Everything one says about war from a liberal and humane point of view – that it is an evil, that it should be stopped, and that while it still happens we should do everything in our power to lessen the harms it causes – is obvious to the point of banality. But this is all nevertheless true, and however banal and clichéd it is to repeat it, I repeat it.
There are some things one can add, however. A survey of the history and causes of war, and reflection on the ethical concerns war raises, suggests a number of points about how the task of lessening the evil of war, and eventually bringing it to an end, might be furthered.
One is that war seems to be far more a matter of how we arrange ourselves politically than it is an outcome of human nature. If most people are traumatised by war, and if almost every idea of human good and flourishing is negated by violence and destruction, loss, grief, and premature death, then war is not an expression of human nature. Anger, aggression and a desire or willingness to fight an opponent on occasion are human characteristics, but the overwhelming evidence of co-operation and mutual interest among members of our essentially social species (think cities, bridges, schools, hospitals, airports, civilisation itself) puts this feature of human psychology in its place, along with other and perhaps allied features such as greed and selfishness. We can all be selfish, we can all be generous; we can all be kind and sometimes unkind; but look around at the streets and buildings of any city, and one sees the marks of mutuality and co-operation more largely and enduringly displayed, even if the marks of humanity’s less appetising sides are visible too.
But the nation state, the tribe, the organised groupings of people between whom conflicts of interest can arise over resources, territory, ideology, religion – in short, the political structures, taken in the broadest sense of ‘political’ – are the units on which war as such is predicated. And war as such is not a saloon bar brawl started and conducted in a flash of aggression. It is a calculated matter organised on a large scale over periods of time in which feelings of anger could not sustain themselves. War is not anger, except at the sharp point of soldier-to-soldier contact; and then only maybe. Aggression is a feeling in an individual, but it is a choice in a state.
If this is right, then one major step to the control of war is adjustment of how international relations are conducted. Long before Richard Cobden in the nineteenth century and Thomas Paine in the late eighteenth century, it was recognised that ties of trade and co-operation are sovereign prophylactics for war. The European Union, a form of co-operation among nations which had been horrendously at each others’ throats for centuries beforehand, is an outstandingly promising example.
Of course, efforts at making international relations work better are indeed made. And they still fail, too often and in too many places. Therefore more has to be done. One step is to deinstitutionalise war. The raising, training and supplying of military forces is a given in almost all states, as if it were as natural as breathing. Government defence contracts play an important part in economies. Military personnel are respected, honoured, applauded: quite rightly, in cases where the defence of the nation or its interests was achieved by their courage and commitment. But one sees how, therefore, the whole matter of military forces, the money for them, the relationship between the arms industry and the economy at large, the encouragement of positive social attitudes to those whose business is war, result in an institutionalisation of the idea of war: it is built into the DNA of the society and the economy. Eisenhower famously warned against the ‘military-industrial complex’ when he left the White House at the end of his presidency in 1961, handing over to John F. Kennedy at a time of high tension between NATO and the Warsaw Pact – yet even then, in the midst of those tensions, the former general could warn against the militarisation of society’s economy and culture.
Eisenhower’s warning came too late and in the wrong circumstances, perhaps, but it still stands as valid in connection with the thought that war should be deinstitutionalised. The idea of war is a too accepted – too thoughtlessly accepted – feature of the very idea of the state and its behaviour. Instead of war being seen as an occasional bitter necessity, its mere possibility is a permanent presence in the budgets, decisions and attitudes of states. Deinstitutionalising the idea of war means changing this assumption.
This task, in turn, requires another. War is romanticised in novels, films and television programmes. War is cosmeticised; television news broadcasts do not show the blood and guts. The millions watching their television screens do not see the full ghastly reality of what is happening – what their own governments might actively be encouraging, for example. Little boys run about the garden making gun noises and being soldiers. Even those films that aim to portray the horror of war are avidly watched and enjoyed because there is romance even in the horror and danger, and both are vicariously enjoyed. Vicariously because they would not be enjoyed in reality.
How about stopping the romanticisation of war, then, by not censoring the news reports on television? How about the aversion therapy of truth – mangled bodies, blown apart children, blood running into gutters, people screaming in pain or terror? How about truth as an antidote to war? This would be really to educate people about war and the realities of war. Words are one thing: one can write about it, and describe horrors – but seeing is really believing. Stop censoring television news. Show the reality.
And then again: the energy, determination, inventiveness and cohesive effort of a people at war – the camaraderie, the solidarity, the sacrifices made and shared – why not transfer this to much better causes, such as the problem of climate change, reducing world poverty, overcoming disease, providing education to all the world’s children, rectifying the unjust situation of women everywhere, fighting human rights abuses, solving the impending water crisis facing the world, resisting conflict rather than engaging in it? There are many better things to which money and energy can be applied, and yet far more of both go into the preparations for war and the conduct of war than to any of these other things. This is madness.
So: deinstitutionalise war. Stop romanticising it. Stop censoring the truth about it. Redirect the energies and solidarities that go into the making of war far more than they go into the making of things of peace. Let us educate ourselves about the realities and costs of war, without pussy-footing about. Let us wean our economies and societies off the addiction to the idea that things military are a commonplace necessity. Let us be hard-nosed about it: that it is only the presence of bad people elsewhere that requires us to be ready for our defence, but that war as an instrument of anything but defence is totally, completely, humanly, morally unacceptable: a crime of the blackest kind on the part of those who cause it.
The obverse of this claim is that there are therefore only two justifications for making war. They are self-defence against aggression, and defence of those who cannot defend themselves against aggression.
If there is one key to the entire question of war, it is justice. A fair world would be a far less conflicted one. Inequality and injustice are ripe causes of social unrest within a society; they have analogues in the international sphere which are heady prompts for conflict.
Organisations like the UN and many others are indeed engaged in trying to make the world a fairer and more co-operative place, thereby promoting peace and the conditions for peace. So this is already being tried. But cynics observe that the efforts do not seem very successful. One can say two things in response. One is: ‘yet’. They might not yet seem to be successful. Give it more time: do not give up. The other is: maybe the cynics are too hasty; perhaps these organisations and their work have indeed limited the amount of conflict that might otherwise have occurred had they and their efforts not existed. Indeed it is a certainty that this is so. Cynicism is therefore misplaced. The human story is a work in progress.
The marks of progress in human affairs are many and varied. Undoubtedly, however, the consignment of war to history will be one of the greatest and most laudable such marks. The work of ending war is in hand; it is long, and arduous – a ‘work of long breath’ as the French say (un ouvrage de longue haleine). It takes, and will continue to demand, even more resolution, courage and determination than going to war takes. That is a fact. It is where the real heroism of the human species will be displayed.
Meanwhile we are still having to live with war, and therefore have a battle to fight: to prevent it whenever possible, to limit it if not, to press for humanitarian restraint when it happens, to hold warmakers to account, to argue and educate against it always. As the technologies of war grow ever more sophisticated and destructive so the truth enunciated by John F. Kennedy comes ominously closer: that if we do not end war, it will end us. Perhaps one day it will. Or perhaps one day everything recounted in the pages of this book will be the stuff of old and outdated things, as a book about witchcraft or astrology might now be – past nonsense, from irrational times, when folly too often reigned.
I hope so.