The Case for War

War is the supreme test of man, in which he rises to heights never approached in any other activity.

--General George S. Patton

The arguments against war are too familiar to need repeating. In the dream of peace, they have been steadily heard along every step of mankind's bloody and belligerent course. And yet war, not peace, has been mankind's most faithful companion. In 35 centuries of recorded history, only one year out of 15 has not been drenched by the blood of the battlefield. Today, a world that presumably cherishes peace as fervently as ever nevertheless keeps 22 million men under arms--many of them, as in Viet Nam and the Middle East, actively engaged in combat. Is there something in what Patton says? In short, can a case be made for war?

The distressing answer is yes; civilization itself is inconceivable without it. This, at any rate, is the conviction of British Sociologist Stanislav Andreski,* one of a number of scientists who are willing to play the devil's advocate for Mars. Such agencies as the Rand Corp., the Hudson Institute and others annually spend millions exploring Andreski's thesis. For war is group rather than individual behavior; and since it is undeniably a fixture of human society, the question that Andreski implies begs for an answer: What purposes can war possibly serve?

"It is an unpleasant truth," Andreski writes, "that, human nature being what it is, without war civilization would still be divided into small bands wandering in the forests and jungles." He contends that "advanced civilization with extensive division of labor can only arise within a large and fairly dense population engaged in peaceful exchange of goods and services. There could be only one way in which small tribes could be welded into states and small states into large ones: namely, conquest."

Moreover, he credits war with producing, or contributing to many of civilization's most treasured fruits. Among them:

INDUSTRIALIZATION. "If we look at the spread of industrial civilization throughout the world, we find that its chief cause was the overwhelming military superiority of the industrialized over unindustrialized states." CIVIL GOVERNMENT. Except for the hunt, intertribal warfare was mankind's first significantly large collective action. In this respect, Andreski says, the organization required to set up armies served as a useful model for government. Andreski cites as one example the development of the infantry phalanx by the ancient Greeks. Individual force was pooled into collective force--a lesson writ large in the philosophy of mass democracy. DEMOCRACY. War is a great leveler. " Under certain circumstances," says Andreski. "the impact of war undermines hereditary privileges, which lower the efficiency of the armed forces, and thus diminishes inequality between classes." In Prussia, that bellicose 19th century European state, "the introduction of general military service led to the abolition of serfdom: later to the establishment of a parliament, and eventually to the setting up of the first scheme of industrial insurance in the world." Andreski also maintains, though less persuasively, that universal suffrage was one of the products of the first World War. NATIONALISM. Conquest, says Andreski, not only demolishes states but also builds them. All of today's large states were traced by war--and are maintained by military strength. No really independent state has ever long survived without military power and a willingness to use it. CULTURE AND THE ARTS. "At all times," says Andreski, "weapons were the most advanced gadgets which any civilization has possessed." More important, states swollen by conquest can support a leisure class without which, the author maintains, science and the arts might never have arisen. He points out that technological progress makes its greatest strides under the prod of war, from the stirrup designed by 2nd century Asian warrior horsemen to the sophisticated creations of the last two world wars. From the 1916 tank evolved the bulldozing tractor. World War II was a veritable cornucopia: the first aerosol bomb, radar, the jet aircraft engine, and the ballistic missiles that, a scant generation later, took man to the moon. And of course that dubious bequest, thermonuclear energy leashed in the Bomb. That weapon redefined war. For the first time, man held in his hands a weapon that could destroy the earth and all living things upon it--a weapon so powerful that human reason would refuse to wield it. So, in any event, goes the argument of those who see in the H-bomb mankind's first true hope of peace. But Andreski and others are gloomy about its potential as a deterrent. As men and weapons have multiplied, so have wars. "Our own century," writes Andreski, "has so far been much more warlike than its predecessor." The evidence bears him out: since 1900, almost a 100 million men have died in 100 wars--compared with 3,845,000 in the 19th century.

Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist Jerome D. Frank, who shares many of Andreski's views, is convinced that a major nuclear exchange is inevitable unless nations stop building nuclear arsenals. "Nothing is more certain and inexorable than the law of chance," Frank writes in Sanity & Survival, his recent study of human aggression. "Present policies involve a continuing risk of nuclear war; the longer the risk continues, the greater the probability of war; and if the probability continues long enough, it approaches certainty."

Future Like the Past. After 30 years of studying war and its causes, Gaston Bouthoul, director of Paris' Institut Francais de Polemologie (from the Greek polemos or war, and logos, study), confesses that he is no nearer an understanding of it than when he began. What he sees in the future is a repetition of the past. Bouthoul foresees war over Siberia, for example, as China increasingly competes with Russia for one of the world's last unexploited land masses; or in the mystifying "encirclement psychosis," as he calls it, manifested by the world's three powers: the Soviet Union, the United States and Communist China.

Why do such men as Andreski, Frank and Bouthoul present the case for war? Not because they believe in war--certainly none of them do--but because they entertain the view that war is an inevitable adjunct, and in many ways the architect, of the civilization that man has built. When asked if he really believes that war is beneficial, Andreski replies: "That depends on whether you think technological civilization is beneficial. Personally, I like it, but I'm not convinced it is a viable creation. It may destroy itself." Destruction was the first and still remains the cardinal function of war as such--and therein lies the true motive of these devil's advocates. By stating the case for war, they are stating the case against mankind.

* A conviction for which he owes much to such 19th century sociologists as Herbert Spencer and Ludwig Gurnplowicz, both of whom, without espousing war, recognized its value in shaping human civilization. "Conquest and the satisfaction of needs through the labor of the conquered," Gurnplowicz wrote, "is the great theme of human history."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.