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SECTION 5
The Functions of War
As we have indicated, the preeminence of the concept of war as the principal organizing force in most societies has been insufficiently appreciated.
This
is also true of its extensive effects throughout the many nonmilitary
activities of society. These effects are less apparent in complex industrial
societies like our own than in primitive cultures,
the activities of which
can be more more easily and fully comprehended. We propose in this section to examine these nonmilitary, implied, and usually invisible functions of war, to the extent they they bear on the problems of transition to peace for our society. The military, or ostensible, function of the war system requires no elaboration; it serves simply to defend or advance the "national interest" by means of organized violence. It is often necessary for a national military establishment to create a need for its unique powers - to maintain the franchise, so to speak. And a healthy military apparatus requires regular "exercise," by whatever rationale seems expedient, to prevent its atrophy. The nonmilitary functions of the war system are more basic. They exist not merely to justify themselves but to serve broader social purposes. If and when war is eliminated, the military functions it has served will end with it. But its nonmilitary functions will not. It is essential, therefore, that we understand their significance before we can reasonably expect to evaluate whatever institutions may be proposed to replace them. Economic
The
production of weapons of mass destruction has always been associated with
economic "waste."
The
term is pejorative, since it implies a failure of function. But no human
activity can properly be considered wasteful if it achieves its contextual
objective.
The
phrase "wasteful but necessary," applied not only to war
expenditures, but to most of the "unproductive" commercial
activities of our society, is a contradiction in terms.
"...
The attacks that have since the time of Samuel’s criticism of King Saul been
leveled against military expenditures as waste may well have concealed or
misunderstood the point that some kinds of waste may have a larger social
utility." [13]
In
the case of military "waste," there is indeed a larger social
utility. It derives from the fact that the "wastefulness" of war
production is exercised entirely outside the framework of the economy of
supply and demand.
As
such, it provides the only critically large segment of the total economy that
is subject to complete and arbitrary central control. If modern industrial
societies can be defined as those which have developed the capacity to
produce more than is required for their economic survival (regardless of the
equities of distribution of goods within them), military spending can be said
to furnish the only balance wheel with sufficient inertia to stabilize the
advance of their economies. The fact that war is "wasteful" is what
enables it to serve this function.
And
the faster the economy advances, the heavier this balance wheel must be.
This function is often viewed, oversimply, as a device for the control of surpluses. One writer on the subject puts it this way:
"Why
is war so wonderful? Because it creates artificial demand ... the only kind
of artificial demand, moreover, that does not raise any political issues:
war, and only war, solves the problem of inventory." [14]
The
reference here is to shooting war, but it applies equally to the general war
economy as well.
"It
is generally agreed," concludes, more cautiously, the report of a panel
set up by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, "that the
greatly expanded public sector since World War II, resulting from heavy
defense expenditures, has provided additional protection against depressions,
since this sector is not responsive to contraction in the private sector and
has provided a sort of buffer or balance wheel in the economy." [15]
The
principal economic function of war, in our view, is that it provides just
such a flywheel. It is not to be confused in function with the the various
forms of fiscal control, none of which directly engages vast numbers of men
and units of production.
It
is not to be confused with massive government expenditures in social welfare
programs; once initiated, such programs normally become integral parts of the
general economy and are no longer subject to arbitrary control.
But even in the context of the general civilian economy war cannot be considered wholly "wasteful." Without a long-established war economy, and without its frequent eruption into large-scale shooting war, most of the major industrial advances known to history, beginning with the development of iron, could never have taken place.
Weapons
technology structures the economy. According to the writer cited above,
"Nothing
is more ironic or revealing about our society than the fact that hugely
destructive war is a very progressive force in it. ... War production is
progressive because it is production that would not otherwise have taken
place. (It is not so widely appreciated, for example, that the civilian
standard of living rose during World War II.)" [16]
This
is not "ironic or revealing," but essentially a simple statement of
fact.
It should also be noted that war production has a dependable stimulation effect outside itself. Far from constituting a "wasteful" drain on the economy, war spending, considered pragmatically, has been a consistently positive factor in the rise of gross national product and of individual productivity.
A
former Secretary of the Army has carefully phrased it for public consumption
thus:
"If
there is, as I suspect there is, a direct relation between the stimulus of
large defense spending and a substantially increased rate of growth of gross
national product, it quite simply follows that defense spending per se might
be countenanced on economic grounds alone [emphasis added] as a stimulator of
the national metabolism." [17]
Actually,
the fundamental nonmilitary utility of war in the economy is far more widely
acknowledged than the scarcity of such affirmations as that quoted above
would suggest.
But negatively phrased public recognitions of the importance of war to the general economy abound.
The
most familiar example is the effect of the "peace threats" on the
stock market, e.g.,
"Wall
Street was shaken yesterday by news of an apparent peace feeler from North
Vietnam, but swiftly recovered its composure after about an hour of sometimes
indiscriminate selling." [18]
Savings
banks solicit deposits with similar cautionary slogans, e.g.,
"If
peace breaks out, will you be ready for it?"
A
more subtle case in point was the recent refusal of the Department of Defense
to permit the West German government to substitute nonmilitary goods for
unwanted armaments in its purchase commitments from the United States; the
decisive consideration was that the German purchases should not affect the
general (nonmilitary) economy.
Other
incidental examples are to be found in the pressures brought to bear on the
Department when it announces plans to close down an obsolete facility (as a
"wasteful" form of "waste"), and in the usual
coordination of stepped-up military activities (as in Vietnam in 1965) with
dangerously rising unemployment rates.
Although we do not imply that a substitute for war in the economy cannot be devised, no combination of techniques for controlling employment, production, and consumption has yet been tested that can remotely compare to it in effectiveness. It is, and has been, the essential economic stabilizer of modern societies. Political
The
political functions of war have been up to now even more critical to social
stability.
It
is not surprising, nevertheless, that discussions of economic conversion for
peace tend to fall silent on the matter of political implementation, and that
disarmament scenarios, often sophisticated in their weighing of international
political factors, tend to disregard the political functions of the war
system within individual societies.
These functions are essentially organizational. First of all, the existence of a society as a political "nation" requires as part of its definition an attitude of relationship toward other "nations." This is what we usually call a foreign policy. But a nation’s foreign policy can have no substance if it lacks the means of enforcing its attitude toward other nations.
It
can do this in a credible manner only if it implies the threat of maximum
political organization for this purpose - which is to say that it is
organized to some degree for war. War, then, as we have defined it to include
all national activities that recognize the possibility of armed conflict, is
itself the defining element of any nation’s existence vis-a-vis any other
nation.
Since
it is historically axiomatic that the existence of any form of weaponry
insures its use, we have used the word "peace" as virtually
synonymous with disarmament. By the same token, "war" is virtually
synonymous with nationhood. The elimination of war implies the inevitable
elimination of national sovereignty and the traditional nation-state.
The war system not only has been essential to the existence of nations as independent political entities, but has been equally indispensable to their stable internal political structure. Without it, no government has ever been able to obtain acquiescence in its "legitimacy," or right to rule its society. The possibility of war provides the sense of external necessity without which no government can long remain in power.
The
historical record reveals one instance after another where the failure of a
regime to maintain the credibility of a war threat led to its dissolution, by
the forces of private interest, of reactions to social injustice, or of other
disintegrative elements.
The
organization of a society for the possibility of war is its principal
political stabilizer. It is ironic that this primary function of war has been
generally recognized by historians only where it has been expressly
acknowledged - in the pirate societies of the great conquerors.
The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers. (There is, in fact, good reason to believe that codified law had its origins in the rules of conduct established by military victors for dealing with the defeated enemy, which were later adapted to apply to all subject populations. [19])
On
a day-to-day basis, it is represented by the institution of police, armed
organizations charged expressly with dealing with "internal
enemies" in a military manner. Like the conventional
"external" military, the police are also substantially exempt from
many civilian legal restraints on their social behavior. In some countries,
the artificial distinction between police and other military forces does not
exist.
On
the long-term basis, a government’s emergency war powers - inherent in the
structure of even the most libertarian of nations - define the most
significant aspect of the relation between state and citizen.
In advanced modern democratic societies, the war system has provided political leaders with another political-economic function of increasing importance: it has served as the last great safeguard against the elimination of necessary social classes. As economic productivity increases to a level further and further above that of minimum subsistence, it becomes more and more difficult for a society to maintain distribution patterns insuring the existence of "hewers of wood and drawers of water."
The
further progress of automation can be expected to differentiate still more
sharply between "superior" workers and what Ricardo called
"menials," while simultaneously aggravating the problem of
maintaining an unskilled labor supply.
The arbitrary nature of war expenditures and of other military activities make them ideally suited to control these essential class relationships. Obviously, if the war system were to be discarded, new political machinery would be needed at once to serve this vital subfunction.
Until
it is developed, the continuance of the war system must be assured, if for no
other reason, among others, than to preserve whatever quality and degree of
poverty a society requires as an incentive, as well as to maintain the
stability of its internal organization of power.
Sociological
Under
this heading, we will examine a nexus of functions served by the war system
that affect human behavior in society. In general, they are broader in
application and less susceptible to direct observation than the economic and
political factors previously considered.
The most obvious of these functions is the time-honored use of military institutions to provide antisocial elements with an acceptable role in the social structure. The disintegrative, unstable social movements loosely described as "fascist" have traditionally taken root in societies that have lacked adequate military or paramilitary outlets to meet the needs of these elements.
This
function has been critical in periods of rapid change. The danger signals are
easy to recognize, even though the stigmata bear different names at different
times. The current euphemistic clichés - "juvenile delinquency" and
"alienation" - have had their counterparts in every age. In earlier
days these conditions were dealt with directly by the military without the
complications of due process, usually through press gangs or outright
enslavement.
But
it is not hard to visualize, for example, the degree of social disruption
that might have taken place in the United States during the last two decades
if the problem of the socially disaffected of the post-World War II period
had not been foreseen and effectively met. The younger, and more dangerous,
of these hostile social groupings have been kept under control by the
Selective Service System.
This system and its analogues elsewhere furnish remarkably clear examples of disguised military utility. Informed persons in this country have never accepted the official rationale for a peacetime draft - military necessity, preparedness, etc. - as worthy of serious consideration. But what has gained credence among thoughtful men is the rarely voiced, less easily refuted, proposition that the institution of military service has a "patriotic" priority in our society that must be maintained for its own sake. Ironically, the simplistic official justification for selective service comes closer to the mark, once the nonmilitary functions of military institutions are understood.
As
a control device over the hostile, nihilistic, and potentially unsettling
elements of a society in transition, the draft can again be defended, and
quite convincingly, as a "military" necessity.
Nor can it be considered a coincidence that overt military activity, and thus the level of draft calls, tend to follow the major fluctuations in the unemployment rate in the lower age groups. This rate, in turn, is a time-tested herald of social discontent. It must be noted also that the armed forces in every civilization have provided the principal state-supported haven for what are now called the "unemployable."
The
typical European standing army (of fifty years ago) consisted of
"...
troops unfit for employment in commerce, industry, or agriculture, led by
officers unfit to practice any legitimate profession or to conduct a business
enterprise." [20]
This
is still largely true, if less apparent. In a sense, this function of the
military as the custodian of the economically or culturally deprived was the
forerunner of most contemporary civilian social-welfare programs, from the
W.P.A. to various forms of "socialized" medicine and social
security.
It
is interesting that liberal sociologists currently proposing to use the
Selective Service System as a medium of cultural upgrading of the poor
consider this a novel application of military practice.
Although it cannot be said absolutely that such critical measures of social control as the draft require a military rationale, no modern society has yet been willing to risk experimentation with any other kind. Even during such periods of comparatively simple social crisis as the so-called Great Depression of the 1930s, it was deemed prudent by the government to invest minor make-work projects, like "Civilian" Conservation Corps, with a military character, and to place the more ambitious National Recovery Administration under the direction of a professional army officer at its inception.
Today,
at least one small Northern European country, plagued with uncontrollable
unrest among its "alienated youth," is considering the expansion of
its armed forces, despite the problem of making credible the expansion of a
non-existent external threat.
Sporadic efforts have been made to promote general recognition of broad national values free of military connotation, but they have been ineffective. For example, to enlist public support of even such modest programs of social adjustment as "fighting inflation" or "maintaining physical fitness" it has been necessary for the government to utilize a patriotic (i.e., military) incentive. It sells "defense" bonds and it equates health with military preparedness. This is not surprising; since the concept of "nationhood" implies readiness for war, a "national" program must do likewise. In general, the war system provides the basic motivation for primary social organization. In so doing, it reflects on the societal level the incentives of individual human behavior. The most important of these, for social purposes, is the individual psychological rationale for allegiance to a society and its values. Allegiance requires a cause; a cause requires an enemy.
This
much is obvious; the critical point is that the enemy that defines the cause
must seem genuinely formidable. Roughly speaking, the presumed power of the
"enemy" sufficient to warrant an individual sense of allegiance to
a society must be proportionate to the size and complexity of the society.
Today, of course, that power must be one of unprecedented magnitude and
frightfulness.
It follows, from the patterns of human behavior, that the credibility of a social "enemy" demands similarly a readiness of response in proportion to its menace. In a broad social context, "an eye for an eye" still characterizes the only acceptable attitude toward a presumed threat of aggression, despite contrary religious and moral precepts governing personal conduct.
The
remoteness of personal decision from social consequence in a modern society
makes it easy for its members to maintain this attitude without being aware
of it. A recent example is the war in Vietnam; a less recent one was the
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [21]
In
each case, the extent and gratuitousness of the slaughter were abstracted
into political formulae by most Americans, once the proposition that the
victims were "enemies" was established.
The
war system makes such an abstracted response possible in nonmilitary contexts
as well. A conventional example of this mechanism is the inability of most
people to connect, let us say, the starvation of millions in India with their
own past conscious political decision-making. Yet the sequential logic
linking a decision to restrict grain production in America with an eventual
famine in Asia is obvious, unambiguous, and unconcealed.
What gives the war system its preeminent role in social organization, as elsewhere, is its unmatched authority over life and death. It must be emphasized again that the war system is not a mere social extension of the presumed need for individual human violence, but itself in turn serves to rationalize most nonmilitary killing. It also provides the precedent for collective willingness of members of a society to pay a blood price for institutions far less central to social organization than war.
To
take a handy example,
"...
rather than accept speed limits of twenty miles an hour we prefer to let
automobiles kill forty thousand people a year." [22]
A
Rand analyst puts it in more general terms and less rhetorically:
"I
am sure that there is, in effect, a desirable level of automobile accidents -
desirable, that is, from a broad point of view; in the sense that it is a
necessary concomitant of things of greater value to society." [23]
The
point may seem too obvious for iteration, but is essential to an
understanding of the important motivational function of war as a model for
collective sacrifice.
A brief look at some defunct premodern societies is instructive. One of the most noteworthy features common to the larger, more complex, and more successful of ancient civilizations was their widespread use of the blood sacrifice.
If
one were to limit consideration to those cultures whose regional hegemony was
so complete that the prospect of "war" had become virtually
inconceivable - as was the case with several of the great pre-Columbian
societies of the Western Hemisphere - it would be found that some form of
ritual killing occupied a position of paramount social importance in each.
Invariably, the ritual was invested with mythic or religious significance; as
with all religious and totemic practice, however, the ritual masked a broader
and more important social function.
In these societies, the blood sacrifice served the purpose of maintaining a vestigial "earnest" of the society’s capability and willingness to make war - i.e., kill and be killed - in the event that some mystical - i.e., unforeseen - circumstance were to give rise to the possibility.
That
the "earnest" was not an adequate substitute for genuine military
organization when the unthinkable enemy, such as the Spanish conquistadores,
actually appeared on the scene in no way negates the function of the ritual.
It was primarily, if not exclusively, a symbolic reminder that war had once
been the central organizing force of the society, and that this condition
might recur.
It does not follow that a transition to total peace in modern societies would require the use of this model, even in less "barbaric" guise. But the historical analogy serves as a reminder that a viable substitute for war as a social system cannot be a mere symbolic charade. It must involve real risk of real personal destruction, and on a scale consistent with the size and complexity of modern social systems. Credibility is the key. Whether the substitute is ritual in nature or functionally substantive, unless it provides a believable life-and-death threat it will not serve the socially organizing function of war. The existence of an accepted external menace, then, is essential to social cohesiveness as well as to the acceptance of political authority.
The
menace must be believable, it must be of a magnitude consistent with the
complexity of the society threatened, and it must appear, at least, to affect
the entire society.
Ecological
Man,
like all other animals, is subject to the continuing process of adapting to
the limitations of his environment.
But
the principal mechanism he has utilized for this purpose is unique among
living creatures. To forestall the inevitable historical cycles of inadequate
food supply, post-Neolithic man destroys surplus members of his own species
by organized warfare.
Ethologists [24] have often observed that the organized slaughter of members of their own species is virtually unknown among other animals. Man’s special propensity to kill his own kind (shared to a limited degree with rats) may be attributed to his inability to adapt anachronistic patterns of survival (like primitive hunting) to his development of "civilizations" in which these patterns cannot be effectively sublimated. It may be attributed to other causes that have been suggested, such as a maladapted "territorial instinct," etc.
Nevertheless,
it exists and its social expression in war constitutes a biological control
of his relationship to his natural environment that is peculiar to man alone.
War has served to help assure the survival of the human species. But as an evolutionary device to improve it, war is almost unbelievably inefficient. With few exceptions, the selective processes of other living creatures promote both specific survival and genetic improvement. When a conventionally adaptive animal faces one of its periodic crises of insufficiency, it is the "inferior" members of the species that normally disappear.
An
animal’s social response to such a crisis may take the form of a mass
migration, during which the weak fall by the wayside. Or it may follow the
dramatic and more efficient pattern of lemming societies, in which the weaker
members voluntarily disperse, leaving available food supplies for the
stronger. In either case, the strong survive and the weak fall. In human
societies, those who fight and die in wars for survival are in general its
biologically stronger members. This is natural selection in reverse.
The regressive genetic effect of war has been often noted [25] and equally often deplored, even when it confuses biological and cultural factors. [26]
The
disproportionate loss of the biologically stronger remains inherent in
traditional warfare. It serves to underscore the fact that survival of the
species, rather than its improvement, is the fundamental purpose of natural
selection, if it can be said to have a purpose, just as it is the basic premise
of this study.
But as the polemologist Gaston Bouthoul [27] has pointed out, other institutions that were developed to serve this ecological function have proved even less satisfactory.
(They
include such established forms as these: infanticide, practiced chiefly in
ancient and primitive societies; sexual mutilation; monasticism; forced
emigration; extensive capital punishment, as in old China and
eighteenth-century England; and other similar, usually localized, practices.)
Man’s
ability to increase his productivity of the essentials of physical life
suggests that the need for protection against cyclical famine may be nearly
obsolete. [28]
It
has thus tended to reduce the apparent importance of the basic ecological
function of war, which is generally disregarded by peace theorists. Two
aspects of it remain especially relevant, however. The first is obvious:
current rates of population growth, compounded by environmental threat of
chemical and other contaminants, may well bring about a new crisis of
insufficiency.
If
so, it is likely to be one of unprecedented global magnitude, not merely
regional or temporary. Conventional methods of warfare would almost surely
prove inadequate, in this event, to reduce the consuming population
to a level consistent with survival of the species.
The second relevant factor is the efficiency of modern methods of mass destruction. Even if their use is not required to meet a world population crisis, they offer, perhaps paradoxically, the first opportunity in the history of man to halt the regressive genetic effects of natural selection by war. Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate.
Their
application would bring to an end the disproportionate destruction of the
physically stronger members of the species (the "warriors") in
periods of war. Whether this prospect of genetic gain would offset the
unfavorable mutations anticipated from postnuclear radioactivity we have not
yet determined. What gives the question a bearing on our study is the
possibility that the determination may yet have to be made.
Another secondary ecological trend bearing on projected population growth is the regressive effect of certain medical advances. Pestilence, for example, is no longer an important factor in population control. The problem of increased life expectancy has been aggravated. These advances also pose a potentially more sinister problem, in that undesirable genetic traits that were formally self-liquidating are now medically maintained.
Many
diseases that were once fatal at preprocreational ages are now cured; the
effect of this development is to perpetuate undesirable susceptibilities and
mutations. It seems clear that a new quasi-eugenic function of war is now in
process of formation that will have to be taken into account in any
transition plan.
For
the time being, the Department of Defense appears to have recognized such
factors, as has been demonstrated by the planning under way by the Rand
Corporation to cope with the breakdown in the ecological balance anticipated
after a thermonuclear war.
The
Department has also begun to stockpile birds, for example, against the
expected proliferation of radiation-resistant insects, etc.
Cultural and Scientific
The
declared order of values in modern societies gives a high place to the
so-call "creative" activities, and an even higher one to those
associated with the advance of scientific knowledge.
Widely
held social values can be translated into political equivalents, which in
turn may bear on the nature of a transition to peace. The attitudes of those
who hold these values must be taken into account in the planning of the
transition. The dependence, therefore, of cultural and scientific achievement
on the war system would be an important consideration in a transition plan
even if such achievement had no inherently necessary social function.
Of all the countless dichotomies invented by scholars to account for the major differences in art styles and cycles, only one has been consistently unambiguous in its application to a variety of forms and cultures. However it may be verbalized, the basic distinction is this: Is the work war-oriented or is it not? Among primitive peoples, the war dance is the most important art form. Elsewhere, literature, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture that has won lasting acceptance has invariably dealt with a theme of war, expressly or implicitly, and has expressed the centricity of war to society.
The
war in question may be national conflict, as in Shakespeare’s plays,
Beethoven’s music, or Goya’s paintings, or it may be reflected in the form of
religious, social, or moral struggle, as in the work of Dante, Rembrandt, and
Bach. Art that cannot be classified as war-oriented is usually described as
"sterile," "decadent," and so on.
Application
of the "war standard" to works of art may often leave room for
debate in individual cases, but there is no question of its role as the
fundamental determinant of cultural values. Aesthetic and moral standards
have a common anthropological origin, in the exaltation of bravery, the
willingness to kill and risk death in tribal warfare.
It is also instructive to note that the character of a society’s culture has borne a close relationship to its war-making potential, in the context of its times. It is no accident that the current "cultural explosion" in the United States is taking place during an era marked by an unusually rapid advance in weaponry. This relationship is more generally recognized than the literature on the subject would suggest.
For
example, many artists and writers are now beginning to express concern over
the limited creative options they envisage in the warless world they think,
or hope, may be soon upon us. They are currently preparing for this
possibility by unprecedented experimentation with meaningless forms; their
interest in recent years has been increasingly engaged by the abstract
pattern, the gratuitous emotion, the random happening, and the unrelated
sequence.
The relationship of war to scientific research and discovery is more explicit. War is the principal motivational force for the development of science at every level, from the abstractly conceptual to the narrowly technological.
Modern
society places a high value on "pure" science, but it is
historically inescapable that all the significant discoveries that have been
made about the natural world have been inspired by the real or imaginary
military necessities of their epochs. The consequences of the discoveries
have indeed gone far afield, but war has always provided the basic incentive.
Beginning with the development of iron and steel, and proceeding through the discoveries of the laws of motion and thermodynamics to the age of the atomic particle, the synthetic polymer, and the space capsule, no important scientific advance has not been at least indirectly initiated by an implicit requirement of weaponry. More prosaic examples include the transistor radio (an outgrowth of military communications requirements), the assembly line (from Civil War firearms needs), the steel-frame building (from the steel battleship), the canal lock, and so on. A typical adaptation can be seen in a device as modest as the common lawnmower; it developed from the revolving scythe devised by Leonardo da Vinci to precede a horse-powered vehicle into enemy ranks. The most direct relationship can be found in medical technology. For example, a giant "walking machine," an amplifier of body motions invented for military use in difficult terrain, is now making it possible for many previously confined to wheelchairs to walk. The Vietnam war alone has led to spectacular improvements in amputation procedures, blood-handling techniques, and surgical logistics.
It
has stimulated new large-scale research on malaria and other tropical
parasitic diseases; it is hard to estimate how long this work would otherwise
have been delayed, despite its enormous nonmilitary importance to nearly half
the world’s population.
Other
We
have elected to omit from our discussion of the nonmilitary functions of war
those we do not consider critical to a transition program. This is not to say
they are unimportant, however, but only that they appear to present no
special problems for the organization of a peace-oriented social system.
They
include the following:
· War as
a general social release. This is a psychosocial function, serving the same
purpose for a society as do the holiday, the celebration, and the orgy for
the individual - the release and redistribution of undifferentiated tensions.
War provides for the periodic necessary readjustment of standards of social
behavior (the "moral climate") and for the dissipation of general
boredom, one of the most consistently undervalued and unrecognized of social
phenomena.
· War as
a generational stabilizer. This psychological function, served by other
behavior patterns in other animals, enables the physically deteriorating
older generation to maintain its control of the younger, destroying it if necessary.
· War as
an ideological clarifier. The dualism that characterizes the traditional
dialectic of all branches of philosophy and of stable political relationships
stems from war as the prototype of conflict. Except for secondary
considerations, there cannot be, to put it as simply as possible, more than
two sides to a question because there cannot be more than two sides to a war.
· War as
the basis for international understanding. Before the development of modern
communications, the strategic requirements of war provided the only
substantial incentive for the enrichment of one national culture with the
achievements of another. Although this is still the case in many
international relationships, the function is obsolescent.
We
have also foregone extended characterization of those functions we assume to
be widely and explicitly recognized.
An
obvious example is the role of war as controller of the quality and degree of
unemployment. This is more than an economic and political subfunction; its
sociological, cultural, and ecological aspects are also important, although
often teleonomic. But none affect the general problem of substitution.
The
same is true of certain other functions; those we have included are
sufficient to define the scope of the problem.
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