Will War Ever End?

[davidswanson]

I wrote recently about the possibility of outgrowing the use of war. Today I got a book in the mail that makes a strong argument intended as a tool for ending war. The book is called "Will War Ever End: A Soldier's Vision of Peace for the 21st Century" by Captain Paul K. Chappell, U.S. Army. It's short, more of a hardcover pamphlet than a book, but it is packed with ideas.

Chappell argues that cooperation, love, and sacrifice for friends and loved ones were more necessary for human survival as our species evolved than hatred or violence, that the flight instinct is much stronger in us than the fight instinct, and that human courage -- even courage in wars -- is based on love. In defensive wars, protection of loved ones motivates warriors. In aggressive wars, it's love of one's fellow soldiers. But the common desire of soldiers, Chappell writes, is to frighten off the enemy rather than kill. As bears roar to avoid a fight, soldiers intimidate in any way they can. At the time of Napoleon, arrows killed far more effectively than guns, but the noise of guns made them the weapon of choice. Hatred, Chappell argues, is unpleasant, albeit sometimes less unpleasant than other undesirable frames of mind. And because it is unpleasant, it is not "human nature."

Of course, as humans evolved they were necessarily violent, at least toward other animals, even if that violence was organized cooperatively with other humans. In fact, that organization provides the basic structure for war. And, while love is more pleasant than hatred, so is gorging more pleasant than rationing, napping more pleasant than working, and so on. That something is unpleasant does not guarantee that it is undesirable. In the end, appeals to "human nature" as inherently peaceful won't persuade anyone who's read enough Jean-Paul Sartre or Richard Rorty to conclude that "human nature" is simply whatever humans choose to make it, for better or worse.

But most people are believers in human nature, and most people believe that violence and war are essential parts of human nature. Given that state of affairs, Chappell's little book is potentially a very powerful tool, because it lays out a compelling case that it makes at least as much sense to declare "human nature" peaceful as to declare it warlike. And it cannot hurt in winning over believers in the inevitability of war that this treatise in support of the possibility of ending war was written by a soldier.

Chappell does not believe that peace is inevitable, only possible. He offers examples from the past of states of affairs that, like war, seemed permanent and unavoidable, focusing above all on slavery. Chappell argues, accurately I think, that the end of slavery began with the spread of the idea that it was "human nature" to be free. This being the case, the beginning of the end of war can be the proliferation of the idea that humans are essentially peaceful. This strikes me as quite plausible, and as a course of education that certainly cannot hurt.

But, to play along with the "human nature" notion a little, we are left believing that for millennia people have mistakenly acted against their proper nature and can finally begin behaving like themselves by ending war, or -- alternatively -- people have always tended to oppose war but have somehow ended up with it anyway. The latter, of course, has a bit of truth to it. War has often been imposed on those who fight it through lies, threats, and bribery. We may have an innate resistance to violence, and yet some of us have manipulated others of us to engage in it. We have an innate resistance to poverty and hunger, too, and yet we can't seem to get rid of them.

Chappell proposes nonviolent activism on behalf of peace, and suggests that his arguments about "human nature" can give people hope of success. I think he is exactly right. In fact, there are cultures and nations that have gone for many years without launching aggressive wars. Few nations' populations have been more dedicated to peace during the past half century than Germany and Japan. Our bitterest supposed enemy, Iran, has not launched an aggressive war for centuries and shows no inclination to do so. We can take hope from these examples of success and turn that hope into action.

But I would quibble with a couple of points in Chappell's proposal. He describes Socrates (possibly the originator of the hopeless quest for "human nature") as the first martyr for peace, as if this is a good thing. I suspect, however, that the glorification of martyrdom tends to provide more support for war than for peace. Secondly, it seems to me that the focus of our nonviolent action should be on the dismantling of the U.S. military industrial congressional complex, and so I have to wonder about Chappell's account of having wanted to end war since he was a child, but having attended West Point and participated in the latest war on Iraq without a word of regret or misgiving, and his continued "service" in the U.S. military. Chappell includes in his book a collection of quotes, all from veterans. His insights have come from the study of war, including at West Point, and we are the beneficiaries of that study, but what is gained by shamelessly providing the example of supporting the war machine and encouraging the false idea that only participants in war can question it?

The book includes an introduction by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, U.S. Army (ret.), which argues that democracy is spreading and that this increases the possibility of peace because no democracy would ever attack another democracy. Tell that to Haiti. Our democracy has a long and ongoing history of overthrowing democratically elected leaders through military action on various scales, and our democracy is also an empire with bases occupying most other democracies and lots of non-democracies. Spreading this empire is clearly a path toward provoking hatred and violence, not peace, and its spread is generally justified by the cause of spreading democracy. I support that cause, and I suspect it benefits peace, but we have to be wary, as Chappell would agree, of how we go about it. We cannot count on limited, so-called democracies of the sort that we Americans live in to refrain from attacking other democracies. Iran, like Pakistan, is not a perfect democracy, but it's no Saudi Arabia. Israel and Gaza both elect their leaders, as do Russia and Georgia. India, too, is a democracy. But by limiting the corruption of money and media and parties and giving greater actual power to the people, while spreading the idea among the people that peace is possible, we just might save the world.

[elleng]

1. I don't think so;

I think that somehow its 'hard-wired' into homo sapiens.

[Common Sense Party]

2. No. Not a chance.

The most we can hope for is fewer and farther between.

But I don't think even that's likely.

[Jack_DeLeon]

3. Nope, people will always disagree over things even reasonable people...

can disagree about things that they think are worth killing over.

Free will makes it possible.

[billyoc]

4. No. War will increase with the population increase.

[Dukkha]

5. Only the dead have seen the end of war

since we could walk on two legs we have used violence to get our way.

[Maru Kitteh]

6. Why would it start now?

human civilization has NEVER been without warfare.

[scytherius]

7. Only if 1 of 3 things happens

1. Nuclear War

2. Comet/asteroid strike

3. Aliens land

Absent that . . . mankind will just keep on slaughtering one another. If Americans aren't in the streets by the millions after the past 8 years, nothing will motivate the or anyone else.

[kenny blankenship]

8. Oh yes, War Is Over.

We just decided to give it a different name like "stabilizing young democracies" or "interdiction of narco-trafficking" or "preventing terrorism".

[davidswanson]

9. you all

are the perfect audience for the book but seem completely uninclined to risk reading it and learning something

[montanto]

18. We're silly for disregarding historical precedence?

I'll risk reading it, but then will it be ok for me to say "bunk. There is no way that even limitless funding of education and progressive activism will overcome our natural inclination to violence." If we can't believe history as proof, look at highly educated and active progressives who would gladly pull their enemy's liver out with their bare hands. Everyone has a position that they would be willing to fight and die for and some of those are pet positions that may be considered progressive but might also be in conflict with other "progressive" motivation. I just don't buy the Star-Trekian, non-violent humanity vision of the future. Hopelessly Utopian.

[eridani]

10. Don't know about ending war, but we should be able to end our empire

Last century, the Brits and the Soviets did so comparatively peacefully.

[newtothegame]

12. Agreed! Empire absolutely, but I'm interested in what he says about ending war...

How would you end war without somehow ending evil? For instance, is there anyway to completely prevent a Hitler-type figure from rising again whose only goal is domination?

[The_Commonist]

11. Nice try, Hippie!

I was trying to put this in a more intelligent, supportive way.
I tried a couple of different approaches.
Unfortunately, I could only come up with the following:

"That's just about the dumbest thing I've ever read."

Sorry...

[blues90]

21. I don't think it's dumb.

I am an early boomer/hippie and I really did think that once the horror of Vietnam ended we would have at least as americans learned that war was never the answer to anything.

But now I feel wars will never end and someone , somewhere will find a reason to promote another war.

That is the sad part is all effort always goes into some sort of death .

[treestar]

13. It is becoming obsolete, like any other barbaric practice

The more cross cultural ties there are, and the less attachment to a certain land/lifestyle. Modern people are not as certain that their religion and way of life are so superior that it has to be pushed onto someone else. As people become less religious in a literal way, they are not as motivated to give up their individual lives for some cause.

Nuclear war - that possibility is so stark that once a country has nukes, no other country can attack it without repercussions that are suicidal. The right wing may believe that Muslims are crazy and suicidal as a bunch and thus willing to die as an entire country in order to attack Israel. But that's a meme they assert to get us interested in never ending war. The average Iranian would probably rather live.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

14. A One Word Answer To The Gazilion Word OP: NO

[starroute]

15. War is a historical phenomenon -- not part of human nature

Hunter-gatherers who can't accumulate much stuff don't have wars. They have violence and murders -- and occasionally might get into group fights with neighboring bands -- but they don't have war in anything like the way we understand it.

War only appears in the historical record when people started farming and were able to settle down in one place and accumulate stuff that someone else might want to take away from them. Early farmers' rock paintings show battles. One of the first cities, Jericho, had massive defensive walls. But once everybody had settled down in their own farming villages, war seems to have vanished again for several thousand years -- many early peasant cultures had no apparent weapons of war.

It's only with the rise of the first civilizations between 4000 and 3000 BC that war not only comes back strongly but appears as a major organizing principle. Kings defined themselves by making war on their enemies. Empires were established by conquest. Peasants with no interest in anything beyond their own villages were turned into imperial subjects by being fed a heroic story. The armed and highly trained warrior became the idea human type, and by the late Bronze Age myths had become centered on warrior gods and their human proteges, rather than creator gods or fertility gods.

That warrior ideal still held true as late as the early Middle Ages, when even kings were eager to set off on crusades and do heroic deeds. But by the 1300's, warfare was becoming professionalized, with mercenaries and then standing armies taking it out of the hands of feudal lords and knights. That wasn't altogether a good thing in the short run, since it made warfare more brutal and less chivalrous, but it did mark the beginning of the termination of the 5000-year exaltation of warfare.

Since then, we've been in a long, drawn-out transitional stage. War is still romanticized by the right -- but in truth there's nothing romantic about it. It's become far too mechanized and impersonal, and though present-day soldiers may be labeled heroes by the media, they're really just cogs in a very large machine. War is still used by nations as a tool of national policy -- but its traditional purpose of seizing valuable resources has become more and more counter-productive, because it typically destroys more than it seizes.

Meanwhile, that old hunter-gatherer problem of low-level one-on-one violence has been largely controlled. We have systems of law enforcement and courts and jails that on the whole operate very effectively to minimize the level of social violence and provide alternative methods of resolving disputes. And it's becoming increasingly clear that even the "war on terror" can be handled far more effectively as a law enforcement problem than by finding some convenient country to invade.

Where we've actually been in the last 60 years is a situation where the most highly-developed nations avoid making war on each other because they know they have nothing to gain and everything to lose. And I don't see that as likely to change -- for all the warmongers' dreams of missile defense shields that would let the US hold the rest of the world to ransom, it ain't gonna happen.

Instead, war has become something that afflicts the less-developed nations -- whether in the form of invasion by their more-developed neighbors or endemic civil wars also incited by the more-developed countries. It's a lot like cigarette-smoking in that way -- something the first world is happy to export to the third world for the profits but doesn't want in its own backyard.

But that's just one last spasm of the old war-making system. Humans aren't angels, and we're not suddenly going to become any nicer than we ever have been. The strong are still going to try to muscle their way in and exploit the poor and vulnerable. But organized warfare -- mass killing and destruction in the pursuit of material gain -- just doesn't work in a high-tech society. And there's nothing inherent in human nature that says it's likely to continue once the rationale for it is gone.

[mmonk]

16. Not as long as someone has what someone else wants.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. "If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how? - Joan Baez

[dflprincess]

19. Not as long as someone can make money off it. (eom)

[Wildewolfe]

20. science fiction has endless commentary on it.

Star Trek is based around the utopian concept that humans/sentients can rise above the base natures to a more evolved existance. Eliminating base wants... money, hunger, need for medical care etc. This disolves a bit in the various clashes of empires throughout the series, but basically the Federation is a utopian society.

Firefly/Serenity is both utopian and dystopian. Where you have a centralized government/corporate ruling class that's largely utopian and wants to force it's will on everyone else who lives in backward/poverty conditions but at least have some freedom. The central government is willing to use any means to enforce "peace" on it's citizens.

Battlestar seems to be a cycle of colonization rebellion war. "All this has happened before and it will happen again" is a recurrant theme in the series.

Sadly I think we suffer from "those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it". We had the great depression last century. Time and prosperity lulled us into letting our guard down and we're now in a financial mess that's very simular in many ways to where we were then. The great depression mirrored events before it as well.

As for wars, as long as there is contention for wealth and natural resources. As long as there is hunger or thirst. As long as on group of people sees themselves the masters of another, there will be war. Sadly the day after war ends for humans will likely be the day after humanity leaves the stage.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

22. blah blah blah.

"Chappell argues that cooperation, love, and sacrifice for friends and loved ones were more necessary for human survival as our species evolved than hatred or violence, that the flight instinct is much stronger in us than the fight instinct, and that human courage -- even courage in wars -- is based on love."

That sort of argues that love and hate are somehow mutually exclusive. They are not. Love your family, hate the tribe over the hill.

"But the common desire of soldiers, Chappell writes, is to frighten off the enemy rather than kill. "

The common desire of the soldiers is irrelevant compared to the common desire of the commanders.

"At the time of Napoleon, arrows killed far more effectively than guns, but the noise of guns made them the weapon of choice."

Baloney.

"In the end, appeals to "human nature" as inherently peaceful won't persuade anyone who's read enough Jean-Paul Sartre or Richard Rorty to conclude that "human nature" is simply whatever humans choose to make it, for better or worse."

It won't persuade anyone who has studied humans in their "natural" habitat. Hunter-gatherer tribes are pretty much the most violent societies on earth.

"His insights have come from the study of war, including at West Point, and we are the beneficiaries of that study, but what is gained by shamelessly providing the example of supporting the war machine and encouraging the false idea that only participants in war can question it?"

Sounds like a sort of pseudo-intellectual masturbation.

"The book includes an introduction by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, U.S. Army (ret.), which argues that democracy is spreading and that this increases the possibility of peace because no democracy would ever attack another democracy."

Sounds like a shitty book. Why should we buy it again?

[Fire1]

23. In short, no.