This month I’d like to talk about our future: what’s happened to homo sapiens so far and what might lay ahead. The idea of the end of war (or even a drastic reduction) probably seems quaint & ridiculous to most. It’s too messianic, and few think swords-into-ploughshares can be achieved without supernatural intervention. It’s too utopian, and from the 20th century we’ve come to recoil at the mere concept of utopia. It’s too naive, and the memory of many failed promises of universal solidarity serve as a reminder. However it’s not that far-fetched:
- War is costly. Even the most militaristic dictatorship rarely attacks on a whim because of the losses involved. If they attack it’s more likely to be because they’ve estimated that they’ll lose, say, 200,000 people and are prepared to pay that price. This is a starting point: few want to go to war for war’s sake (Wahhabists being a notable exception).
- Democracy is anathema to war. As per a BloggingHeads talk I can’t find: when was the last time two democracies went to war with each other? It’s actually an extreme rarity. Democracies go to war with dictatorships. Dictatorships go to war with dictatorships. Combined with the trend of a worldwide democratisation, there’s room for optimism. Yes this could be undone, but it need not be.
- Also from the talk: what are the chances two countries will go to war if they share the same currency? I’d be less surprised if Benedict becomes a Protestant than if 2 EU members go to war. Some ties really do minimise the chance of war greatly, and these ties might just be scalable.
- Despite popular misconception, violence is steadily decreasing. Even taking into account all the atrocities, the 20th century was the most peaceful one on record. Since WWII although civil wars have spiked then sharply fallen, conflicts between two states have remained very low (source).
- Technology can’t be underestimated. It was video footage of Vietnam that fuelled mass protests. In Abu Ghraib, Saddam committed extreme atrocities, once executing hundreds in one day to make room for more. This got little coverage or world indignation. But US-inflicted sexual abuse in the same jail, recorded on mobile phones, created an uproar. Mass distribution did play a part.
- Violence can be caused AND stopped for the simplest reasons. When I’m full I could never assault someone but when I’m hungry, who knows? How much street violence is influenced by attackers simply being hungry? Yes, wars can start over the smallest reasons — but even a seemingly trivial improvement in living standards can have great positive effect.
- “If you ask me why don’t I think it’s a good idea to bomb the Japanese, I’d say, ‘For one thing, because they built my mini-van.’” (Robert Wright). If you’re cynical about the human condition, that’s actually a reason to be optimistic. The more trade becomes globalised and the more selfish people are, the less likely they are to go to war. Here, selfishness and banal consumerism can lead to peace. Which means there’s hope for us yet.
Of course there might be a final nuclear holocaust. But there’s also a real possibility armed conflict decreasing. And the interesting thing is it might be brought about as a side effect of other events. None of the things in the list above are the result of any specific anti-war policy.
8 comments ↓
since this is a topic i’m quite interested in, i’m gonna have to address all your points:
1. War can also bring a lot of profit, not only for the military industry but also the ‘spoils of war’ like business contracts. I don’t know much about economics but it seems that you can just ‘buy out’ a massive financial loss these days.
2. Yes I also came upon this point in a couple of books but what is ‘democracy’ these days? With the amount of corruption that goes on in democracies, who’s to say that once dictatorships are done with that there would not be wars between democracies? Take the USA in Iraq (post Gulf-war). Here a democratic system allowed the invasion of a state without UN approval and based on propaganda. I think peace based on ‘democracies’ is too idealistic.
3. I’m not sure how a common currency is relevant. Once natural resources become more important than money I don’t think people will care what’s in your wallet.
4. I saw that Steven Pinker talk on TED about this. As much as I’d like to support this view, we have developed such powerful weapons that even if there is a decrease right now… the potential for violence is unprecedented. Another point is this: you mention that conflicts between states have remained very low. However, thanks to globalisation (whatever that means) violence these days is intra-state or caused by non-state actors. For a state to openly declare war is impractical.
5. There are two sides to the technology coin. It’s a tool and it can be used constructively as well as destructively. The destructive potential of technology also can’t be underestimated.
6. This is a point I strongly agree with. I’ll mention it at the end.
7. Globalisation, trade.. yes I think that the more we become reliant on others the less likely we are to try to kill them. Selfishness, however, seems to me to be contrary to peace. Excuse the hippy notion, but I think that if people start to truly care about others around them and relate to them this may reduce the me/other distinction and bring out our similarities. People are less likely to support an attack on a population if that population is ‘humanised’, so to speak. In my opinion, this cosmopolitanism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmopolitanism) would make dispute resolution a much more effective alternative to war.
And so this brings me to your point about the cause of violence… which, I think, a lot of pacifists miss. My fave academic in this area is John Burton and I would highly recommend this book by him: http://www.beyondintractability.org/booksummary/10089/
the basis of his argument is that the root of conflict is the inability to meet human needs. Think back to Maslow’s pyramid. The sad thing is that it seems impossible that humans ever run out of needs, but I think that understanding what makes people unhappy (and what ultimately starts off the chain reaction of violence) would give us MUCH more effective anti-war tools than what we have at our disposal today.
Yeah – banal consumerism for peace!
Obey – Conform – Consume!
Ooh, my sarcasm detector needle moved (sweet!)
But beyond that, what are you actually saying?
Call me an old cynic… actually, just call me a cynic and enough with the old… humans are conditioned for war like dogs are conditioned for sniffing other dogs butts. We will always be inclined to fight something.
If we finally achieve a single currency, democratised, banally consuming global society, we’ll soon find an alien race to make war with.
Alan — the problem with that ideas is that violence is already a fraction of what it was at any other point in history (middle ages, ancient civilisations, pre-agricultural times), and the best explanation is that this arises from the social structures.
If all humans are equally predisposed to violence, why is Australia virtually violence-free (comparatively speaking of course) while the Congo has over 10,000 die every month?
Though Australia may attack another country it’s much less likely to do so than say Indonesia — and if other countries become more like Australia I think it can only improve things.
Alex — my point wasn’t that these factors necessarily will lead to a decline in conflict but that they may — and that people should not underestimate their potential to help (although of course like the technology example they can be used to harm as well).
I’ll look at the other points later but the Iraq example — despite the fact that this was without UN approval etc etc, it was still a democracy attacking a dictatorship — if Iraq was a democracy and an active participant in the UN things would have been very different.
One item I didn’t mention was that these democracies require a sane and effective UN — something that we’ve yet to achieve. After all Iraq fired on US planes every day for I think years without anything been done, and committed a whole lot of other violations with no consequences.
I hope you’re right. Like I said, I’m a cynic!
ok back to alex’s points
3 — the common currency means that if italy attacks france for some resource the euro will collapse affecting italy so much that it may no longer be cost effective for italy to attack france
4 — yes, if we go it will probably be because of a wmd. however as you said — the mere fact that a state declaring war is impractical shows there’s been a major change. (i guess my points address inter-country warfare more than civil war)
7 — of course niceness is nicer but the point is that if selfishness is much easier to find and much more likely to be reverted to then a good system will take advantage of this. to paraphrase adam smith, the baker does not get up at 4am out of a love of humanity. or at least the system motivates bakers such that even if they are misanthropic they will still give us our daily bread.
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