Grant Us Peace

History would not be what it is, the record of man’s crimes and follies, if logic and decency governed its events and great decisions.¹

Ladislas Farago

It is becoming more and more obvious that it is not starvation, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself who is mankind’s greatest danger because he has no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating in their effect than the greatest natural catastrophes.²

C.G. Jung

In Walter Miller’s brilliant novel about nuclear warfare (and the human condition), a priest who discerns an encroaching Armageddon plaintively asks:

One would think not. After all, in Paris on 27 August 1928, the Kellogg-Briand Treaty was signed, and war was renounced as an instrument of national policy. Fifty-four years later that treaty is still in effect, its existence serving as an unintended and unfortunate mockery of its admirable aims.⁴ Similarly, the United Nations Charter obliges its members to "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations." ⁵

The promise of these Panglossian pacts is betrayed by events both recent and ancient. A generation ago, a Norwegian statistician computed that during 5560 years of recorded history, there had been 14,531 wars, an average of 2.6135 a year. Of 185 generations of man’s recorded experience, only ten had known unsullied peace.⁶The Bible, for example, contains multiple references to warfare,⁷ and the Dupuys are clearly correct in their judgment that "the dawn of history and the beginning of organized warfare went hand in hand."⁸

Now we are told that the Soviet Union believes it can successfully wage a nuclear war, that mutual deterrence does not exist, and that American nuclear strategy is immoral in part because we have not planned or been prepared for nuclear war.⁹In the meantime we learn that, by the end of the l980s, the atomic bomb will be within reach of forty countries in addition to the six (or so) that now have it, raising the terrifying prospect of "atomic bombs everywhere" and horrifying most observers¹⁰because, as George Quester has put it: "The world does not have an option of living with nuclear proliferation, for what would be entailed is an open-ended expansion of the likelihood and costs of war.¹¹ Despite the assurances of some about the practicability of war, Representative Thomas J. Downey (D.-N.Y.) believes that, after a nuclear war, "Life as we know it would come to an end. We’d be holed up in cellars with machine guns trying to protect five cans of tuna fish."¹²

Although there is no Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-96) around anymore to glorify war, one reads that the world spent almost $1 million a minute on defense last year, or about $500 billion, which also reflected a mounting appetite for weaponry and technology in the Third World, in which about forty armed conflicts have been fought in the last decade.¹³If we further consider that the global population is currently increasing by one million people every five days, that our renewable resources are being consumed at rates exceeding their natural capacities for regeneration,¹⁴and that, as psychologist Jerome Frank put it, ". . . the longer the risk [of nuclear war] continues, the greater the probability of war; and if the probability continues long enough, it approaches certainty," one can hardly maintain uncomplicated optimism about the future prospects of the human race. As columnist Carl Rowan has written, "It is hard to believe that a species that has gotten itself so hopelessly trapped in a self-perpetuating race to destruction is really smart enough to avoid the ultimate tragedy."¹⁶

What Is War?

Serious scholars and soldiers whose professional responsibilities include the study of warfare know how massive is the literature concerned with war. The interested reader may consult the bibliographies of any of the five books reviewed here for excellent and extensive references. Richard Falk and Samuel Kim have compiled a particularly useful volume,* which contains 27 selections about the causes of war. Advanced students in international relations will want to have The War System: An Interdisciplinary Approach on their shelves.

The volume by Julian Lider is a veritable treasure house of information.** Lider undertakes the Herculean challenge of analyzing and comparing non-Marxist and Marxist approaches to war, which, he says, "are founded upon two separate and irreconcilable concepts of society, social behavior, and history. Although both consider war to be a political act and an instrument of politics,. . . each has its own idea of politics. . . ." (p. 353) This modern Clausewitzian study, although choppy and plagued by numerous typographical errors, is an excellent reference work and can be indispensable to the student of Soviet affairs.

There is ample scholarly debate about the meanings of force, violence, conflict, and war.¹⁷ But there is little agreement. When, for instance, did the Korean conflict become the Korean War? War may resemble pornography in that, even though war cannot precisely be defined, combat veterans know what it is, just as retired Justice Potter Stewart said of smut: "I know it when I see it."¹⁸ If one agrees that

Also, Charles Lofgren stated that "Today, threatened or applied force is a rational instrument of policy only if it is used with restraint,"²⁰then one may be able to accept my definition of war as the limited application of force—customarily by states—toward the achievement of reasonable and ethical political goals.²¹ Those who read the literature surveys,²²such as those by Falk and Kim and Lider, may come away bemused at the vast number of answers to the ageless question, Why is there war? For purposes of this article, I have condensed the material into ten "pigeonholes," four of which are nonpolitical or scientific, four are essentially political, and two are transpolitical.²³

The Nonpolitical Causes of War

Some biologists contend that survival is the principal human instinct and that all forms of life are engaged in a constant struggle in which only the strongest survive. Ethologists—or those who study animal behavior—argue by analogy that man is innately aggressive, has a territorial instinct, and is governed by certain genetic predispositions. The views of such writers as Konrad Lorenz or Robert Ardrey are intriguing but hardly sufficient in themselves as a basis for understanding, preventing, or even mitigating war.

Some psychologists argue that aggression is the product of frustration or that certain mental maladjustments or psychoses result in violence. A spate of psychohistories and psychobiographies (of such people as Woodrow Wilson, John Foster Dulles, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon Johnson) testifies to the popularity of examining warfare and political figures through the science of psychoanalysis. But as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has observed:

This "school" sees war, not as a result of instinct or psychic need, but as a cultural phenomenon. Margaret Mead, for example, considered warfare to be a simple social "invention." Some anthropologists believe that, through careful study of "peaceful societies," the industrial world might be able to eliminate much of its violence. Others in this area view war as useful, if not as good. British sociologist Stanislav Andreski argues that "without war civilization would still be divided into small bands wandering in the forests and jungles."²⁵ Arnold Toynbee’s view of history as a cyclic pattern of challenge and response is well known. Still, the idea that war emerges from cultural or societal causes alone seems not to square with the evidence of military history.

Representative of the ecological approach to warfare is the recent work by Dr. Arthur H. Westing, which he did under the auspices of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.* This extraordinary volume is an encyclopedia of information on war’s impact on the human environment. It is an extensive and fairly balanced view of the dangers posed to the continued survival of the human race by both military and civil abuse of our finite planetary resources. The ecological approach does not see the environment as causing war (unless, in a Malthusian sense, nations must struggle desperately over diminished or depleted resources) but as a cause for human confraternity— should we recognize in time that, as Westing says, "the situation in which man finds himself today is a grave one." (p. 192)

Thus war seems to come from—or perhaps it could be cured by effective work with—our genes, our mental aberrations, our social structures, or our abused environment. But these views largely ignore what Aristotle, the father of political science, tried to tell us about 2300 years ago—that man is a fully political being and not a mere response to stimulus.

The Political Causes of War

Students of international relations know that a principal approach to the study of war is the examination of what is called "levels of analysis,"²⁶ usually beginning with the decisionmaker. Clearly, it makes a major difference who is in charge in a country during a crisis. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis might not have been resolved peacefully had someone other than John F. Kennedy been president. Count Axel Oxenstierna (1583-1654) of Sweden knew the importance of having prudent leaders. He once advised his son: "Quantula sapientia regitur mundus" ("With how little wisdom is the world governed"). There is more to the study of decision-making than some psychologists might admit. In 1971,for example, Kenneth B. Clark suggested that psychotechnology might produce a "peace pill" which world leaders could take to prevent them from using their political power destructively.²⁷ It is undeniably true that savage or stupid leaders can cause war. But war can be caused as well by those good-hearted leaders who misjudge, misperceive, or misunderstand world politics.²⁸

There are those who would argue that war is the result of men’s boredom. A number of veterans express the opinion that their military or combat experience was the most intense and curiously "enjoyable" time of their lives. In his novel The War Lover, John Hersey has the lover of his hero (a World War II U.S. Air Force combat pilot) say to him:

Marxists in particular customarily reject the idea that war is caused by—or least is intimately related to—personality disorders or leadership failures. Rather, most Marxists view war as a consequence of a diseased social order, marked by the economic tension of the class struggle. They would contend that once the privileged classes of society are eliminated (either by ballot or by bullet), the nation’s tensions will be reduced, its social harmony assured, its foreign policies pacified. If the power elite, the profit motive, and the exigent need for overseas markets will give way to the grandeur of socialism, it is likely (or certain in the judgment of some members of this school), that warfare, too, will be eliminated. Still, Falk and Kim, who are hardly apologists for conservative economics, say that

In their iconoclastic book The War Ledger,* A. F. K. Organski and Jacek Kugler contend that relative rates of growth in the gross national product are linked to the outbreak of a number of wars; to them, a crisis takes place when a challenging nation threatens to surpass a dominant nation in economic power. Their theory of the "Power Transition" sees political growth and development as being far more influential on war than war is on growth.³¹ Power, to Organski and Kugler, derives from the nation’s political organization and the ability of central governmental elites to penetrate all aspects of society and to extract resources therefrom. They make some startling declarations.

There is a Phoenix factor at work in world politics: "Within a relatively short period of time [after the war], all nations return to the levels of national capabilities they would reasonably expect to have held had there been no war." (pp. 106-7) The tendency to go to war increases as great power involvement increases and the possibility that nuclear weapons may be used becomes more real. (See pages 161, 176, 215) "One is led to the bizarre conclusion that nuclear weapons do not deter the opponents of nuclear powers, but deter only their possessors." (p. 178) There is no arms race between the United States and the U.S.S.R.; (p. 199) deterrence does not exist (p. 216), and war is neither a rational nor an effective instrument of policy. (p. 220) Essentially, Organski and Kugler contend that, for one to understand world politics, he must study the structure and class stratifications of each society and learn that the tensions of global affairs result more from intranational bureaucratic competition than from international political motives.

The War Ledger is a powerful book which will be of interest to advanced students of international politics. The thesis is fatally wounded, however, by the authors’ concentration on sheer economic standing. They contend, for example, that, despite its victory in World War II, England is in the economic situation (behind Germany) it fought to avoid. Although this may be true economically, Britain does not have a swastika on its flag—and surely that counts for something. Modern political science has begun to examine more closely the competitive natures of governmental bureaucracies and fiefdoms, and the study of structural impetus to violence is significant.³² This effort alone, however, cannot provide the etiology of war.

A number of political analysts would say that wars do not derive from individual idiosyncrasies, or from the ostensible deficiencies of social organizations or bureaucratic competition, or even from the greed of the power elite; rather, the source of war is the essentially anarchic condition of the state system in world politics.

At least one analyst, Werner Levi,* has concluded, however, that because sovereignty is diminishing, because internationalization is increasing, because "economics is international politics by other means" (p. 118), and because warfare may now "be useless for the achievement of most conceivable or national purposes" (p. 78), no nuclear war will be fought, and "developed states are unlikely to engage in a modern war with each other directly." (p. 15) This is all very reassuring—until one recalls that Sir Norman Angell (1872-1967) published his book The Great Illusion in 1910. He argued essentially that it was illusory for one to think that victory in war could lead to one nation’s absorbing the economic strength of another nation; the world, he wrote, was so interdependent in trade and in economics that war was senseless. Four years later World War I erupted (but Angell still received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933).

Some would cure war by personal psychology; some would cure it by introducing socialism; some would cure it by eliminating social stratification and bureaucracy. Those who see the source of war in the dimension of international relations would solve war by one of two devices: they might want to eliminate all power through ardent pacifism, or to consolidate all power through world government and law. Inis Claude once explained why law is not mankind’s savior:

There is, then, no simple, single cause of war; neither is there an elementary remedy for it. Americans in particular have difficulty in accepting this because it suggests that there is no warless millennium on the horizon. Because Americans are used to a relatively painless existence, expect happy endings in all their books and movies, and generally have precious little understanding of the symbiotic relationship between power and politics,³⁴balance of power appears to be an anathema because it implies that, in international affairs, there is no human end to the struggles and tensions among peoples.

Transpolitical Causes

Political scientist Morton Kaplan stated that "evil will never be eliminated from the world nor will good ever reign supreme."³⁵ That assessment is part of our intellectual heritage from Saint Augustine, Machiavelli, Luther, Malthus, Jonathan Swift, Dean Inge, Spinoza, Bismarck, Metternich, Freud, Niebuhr, and Morgenthau. But the notion that war is an ultima ratio—the last or final argument—has seemed generally to be inconsistent with the American experience. American power, as political realists have so long tried to tell us, has always had to be righteous power if it were to be used at all. Our wars have had to be all-or-nothing; and we have alternated between crusades and pacifism, neither of which is practicable today. Yet, as William O’Brien has pointed out:

To be sure, all decent humans want an end to war, but to desire is not necessarily to obtain. In this nation of relatively spectacular wealth and achievement, we too often indulge ourselves in the mirage that merely because we want an end to human misery we shall have it. In the cited John Hersey novel, the American hero is told by an English woman, "Darling, you’re so American. You get what is and what you want all mixed up together in your head."³⁷The realist philosophy informs us that the problems of world politics—preeminent among them that of war—will never fully or finally yield to human solutions. Cecil Crabb has explained this succinctly:

Historian Bernard Norling has contended that only the most saccharine observer can fail to note the ubiquity of human weakness:

Utopians of all stripes—including, of course, Marxists—promise the perfectibility of mankind and the elimination of war. The spiritual testimony of orthodox Christianity counsels skepticism in the face of such specious promises. The confusion of the eschatological promises of religion with the practical concerns of statecraft is likely to lead to something of the horrors found in contemporary Iran. The late Reinhold Niebuhr told us that "The New Testament does not. . . envisage a simple triumph of good over evil in history. It sees human history involved in the contradictions of sin to the end."⁴°

The philosophical realist and the orthodox Christian view concentrations of power with great trepidation. In the Madisonian tradition of American politics, one could say that "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." (Federalist 47) As we accept separation of powers in our domestic politics, we ought to be able to accept balance of power in our international politics. Niebuhr, as always, put it well:

Those who expect the easy (and the earthly) triumph of the millennium; the end to war; the establishment of legal, political, or social utopia; the reign of full international or interpersonal harmony—are pursuing a chimera. That there will be no end to our troubles does not mean, however, that we must become despondent. As Winston Churchill said:

Although balance of power is a nebulous term,⁴³the notion does convey the idea of resolute pursuit of peace and harmony, but always with the kind of appropriate prudence and caution which history and Proverbs 27:1 advise:

One suspects, then, that war has many causes— and no cure. Although war cannot be eliminated by human science or statecraft, it can perhaps be arrested if we can remember that, internationally as well as domestically, "ambition must be made to counteract ambition." As Madison goes on to ask, in the tenth Federalist ". . .what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?" To study war is to study human nature; to study human nature is to know the awesome mosaic of our human potentials—and of our perils. How do we save humankind from the scourge of war? Each person must answer the question in his own way. As I do not expect an end to political tension and turmoil, neither do I expect an immediate end to human life on earth through nuclear warfare—provided we can avert the dangers of unused,⁴⁴unknown,⁴⁵and undistributed⁴⁶power. But, as Inis Claude has written, "We must be aware that power will always be with us, and thus the possibility of the violent disruption of order."⁴⁷

But, then, if there is no utopia on the horizon, whom do we trust? Whence comes the "peace which surpasses all understanding?" Some would trust genetic engineering; some, psychological research; others, socialist politics. I reject these as largely irrelevant; I look elsewhere for that full and final peace which humanity, unaided by a higher power, can never wholly achieve. And I recall the ancient petition: Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem (Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, giant us peace).

1. Epigraph to Bernard Norling, Timeless Problems in History (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970).

3. Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Liebowitz ( New York: Bantam, 1959), p. 245. (Emphasis in original.)

4. Among the signatories of the Pact of Paris are Iran, Iraq, and the Soviet Union.

5. See Article 2(4) but note Article 51. Israel has been a member of the United Nations since 11 May 1949. Consider Menachem Begin’s remark that the 7 June 1981 raid on the Iraqi nuclear facility was a "morally supreme act of national self-defense. No fault whatsoever on our side" (Time, June 22, 1981, p. 30).

7. See, for example, Joshua 8, Judges 15, Sirach 12:10, Matthew 24:6, Mark 13:7, Luke 21:9.

8. R. E. Dupuy and T. N. Dupuy, The Encyclopedia of Military History, revised edition (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 1.

9. Richard Pipes, "Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War," Commentary, July 1977, pp. 21-34; John Erickson, "The Chimera of Mutual Deterrence," Strategic Review, Spring 1978, pp. 11-17; and C. S. Gray and Keith Payne, "Under the Nuclear Gun: Victory Is Possible," Foreign Policy, Summer 1980, pp. 14-27.

10. Roger Rosenblatt, "Looking Straight at the Bomb," Time, July 6, 1981, p. 79; Daniel Yergin, "The Terrifying Prospect: Atomic Bombs Everywhere," The Atlantic, April 1977, pp. 46-65; Ron Rosenbaum, "The Subterranean World of the Bomb," Harper’s, March 1978, pp. 85-105; and see Louis R. Beres, "The Porcupine Theory of Nuclear Proliferation: Shortening the Quills," Parameters, September 1979, pp. 31-37. For a different view, see Donald L. Clark, "Could We Be Wrong?" Air University Review, September-October 1978, pp. 28-37.

11. George H. Quester, "Nuclear Proliferation: Linkages and Solutions, "International Organization, Autumn 1979, pp. 564-65.

12. Ed Zuckerman, "Hiding from the Bomb—Again," Harper’s, August 1979, p. 36. And see U.S., Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, The Effects of Nuclear War, NS-89 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1979).

14. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Warfare in a Fragile World (New York: Crane, Russak, 1980), pp. 11, 192.

17. For two chartered approaches, see Herman Kahn, On Escalation (New York: Praeger, 1965), p. 39; Henry E Eccles, Military Concepts and Philosophy (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1965), p. 37.

19. Thomas E. Murray made the distinction. New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967, s.v. "War," by W. V. O’Brien.

20. Charles A. Lofgren, "How New Is Limited War?" Military Review, July 1967, p. 18.

21. The distinguished military historian Theodore Ropp says simply that "War is a violent conflict between states" in The Encyclopedia Americana, 1980, s.v., "War." But there can be "internal" or "guerrilla" warfare. In accepting the classical Christian notion of just war (which I believe is.still relevant), I must reject the notion of unlimited war and of warfare that ignores its political dimension (a crusade) or its ethical dimension (a massacre). Reconciling the twin dimensions of politics and ethics is a premier task of humankind, and the soldier is never exempted from that awesome task.

22. See Francis A. Beer, Peace against War (San Francisco, California: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1981); James Dougherty and R. L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., Contending Theories of International Relations, second edition (New York: Harper & Row, 1981); and Patrick Morgan, Theories and Approaches to International Relations, third edition (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1981).

23. I define politics as that action or process by which individuals and groups seek, competitively, to exalt their values and to enhance their interests.

24. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "Can Psychiatry Save the Republic?" Saturday Review/World, September 7, 1974, p. 15. Morton A. Kaplan, in his review of Old Myths and New Realities, by J. W. Fulbright, in World Politics, January 1965, p. 361, says that "In general, the psychologists who have been talking loudly about international politics make ridiculous and misleading assertions that they attempt to cloak beneath a certificate of professional skill."

26. See Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).

27. See James A. Stegenga, "The Physiology of Aggression (and of Warfare?)" International Journal of Group Tensions, 8 (1978): 65.

28. See John Stoessinger, Why Nations Go to War, second edition (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978).

30. FaIk and Kim editors, The War System, p. 376. For a different view see Richard J. Barnet, Roots of War (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1972).

31. This is not a new thesis. See A. F. K. Organski, World Politics (New York: Knopf, 1960), chapter 12.

32. For more details on the structural school, see Part Six in The War System. For a recent social stratification argument concerning the outbreak of World War I, see Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981).

33. lids L. Claude, Jr., Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962), pp. 260-61.

34. James H. Toner, "American Society and the American Way of War: Korea and Beyond," Parameters, March 1981, pp. 79-90.

38. Cecil Crabb, Jr., American Foreign Policy in the Nuclear Age, 3rd edition (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 31.

40. Reinhold Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics (New York: Scribner, 1940; reprint edition, Archon Books, 1969), p. 20. Niebuhr wrote that ". . . most modern forms of pacifism are heretical" (p. 5); and "There is not the slightest support in Scripture for this doctrine of non-violence." (p. 10)

42. From a Churchill address of 1 March 1955, in Parliamentary Debates, 5th Series, vol. 537, col. 1905.

43. As Claude says, "The immediate task [of world politics], in short, is to make the world safe for the balance of power system, and the balance system safe for the world." (p. 284)

44. One is reminded of Sir Robert Thompson’s equation: national power equals manpower plus applied resources times will. In Richard Nixon, The Real War (New York: Warner, 1980), pp. 43, 306. The Almanac of World Military Power, 4th edition (San Rafael, California: Presidio Press, 1980), defines military power as "the capability of a nation to employ armed forces effectively in support of national objectives by exerting influence on the performance of other nations." (p. vii) See the sobering remarks of Norman Podhoretz, "The Culture of Appeasement," Harper’s, October 1977, pp. 25-32. Military power is never, by itself, the answer to a political challenge; but failure to use military power may be as dangerous in some circumstances, as adventurism.

45. For a good analysis, see Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War (New York: The Free Press, 1973): ‘War is a dispute about the measurement of power." (p. 114)

46. "In a world whose moving force is the aspiration of sovereign nations for power, peace can be maintained only by two devices. One is the self-regulatory mechanism of. . . the balance of power. The other consists of normative limitations . . . in the form of international law, international morality, and world public opinion." Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 5th edition (New York: Knopf, 1973), p. 24.

James H. Toner (B.A., Saint Anselm’s College; M.A., The College of William and Mary; Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is Associate Professor of Government at Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont, and a fellow of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. He has been an assistant professor at Notre Dame, an officer in the U.S. Army, and a General Douglas MacArthur Statesman scholar. His writings have appeared in Military Review, International Review of History and Politics, Naval War College Review, Parameters, Review of Politics, and frequently in the Review.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.