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SECTION 7:
Summary and Conclusions
The Nature of War
War
is not, as is widely assumed, primarily an instrument of policy utilized by
nations to extend or defend their expressed political values or their
economic interests. On the
contrary, it is itself the principal basis of
organization on which all modern societies are constructed. The common
proximate cause of war is the apparent interference of one nation with the
aspirations of another. But at the root of all ostensible differences of
national interest lie the dynamic requirements of the war system itself for
periodic armed conflict. Readiness for war characterizes contemporary social
systems more broadly than their economic and political structures, which it
subsumes.
Economic analyses of the anticipated problems of transition to peace have not
recognized the broad preeminence of war in the definition of social systems.
The same is true, with rare and only partial exceptions, of model disarmament
"scenarios." For this reason, the value of this previous work is
limited to the mechanical aspects of transition.
Certain
features of these models may perhaps be applicable to a real situation of conversion
to peace; this will depend on their compatibility with a substantive, rather
than a procedural, peace plan. Such a plan can be developed only from the
premise of full understanding of the nature of the war system it proposes to
abolish, which in turn presupposes detailed comprehension of the functions
the war system performs for society. It will require the construction of a
detailed and feasible system of substitutes for those functions that are
necessary to the stability and survival of human societies.
The Functions of War
The
visible,
military function of war requires no elucidation; it is not only
obvious but also irrelevant to a transition to the condition of peace, in
which it will by definition be superfluous.
It
is also subsidiary in social significance to the implied, nonmilitary
functions of war; those critical to transition can be summarized in five
principal groupings.
1. Economic.
War has provided both ancient and modern societies with a dependable system
for stabilizing and controlling national economies. No alternate
method of control has yet been tested in a complex modern economy that has
shown itself remotely comparable in scope or effectiveness.
2. Political. The
permanent possibility of war is the foundation for stable government; it
supplies the basis for general acceptance of political authority. It
has enabled societies to maintain necessary class distinctions, and it has
ensured the subordination of the citizen to the state, by virtue of the
residual war powers inherent in the concept of nationhood. No modern
political ruling group has successfully controlled its constituency after
failing to sustain the continuing credibility of an external threat of war.
3. Sociological. War,
through the medium of military institutions, has uniquely served societies,
throughout the course of known history, as an indispensable controller of
dangerous social dissidence and destructive antisocial tendencies. As the
most formidable of threats to life itself, and as the only one susceptible to
mitigation by social organization alone, it has played another equally
fundamental role: the war system has provided the
machinery through which the motivational forces governing human behavior have
been translated into binding social allegiance. It has thus ensured the
degree of social cohesion necessary to the viability of nations. No other
institution, or group of institutions, in modern societies, has successfully
served these functions.
4. Ecological. War has
been the principal evolutionary device for maintaining a satisfactory
ecological balance between gross human population and supplies available for
its survival. It is unique to the human species.
5. Cultural
and Scientific. War-orientation has determined the basic standards of
value in the creative arts, and has provided the fundamental motivational source
of scientific and technological progress. The concepts that the arts
express values independent of their own forms and that the successful pursuit
of knowledge has intrinsic social value have long been accepted in modern
societies; the development of the arts and sciences during this period has
been corollary to the parallel development of weaponry.
Substitutes
for the Functions of War: Criteria
The
foregoing functions of war are essential to the survival of the social
systems we know today.
With
two possible exceptions they are also essential to any kind of stable social
organization that might survive in a warless world. Discussion of the ways
and means of transition to such a world are meaningless unless a) substitute
institutions can be devised to fill these functions, or b) it can reasonably
be hypothecated that the loss or partial loss of any one function need not
destroy the viability of future societies.
Such substitute institutions and hypotheses must meet varying criteria. In
general, they must be technically feasible, politically acceptable, and
potentially credible to the members of the societies that adopt them.
Specifically, they must be characterized as follows:
1. Economic.
An acceptable economic surrogate for the war system will require the
expenditure of resources for completely nonproductive purposes at a level
comparable to that of the military expenditures otherwise demanded by the
size and complexity of each society. Such a substitute system of apparent
"waste" must be of a nature that will permit it to remain
independent of the normal supply-demand economy; it must be subject to
arbitrary political control.
2. Political. A viable
political substitute for war must posit a generalized external menace to each
society of a nature and degree sufficient to require the organization and
acceptance of political authority.
3. Sociological. First, in the permanent absence of war, new
institutions must be developed that will effectively control the socially
destructive segments of societies. Second, for purposes of adapting the
physical and psychological dynamics of human behavior to the needs of social
organization, a credible substitute for war must generate an omnipresent and
readily understood fear of personal destruction. This fear must be of a
nature and degree sufficient to ensure adherence to societal values to the
full extent that they are acknowledged to transcend the value of an
individual human life.
4. Ecological. A
substitute for war in its function as the uniquely human system of population
control must ensure the survival, if not necessarily the improvement, of the
species, in terms of its relation to environmental supply.
5. Cultural
and Scientific. A surrogate for the function of war as the
determinant of cultural values must establish a basis of sociomoral conflict
of equally compelling force and scope. A substitute motivational basis for
the quest for scientific knowledge must be similarly informed by a comparable
sense of internal necessity.
Substitutes
for the Functions of War: Models
The
following substitute institutions, among others, have been proposed for
consideration as replacements for the nonmilitary functions of war. That they
may not have been originally set forth for that purpose does not preclude or
invalidate their possible application here.
1. Economic.
a) A
comprehensive social-welfare program, directed toward maximum improvement of
general conditions of human life.
b) A
giant open-end space research program, aimed at unreachable targets.
c) A
permanent, ritualized, ultra-elaborate disarmament inspection system, and
variants of such a system.
2. Political.
a) An
omnipresent, virtually omnipotent international police force.
b) An
established and recognized extraterrestrial menace.
c)
Massive global environmental pollution.
d)
Fictitious alternate enemies.
3. Sociological:
-
Control function.
a)
Programs generally derived from the Peace Corps model.
b) A
modern, sophisticated form of slavery.
-
Motivational function.
a)
Intensified environmental pollution.
b) New
religious or other mythologies.
c)
Socially oriented blood games.
d)
Combination forms.
4. Ecological.
A comprehensive program of applied eugenics.
5. Cultural. No
replacement institution offered. Scientific. The secondary requirements of
the space research, social welfare, and/or eugenics programs.
Substitutes
for the Functions of War: Evaluation
The
models listed above reflect only the beginning of the quest for substitute
institutions for the functions of war, rather than a recapitulation of
alternatives. It would be both premature and inappropriate, therefore, to
offer final judgments on their applicability to a transition to peace and
after. Furthermore, since the necessary but complex project of correlating
the compatibility of proposed surrogates for different functions could be
treated only in exemplary fashion at this time, we have elected to withhold
such hypothetical correlation as were tested as statistically inadequate.
[42]
Nevertheless, some tentative and cursory comments on these proposed
functional "solutions" will indicate the scope of the difficulties
involved in this area of peace planning.
Economic
The
social-welfare model cannot be expected to remain outside the normal economy
after the conclusion of its predominantly capital-investment phase; its value
in this function can therefore be only temporary. The space-research
substitute appears to meet both major criteria, and should be examined in
greater detail, especially in respect to its probable effects on other war
functions. "Elaborate inspection" schemes, although superficially
attractive, are inconsistent with the basic premise of transition to peace.
The "unarmed forces" variant, logistically similar, is subject to
the same functional criticism as the general social-welfare model.
Political
Like
the inspection-scheme surrogates, proposals for plenipotentiary international
police are inherently incompatible with the ending of the war system. The
"unarmed forces" variant, amended to include unlimited powers of
economic sanction, might conceivably be expanded to constitute a credible
external menace. Development of an acceptable threat from "outer
space," presumably in conjunction with a space-research surrogate for
economic control, appears unpromising in terms of credibility. The
environmental-pollution model does not seem sufficiently responsive to
immediate social control, except through arbitrary acceleration of current
pollution trends; this in turn raises questions of political acceptability.
New, less regressive, approaches to the creation of fictitious global
"enemies" invite further investigation.
Sociological
Control
function. Although the various substitutes proposed for this function that
are modeled roughly on the Peace Corps appear grossly inadequate in potential
scope, they should not be ruled out without further study. Slavery, in a
technologically modern and conceptually euphemized form, may prove a more
efficient and flexible institution in this area. Motivational function.
Although none of the proposed substitutes for war as the guarantor of social
allegiance can be dismissed out of hand, each presents serious and special
difficulties. Intensified environmental threats may raise ecological dangers;
mythmaking dissociated from war may no longer be politically feasible;
purposeful blood games and rituals can far more readily be devised than
implemented. An institution combining this function with the preceding one,
based on, but not necessarily imitative of, the precedent of organized ethnic
repression, warrants careful consideration.
Ecological
The
only apparent problem in the application of an adequate eugenic substitute
for war is that of timing; it cannot be effectuated until the transition to
peace has been completed, which involves a serious temporary risk of
ecological failure.
Cultural
No
plausible substitute for this function of war has yet been proposed. It may
be, however, that a basic cultural value-determinant is not necessary to the
survival of a stable society. Scientific. The same might be said for the
function of war as the prime mover of the search for knowledge. However,
adoption of either a giant space-research program, a comprehensive
social-welfare program, or a master program of eugenic control would provide
motivation for limited technologies.
General Conclusions
It is apparent, from the foregoing, that no program or combination of
programs yet proposed for a transition to peace has remotely approached
meeting the comprehensive functional requirements of a world without war.
Although one projected system for filling the economic function of war seems
promising, similar optimism cannot be expressed in the equally essential
political and sociological areas. The other major nonmilitary functions of
war - ecological, cultural, scientific - raise very
different problems, but it is at least possible that detailed programming of
substitutes in these areas is not prerequisite to transition. More important,
it is not enough to develop adequate but separate surrogates for the major
war functions; they must be fully compatible and in no degree self-canceling.
Until
such a unified program is developed, at least hypothetically, it is
impossible for this or any other group to furnish meaningful answers to the
questions originally presented to us.
When
asked how best to prepare for the
advent of peace, we must first reply, as strongly as we can, that the war
system cannot responsibly be allowed to disappear until,
1) we
know exactly what it is we plan to put in its place, and
2) we
are certain, beyond reasonable doubt, that these substitute institutions will
serve their purposes in terms of the survival and stability of society.
It
will then be time enough to develop methods for effectuating the transition;
procedural programming must follow, not precede, substantive solutions.
Such solutions, if indeed they exist, will not be arrived at without a
revolutionary revision of the modes of thought heretofore considered
appropriate to peace research. That we have examined the fundamental
questions involved from a dispassionate, value-free point of view should not
imply that we do not appreciate the intellectual and emotional difficulties
that must be overcome on all decision-making levels before these questions
are generally acknowledged by others for what they are. They reflect, on an
intellectual level, traditional emotional resistance to new (more lethal and
thus more "shocking") forms of weaponry.
The
understated comment of then-Senator Hubert
Humphrey on the publication of On
Thermonuclear War is still very much to the point:
"New
thoughts, particularly those which appear to contradict current assumptions,
are always painful for the mind to contemplate."
Nor,
simply because we have not discussed them, do we minimize the massive
reconciliation of conflicting interest which domestic as well as
international agreement on proceeding toward genuine peace presupposes.
This
factor was excluded from the purview of our assignment, but we would be
remiss if we failed to take it into account. Although no insuperable obstacle
lies in the path of reaching such general agreements, formidable short-term
private-group and general-class interest in maintaining the war system is
well established and widely recognized.
The
resistance to peace stemming from such interest is only tangential, in the
long run, to the basic functions of war, but it will not be easily overcome,
in this country or elsewhere. Some observers, in fact, believe that it cannot
be overcome at all in our time, that the price of peace is, simply, too high.
This bears on our overall conclusions to the extent that timing in the
transference to substitute institutions may often be the critical factor in
their political feasibility.
It is uncertain, at this time, whether peace will ever be possible. It is far
more questionable, by the objective standard of continued social survival
rather than that of emotional pacifism, that it would be desirable even if it
were demonstrably attainable. The war system, for all its
subjective repugnance to important sections of "public opinion,"
has demonstrated its effectiveness since the beginning of recorded history;
it has provided the basis for the development of many impressively durable
civilizations, including that which is dominant today. It has consistently
provided unambiguous social priorities. It is, on the whole, a known
quantity.
A
viable system of peace, assuming that the great and complex questions of
substitute institutions raised in this Report are both soluble and solved,
would still constitute a venture into the unknown, with the inevitable risks
attendant on the unforeseen, however small and however well hedged.
Government decision-makers tend to choose peace over war whenever a real
option exists, because it usually appear to be the "safer" choice.
Under most immediate circumstances they are likely to be right. But in terms
of long-range social stability, the opposite is true. At our present state of
knowledge and reasonable inference, it is the war system that must be
identified with stability, the peace system with social speculation, however
justifiable the speculation may appear, in terms of subjective moral or
emotional values.
A
nuclear physicist once remarked, in respect to a possible disarmament
agreement:
"If
we could change the world into a world in which no weapons could be made,
that would be stabilizing. But agreements we can expect with the Soviets
would be destabilizing." [43]
The
qualification and the bias are equally irrelevant; any condition of genuine
total peace, however achieved, would be destabilizing until proved otherwise.
If it were necessary at this moment to opt irrevocably for the retention or
for the dissolution of the war system, common prudence would dictate the
former course. But it is not yet necessary, late as the hour appears. And
more factors must eventually enter the war-peace equation than even
the most determined search for alternative institutions for the functions of war
can be expected to reveal.
One
group of such factors has been given only passing mention in this Report; it centers around the
possible obsolescence of the war system itself.
We
have noted, for instance, the limitations of the war system in filling its
ecological function and the declining importance of this aspect of war. It by
no means stretches the imagination to visualize comparable developments which
may compromise the efficacy of war as, for example, an economic controller or
as an organizer of social allegiance. This kind of possibility, however
remote, serves as a reminder that all calculations of contingency not only
involve the weighing of one group of risks against another, but require a
respectful allowance for error on both sides of the scale.
A more expedient reason for pursuing the investigation of alternate ways and
means to serve the current functions of war is narrowly political. It is
possible that one or more major sovereign nations may arrive, through
ambiguous leadership, at a position in which a ruling administrative class
may lose control of basic public opinion or of its ability to rationalize a
desired war.
It
is not hard to imagine, in such circumstance, a situation in which such
governments may feel forced to initiate serious full-scale disarmament
proceedings (perhaps provoked by "accidental" nuclear explosions),
and that such negotiations may lead to the actual disestablishment of
military institutions.
As
our Report has made clear, this could be catastrophic. It seems evident that,
in the event an important part of the world is suddenly plunged without
sufficient warning into an inadvertent peace, even partial and inadequate
preparation for the possibility may be better than none. The difference
could even be critical. The models considered in the preceding chapter,
both those that seem promising and those that do not, have one positive
feature in common - an inherent flexibility of phasing.
And
despite our strictures against knowingly proceeding into peace-transition procedures
without thorough substantive preparation, our government must nevertheless be
ready to move in this direction with whatever limited resources of planning
are on hand at the time - if circumstances so require. An arbitrary
all-or-nothing approach is no more realistic in the development of
contingency peace programming than it is anywhere else.
But the principal cause for concern over the continuing effectiveness of the
war system, and the more important reason for hedging with peace planning,
lies in the backwardness of current war-system programming. Its controls have
not kept pace with the technological advances it has made possible. Despite
its inarguable success to date, even in this era of unprecedented potential
in mass destruction, it continues to operate largely on a laissez-faire
basis.
To
the best of our knowledge, no serious quantified studies have ever been
conducted to determine, for example:
· optimum
levels of armament production, for purposes of economic control, at any given
series of chronological points and under any given relationship between
civilian production and consumption patterns
· correlation
factors between draft recruitment policies and mensurable social dissidence
· minimum
levels of population destruction necessary to maintain war-threat credibility
under varying political conditions
· optimum
cyclical frequency of "shooting" wars under varying circumstances
of historical relationship
These
and other war-function factors are fully susceptible to analysis by
today’s computer-based systems, [44] but they have not been so
treated; modern analytical techniques have up to now been relegated to such
aspects of the ostensible functions of war as procurement, personnel
deployment, weapons analysis, and the like.
We
do not disparage these types of application, but only deplore their lack of
utilization to greater capacity in attacking problems of broader scope.
Our
concern for efficiency in this context is not aesthetic, economic, or
humanistic. It stems from the axiom that no system can long survive
at either input or output levels that consistently or substantially deviate
from an optimum range. As their data grow increasingly sophisticated, the war
system and its functions are increasingly endangered by such deviations.
Our final conclusion, therefore, is that it will be necessary for our
government to plan in depth for two general contingencies.
· the
first, and lesser, is the possibility of a viable general peace
· the
second is the successful continuation of the war system
In
our view, careful preparation for the possibility of peace should be
extended, not because we take the position that the end of war would
necessarily be desirable, if it is in fact possible, but because it may be
thrust upon us in some form whether we are ready for it or not.
Planning
for rationalizing and quantifying the war system, on the other hand,
to ensure the effectiveness of its major stabilizing functions, is not only
more promising in respect to anticipated results, but is essential; we can no
longer take for granted that it will continue to serve our purposes well
merely because it always has.
The
objective of government policy in regard to war and peace, in this period of
uncertainty, must be to preserve maximum options.
The
recommendations which follow are directed to this end.
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