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22nd February 08 - John Horgan, Adbusters

In the aftermath of World War I, which some optimists were calling the war to end all wars, the philosopher George Santayana demurred, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” This sort of fatalism is still widespread today, and it cuts across political affiliations. Whether they are hawks or doves, on the political left or right, many people have come to accept war as inevitable, even “in our genes.” The obvious problem with such fatalism is that it can become self-fulfilling. Our first step toward ending war must be to believe that we can do it.

We also need to come to grips with the scale of the problem. As far back as anthropologists have peered into human history and pre-history, they have found evidence of group bloodshed. In War Before Civilization, Lawrence Keeley estimates that as many as 95 percent of primitive societies engaged in at least occasional warfare, and many fought constantly. Tribal combat usually involved skirmishes and ambushes rather than pitched battles. But over time the chronic fighting could produce mortality rates as high as 50 percent.

This violence, some scholars argue, is an inevitable consequence of innate male ambition and aggression. “Males have evolved to possess strong appetites for power,” the anthropologist Richard Wrangham contends in Demonic Males, “because with extraordinary power comes extraordinary reproductive success.” As evidence for this hypothesis, Wrangham cites studies of societies such as the Yanomamo, an Amazonian tribe. Yanomamo men from different villages often engage in lethal raids and counter-raids. Like most tribal societies, the Yanomamo are polygamous. The anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, who has observed the Yanomamo for decades, found that killers on average have twice as many wives and three times as many children as non-killers.

But Chagnon, significantly, has rejected the notion that Yanomamo warriors are compelled to fight by their aggressive instincts. Truly compulsive, out-of-control killers, Chagnon explains, quickly get killed themselves rather than living long enough to have many wives and children. Successful warriors are usually quite controlled and calculating; they fight because that is how a male advances in their society. Moreover, many Yanomamo men have confessed to Chagnon that they loathe war and wish it could be abolished from their culture – and in fact rates of violence have recently dropped dramatically as Yanomamo villages have accepted the laws and mores of the outside world.

History offers many other examples of warlike societies that became peaceful very rapidly. In the middle ages, Vikings were the scourge of Europe, but their Scandinavian descendants are among the most peaceful people on Earth. Similarly, in the early 20th century, Japan was extremely belligerent, but it took a more pacifist tack after its traumatic defeat in World War II.

In fact, hard as it may be to believe, humanity as a whole has become much less violent than it used to be. Despite the massive slaughter that resulted from World Wars I and II, the rate of violent death for males in North America and Europe during the 20th century was one percent. Worldwide, about 100 million men, women, and children died from war-related causes, including disease and famine, in the last century. The total would have been 2 billion if our rates of violence had been as high as in the average primitive society.

These statistics contradict the myth that war is a constant of the human condition. They also suggest that civilization has not created the problem of warfare, as some Luddites have suggested; civilization is helping us solve the problem. We need more civilization, not less, if we wish to eradicate war. Civilization has given us legal institutions that resolve disputes by establishing laws, negotiating agreements, and enforcing them. These institutions, which range from local courts to the United Nations, have vastly reduced the risk of violence both within and between nations. They are what keep us from succumbing to the chronic violence that afflicts societies like the Yanomamo.

Even if warfare is at least in part biologically based – and what human behavior isn’t? – we cannot end it by altering our biology. Modern war is primarily a social and political phenomenon, and we need social and political solutions to end it. Many such solutions have been proposed, but all are problematic. One perennial plan is for all nations to yield power to a global institution that can enforce peace. This was the vision that inspired the League of Nations and the UN. But neither the US nor any other major power is likely to entrust its national security to an international entity any time soon. And even if we did, how would we ensure that a global military force does not become repressive?

One encouraging finding to emerge from political science is that democracies rarely, if ever, fight each other. But does that mean democracies such as the US should use military means to force countries with no democratic tradition to accept this form of governance? If history teaches us anything, it is that war often begets more war. Religion has been prescribed as a solution to war and aggression. After all, most religions preach love and forgiveness, and they prohibit killing, at least in principle. But in practice, of course, religion has often inspired rather than inhibited bloodshed.

In his book, Collapse, the anthropologist Jared Diamond argues that many wars, both ancient and modern, spring from mismanagement of environmental resources. He notes, for example, that ethnic conflicts are only the proximate causes of the conflicts that have ravaged Rwanda, Somalia, and other African nations in the last decade. The ultimate cause is that overpopulation has led to deforestation, overgrazing and soil depletion and, hence, a Hobbesian struggle over dwindling resources. But resource scarcity has not played a significant role in other modern conflicts, such as the civil war that raged in the Balkans in the 1990s.

Obviously, ending war will not be easy. War, it seems fair to say, is overdetermined – that is, it can spring from many different causes. Peace, if it is to be permanent, must be overdetermined too. Scientists could help promote peace in two ways: first, by rejecting the notion that warfare is inevitable; and second, by doing much more research on the causes of war and peace. The short-term goal of this research would be finding ways to reduce conflict in the world today, wherever it might occur. The long-term goal would be to identify ways for humanity to achieve permanent disarmament: the elimination of armies, arms, and arms industries.

In The Blank Slate, psychologist Steven Pinker argues for what he calls a “tragic” view of human nature, which accepts that we are limited by our biological heritage. Pinker uses the term “utopian” to describe the belief that we can transcend human nature and create a perfect world. By utopian, Pinker means hopelessly naïve. Many scientists and lay people alike no doubt dismiss the goal of global disarmament as utopian in this sense. These skeptics will argue that we will always need some military force to protect us from our own aggressive instincts; at the very least some transnational organization should always retain a military force, perhaps equipped with nuclear weapons, to deter or suppress attacks from outlaw states or organizations, such as North Korea and al Qaeda.

Certainly total disarmament seems a remote possibility now. But can we really accept armies and armaments, including weapons of mass destruction, as permanent features of civilization? As recently as the late 1980s, global nuclear war still seemed like a distinct possibility. Then, incredibly, the Soviet Union dissolved and the Cold War ended peacefully. Apartheid also ended in South Africa without significant violence, and human rights have advanced elsewhere around the world.

Deep down – perhaps because I have two young children – I have faith that we will solve the problem of war. If the capacity for war is in our genes, as many seem to fear these days, so is the capacity – and the desire – for peace. Even our most hawkish leaders claim that peace is their ultimate goal. As an agnostic, I have a hard time believing in God, but I believe in humanity’s common sense, moral decency and instinct for self-preservation. We will abolish war someday. The only questions are how, and how soon.

John Horgan has written about science for Scientific American, Discover and The New York Times.

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