Report from Iron Mountain Section 5: from Educate Yourself
The Functions of War
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.
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. "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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
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
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. (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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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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