The End of War- a book review

When we think of ending warfare for most of us it's hard to be optimistic. As anyone in the American peace movement can tell you, the past 10 years have been very frustrating. an effort to stop the Iraq war from starting millions of people around the planet participated in the largest day of peace demonstrations ever, and yet the war still started. If the Iraq war is now over, and it's not clear that it is, this likely happened under its own weight, and not due to any efforts of the peace movement. Even the election of a Democratic Congress in 2006, and a Democratic president in 2008 were more likely window dressings then actual forces bringing the war to an end. Many of the Democrats elected in 2006 ran on a campaign of ending the Iraq war, but when there was an opportunity to withhold funds for the war the Democrats were not willing to do so. Obama ran on a campaign to end the Iraq war, but in fact the deal that resulted in the removal of US troops(with certain exceptions) from Iraq was negotiated between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government. And yet like a shell game even with the drawing down of Iraqi troops we saw a build-up in the Afghanistan war effort (also something Obama campaigned on). Meanwhile America's war technology has taken a new gruesome turn with the flourishing of the drones. In this allowing America to open up military theaters anywhere in the world with soldiers working from the comfort of their home base on American soil. If this weren't bad enough, we could be on the verge of an Iranian war, which is the candidate at the moment for the war most likely to engulf a region.

Against this backdrop it seems almost incredulous that John Horgan would declare that the end of war is not only possible but that it may be happening soon. If “the end of war” is an overly optimistic book, it's just the kind of optimism the peace movement might needs. I first heard of Horgan a couple of weeks before I ran into his book. While trying to get to sleep on an overnight Amtrak trip I was listening to a podcast of the NPR show Radiolab. The show was about whether humans could change, and included a brief segment about Horgan whose favorite question was “Do you think humans will ever put an end to war?” Through his informal surveys in various settings he finds that somewhere between 80 and 90% of the people he asks feel that there will always be wars. These figures seem to hold across a variety of demographic groups he's surveyed, including the progressive leaning congregation where he first asked the question. Horgan is not part of that 80 to 90%. When I first picked up the book I didn't make the connection with the guy interviewed on Radiolab. It was a book I was only judging by the cover. It caught my eye on the new bookshelf at our library. So I brought it home not even sure that I would read it. But once I picked it up I couldn't put it down.

This book is a simple, elegant, easy read. If you're willing to listen to someone speaking optimistically about the future of war, this book is certainly worth reading. The book starts with a review of common theories about the causes of war. These can be divided into two groups, biological theories and economic theories. Then we get to the author's own belief about the cause of war: It’s a cultural phenomenon. The book's main message is that we can change our cultural behavior of war. In making this point he suggests that in fact we are changing our war culture. The final chapter of the book, the action plan if you will, is the place where the book has some of its greatest naiveté but I think it may be the kind of naïve optimism that can change the world.
The biological argument is that humans are innately warlike. Horgan reviews the arguments that have been made regarding our innately violent tendencies. This includes primate research, and anthropological evidence. Chimps for instance have been found to engage in warlike activities. But as Horgan points out on closer examination much of this research is tainted by the presence of the researchers. For example Jane Goodall's supplying of chimps with bananas combined with the environmental pressures of shrinking territory may have led to the chimps becoming more aggressive. In fact the first account of collective violence among chimpanzees was not observed until over a decade after Goodall's arrival. The biggest case for chimp aggression probably comes from Richard Wrangham who along with Dale Peterson published a book entitled, Demonic Males. It argues that at least among male chimps and humans there is pleasure in violence. Apparently, this book is a favorite of both Hillary Clinton and Francis Fukuyama and generally popular among Washington elites. Bonobos, our other closest genetic relative are of course anything but violent and Horgan discusses them as well, the so-called hippie chimps whose slogan could be make love not war. Frans de Waal, a bonobo researcher, argues that “Wrangham has created a cartoonishly distorted picture of the (chimpanzee) species“ to quote Horgan.

Then we get to early human culture. Tribal war certainly seems to occur among pre-contact first nation peoples. According to Horgan war is certainly something seen among Neolithic people but not Paleolithic people. The Neolithic human had agriculture and thus land worth protecting. The earlier Paleolithic were strict hunter gatherers, and so were more likely to pick up and move than they would have been to fight. Among the archaeological evidence for war the oldest site that clearly demonstrates collective violence is a 13,000 year old mass grave. This was a time of transition between Paleolithic and Neolithic but most other evidence of warfare are less than 10,000 years old, clearly into the Neolithic age. The change from Paleolithic and Neolithic is not genetic but rather a cultural change.
This brings us to the economic theories about the causes of war. When humans started farming during the Neolithic age there started to be resources, land or stores of food, that were worth fighting over. So is scarcity the cause of war? Not according to Horgan. He identifies two theories of scarcity, he identifies these theories with Malthus and Marx. From the Malthus perspective the issue was that populations would grow faster than the resources needed to support them, and so scarcity would always emerge as an issue that would lead to war. From the perspective of Marx the issue is inequality. As long as there is inequality, so goes the theory, those with less will struggle against those with more. Horgan draws heavily on work of Lewis Fry Richardson which was published in 1960 by Quincy Wright, The Statistics of Deadly Quarrels to show that neither of these arguments fit the evidence of the causes of war. To the extent scarcity is an issue it seems the perception of scarcity is more important than scarcity itself. Still as Horgan puts it “many conditions appear to be sufficient for war to occur, but none are necessary."

In developing the argument that war is essentially a cultural habit, Horgan returns to the question of our biological nature, and shows that more than our aggressiveness it may be our docility that gets us into wars. Our willingness to go along, to do what we are told. But this docility is a two-edged sword(apologies for the metaphor). Muzafer Sherif conducted an experiment in the 1950s where he created conditions among two groups of boys that provoked antagonism and hostility. But the good news is the second half of his experiment created conditions where they had to work together, and their antagonisms and hostilities were replaced with friendship. A common goal or common problem can often bridge differences and bring people together. Horgan suggests two such common goals,”one is figuring out how we can all prosper in every sense - materially as well as spiritually - without you remotely damaging our planet. Another, which will help us achieve the first, is ending war."
If war is a learned cultural phenomenon that humans developed some 10,000 years ago, is it possible that we can unlearn this culture? There are ample examples of individual cultures that have turned away from aggression, sure this is hopeful, but can our culture do it? According to Horgan we may be well on our way. He analyzes wars and war deaths and sees a decline in both. The reality is that this may depend on how you read the statistics. World War II was clearly the most destructive war in human history, but wars of the 19th century killed more people than the wars of the 20th century, and so far the 21st century seems to be doing better than the 20th from this perspective. These numbers are in absolute terms, when we look at things proportionally they look even better, because the total numbers of humans have gone up.

When I first heard the argument that war deaths were on the decline I found it hard to believe. So I looked at some other sources. Stephen Pinkner, a Harvard psychologist has done significant work on the decline of war. His book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, just came out in 2011. Although he relies a little too heavily on Hobbes, a worthwhile talk of his is here http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker. Another thing I stumbled upon is the chart below. The amazing thing is that weapons have gotten far more destructive and yet daily casualty rates have dropped precipitously. Clearly there are some paradoxes here.

Of course, there are other opinions, some hold to a cyclic theory of war, and by that theory the latter 20th century, and even this first decade of the 21st century can be seen as an extended period between major wars. You can bet if there's another one it's going to be a real doozy.

There are two scenarios that could seriously reduce the trend towards a reduction in war casualties. One is a major war between major powers possibly involving nuclear weapons. The other is the violence that we might imagine could break out if environmental dynamics lead to some form of societal collapse. Regarding major wars my biggest concern is that the declining American Empire would do something stupid to try to prop itself up. This is likely avoidable, the British Empire largely walked away from its colonies. As a pessimist I think environmental collapse is likely. This could be peak oil, global climate change, or species decimation. I don't know how we will deal with these problems. As an optimist I do believe that we have the capacity to go through the environmental transformation we face and in spite of the suffering, somehow to thrive as a species.

Horgan is an optimist; he feels it that the trend away from war is likely to continue and he believes that nonviolent action is helping that process along. It is worth noting that the Soviet Union and several of its so-called communist neighbors fell under the force of nonviolence. More recently we all have reason to be excited about some of the events of the Arab spring, again nonviolent technics proved their power. Horgan is not a complete pacifist, he believes that until war is abolished there may be rules for humanitarian policing actions. Horgan proposes three rules for leaders faced with “either way you lose” choices, regarding when and how to go to war. First do no harm, by which he means don't make things worse, second minimize civilian casualties, and third consider whether it moves us closer to the larger goal of abolishing war. This of course is a completely reasonable perspective for approaching the question of when military intervention might be appropriate. And yet of course it is utter naivety to think that political leaders would agree to such rules much less follow the rules. Still demanding the completely reasonable is a good place for us to start.

There is a concern that if you say, things are getting better, people will become complacent. I think that the message we all need to give, to ourselves and to our politicians is that things have gotten better but we realize how precarious things are, and we demand that things get better still.