ out" to each player, and of course since there are two players and two choices of action for each, there are four possible outcomes to the game: Both players cooperate with each other Both players refuse to cooperate Player A cooperates; player B refuses Player B cooperates; player A refuses The payouts are structured in such a way that both players will bene­ fit if they both cooperate, and both will suffer mildly if both refuse to cooperate. In the example shown in Figure 3.1, each player wins $1 if they both cooperate, emd each loses $1 if neither cooperates. The trick, though, is that if one cooperates and the other does not, the noncoop- erative player wins big while the cooperative player suffers severe losses. In this example, the cooperating player loses $2 while the non- cooperating player wins $2. Thus, cooperating promises rewards for aU, but there is the risk of a big loss if the other player refuses. At the same time, if you refuse to cooperate, there is the likelihood of only mild suf­ fering, but also the possibility that the other player will choose to coop­ erate, in which case you will reap the greatest reward of all. Thus, the ra­ tional choice is never to cooperate, and both players lose even though they both could win. Prisoner's Dilemma is used in peace research to simulate the behavior of two states in the internationi relations arena. In its simplest sense, the payouts represent conditions of trust and distrust between nations. For example, the basic game may be used to simulate the Cold War rela­ tions between the United States and the former Soviet Union. The "mu­ tual cooperation" outcome represents mutual adherence to an arms re-  ExplainingWar / 69 FIGURE 3.1 Payout Scheme in a TVpical Prisoner's Dilemma Game A cooperates A refuses B cooperates Both win $1 AAvins$2 Bloses $2 B refuses A loses $2 Both lose $1 B wins $2 FIGURE 3.2 Prisoner's Dilemma Applied to the Cold War United States United States honors treaty cheats USSR Both achieve United States dominates, honors treaty security USSR at risk of attack USSR USSR dominates, Arms race continues cheats United States at risk of attack duction agreement. As shown in Figure 3.2, both sides "win" here be­ cause they achieve security without the expense of arming to deter en­ emy attack. The asymmetric outcomes, in which one player cooperates while the other does not, represent adherence to an arms-control treaty by one country and violation of it by the other. This is the outcome most feared by policy makers, for it suggests that one country will be in a posi­ tion to attack the other with impunity. The final possibility, in which nei­ ther player cooperates, represents the reality of the Cold War: Neither side enters into any arms control treaty. As a consequence, both coun­ tries suffer mild losses (they both must spend large sums on nuclear weapons) but neither risks attack by the other. The game lends itself to surprising variation. The payouts can he tin­ kered with, to represent varying costs and risks to the two players so as to simulate varying international situations.The amount of information can be varied, so that players have partial knowledge of each other's ac­ tions. Players may be allowed to communicate to each other, which raises the possibility of lying and subterfuge. The number of players can be increased to add the comphcation of possible coalitions and greater uncertainty. It is this latter possibility that is of greatest interest, for the real inter­ national relations arena never involves only two players. What happens to PD games as the number of players is increased just to three? Saper- stein and Mayer-Kress recognized this complexity, and concluded that a "bipolar" world (dominated by two Great Powers) is inherently safer 70 / ExplainingWar than a "tripolar" one (1988; see also Waltz 1994b). Georg Simmel had ad­ dressed the same idea in his pioneering discussion of small group the­ ory. He noted that a triad, or group of three people, is qualitatively differ­ ent them a dyad, or group of two. The dyad is inherently stable because each member is essentieJ to the preservation of the group; if one leaves the group breaks down. The triad, on the other hand, is prone to all sorts of instabilities. Any two members can form a coalition against the third, for example (Coser 1956). The addition of a third member to the international-relations arena introduces a new level of uncertainty. In Prisoner's Dilemma terms, each player now must evaluate not only the opponent's motivations and the opponent's perception of one's own motivation. Now there is the oppo­ nent's perception of the third player's motives and of the third player's perception of the other two. And of course one's own perception of the third player must be considered too. In short, a world of just three na­ tions is already almost impossibly complex. But it is a much better re­ flection of the real world of internation^ politics. In fact, even the Cold War relations between the two superpowers always involved each side's consideration of allies, opponent's allies, nonaligned nations, the U.N., and many other interests. To try to analyze such relationships is some­ thing like planning a move in a chess game involving a dozen players, each controlling a few of the pieces. Whether through Prisoner's Dilemma simulations or by other meth­ ods, the international relations approach has developed and tested a formidable and systematic body of knowledge about the behavior of states. But it does imply a set of assumptions that strongly color the sorts of conclusions that can be drawn. Simply put, this approach to war takes for granted the idea that states can be viewed in the same way as indi­ vidual people can; that they have motivations just as people do. In fact, the use of individuals to represent states in the game implies that states have the same motives as individual people. This assumption—that states act as if they are persons—is not entirely nonsensical, especially if one considers that most states throughout his­ tory really were personified by individual people. The idea of monarchy is nicely represented by the concept of the "sovereign"; a person who embodies the state. The rise of the medieval European state was really the rise of individual landholders who consolidated ever larger regions under their protection and rule. The process was repeated in Japan into the nineteenth century, when warlords and shoguns were still only loosely confederated into an empire. This sort of evolution can still be seen in the Middle East. Kuwait really is a monarchy in the most traditional sense. It is a piece of land owned by a royal family, who allow their subjects to live on it in safety in return  ExplainingWar / 71 for loyalty and tribute. Just a short distance down the Gulf, the United Arab Emirates is a confederation of similar lords (emirs) who have banded together for mutual protection and aid. In considering the be­ havior of such states, it is reasonable to think of these coimtries as indi­ viduals, for they are in many ways personified by individuals. The poli­ cies of Kuwait really are the policies of the al-Sabah family. Or are they? As a matter of fact, the aftermath of the Gulf War probably weakened to some extent the authority of the Kuwaiti royal family, as their subjects began to complain about delays in restoring basic public services. It is possible that democratic reforms may he forced on the royal family, as dissident groups acquire a larger and stronger following. In the end, the emir of Kuwait may become a constitutional monarch, in the same sense as the British one, with real political power residing in the hands of an elected parliament. That would be consistent with the history of monarchies generally. It appears, then, that even the absolute authority of the Kuwaiti monarch is not really absolute. Rather, the monarchy depends on the support of the governed, or at least on certain powerful sectors. It fol­ lows that to the extent that this is so, the motives of the state of Kuwait cannot be reckoned simply as the motives of the monarch. He must con­ sider his political position, that is, the desires and motivations of his supporters, in deciding what to do in the international arena. If this is true of such an absolute ruler as Sheik al-Sabah, then it is easily true of the German prime minister or the American president. Internal-Control Theories These sorts of considerations lead to theories that explicitly account for the notion that governments rule only by consent of the governed, and conversely, that they use foreign policy to manipulate the governed. In their most extreme form, these "internal control" theories imply a grand conspiracy, by which political leaders use warfare as a means of control­ ling the political, economic, or social environments of their own na­ tions. Orwell's fictional account in 1984 is probably the best-known ex­ ample of this kind of thinking. It portrays a fictional future world in which citizens are demoralized and tightly controlled by the state, whose incessant propaganda promotes the constant state of war, or ru­ mor of war, as a source of fear and acquiescence. Terry Gilliam's Brazil retells the tale in a more stylized way. No doubt there are cases in which such conspiracy theories apply. But conspiracies are not a necessary premise, ewdenced by a look at things from a slightly different angle. Under the assumption that governments  72 / ExplainingWar depend on citizens for their power and legitimacy, it is clear that even in the absence of a conspiracy to instigate a war, certainly public approval makes it possible to engage in war. Political leaders might, under this view, actually be forced into war by a public driven by national pride or blood lust.3 Conversely, the lack of support can make the decision to wage war politically risky, even for the most autocratic ruler. Evidence for this perspective is easy to find close to home, the most persuasive of which is the Vietnam War. Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the war was motivated more by the fear of appearing soft on commu­ nism than by the prospect of gain, either political or economic. For that matter, many think that Vietnam was "lost" because the American pub­ lic was not behind the war effort. And it is the vivid specter of that defeat that seems to have driven many of the decisions regarding the Gulf War. 1 Thus President Bush made sure he had the support of Congress and kept a watchful eye on the polls at every stage of the conflict. In fact,Vietnam was so clear in the national memory that Bush officially declared, at the end of the fighting, that the United States had "put Vietnam behind \\ us"—as if the Gulf War itself was little more than epilogue. This approach to understanding war embodies two possibilities: Wars are instigated by the state (as embodied by political leaders), after which the public is "sold" on the idea. Alternatively, wars originate in the pub­ lic demand, which is forced on political leadership. The reality is proba­ bly best thought of as a mixture of the two. Bush (as well as Reagan be­ fore him) won elections handily by running against the "malaise" of the 1970s, as exemplified in election rhetoric by the Carter administration. In this sense, one can argue that Americans have demanded a more hawkish stance in foreign policy. The election-campaign refrain "Amer­ ica is back!" roused voters to endorse Reagan's promise of a more activist and frankly imperialist role by the United States in world affairs. Gene Sharp takes a much stronger view on the power of the citizenry to influence policy. He observes that even the most oppressive regimes depend largely on the acquiescence of the populace; even the power of dictators is largely illusory. For example, the occupying Nazi regimes in the conquered European countries were fairly impotent in cases where local citizens failed to cooperate actively with them. The deportation of Jews to the death camps was itself highly dependent on the active coop­ eration of local government leaders, average citizens, and even Jewish community leaders. Thus virtually no Danish Jews were taken by the ^Of course, "public" demands can be viewed as manipulated by powerful elites. Either way, the political leader's actions can be thought of as governed by the wishes of a con­ stituency. Whether that constituency is democratic, aristocratic, or corporate is irrelevant for present discussion.  ExplainingWar / 73 Nazis, simply because there were no Danes cooperative enough to give them over (Sharp 1980). At the same time, it would he naive to conclude that American politi­ cal leaders (or those of any state) simply reflect somehow the "will of the people." Those in positions of power have access to the tools that shape the public's desires and opinions. This was surprisingly explicit during the Gulf War, as pool reporters in the area were steered by military "in­ formation officers" from briefing to briefing, to interviews with pilots and officers, and generally, far away from scenes of death and destruc- ^ tion. In fact, M. Grossman (1995) asserted that reporters were never left unescorted for the duration of the war. After hostilities had ceased. Sen­ ator Alan Simpson of Wyoming mounted a sizable defamation campaign against CNN's Peter Arnett, the only major network reporter providing information on Iraqi losses from "eye level." The very reporting of the human misery of war was in Simpson's view "sympathizing" with the en­ emy. Ultimately, the relationship between political leaders and those they lead, like that between the state and the individual, is complex. It is tme that few leaders have the wherewithal to act for long purely on their own; a base of public acquiescence and legitimation is necessary for even the most autocratic leader. At the same time, political leaders—at least the successful ones—possess the means of gaining that acquies­ cence by controlling information, rewarding powerful elites, and cen­ tralizing and manipulating the economy. Some are also the religious leaders of their societies and thus have access to the very souls of their followers. But even in the most open democracies, it is probably fairly accurate to say that the people really do get what they want—as soon as they are told what it is. Empirical-Inductive Approaches An entirely different tack is taken by a growing number of researchers in war and peace. Led by historian Melvin Small and political scienbst J. David Singer, this "inductive" approach begins with empiric^ data on wars and seeks to build theories from the "ground up" by identifying s a tistical patterns. Using data from their Correlates ofWar Project, a da a- gathering and compiling effort comprising all the worlds major wars since 1815, Small and Singer have been able to generate a provocative hypotheses. For one, major powers are far more prone ternational war than lesser states (this may explain how major po get that way). Moreover, and easily overlooked, a great many ewe ers have managed to avoid war altogether. They tod too tha. ^ tors of wars tend to be more successful militarily than t e 74 / ExplainingWar (Small and Singer 1989). Other inductive work has used other databases; for example, Gleditsch and Ward (1997) and Gleditsch and Hegre (1997) have used various databases to determine whether democratic states are more peaceful than nondemocratic ones. The Correlates of War Project has a heritage in earlier work by Lewis Richardson (1960), Quincy Wright (1942), and even Pitirim Sorokin (1937), who included warfare in a general theoretical framework for so­ ciology. The approach has much to recommend it. At the very least, it would seem that its dispassionate empiricism should be helpful in keep­ ing discussion about war focused on the world as it is rather than on ide­ ological formulas for a better one. An empirical approach forces one to look coldly at human activity, seeking solutions to problems in realistic understandings about the behavior of people and states. More impor­ tant, this approach is useful for examining assumptions that can be­ come truisms over time. Yet there are problems, the most obvious involving the definition of basic terms. Decisions about what to "count" as war, for example, must be a matter of convention made on somewhat arbitrary grounds. To count as a war for Small and Singer's purposes, a dispute has to result in at least 1,000 battle-connected deaths (1989: 27). Further, the definition explicitly excludes internal unrest and civil war (as do most interna­ tional-relations perspectives), and most of the "new wars" that charac­ terize the current era are of this type (Kaldor 1996). This is not to criticize the quality or the usefulness of the work that many scholars have accomplished in this area. On the contrary, such work is essential if progress can be made in understanding war as a so­ cial problem. Still, it is best to think of this sort of research, empirical as it is, as inductive and exploratory in nature. Human Nature Approaches During the Vietnam War, a popular poster found on college dormitory walls asked: "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" The poster represented a view of war that emphasized individual participation and responsibility for it, and suggested that in the end, wars are made up of individuals and thus could be prevented if only individuals would refuse to cooperate in it. As it happens, people do turn out for wars, often ea­ gerly. The state seldom has difficulty in recruiting or conscripting sol­ diers, or in exacting loyalty and tolerance from its citizens in times of war. In fact, war frequently brings out the strongest feelings of commu­ nity and nationalism in people. Perhaps people actually /ike war. 'This is the basis for the simplest approach of all to the explanation of war. In this view, fundamental human traits, particularly the propensity  ExplainingWar / 75 toward aggression, are viewed as the ultimate cause of war. After all, when states go to war, it is really large masses of individuals who do the fighting and dying. Without their cooperation, war would not be possi­ ble. Thus, many investigators have looked to the fundamental human character as the cause of war. The most important modern exponent of this approach was Konrad Lorenz, who looked to the aggressive behavior of other animal species for analogies to human violence. Lorenz observed that many species ex­ hibited violent behavior, and concluded that such behavior must be of survival value to the species. For some species, aggression and fighting help space out populations so that they make maximum use of habitat. For others, fighting for mates helps ensure that only the strongest mem­ bers procreate. For still others, attacking outsiders helps to strengthen bonds among mates (Lorenz 1966). Two important assumptions underlie this view. First, there is the no­ tion that aggression might be instinctive, or in some way inherent in the human psyche. After all, other animals fight instinctively; they do not reason or cogitate on the motives or consequences of their actions, so it stands to reason that the same might be true for humans. This assump­ tion is strengthened by a good deal of psychological theory that shows that humans of all sorts can be made to exhibit aggression if given the right stimulus. The other major assumption underlying human nature theories is that aggressive instincts are functional. Lorenz and the other human na­ ture theorists actually represent a return to functionalist and social Dar­ winist thinking, for such traits must have evolved through a process of natural selection. Humans are inherently aggressive because aggression has, over the generations, improved survival chances for individual members of the species. The most aggressive people have survived and procreated. The result is that humans have a certain level of aggressiveness pro­ grammed into them. It emerges under certain well-understood circum­ stances, and in some respects, may still (in this view) provide survival value for the species. The real problem is that if functionally appropriate channels of aggression are not available, then that instinctive aggression will spontaneously emerge, with dire and unpredictable consequences. This is unknown in the animal kingdom, because other species have evolved innate inhibitions against the inappropriate use of their natural weapons. Humans, on the other hand, have evolved artificial weapons for which no innate restraint has yet been evolved. In a sense, humans have a greater capability for violence than they are biologically equipped to handle. For Lorenz, the only solution is to find harmless channels for aggression; athletic competition, collective "wars" against 76 / Explaining War social evils, and the like. In the end, this is almost exactly a restatement of William James's search for a "moral equivalent to war." There are others who have similarly sought the cause of war in human nature. Freud proposed that the balance between community and con­ flict that can be seen in the human condition is reflected in a balance between two opposing instincts in the human psyche. These two in­ stincts—one oriented toward preserving and uniting, the other toward destruction and death—interact in complex ways to create the mix of peaceful and violent behavior that humans exhibit. It is to Freud's credit that he recognized that much behavior might be motivated by both in­ stincts at the same time, just as warfare is the product of both coopera­ tion and conflict (Freud 1989). j Still others have stressed the adaptive value of aggression and vio­ lence in the evolution of the species. Edward O. Wilson, for example, suggests that while there may be no particular instinct toward aggres­ sion, it is such a common behavior pattern that it must have survival and adaptation value (Wilson 1975). Although each of these views provides insight into the human mind, they are subject to a profound weakness in explaining war. The problem is that the conduct of war is really not dependent on a pool of aggressive individuals. InherenUy docile people can he easily trained for war, and military officers will attest that anyone can be trained to kill, in even the most grisly and bloodthirsty ways. At the same time, it is clear that ag­ gressive people live peaceably all the time. If people are inherently ag­ gressive, then why don't they always engage in aggressive behavior? In the end, it does not seem to matter whether people are nasty or nice; war seems to have a life of its own. This is just another way of saying that war and violence are not the same thing. Mead's definition of war makes the distinction nicely: War is a collective reality, irreducible to individual motivations or desires, and as such it must he understood in social terms. In the words of Creighton and Shaw, "aggression is not force, force is not violence, violence is not killing, killing is not war" (1987:3). To take these as equivalent is to make the error of reductionism. War is a social, not a psychological, phenome­ non. It is an inconvenience when multiple theories clcdm to explain a phe­ nomenon. It is understandable that one would want to know which the­ ory is the right one. But there are good reasons why it is too much to ex­ pect that any one theory will suffice to explain something as pervasive and as varied as war. First, there seem to be many kinds of war. Like cancer, it appears that war is not a single disease, but rather a whole family of diseases, related in certain ways but varied in many other ways. Even confining war to  ExplainingWar / 77 Mead's definition, one can easily see that a good deal of variation is pos­ sible, as Barash (1991) concludes. Wars can be classified according to size, both in terms of number of troops, amount of territory, or the num­ ber of factions involved. They can be classified according to destructive- ness in terms of deaths or property damage. Wars vary in terms of the goals of the combatants (territory, resources, ideological control, na­ tional pride, internal unrest) or the proportion of civilian involvement. One useful categorization can be constructed according to the level of integration of the combatants, and this divides wars into just three fairly clear categories. International wars involve combat between two or more sovereign states, each controlling a military force in an effort to ex­ act compliance from its foe or to destroy the foe's social integration. These include the clear examples of the world wars and more recently the several Arab-Israeli wars, Iran-Iraq, the Falklands, and the Gulf War. A variation on this type is the war between large nations conducted through smaller client states. Korea and Vietnam are two examples, the first involving the United States and China, the second involving the United States and the former Soviet Union. A second type is the war of one state against a political or ethnic fac­ tion within it. These wars have predominated in the last couple of decades; the current examples are shown in Table 1.1 of Chapter 1. A variation on this type is the case in which the internal faction is large enough or strong enough to secede and form its own sovereign state. The 7)jnerican Civil War would be a case in point, as would the breakup ofYugoslavia into several independent states. Finally, there is warfare between two or more factions within a state. Often one faction will be sponsored or indirectly supported by the state; for example, the Contras were endorsed by the Nicaraguan government and its sponsor the United States in their guerrilla war against the San­ dinistas in the 1970s and 1980s. Recently the Tutsi-Hutu fighting in Rwanda and similar action between ethnic and clan groups in Somalia and the Ivory Coast provide bloody examples. There are simply too many kinds of war to be explained by a single theory. But a second reason for multiple theories of war is that even a particular war may have multiple causes. Continuing the disease anal­ ogy, it is known that many diseases are caused by the presence of a par­ ticular virus or bacterium. But to call this the single "cause" of the dis­ ease is to ignore the question of how the germ is spread and what factors affect one's chances of exposure to it. Thus, although tuberculosis is caused by the tubercle bacillus, the disease is best explained in terms of air quality, living conditions, and population density. And this is not to mention the fact that many people harbor the germ benignly within healthy bodies. One must expect the same of war. At the very least, every 78 / Explaining War war probably has immediate causes, antecedent causes, and something like "root causes" or "favorable conditions" underlying them. No one at­ tributes, for example.World War I solely to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. In the end, one should not be too uncomfortable with the idea that there are multipl