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2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<div id="conspiracy">
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<p>Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
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2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
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From: pierce@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce)
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Subject: "Report from Iron Mountain" (an electronic version) - LONG
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Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
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Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 18:49:55 GMT</p>
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<p>f_gautjw@ccsvax.sfasu.edu writes:</p>
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<p>>inalienable rights of man to one more akin to that expressed by
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>Leonard Lewin in his truer than life novel "Report from Iron Mountain":
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>
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>The organizing principle of any society is for war. The
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>basic authority of a modern state over its people resides
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>in its war powers.</p>
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2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>THE REPORT OF THE <span class="ORG" title="ORG">SPECIAL</span> STUDY GROUP</p>
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<p>Letter of Transmittal</p>
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<p>To the convener of this group:</p>
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<p>Attached is the Report of the Special Study Group established by
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you in August, 1963, 1) to consider the problems involved in the
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contingency of a transition to a general condition of peace, and
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2) to recommend procedures for dealing with this contingency. For
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the convenience of nontechnical readers we have elected to submit
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our statistical supporting data, totaling 604 exhibits, separately,
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as well as a preliminary manual of the "peace games" method devised
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during the course of our study.</p>
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<p>We have completed our assignment to the best of our ability, subject
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to the limitations of time and resources available to us. Our
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conclusions of fact and our recommendations are unanimous; those
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of us who differ in certain secondary respects from the findings
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set forth herein do not consider these differences sufficient to
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warrant the filing of a minority report. It is our earnest hope
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that the fruits of our deliberations will be of value to our
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government in its efforts to provide leadership to the nation in
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solving the complex and far-reaching problems we have examined,
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and that our recommendations for subsequent Presidential action in
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this area will be adopted.</p>
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<p>Because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the establishment
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of this Group, and in view of the nature of its finding, we do not
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recommend that this Report be released for publication. It is our
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affirmative judgement that such actions would not be in the public
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interest. The uncertain advantages of public discussion of our
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conclusions and recommendations are, in our opinion, greatly
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outweighed by the clear and predictable danger of a crisis in public
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confidence which untimely publication of this Report might be
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expected to provoke. The likelihood that a lay reader, unexposed
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to the exigencies of higher political or military responsibility,
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will misconstrue the purpose of this project, and the intent of
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its participants, seems obvious. We urge that circulation of this
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Report be closely restricted to those whose responsibilities require
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that they be apprised of its contents.</p>
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<p>We deeply regret that the necessity of anonymity, a prerequisite
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to our Group's unhindered pursuit of its objectives, precludes
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proper acknowledgement of our gratitude to the many persons in and
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out of government who contributed so greatly to our work.</p>
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<p>{For the Special Study Group</p>
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<p>[signature withheld]</p>
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<p>30 September, 1966}</p>
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<p>Introduction</p>
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<p>The report which follows summarizes the results of a two-and-a-half-year study of the broad problems to be anticipated in
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the event of a general transformation of American society to a
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condition lacking its most critical current characteristics: its
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capability and readiness to make war when doing so is judged
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necessary or desirable by its political leadership.</p>
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2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>Our work has been predicated on the belief that some kind of general
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peace may soon be negotiable. The {de facto} admission of Communist
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China into the United Nations now appears to be only a few years
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away at most. It has become increasingly manifest that conflicts
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of American national interest with those of China and the Soviet
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Union are susceptible of political solution, despite the superficial
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contraindications of the current Vietnam war, of the threats of an
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attack on China, and of the necessarily hostile tenor of day-to-day
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foreign policy statements. It is also obvious that differences
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involving other nations can be readily resolved by the three great
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powers whenever they arrive at a stable peace among themselves. It
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is not necessary, for the purposes of our study, to assume that a
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general detente of this sort {will} come about - and we make no
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such argument - but only that it {may}.</p>
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2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>It is surely no exaggeration to say that a condition of general
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world peace would lead to changes in the social structures of the
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nations of the world of unparalleled and revolutionary magnitude.
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The economic impact of general disarmament, to name only the most
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obvious consequence of peace, would revise the production and
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distribution patterns of the globe to a degree that would make the
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changes of the past fifty years seem insignificant. Political,
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sociological, cultural, and ecological changes would be equally
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far-reaching. What has motivated our study of these contingencies
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has been the growing sense of thoughtful men in and out of government
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that the world is totally unprepared to meet the demands of such
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a situation.</p>
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2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>We had originally planned, when our study was initiated, to address
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ourselves to these two broad questions and their components: {What
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can be expected if peace comes? What should we be prepared to do
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about it?} But as our investigation proceeded it became apparent
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that certain other questions had to be faced. What, for instance,
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are the real functions of war in modern societies, beyond the
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ostensible ones of defending and advancing the "national interests"
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of nations? In the absence of war, what other institutions exist
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or might be devised to fulfill these functions? Granting that a
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"peaceful" settlement of disputes is within the range of current
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international relationships, is the abolition of war, in the broad
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sense, really possible? If so, is it necessarily desirable, in
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terms of social stability? If not, what can be done to improve the
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operation of our social system in respect to its war-readiness?</p>
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<p>The word {peace}, as we have used it in the following pages,
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describes a permanent, or quasi-permanent, condition entirely free
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>from the national exercise, or contemplation, of any form of the
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organized social violence, or threat of violence, generally known
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as war. It implies total and general disarmament. It is not used
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to describe the more familiar condition of "cold war," "armed peace,
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" or other mere respite, long or short, from armed conflict. Nor
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is it used simply as a synonym for the political settlement of
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international differences. The magnitude of modern means of mass
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destruction and the speed of modern communications require the
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unqualified working definition given above; only a generation ago
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such an absolute description would have seemed utopian rather than
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pragmatic. Today, any modification of this definition would render
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it almost worthless for our purpose. By the same standard, we have
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used the word {war} to apply interchangeably to conventional ("hot")
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war, to the general condition of war preparation or war readiness,
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and to the general "war system." The sense intended is made clear
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in context.</p>
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<p>The first section of our Report deals with its scope and with the
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assumptions on which our study was based. The second considers the
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effects of disarmament on the economy, the subject of most peace
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research to date. The third takes up so-called "disarmament scenarios"
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which have been proposed. The fourth, fifth, and sixth examine the
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nonmilitary functions of war and the problems they raise for a
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viable transition to peace; here will be found some indications of
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the true dimensions of the problem, not previously coordinated in
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any other study. In the seventh section we summarize our findings,
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and in the eighth we set forth our recommendations for what we
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believe to be a practical and necessary course of action.</p>
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<p>SECTION 1: Scope of the Study</p>
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<p>When the Special Study Group was established in August, 1963, its
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members were instructed to govern their deliberations in accordance
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with three principal criteria. Briefly stated, they were these:
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1) military-style objectivity; 2) avoidance of preconceived value
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assumptions; 3) inclusion of all relevant areas of theory and data.</p>
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<p>These guideposts are by no means as obvious as they may appear at
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first glance, and we believe it necessary to indicate clearly how
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they were to inform our work. For they express succinctly the
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limitations of previous "peace studies," and imply the nature of
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both government and unofficial dissatisfaction with these earlier
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efforts. It is not our intention here to minimize the significance
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of the work of our predecessors, or to belittle the quality of
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their contributions. What we have tried to do, and believe we have
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done, is extend their scope. We hope that our conclusions may serve
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in turn as a starting point for still broader and more detailed
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examinations of every aspect of the problems of transition to peace
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and of the questions which must be answered before such a transition
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can be allowed to get under way.</p>
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<p>It is a truism that objectivity is more often an intention expressed
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than an attitude achieved, but the intention - conscious, unambiguous,
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and constantly self-critical - is a precondition to its achievement.
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We believe it no accident that we were charged to use a "military
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contingency" model for our study, and we owe a considerable debt
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to the civilian war planning agencies for their pioneering work in
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the objective examination of the contingencies of nuclear war.
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There is no such precedent in peace studies. Much of the usefulness
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of even the most elaborate and carefully reasoned programs for
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economic conversion to peace, for example, has been vitiated by a
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wishful eagerness to demonstrate that peace is not only possible,
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but even cheap or easy. One official report is replete with references
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to the critical role of "dynamic optimism" on economic developments,
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and goes on to submit, as evidence, that it "would be hard to
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imagine that the American people would not respond very positively
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to an agreed and safeguarded program to substitute an international
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rule of law and order," etc. [1] Another line of argument frequently
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taken is that disarmament would entail comparatively little disruption
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of the economy, since it need only be partial; we will deal with
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this approach later. Yet genuine objectivity in war studies is
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often criticized as inhuman. As Herman Kahn, the writer on strategic
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studies best known to the general public, put it: "Critics frequently
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object to the icy rationality of the Hudson Institute, the Rand
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Corporation, and other such organizations. I'm always tempted to
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ask in reply, 'Would you prefer a warm, human error? Do you feel
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better with a nice emotional mistake?'" [2] And, as Secretary of
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Defense Robert S. McNamara has pointed out, in reference to facing
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up to the possibility of nuclear war, "Some people are afraid even
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to look over the edge. But in a thermonuclear war we cannot afford
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any political acrophobia." [3] Surely it should be self-evident
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that this applies equally to the opposite prospect, but so far no
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one has taken more than a timid glance over the brink of peace.</p>
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<p>An intention to avoid preconceived value judgments is if anything
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even more productive of self-delusion. We claim no immunity, as
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individuals, from this type of bias, but we have made a continuously
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self-conscious effort to deal with the problems of peace without,
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for example, considering that a condition of peace is {per se}
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"good" or "bad." This has not been easy, but it has been obligatory;
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to our knowledge, it has not been done before. Previous studies
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have taken the desirability of peace, the importance of human life,
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the superiority of democratic institutions, the greatest "good"
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for the greatest number, the "dignity" of the individual, the
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desirability of maximum health and longevity, and other such wishful
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premises as axiomatic values necessary for the justification of a
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study of peace issues. We have not found them so. We have attempted
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to apply the standards of physical science to our thinking, the
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principal characteristic of which is not quantification, as is
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popularly believed, but that, in Whitehead's words, "... it ignores
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all judgments of value; for instance, all esthetic and moral
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judgments." [4] Yet it is obvious that any serious investigation
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of a problem, however "pure," must be informed by some normative
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standard. In this case it has been simply the survival of human
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society in general, of American society in particular, and, as a
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corollary to survival, the stability of this society.</p>
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<p>It is interesting, we believe, to note that the most dispassionate
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planners of nuclear strategy also recognize that the stability of
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society is the one bedrock value that {cannot} be avoided. Secretary
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McNamara has defended the need for American nuclear superiority on
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the grounds that it "makes possible a strategy designed to preserve
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the fabric of our societies if war should occur." [5] A former
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member of the Department of State policy planning staff goes further.
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"A more precise word for peace, in terms of the practical world,
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is stability. ... Today the great nuclear panoplies are essential
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elements in such stability as exists. Our present purpose must be
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to continue the process of learning how to live with them." [6]
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We, of course, do not equate stability with peace, but we accept
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it as the one common assumed objective of both peace and war.</p>
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2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>The third criterion - breadth - has taken us still farther afield
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>from peace studies made to date. It is obvious to any layman that
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the economic patterns of a warless world will be drastically
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different from those we live with today, and it is equally obvious
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that the political relationships of nations will not be those we
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have learned to take for granted, sometimes described as a global
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version of the adversary system of our common law. But the social
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implications of peace extend far beyond its putative effects on
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national economies and international relations. As we shall show,
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the relevance of peace and war to the internal political organization
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of societies, to the sociological relationships of their members,
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to psychological motivations, to ecological processes, and to
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cultural values is equally profound. More important, it is equally
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critical in assaying the consequences of a transition to peace,
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and in determining the feasibility of any transition at all.</p>
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2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>It is not surprising that these less obvious factors have been
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2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
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generally ignored in peace research. They have not lent themselves
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to systematic analysis. They have been difficult, perhaps impossible,
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to measure with any degree of assurance that estimates of their
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effects could be depended on. They are "intangibles," but only in
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the sense that abstract concepts in mathematics are intangible
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compared to those which can be measured, at least superficially;
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and international relationships can be verbalized, like law, into
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logical sequences.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>We do not claim that we have discovered an infallible way of
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2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
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measuring these other factors, or of assigning them precise weights
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in the equation of transition. But we believe we have taken their
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relative importance into account to this extent: we have removed
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them from the category of the "intangible," hence scientifically
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suspect and therefore somehow of secondary importance, and brought
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them out into the realm of the objective. The result, we believe,
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provides a context of realism for the discussion of the issues
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relating to the possible transition to peace which up to now has
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been missing.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>This is not to say that we presume to have found the answers we
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
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were seeking. But we believe that our emphasis on breadth of scope
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has made it at least possible to begin to understand the questions.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>SECTION 2: Disarmament and the Economy</p>
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<p>In this section we shall briefly examine some of the common features
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
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of the studies that have been published dealing with one or another
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aspect of the expected impact of disarmament on the American economy.
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Whether disarmament is considered as a by-product of peace or as
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its precondition, its effect on the national economy will in either
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case be the most immediately felt of its consequences. The quasi-mensurable quality of economic manifestations has given rise to
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more detailed speculation in this area than in any other.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>General agreement prevails with respect to the more important
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
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economic problems that general disarmament would raise. A short
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survey of these problems, rather than a detailed critique of their
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comparative significance, is sufficient for our purposes in this
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Report.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>The first factor is that of size. The "world war industry," as one
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2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
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writer [7] has aptly called it, accounts for approximately a tenth
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of the output of the world's total economy. Although this figure
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is subject to fluctuation, the causes of which are themselves
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subject to regional variation, it tends to hold fairly steady. The
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United States, as the world's richest nation, not only accounts
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for the largest single share of this expense, currently upward of
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$60 billion a year, but also "... has devoted a higher {proportion}
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[emphasis added] of its gross national product to its military
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|
establishment than any other major free world nation. This was true
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|
even before our increased expenditures in Southeast Asia." [8]
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|
Plans for economic conversion that minimize the economic magnitude
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|
of the problem do so only by rationalizing, however persuasively,
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|
the maintenance of a substantial residual military budget under
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some euphemized classification.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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|
<p>Conversion of military expenditures to other purposes entails a
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2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
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|
number of difficulties. The most serious stems from the degree of
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|
high specialization that characterizes modern war production, best
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|
exemplified in nuclear and missile technology. This constituted no
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|
fundamental problem after World War II, nor did the question of
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|
free-market consumer demand for "conventional" items of consumption
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|
- those goods and service consumers had already been conditioned
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|
to require. Today's situation is qualitatively different in both
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|
respects.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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|
<p>This inflexibility is geographical and occupational, as well as
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
industrial, a fact which has led most analysts of the economic
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|
|
impact of disarmament to focus their attention on phased plans for
|
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|
|
the relocation of war industry personnel and capital installations
|
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|
|
as much as on proposals for developing new patterns of consumption.
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|
One serious flaw common to such plans is the kind called in the
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|
|
natural sciences the "macroscopic error." An implicit presumption
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|
is made that a total national plan for conversion differs from a
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|
community program to cope with the shutting down of a "defense
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|
|
facility" only in degree. We find no reason to believe that this
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|
is the case, nor that a general enlargement of such local programs,
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|
however well thought out in terms of housing, occupational retraining,
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|
and the like, can be applied on a national scale. A national economy
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|
can absorb almost any number of subsidiary reorganizations within
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|
its total limits, providing there is no basic change in its own
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|
structure. General disarmament, which would require such basic
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|
|
changes, lends itself to no valid smaller-scale analogy.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Even more questionable are the models proposed for the retraining
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of labor for nonarmaments occupation. Putting aside for the moment
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|
|
the unsolved questions dealing with the nature of new distribution
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|
|
patterns - retraining for what? - the increasingly specialized job
|
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|
skills associated with war industry production are further depreciated
|
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|
by the accelerating inroads of the industrial techniques loosely
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|
|
described as "automation." It is not too much to say that general
|
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|
|
disarmament would require the scrapping of a critical proportion
|
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|
|
of the most highly developed occupational specialties in the economy.
|
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|
The political difficulties inherent in such an "adjustment" would
|
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|
|
make the outcries resulting from the closing of a few obsolete
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|
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|
|
military and naval installations in 1964 sound like a whisper.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>In general, discussion of the problems of conversion have been
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
characterized by an unwillingness to recognize its special quality.
|
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|
|
This is best exemplified by the 1965 report of the Ackley Committee.
|
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|
|
[9] One critic has tellingly pointed out that it blindly assumes
|
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|
|
that "... nothing in the arms economy - neither its size, nor its
|
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|
|
geographical concentration, nor its highly specialized nature, nor
|
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|
|
the peculiarities of its market, nor the special nature of much of
|
|
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|
|
its labor force - endows it with any uniqueness when the necessary
|
|
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|
|
time of adjustment comes." [10]</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Let us assume, however, despite the lack of evidence that a viable
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
program for conversion can be developed in the framework of the
|
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|
|
existing economy, that the problems noted above can be solved. What
|
|
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|
|
proposals have been offered for utilizing the productive capabilities
|
|
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|
|
that disarmament would presumably release?</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The most commonly held theory is simply that general economic
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
reinvestment would absorb the greater part of these capabilities.
|
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|
Even though it is now largely taken for granted (and even by today's
|
|
|
|
|
equivalent of traditional laissez-faire economists) that unprecedented
|
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|
|
government assistance (and concomitant government control) will be
|
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|
|
needed to solve the "structural" problems of transition, a general
|
|
|
|
|
attitude of confidence prevails that new consumption patterns will
|
|
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|
|
take up the slack. What is less clear is the nature of these
|
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|
|
patterns.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>One school of economists has it that these patterns will develop
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
on their own. It envisages the equivalent of the arms budget being
|
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|
|
returned, under careful control, to the consumer, in the form of
|
|
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|
|
tax cuts. Another, recognizing the undeniable need for increased
|
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|
"consumption" in what is generally considered the public sector of
|
|
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|
|
the economy, stresses vastly increased government spending in such
|
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|
|
areas of national concern as health, education, mass transportation,
|
|
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|
|
low-cost housing, water supply, control of the physical environment,
|
|
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|
|
and, stated generally, "poverty."</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The mechanisms proposed for controlling the transition to an
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
arms-free economy are also traditional - changes in both sides of
|
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|
|
the federal budget, manipulation of interest rates, etc. We
|
|
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|
|
acknowledge the undeniable value of fiscal tools in a normal cyclical
|
|
|
|
|
economy, where they provide leverage to accelerate or brake an
|
|
|
|
|
existing trend. Their more committed proponents, however, tend to
|
|
|
|
|
lose sight of the fact that there is a limit to the power of these
|
|
|
|
|
devices to influence fundamental economic forces. They can provide
|
|
|
|
|
new incentives in the economy, but they cannot in themselves
|
|
|
|
|
transform the production of a billion dollars' worth of missiles
|
|
|
|
|
a year to the equivalent in food, clothing, prefabricated houses,
|
|
|
|
|
or television sets. At bottom, they reflect the economy; they do
|
|
|
|
|
not motivate it.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>More sophisticated, and less sanguine, analysts contemplate the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
diversion of the arms budget to a nonmilitary system equally remote
|
|
|
|
|
>from the market economy. What the "pyramid-builders" frequently
|
|
|
|
|
suggest is the expansion of space-research programs to the dollar
|
|
|
|
|
level of current armaments expenditures. This approach has the
|
|
|
|
|
superficial merit of reducing the size of the problem of transferability
|
|
|
|
|
of resources, but introduces other difficulties, which we will take
|
|
|
|
|
up in section 6.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Without singling out any one of the several major studies of the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
expected impact of disarmament on the economy for special criticism,
|
|
|
|
|
we can summarize our objections to them in general terms as follows:</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>1. No proposed program for economic conversion to disarmament
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
sufficiently takes into account the unique magnitude of the required
|
|
|
|
|
adjustments it would entail.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>2. Proposals to transform arms production into a beneficent scheme
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of public works are more the products of wishful thinking than of
|
|
|
|
|
realistic understanding of the limits of our existing economic
|
|
|
|
|
system.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>3. Fiscal and monetary measures are inadequate as controls for the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
process of transition to an arms-free economy.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>4. Insufficient attention has been paid to the political acceptability
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of the objectives of the proposed conversion models, as well as of
|
|
|
|
|
the political means to be employed in effectuating a transition.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>5. No serious consideration has been given, in any proposed conversion
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
plan, to the fundamental nonmilitary function of war and armaments
|
|
|
|
|
in modern society, nor has any explicit attempt been made to devise
|
|
|
|
|
a viable substitute for it. This criticism will be developed in
|
|
|
|
|
sections 5 and 6.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>SECTION 3: Disarmament Scenarios</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>Scenarios, as they have come to be called, are hypothetical
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
constructions of future events. Inevitably, they are composed of
|
|
|
|
|
varying proportions of established fact, reasonable inference, and
|
|
|
|
|
more or less inspired guess-work. Those which have been suggested
|
|
|
|
|
as model procedures for effectuating international arms control
|
|
|
|
|
and eventual disarmament are necessarily imaginative, although
|
|
|
|
|
closely reasoned; in this respect they resemble the "war games"
|
|
|
|
|
analyses of the Rand Corporation, with which they share a common
|
|
|
|
|
conceptual origin.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>All such scenarios that have been seriously put forth imply dependence
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
on bilateral or multilateral agreement between the great powers.
|
|
|
|
|
In general, they call for a progressive phasing out of gross
|
|
|
|
|
armaments, military forces, weapons, and weapons technology,
|
|
|
|
|
coordinated with elaborate matching procedures of verification,
|
|
|
|
|
inspection, and machinery for the settlement of international
|
|
|
|
|
disputes. It should be noted that even proponents of unilateral
|
|
|
|
|
disarmament qualify their proposals with an implied requirement of
|
|
|
|
|
reciprocity, very much in the manner of a scenario of graduated
|
|
|
|
|
response in nuclear war. The advantage of unilateral initiative
|
|
|
|
|
lies in its political value as an expression of good faith, as well
|
|
|
|
|
as in its diplomatic function as a catalyst for formal disarmament
|
|
|
|
|
negotiations.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The READ model for disarmament (developed by the Research Program
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
on Economic Adjustments to Disarmament) is typical of these scenarios.
|
|
|
|
|
It is a twelve-year-program, divided into three-year stages. Each
|
|
|
|
|
stage includes a separate phase of: reduction of armed forces;
|
|
|
|
|
cutbacks of weapons production, inventories, and foreign military
|
|
|
|
|
bases; development of international inspection procedures and
|
|
|
|
|
control conventions; and the building up of a sovereign international
|
|
|
|
|
disarmament organization. It anticipates a net matching decline in
|
|
|
|
|
U.S. defense expenditures of only somewhat more than half the 1965
|
|
|
|
|
level, but a necessary redeployment of some five-sixths of the
|
|
|
|
|
defense-dependent labor force.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The economic implications assigned by their authors to various
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
disarmament scenarios diverge widely. The more conservative models,
|
|
|
|
|
like that cited above, emphasize economic as well as military
|
|
|
|
|
prudence in postulating elaborate fail-safe disarmament agencies,
|
|
|
|
|
which themselves require expenditures substantially substituting
|
|
|
|
|
for those of the displaced war industries. Such programs stress
|
|
|
|
|
the advantages of the smaller economic adjustment entailed. [11]
|
|
|
|
|
Others emphasize, on the contrary, the magnitude (and the opposite
|
|
|
|
|
advantages) of the savings to be achieved from disarmament. One
|
|
|
|
|
widely read analysis [12] estimates the annual cost of the inspection
|
|
|
|
|
function of general disarmament throughout the world as only between
|
|
|
|
|
two and three percent of current military expenditures. Both types
|
|
|
|
|
of plan tend to deal with the anticipated problem of economic
|
|
|
|
|
reinvestment only in the aggregate. We have seen no proposed
|
|
|
|
|
disarmament sequence that correlates the phasing out of specific
|
|
|
|
|
kinds of military spending with specific new forms of substitute
|
|
|
|
|
spending.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Without examining disarmament scenarios in greater detail, we may
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
characterize them with these general comments:</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>1. Given genuine agreement of intent among the great powers, the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
scheduling of arms control and elimination presents no inherently
|
|
|
|
|
insurmountable procedural problems. Any of several proposed sequences
|
|
|
|
|
might serve as the basis for multilateral agreement or for the
|
|
|
|
|
first step in unilateral arms reduction.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>2. No major power can proceed with such a program, however, until
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
it has developed an economic conversion plan fully integrated with
|
|
|
|
|
each phase of disarmament. No such plan has yet been developed in
|
|
|
|
|
the United States.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>3. Furthermore, disarmament scenarios, like proposals for economic
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
conversion, make no allowance for the nonmilitary functions of war
|
|
|
|
|
in modern societies, and offer no surrogate for these necessary
|
|
|
|
|
functions. One partial exception is a proposal for the "unarmed
|
|
|
|
|
forces of the United States," which we will consider in section 6.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>SECTION 4: War and Peace as Social Systems</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>We have dealt only sketchily with proposed disarmament scenarios
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
and economic analyses, but the reason for our seemingly casual
|
|
|
|
|
dismissal of so much serious and sophisticated work lies in no
|
|
|
|
|
disrespect for its competence. It is rather a question of relevance.
|
|
|
|
|
To put it plainly, all these program, however detailed and well
|
|
|
|
|
developed, are abstractions. The most carefully reasoned disarmament
|
|
|
|
|
sequence inevitably reads more like the rules of a game or a
|
|
|
|
|
classroom exercise in logic than like a prognosis of real events
|
|
|
|
|
in the real world. This is as true of today's complex proposals as
|
|
|
|
|
it was of the Abbe de St. Pierre's "Plan for Perpetual Peace in
|
|
|
|
|
Europe" 250 years ago.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>Some essential element has clearly been lacking in all these schemes.
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
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One of our first tasks was to try to bring this missing quality
|
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into definable focus, and we believe we have succeeded in doing
|
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|
so. We find that at the heart of every peace study we have examined
|
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|
- from the modest technological proposal (e.g., to convert a poison
|
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|
|
gas plant to the production of "socially useful" equivalents) to
|
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|
the most elaborate scenario for universal peace in our time - lies
|
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one common fundamental misconception. It is the source of the miasma
|
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|
of unreality surrounding such plans. {It is the incorrect assumption
|
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that war, as an institution, is subordinate to the social systems
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|
it is believed to serve.}</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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<p>This misconception, although profound and far-reaching, is entirely
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
comprehensible. Few social cliches are so unquestioningly accepted
|
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as the notion that war is an extension of diplomacy (or of politics,
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|
|
or of the pursuit of economic objectives). If this were true, it
|
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would be wholly appropriate for economists and political theorists
|
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|
to look on the problems of transition to peace as essentially
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|
mechanical or procedural - as indeed they do, treating them as
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logistic corollaries of the settlement of national conflicts of
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interest. If this were true, there would be no real substance to
|
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|
the difficulties of transition. For it is evident that even in
|
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today's world there exists no conceivable conflict of interest,
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|
real or imaginary, between nations or between social forces within
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nation, that cannot be resolved without recourse to war - {if} such
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resolution were assigned a priority of social value. And if this
|
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were true, the economic analyses and disarmament proposals we have
|
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referred to, plausible and well conceived as they may be, would
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not inspire, as they do, an inescapable sense of indirection.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>The point is that the cliche is not true, and the problems of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
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transition are indeed substantive rather than merely procedural.
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Although war is "used" as an instrument of national and social
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|
policy, the fact that a society is organized for any degree of
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readiness for war supersedes its political and economic structure.
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War itself is the basic social system, within which other secondary
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modes of social organization conflict or conspire. It is the system
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which has governed most human societies of record, as it is today.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Once this is correctly understood, the true magnitude of the problems
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
entailed in a transition to peace - itself a social system, but
|
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|
|
without precedent except in a few simple preindustrial societies
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|
- becomes apparent. At the same time, some of the puzzling superficial
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|
|
contradictions of modern societies can then be readily rationalized.
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|
The "unnecessary" size and power of the world war industry; the
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|
|
preeminence of the military establishment in every society, whether
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|
|
open or concealed; the exemption of military or paramilitary
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|
institutions from the accepted social and legal standards for
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|
behavior required elsewhere in the society; the successful operation
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|
of the armed forces and the armaments producers entirely outside
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|
the framework of each nation's economic ground rules: these and
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|
other ambiguities closely associated with the relationship of war
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|
to society are easily clarified, once the priority of war-making
|
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|
potential as the principal structuring force in society is accepted.
|
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Economic systems, political philosophies, and corpora jures serve
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and extend the war system, not vice versa.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>It must be emphasized that the precedence of a society's war-making
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
potential over its other characteristics is not the result of the
|
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|
"threat" presumed to exist at any one time from other societies.
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|
This is the reverse of the basic situation; "threats" against the
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|
"national interest" are usually created or accelerated to meet the
|
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|
|
changing needs of the war system. Only in comparatively recent
|
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|
times has it been considered politically expedient to euphemize
|
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|
|
war budgets as "defense" requirements. The necessity for governments
|
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|
|
to distinguish between "aggression" (bad) and "defense" (good) has
|
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|
|
been a by-product of rising literacy and rapid communication. The
|
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|
|
distinction is tactical only, a concession to the growing inadequacy
|
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|
|
of ancient war-organizing political rationales.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Wars are not "caused" by international conflicts of interest. Proper
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
logical sequence would make it more often accurate to say that
|
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|
war-making societies require - and thus bring about - such conflicts.
|
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|
The capacity of a nation to make war expresses the greatest social
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|
power it can exercise; war-making, active or contemplated, is a
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|
|
matter of life and death on the greatest scale subject to social
|
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|
|
control. It should therefore hardly be surprising that the military
|
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|
|
institutions in each society claim its highest priorities.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>We find further that most of the confusion surrounding the myth
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
that war-making is a tool of state policy stems from a general
|
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|
|
misapprehension of the functions of war. In general, these are
|
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|
|
conceived as: to defend a nation from military attack by another,
|
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|
|
or to deter such an attack; to defend or advance a "national
|
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|
|
interest" - economic, political, ideological; to maintain or increase
|
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|
|
a nation's military power for its own sake. These are the visible,
|
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|
|
|
or ostensible, functions of war. If there were no others, the
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|
|
importance of the war establishment in each society might in fact
|
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|
|
decline to the subordinate level it is believed to occupy. And the
|
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|
|
elimination of war would indeed be the procedural matter that the
|
|
|
|
|
disarmament scenarios suggest.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>But there are other, broader, more profoundly felt functions of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
war in modern societies. It is these invisible, or implied, functions
|
|
|
|
|
that maintain war-readiness as the dominant force in our societies.
|
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|
|
And it is the unwillingness or inability of the writers of disarmament
|
|
|
|
|
scenarios and reconversion plans to take them into account that
|
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|
|
has so reduced the usefulness of their work, and that has made it
|
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|
|
seem unrelated to the world we know.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>SECTION 5: The Functions of War</p>
|
|
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|
|
<p>As we have indicated, the preeminence of the concept of war as the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
principal organizing force in most societies has been insufficiently
|
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|
|
|
appreciated. This is also true of its extensive effects throughout
|
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|
|
the many nonmilitary activities of society. These effects are less
|
|
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|
|
apparent in complex industrial societies like our own than in
|
|
|
|
|
primitive cultures, the activities of which can be more more easily
|
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|
|
and fully comprehended.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>We propose in this section to examine these nonmilitary, implied,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
and usually invisible functions of war, to the extent they they
|
|
|
|
|
bear on the problems of transition to peace for our society. The
|
|
|
|
|
military, or ostensible, function of the war system requires no
|
|
|
|
|
elaboration; it serves simply to defend or advance the "national
|
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|
|
interest" by means of organized violence. It is often necessary
|
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|
|
for a national military establishment to create a need for its
|
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|
|
unique powers - to maintain the franchise, so to speak. And a
|
|
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|
|
healthy military apparatus requires regular "exercise," by whatever
|
|
|
|
|
rationale seems expedient, to prevent its atrophy.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The nonmilitary functions of the war system are more basic. They
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
exist not merely to justify themselves but to serve broader social
|
|
|
|
|
purposes. If and when war is eliminated, the military functions it
|
|
|
|
|
has served will end with it. But its nonmilitary functions will
|
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|
|
|
not. It is essential, therefore, that we understand their significance
|
|
|
|
|
before we can reasonably expect to evaluate whatever institutions
|
|
|
|
|
may be proposed to replace them.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Economic</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>The production of weapons of mass destruction has always been
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
associated with economic "waste." The term is pejorative, since it
|
|
|
|
|
implies a failure of function. But no human activity can properly
|
|
|
|
|
be considered wasteful if it achieves its contextual objective.
|
|
|
|
|
The phrase "wasteful but necessary," applied not only to war
|
|
|
|
|
expenditures, but to most of the "unproductive" commercial activities
|
|
|
|
|
of our society, is a contradiction in terms. "... The attacks that
|
|
|
|
|
have since the time of Samuel's criticism of King Saul been leveled
|
|
|
|
|
against military expenditures as waste may well have concealed or
|
|
|
|
|
misunderstood the point that some kinds of waste may have a larger
|
|
|
|
|
social utility." [13]</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>In the case of military "waste," there is indeed a larger social
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
utility. It derives from the fact that the "wastefulness" of war
|
|
|
|
|
production is exercised entirely outside the framework of the
|
|
|
|
|
economy of supply and demand. As such, it provides the only
|
|
|
|
|
critically large segment of the total economy that is subject to
|
|
|
|
|
complete and arbitrary central control. If modern industrial
|
|
|
|
|
societies can be defined as those which have developed the capacity
|
|
|
|
|
to produce more than is required for their economic survival
|
|
|
|
|
(regardless of the equities of distribution of goods within them),
|
|
|
|
|
military spending can be said to furnish the only balance wheel
|
|
|
|
|
with sufficient inertia to stabilize the advance of their economies.
|
|
|
|
|
The fact that war is "wasteful" is what enables it to serve this
|
|
|
|
|
function. And the faster the economy advances, the heavier this
|
|
|
|
|
balance wheel must be.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>This function is often viewed, oversimply, as a device for the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
control of surpluses. One writer on the subject puts it this way:
|
|
|
|
|
"Why is war so wonderful? Because it creates artificial demand ...
|
|
|
|
|
the only kind of artificial demand, moreover, that does not raise
|
|
|
|
|
any political issues: {war, and only war, solves the problem of
|
|
|
|
|
inventory.}" [14] The reference here is to shooting war, but it
|
|
|
|
|
applies equally to the general war economy as well. "It is generally
|
|
|
|
|
agreed," concludes, more cautiously, the report of a panel set up
|
|
|
|
|
by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, "that the greatly
|
|
|
|
|
expanded public sector since World War II, resulting from heavy
|
|
|
|
|
defense expenditures, has provided additional protection against
|
|
|
|
|
depressions, since this sector is not responsive to contraction in
|
|
|
|
|
the private sector and has provided a sort of buffer or balance
|
|
|
|
|
wheel in the economy." [15]</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The {principal} economic function of war, in our view, is that it
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
provides just such a flywheel. It is not to be confused in function
|
|
|
|
|
with the the various forms of fiscal control, none of which directly
|
|
|
|
|
engages vast numbers of men and units of production. It is not to
|
|
|
|
|
be confused with massive government expenditures in social welfare
|
|
|
|
|
programs; once initiated, such programs normally become integral
|
|
|
|
|
parts of the general economy and are no longer subject to arbitrary
|
|
|
|
|
control.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>But even in the context of the general civilian economy war cannot
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
be considered wholly "wasteful." Without a long-established war
|
|
|
|
|
economy, and without its frequent eruption into large-scale shooting
|
|
|
|
|
war, most of the major industrial advances known to history,
|
|
|
|
|
beginning with the development of iron, could never have taken
|
|
|
|
|
place. Weapons technology structures the economy. According to the
|
|
|
|
|
writer cited above, "Nothing is more ironic or revealing about our
|
|
|
|
|
society than the fact that hugely destructive war is a very
|
|
|
|
|
progressive force in it. ... War production is progressive because
|
|
|
|
|
it is production that would not otherwise have taken place. (It is
|
|
|
|
|
not so widely appreciated, for example, that the civilian standard
|
|
|
|
|
of living {rose} during World War II.)" [16] This is not "ironic
|
|
|
|
|
or revealing," but essentially a simple statement of fact.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>It should also be noted that war production has a dependable
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
stimulation effect outside itself. Far from constituting a "wasteful"
|
|
|
|
|
drain on the economy, war spending, considered pragmatically, has
|
|
|
|
|
been a consistently positive factor in the rise of gross national
|
|
|
|
|
product and of individual productivity. A former Secretary of the
|
|
|
|
|
Army has carefully phrased it for public consumption thus: "If
|
|
|
|
|
there is, as I suspect there is, a direct relation between the
|
|
|
|
|
stimulus of large defense spending and a substantially increased
|
|
|
|
|
rate of growth of gross national product, it quite simply follows
|
|
|
|
|
that defense spending {per se} might be countenanced {on economic
|
|
|
|
|
grounds alone} [emphasis added] as a stimulator of the national
|
|
|
|
|
metabolism." [17] Actually, the fundamental nonmilitary utility of
|
|
|
|
|
war in the economy is far more widely acknowledged than the scarcity
|
|
|
|
|
of such affirmations as that quoted above would suggest.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>But {negatively} phrased public recognitions of the importance of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
war to the general economy abound. The most familiar example is
|
|
|
|
|
the effect of the "peace threats" on the stock market, e.g., "Wall
|
|
|
|
|
Street was shaken yesterday by news of an apparent peace feeler
|
2023-04-28 08:18:41 -04:00
|
|
|
>from <span class="LOC" title="LOC">North Vietnam</span>, but swiftly recovered its composure after about
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
an hour of sometimes indiscriminate selling." [18] Savings banks
|
|
|
|
|
solicit deposits with similar cautionary slogans, e.g., "If peace
|
|
|
|
|
breaks out, will you be ready for it?" A more subtle case in point
|
|
|
|
|
was the recent refusal of the Department of Defense to permit the
|
|
|
|
|
West German government to substitute nonmilitary goods for unwanted
|
|
|
|
|
armaments in its purchase commitments from the United States; the
|
|
|
|
|
decisive consideration was that the German purchases should not
|
|
|
|
|
affect the general (nonmilitary) economy. Other incidental examples
|
|
|
|
|
are to be found in the pressures brought to bear on the Department
|
|
|
|
|
when it announces plans to close down an obsolete facility (as a
|
|
|
|
|
"wasteful" form of "waste"), and in the usual coordination of
|
|
|
|
|
stepped-up military activities (as in Vietnam in 1965) with
|
|
|
|
|
dangerously rising unemployment rates.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Although we do not imply that a substitute for war in the economy
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
cannot be devised, no combination of techniques for controlling
|
|
|
|
|
employment, production, and consumption has yet been tested that
|
|
|
|
|
can remotely compare to it in effectiveness. It is, and has been,
|
|
|
|
|
the essential economic stabilizer of modern societies.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Political</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>The political functions of war have been up to now even more critical
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
to social stability. It is not surprising, nevertheless, that
|
|
|
|
|
discussions of economic conversion for peace tend to fall silent
|
|
|
|
|
on the matter of political implementation, and that disarmament
|
|
|
|
|
scenarios, often sophisticated in their weighing of international
|
|
|
|
|
political factors, tend to disregard the political functions of
|
|
|
|
|
the war system within individual societies.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>These functions are essentially organizational. First of all, the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
existence of a society as a political "nation" requires as part of
|
|
|
|
|
its definition an attitude of relationship toward other "nations."
|
|
|
|
|
This is what we usually call a foreign policy. But a nation's
|
|
|
|
|
foreign policy can have no substance if it lacks the means of
|
|
|
|
|
enforcing its attitude toward other nations. It can do this in a
|
|
|
|
|
credible manner only if it implies the threat of maximum political
|
|
|
|
|
organization for this purpose - which is to say that it is organized
|
|
|
|
|
to some degree for war. War, then, as we have defined it to include
|
|
|
|
|
all national activities that recognize the possibility of armed
|
|
|
|
|
conflict, is itself the defining element of any nation's existence
|
|
|
|
|
vis-a-vis any other nation. Since it is historically axiomatic that
|
|
|
|
|
the existence of any form of weaponry insures its use, we have used
|
|
|
|
|
the word "peace" as virtually synonymous with disarmament. By the
|
|
|
|
|
same token, "war" is virtually synonymous with nationhood. The
|
|
|
|
|
elimination of war implies the inevitable elimination of national
|
|
|
|
|
sovereignty and the traditional nation-state.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The war system not only has been essential to the existence of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
nations as independent political entities, but has been equally
|
|
|
|
|
indispensable to their stable internal political structure. Without
|
|
|
|
|
it, no government has ever been able to obtain acquiescence in its
|
|
|
|
|
"legitimacy," or right to rule its society. The possibility of war
|
|
|
|
|
provides the sense of external necessity without which no government
|
|
|
|
|
can long remain in power. The historical record reveals one instance
|
|
|
|
|
after another where the failure of a regime to maintain the
|
|
|
|
|
credibility of a war threat led to its dissolution, by the forces
|
|
|
|
|
of private interest, of reactions to social injustice, or of other
|
|
|
|
|
disintegrative elements. The organization of a society for the
|
|
|
|
|
possibility of war is its principal political stabilizer. It is
|
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|
|
|
ironic that this primary function of war has been generally recognized
|
|
|
|
|
by historians only where it has been expressly acknowledged - in
|
|
|
|
|
the pirate societies of the great conquerors.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
its war powers. (There is, in fact, good reason to believe that
|
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|
codified law had its origins in the rules of conduct established
|
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|
|
by military victors for dealing with the defeated enemy, which were
|
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|
|
later adapted to apply to all subject populations. [19]) On a
|
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|
day-to-day basis, it is represented by the institution of police,
|
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|
|
armed organizations charged expressly with dealing with "internal
|
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|
|
enemies" in a military manner. Like the conventional "external"
|
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|
|
military, the police are also substantially exempt from many civilian
|
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|
|
|
legal restraints on their social behavior. In some countries, the
|
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|
|
artificial distinction between police and other military forces
|
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|
|
does not exist. On the long-term basis, a government's emergency
|
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|
|
war powers - inherent in the structure of even the most libertarian
|
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|
|
of nations - define the most significant aspect of the relation
|
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|
|
between state and citizen.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>In advanced modern democratic societies, the war system has provided
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
political leaders with another political-economic function of
|
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|
|
increasing importance: it has served as the last great safeguard
|
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|
|
|
against the elimination of necessary social classes. As economic
|
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|
|
|
productivity increases to a level further and further above that
|
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|
|
of minimum subsistence, it becomes more and more difficult for a
|
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|
|
society to maintain distribution patterns insuring the existence
|
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|
|
of "hewers of wood and drawers of water." The further progress of
|
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|
|
|
automation can be expected to differentiate still more sharply
|
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|
|
|
between "superior" workers and what Ricardo called "menials," while
|
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|
|
simultaneously aggravating the problem of maintaining an unskilled
|
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|
|
|
labor supply.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The arbitrary nature of war expenditures and of other military
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
activities make them ideally suited to control these essential
|
|
|
|
|
class relationships. Obviously, if the war system were to be
|
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|
|
|
discarded, new political machinery would be needed at once to serve
|
|
|
|
|
this vital subfunction. Until it is developed, the continuance of
|
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|
|
the war system must be assured, if for no other reason, among
|
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|
|
others, than to preserve whatever quality and degree of poverty a
|
|
|
|
|
society requires as an incentive, as well as to maintain the
|
|
|
|
|
stability of its internal organization of power.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Sociological</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>Under this heading, we will examine a nexus of functions served by
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
the war system that affect human behavior in society. In general,
|
|
|
|
|
they are broader in application and less susceptible to direct
|
|
|
|
|
observation than the economic and political factors previously
|
|
|
|
|
considered.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The most obvious of these functions is the time-honored use of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
military institutions to provide antisocial elements with an
|
|
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|
|
acceptable role in the social structure. The disintegrative, unstable
|
|
|
|
|
social movements loosely described as "fascist" have traditionally
|
|
|
|
|
taken root in societies that have lacked adequate military or
|
|
|
|
|
paramilitary outlets to meet the needs of these elements. This
|
|
|
|
|
function has been critical in periods of rapid change. The danger
|
|
|
|
|
signals are easy to recognize, even though the stigmata bear
|
|
|
|
|
different names at different times. The current euphemistic cliches
|
|
|
|
|
- "juvenile delinquency" and "alienation" - have had their counterparts
|
|
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|
|
in every age. In earlier days these conditions were dealt with
|
|
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|
|
directly by the military without the complications of due process,
|
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|
|
|
usually through press gangs or outright enslavement. But it is not
|
|
|
|
|
hard to visualize, for example, the degree of social disruption
|
|
|
|
|
that might have taken place in the United States during the last
|
|
|
|
|
two decades if the problem of the socially disaffected of the
|
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|
|
post-World War II period had not been foreseen and effectively met.
|
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|
|
The younger, and more dangerous, of these hostile social groupings
|
|
|
|
|
have been kept under control by the Selective Service System.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>This system and its analogues elsewhere furnish remarkably clear
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
examples of disguised military utility. Informed persons in this
|
|
|
|
|
country have never accepted the official rationale for a peacetime
|
|
|
|
|
draft - military necessity, preparedness, etc. - as worthy of
|
|
|
|
|
serious consideration. But what has gained credence among thoughtful
|
|
|
|
|
men is the rarely voiced, less easily refuted, proposition that
|
|
|
|
|
the institution of military service has a "patriotic" priority in
|
|
|
|
|
our society that must be maintained for its own sake. Ironically,
|
|
|
|
|
the simplistic official justification for selective service comes
|
|
|
|
|
closer to the mark, once the nonmilitary functions of military
|
|
|
|
|
institutions are understood. As a control device over the hostile,
|
|
|
|
|
nihilistic, and potentially unsettling elements of a society in
|
|
|
|
|
transition, the draft can again be defended, and quite convincingly,
|
|
|
|
|
as a "military" necessity.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Nor can it be considered a coincidence that overt military activity,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
and thus the level of draft calls, tend to follow the major
|
|
|
|
|
fluctuations in the unemployment rate in the lower age groups. This
|
|
|
|
|
rate, in turn, is a time-tested herald of social discontent. It
|
|
|
|
|
must be noted also that the armed forces in every civilization have
|
|
|
|
|
provided the principal state-supported haven for what are now called
|
|
|
|
|
the "unemployable." The typical European standing army (of fifty
|
|
|
|
|
years ago) consisted of "... troops unfit for employment in commerce,
|
|
|
|
|
industry, or agriculture, led by officers unfit to practice any
|
|
|
|
|
legitimate profession or to conduct a business enterprise." [20]
|
|
|
|
|
This is still largely true, if less apparent. In a sense, this
|
|
|
|
|
function of the military as the custodian of the economically or
|
|
|
|
|
culturally deprived was the forerunner of most contemporary civilian
|
|
|
|
|
social-welfare programs, from the W.P.A. to various forms of
|
|
|
|
|
"socialized" medicine and social security. It is interesting that
|
|
|
|
|
liberal sociologists currently proposing to use the Selective
|
|
|
|
|
Service System as a medium of cultural upgrading of the poor consider
|
|
|
|
|
this a {novel} application of military practice.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Although it cannot be said absolutely that such critical measures
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of social control as the draft require a military rationale, no
|
|
|
|
|
modern society has yet been willing to risk experimentation with
|
|
|
|
|
any other kind. Even during such periods of comparatively simple
|
|
|
|
|
social crisis as the so-called Great Depression of the 1930s, it
|
|
|
|
|
was deemed prudent by the government to invest minor make-work
|
|
|
|
|
projects, like "Civilian" Conservation Corps, with a military
|
|
|
|
|
character, and to place the more ambitious National Recovery
|
|
|
|
|
Administration under the direction of a professional army officer
|
2023-04-28 08:18:41 -04:00
|
|
|
at its inception. Today, at least one small <span class="LOC" title="LOC">Northern European</span>
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
country, plagued with uncontrollable unrest among its "alienated
|
|
|
|
|
youth," is considering the expansion of its armed forces, despite
|
|
|
|
|
the problem of making credible the expansion of a non-existent
|
|
|
|
|
external threat.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Sporadic efforts have been made to promote general recognition of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
broad national values free of military connotation, but they have
|
|
|
|
|
been ineffective. For example, to enlist public support of even
|
|
|
|
|
such modest programs of social adjustment as "fighting inflation"
|
|
|
|
|
or "maintaining physical fitness" it has been necessary for the
|
|
|
|
|
government to utilize a patriotic (i.e., military) incentive. It
|
|
|
|
|
sells "defense" bonds and it equates health with military preparedness.
|
|
|
|
|
This is not surprising; since the concept of "nationhood" implies
|
|
|
|
|
readiness for war, a "national" program must do likewise.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>In general, the war system provides the basic motivation for primary
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
social organization. In so doing, it reflects on the societal level
|
|
|
|
|
the incentives of individual human behavior. The most important
|
|
|
|
|
of these, for social purposes, is the individual psychological
|
|
|
|
|
rationale for allegiance to a society and its values. Allegiance
|
|
|
|
|
requires a cause; a cause requires an enemy. This much is obvious;
|
|
|
|
|
the critical point is that the enemy that defines the cause must
|
|
|
|
|
seem genuinely formidable. Roughly speaking, the presumed power of
|
|
|
|
|
the "enemy" sufficient to warrant an individual sense of allegiance
|
|
|
|
|
to a society must be proportionate to the size and complexity of
|
|
|
|
|
the society. Today, of course, that power must be one of unprecedented
|
|
|
|
|
magnitude and frightfulness.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>It follows, from the patterns of human behavior, that the credibility
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of a social "enemy" demands similarly a readiness of response in
|
|
|
|
|
proportion to its menace. In a broad social context, "an eye for
|
|
|
|
|
an eye" still characterizes the only acceptable attitude toward a
|
|
|
|
|
presumed threat of aggression, despite contrary religious and moral
|
|
|
|
|
precepts governing personal conduct. The remoteness of personal
|
|
|
|
|
decision from social consequence in a modern society makes it easy
|
|
|
|
|
for its members to maintain this attitude without being aware of
|
|
|
|
|
it. A recent example is the war in Vietnam; a less recent one was
|
|
|
|
|
the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [21] In each case, the extent
|
|
|
|
|
and gratuitousness of the slaughter were abstracted into political
|
|
|
|
|
formulae by most Americans, once the proposition that the victims
|
|
|
|
|
were "enemies" was established. The war system makes such an
|
|
|
|
|
abstracted response possible in nonmilitary contexts as well. A
|
|
|
|
|
conventional example of this mechanism is the inability of most
|
|
|
|
|
people to connect, let us say, the starvation of millions in India
|
|
|
|
|
with their own past conscious political decision-making. Yet the
|
|
|
|
|
sequential logic linking a decision to restrict grain production
|
|
|
|
|
in America with an eventual famine in Asia is obvious, unambiguous,
|
|
|
|
|
and unconcealed.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>What gives the war system its preeminent role in social organization,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
as elsewhere, is its unmatched authority over life and death. It
|
|
|
|
|
must be emphasized again that the war system is not a mere social
|
|
|
|
|
extension of the presumed need for individual human violence, but
|
|
|
|
|
itself in turn serves to rationalize most nonmilitary killing. It
|
|
|
|
|
also provides the precedent for collective willingness of members
|
|
|
|
|
of a society to pay a blood price for institutions far less central
|
|
|
|
|
to social organization than war. To take a handy example, "...
|
|
|
|
|
rather than accept speed limits of twenty miles an hour we prefer
|
|
|
|
|
to let automobiles kill forty thousand people a year." [22] A Rand
|
|
|
|
|
analyst puts it in more general terms and less rhetorically: "I am
|
|
|
|
|
sure that there is, in effect, a desirable level of automobile
|
|
|
|
|
accidents - desirable, that is, from a broad point of view; in the
|
|
|
|
|
sense that it is a necessary concomitant of things of greater value
|
|
|
|
|
to society." [23] The point may seem too obvious for iteration,
|
|
|
|
|
but is essential to an understanding of the important motivational
|
|
|
|
|
function of war as a model for collective sacrifice.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>A brief look at some defunct premodern societies is instructive.
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
One of the most noteworthy features common to the larger, more
|
|
|
|
|
complex, and more successful of ancient civilizations was their
|
|
|
|
|
widespread use of the blood sacrifice. If one were to limit
|
|
|
|
|
consideration to those cultures whose regional hegemony was so
|
|
|
|
|
complete that the prospect of "war" had become virtually inconceivable
|
2023-04-28 08:18:41 -04:00
|
|
|
- as was the case with several of the great pre-<span class="GPE" title="GPE">Columbian</span> societies
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of the Western Hemisphere - it would be found that some form of
|
|
|
|
|
ritual killing occupied a position of paramount social importance
|
|
|
|
|
in each. Invariably, the ritual was invested with mythic or religious
|
|
|
|
|
significance; as with all religious and totemic practice, however,
|
|
|
|
|
the ritual masked a broader and more important social function.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>In these societies, the blood sacrifice served the purpose of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
maintaining a vestigial "earnest" of the society's capability and
|
|
|
|
|
willingness to make war - i.e., kill and be killed - in the event
|
|
|
|
|
that some mystical - i.e., unforeseen - circumstance were to give
|
|
|
|
|
rise to the possibility. That the "earnest" was not an adequate
|
|
|
|
|
substitute for genuine military organization when the unthinkable
|
|
|
|
|
enemy, such as the Spanish conquistadores, actually appeared on
|
|
|
|
|
the scene in no way negates the function of the ritual. It was
|
|
|
|
|
primarily, if not exclusively, a symbolic reminder that war had
|
|
|
|
|
once been the central organizing force of the society, and that
|
|
|
|
|
this condition might recur.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>It does not follow that a transition to total peace in modern
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
societies would require the use of this model, even in less "barbaric"
|
|
|
|
|
guise. But the historical analogy serves as a reminder that a viable
|
|
|
|
|
substitute for war as a social system cannot be a mere symbolic
|
|
|
|
|
charade. It must involve real risk of real personal destruction,
|
|
|
|
|
and on a scale consistent with the size and complexity of modern
|
|
|
|
|
social systems. Credibility is the key. Whether the substitute is
|
|
|
|
|
ritual in nature or functionally substantive, unless it provides
|
|
|
|
|
a believable life-and-death threat it will not serve the socially
|
|
|
|
|
organizing function of war.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The existence of an accepted external menace, then, is essential
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
to social cohesiveness as well as to the acceptance of political
|
|
|
|
|
authority. The menace must be believable, it must be of a magnitude
|
|
|
|
|
consistent with the complexity of the society threatened, and it
|
|
|
|
|
must appear, at least, to affect the entire society.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Ecological</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>Man, like all other animals, is subject to the continuing process
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of adapting to the limitations of his environment. But the principal
|
|
|
|
|
mechanism he has utilized for this purpose is unique among living
|
|
|
|
|
creatures. To forestall the inevitable historical cycles of inadequate
|
|
|
|
|
food supply, post-Neolithic man destroys surplus members of his
|
|
|
|
|
own species by organized warfare.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Ethologists [24] have often observed that the organized slaughter
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of members of their own species is virtually unknown among other
|
|
|
|
|
animals. Man's special propensity to kill his own kind (shared to
|
|
|
|
|
a limited degree with rats) may be attributed to his inability to
|
|
|
|
|
adapt anachronistic patterns of survival (like primitive hunting)
|
|
|
|
|
to his development of "civilizations" in which these patterns cannot
|
|
|
|
|
be effectively sublimated. It may be attributed to other causes
|
|
|
|
|
that have been suggested, such as a maladapted "territorial instinct,"
|
|
|
|
|
etc. Nevertheless, it exists and its social expression in war
|
|
|
|
|
constitutes a biological control of his relationship to his natural
|
|
|
|
|
environment that is peculiar to man alone.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>War has served to help assure the {survival} of the human species.
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
But as an evolutionary device to {improve} it, war is almost
|
|
|
|
|
unbelievably inefficient. With few exceptions, the selective
|
|
|
|
|
processes of other living creatures promote both specific survival
|
|
|
|
|
{and} genetic improvement. When a conventionally adaptive animal
|
|
|
|
|
faces one of its periodic crises of insufficiency, it is the
|
|
|
|
|
"inferior" members of the species that normally disappear. An
|
|
|
|
|
animal's social response to such a crisis may take the form of a
|
|
|
|
|
mass migration, during which the weak fall by the wayside. Or it
|
|
|
|
|
may follow the dramatic and more efficient pattern of lemming
|
|
|
|
|
societies, in which the weaker members voluntarily disperse, leaving
|
|
|
|
|
available food supplies for the stronger. In either case, the strong
|
|
|
|
|
survive and the weak fall. In human societies, those who fight and
|
|
|
|
|
die in wars for survival are in general its biologically stronger
|
|
|
|
|
members. This is natural selection in reverse.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The regressive genetic effect of war has been often noted [25] and
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
equally often deplored, even when it confuses biological and cultural
|
|
|
|
|
factors. [26] The disproportionate loss of the {biologically}
|
|
|
|
|
stronger remains inherent in traditional warfare. It serves to
|
|
|
|
|
underscore the fact that survival of the species, rather than its
|
|
|
|
|
improvement, is the fundamental purpose of natural selection, if
|
|
|
|
|
it can be said to have a purpose, just as it is the basic premise
|
|
|
|
|
of this study.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>But as the polemologist Gaston Bouthoul [27] has pointed out, other
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
institutions that were developed to serve this ecological function
|
|
|
|
|
have proved even less satisfactory. (They include such established
|
|
|
|
|
forms as these: infanticide, practiced chiefly in ancient and
|
|
|
|
|
primitive societies; sexual mutilation; monasticism; forced
|
|
|
|
|
emigration; extensive capital punishment, as in old China and
|
|
|
|
|
eighteenth-century England; and other similar, usually localized,
|
|
|
|
|
practices.)</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Man's ability to increase his productivity of the essentials of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
physical life suggests that the need for protection against cyclical
|
|
|
|
|
famine may be nearly obsolete. [28] It has thus tended to reduce
|
|
|
|
|
the apparent importance of the basic ecological function of war,
|
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|
|
|
which is generally disregarded by peace theorists. Two aspects of
|
|
|
|
|
it remain especially relevant, however. The first is obvious:
|
|
|
|
|
current rates of population growth, compounded by environmental
|
|
|
|
|
threat of chemical and other contaminants, may well bring about a
|
|
|
|
|
new crisis of insufficiency. If so, it is likely to be one of
|
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|
|
|
unprecedented global magnitude, not merely regional or temporary.
|
|
|
|
|
Conventional methods of warfare would almost surely prove inadequate,
|
|
|
|
|
in this event, to reduce the consuming population to a level
|
|
|
|
|
consistent with survival of the species.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The second relevant factor is the efficiency of modern methods of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
mass destruction. Even if their use is not required to meet a world
|
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|
|
|
population crisis, they offer, perhaps paradoxically, the first
|
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|
|
|
opportunity in the history of man to halt the regressive genetic
|
|
|
|
|
effects of natural selection by war. Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate.
|
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|
|
Their application would bring to an end the disproportionate
|
|
|
|
|
destruction of the physically stronger members of the species (the
|
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|
|
"warriors") in periods of war. Whether this prospect of genetic
|
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|
|
gain would offset the unfavorable mutations anticipated from
|
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|
|
|
postnuclear radioactivity we have not yet determined. What gives
|
|
|
|
|
the question a bearing on our study is the possibility that the
|
|
|
|
|
determination may yet have to be made.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Another secondary ecological trend bearing on projected population
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
growth is the regressive effect of certain medical advances.
|
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|
|
|
Pestilence, for example, is no longer an important factor in
|
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|
|
|
population control. The problem of increased life expectancy has
|
|
|
|
|
been aggravated. These advances also pose a potentially more sinister
|
|
|
|
|
problem, in that undesirable genetic traits that were formally
|
|
|
|
|
self-liquidating are now medically maintained. Many diseases that
|
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|
|
|
were once fatal at preprocreational ages are now cured; the effect
|
|
|
|
|
of this development is to perpetuate undesirable susceptibilities
|
|
|
|
|
and mutations. It seems clear that a new quasi-eugenic function of
|
|
|
|
|
war is now in process of formation that will have to be taken into
|
|
|
|
|
account in any transition plan. For the time being, the Department
|
|
|
|
|
of Defense appears to have recognized such factors, as has been
|
|
|
|
|
demonstrated by the planning under way by the Rand Corporation to
|
|
|
|
|
cope with the breakdown in the ecological balance anticipated after
|
|
|
|
|
a thermonuclear war. The Department has also begun to stockpile
|
|
|
|
|
birds, for example, against the expected proliferation of
|
|
|
|
|
radiation-resistant insects, etc.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Cultural and Scientific</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>The declared order of values in modern societies gives a high place
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
to the so-call "creative" activities, and an even higher one to
|
|
|
|
|
those associated with the advance of scientific knowledge. Widely
|
|
|
|
|
held social values can be translated into political equivalents,
|
|
|
|
|
which in turn may bear on the nature of a transition to peace. The
|
|
|
|
|
attitudes of those who hold these values must be taken into account
|
|
|
|
|
in the planning of the transition. The dependence, therefore, of
|
|
|
|
|
cultural and scientific achievement on the war system would be an
|
|
|
|
|
important consideration in a transition plan even if such achievement
|
|
|
|
|
had no inherently necessary social function.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Of all the countless dichotomies invented by scholars to account
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
for the major differences in art styles and cycles, only one has
|
|
|
|
|
been consistently unambiguous in its application to a variety of
|
|
|
|
|
forms and cultures. However it may be verbalized, the basic
|
|
|
|
|
distinction is this: Is the work war-oriented or is it not? Among
|
|
|
|
|
primitive peoples, the war dance is the most important art form.
|
|
|
|
|
Elsewhere, literature, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture
|
|
|
|
|
that has won lasting acceptance has invariably dealt with a theme
|
|
|
|
|
of war, expressly or implicitly, and has expressed the centricity
|
|
|
|
|
of war to society. The war in question may be national conflict,
|
2023-04-28 08:18:41 -04:00
|
|
|
as in Shakespeare's plays, <span class="PERSON" title="PERSON">Beethoven</span>'s music, or Goya's paintings,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
or it may be reflected in the form of religious, social, or moral
|
|
|
|
|
struggle, as in the work of Dante, Rembrandt, and Bach. Art that
|
|
|
|
|
cannot be classified as war-oriented is usually described as
|
|
|
|
|
"sterile," "decadent," and so on. Application of the "war standard"
|
|
|
|
|
to works of art may often leave room for debate in individual cases,
|
|
|
|
|
but there is no question of its role as the fundamental determinant
|
|
|
|
|
of cultural values. Aesthetic and moral standards have a common
|
|
|
|
|
anthropological origin, in the exaltation of bravery, the willingness
|
|
|
|
|
to kill and risk death in tribal warfare.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>It is also instructive to note that the character of a society's
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
culture has borne a close relationship to its war-making potential,
|
|
|
|
|
in the context of its times. It is no accident that the current
|
|
|
|
|
"cultural explosion" in the United States is taking place during
|
|
|
|
|
an era marked by an unusually rapid advance in weaponry. This
|
|
|
|
|
relationship is more generally recognized than the literature on
|
|
|
|
|
the subject would suggest. For example, many artists and writers
|
|
|
|
|
are now beginning to express concern over the limited creative
|
|
|
|
|
options they envisage in the warless world they think, or hope,
|
|
|
|
|
may be soon upon us. They are currently preparing for this possibility
|
|
|
|
|
by unprecedented experimentation with meaningless forms; their
|
|
|
|
|
interest in recent years has been increasingly engaged by the
|
|
|
|
|
abstract pattern, the gratuitous emotion, the random happening,
|
|
|
|
|
and the unrelated sequence.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The relationship of war to scientific research and discovery is
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
more explicit. War is the principal motivational force for the
|
|
|
|
|
development of science at every level, from the abstractly conceptual
|
|
|
|
|
to the narrowly technological. Modern society places a high value
|
|
|
|
|
on "pure" science, but it is historically inescapable that all the
|
|
|
|
|
significant discoveries that have been made about the natural world
|
|
|
|
|
have been inspired by the real or imaginary military necessities
|
|
|
|
|
of their epochs. The consequences of the discoveries have indeed
|
|
|
|
|
gone far afield, but war has always provided the basic incentive.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Beginning with the development of iron and steel, and proceeding
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
through the discoveries of the laws of motion and thermodynamics
|
|
|
|
|
to the age of the atomic particle, the synthetic polymer, and the
|
|
|
|
|
space capsule, no important scientific advance has not been at
|
|
|
|
|
least indirectly initiated by an implicit requirement of weaponry.
|
|
|
|
|
More prosaic examples include the transistor radio (an outgrowth
|
|
|
|
|
of military communications requirements), the assembly line (from
|
|
|
|
|
Civil War firearms needs), the steel-frame building (from the steel
|
|
|
|
|
battleship), the canal lock, and so on. A typical adaptation can
|
|
|
|
|
be seen in a device as modest as the common lawnmower; it developed
|
|
|
|
|
>from the revolving scythe devised by Leonardo da Vinci to precede
|
|
|
|
|
a horse-powered vehicle into enemy ranks.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The most direct relationship can be found in medical technology.
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
For example, a giant "walking machine," an amplifier of body motions
|
|
|
|
|
invented for military use in difficult terrain, is now making it
|
|
|
|
|
possible for many previously confined to wheelchairs to walk. The
|
|
|
|
|
Vietnam war alone has led to spectacular improvements in amputation
|
|
|
|
|
procedures, blood-handling techniques, and surgical logistics. It
|
|
|
|
|
has stimulated new large-scale research on malaria and other tropical
|
|
|
|
|
parasitic diseases; it is hard to estimate how long this work would
|
|
|
|
|
otherwise have been delayed, despite its enormous nonmilitary
|
|
|
|
|
importance to nearly half the world's population.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Other</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>We have elected to omit from our discussion of the nonmilitary
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
functions of war those we do not consider critical to a transition
|
|
|
|
|
program. This is not to say they are unimportant, however, but only
|
|
|
|
|
that they appear to present no special problems for the organization
|
|
|
|
|
of a peace-oriented social system. They include the following:</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{War as a general social release.} This is a psychosocial function,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
serving the same purpose for a society as do the holiday, the
|
|
|
|
|
celebration, and the orgy for the individual - the release and
|
|
|
|
|
redistribution of undifferentiated tensions. War provides for the
|
|
|
|
|
periodic necessary readjustment of standards of social behavior
|
|
|
|
|
(the "moral climate") and for the dissipation of general boredom,
|
|
|
|
|
one of the most consistently undervalued and unrecognized of social
|
|
|
|
|
phenomena.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{War as a generational stabilizer.} This psychological function,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
served by other behavior patterns in other animals, enables the
|
|
|
|
|
physically deteriorating older generation to maintain its control
|
|
|
|
|
of the younger, destroying it if necessary.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{War as an ideological clarifier.} The dualism that characterizes
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
the traditional dialectic of all branches of philosophy and of
|
|
|
|
|
stable political relationships stems from war as the prototype of
|
|
|
|
|
conflict. Except for secondary considerations, there cannot be, to
|
|
|
|
|
put it as simply as possible, more than two sides to a question
|
|
|
|
|
because there cannot be more than two sides to a war.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{War as the basis for international understanding.} Before the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
development of modern communications, the strategic requirements
|
|
|
|
|
of war provided the only substantial incentive for the enrichment
|
|
|
|
|
of one national culture with the achievements of another. Although
|
|
|
|
|
this is still the case in many international relationships, the
|
|
|
|
|
function is obsolescent.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>We have also foregone extended characterization of those functions
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
we assume to be widely and explicitly recognized. An obvious
|
|
|
|
|
example is the role of war as controller of the quality and degree
|
|
|
|
|
of unemployment. This is more than an economic and political
|
|
|
|
|
subfunction; its sociological, cultural, and ecological aspects
|
|
|
|
|
are also important, although often teleonomic. But none affect the
|
|
|
|
|
general problem of substitution. The same is true of certain other
|
|
|
|
|
functions; those we have included are sufficient to define the
|
|
|
|
|
scope of the problem.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>SECTION 6: Substitutes for the Functions of War</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>By now it should be clear that the most detailed and comprehensive
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
master plan for a transition to world peace will remain academic
|
|
|
|
|
if it fails to deal forthrightly with the problem of the critical
|
|
|
|
|
nonmilitary functions of war. The social needs they serve are
|
|
|
|
|
essential; if the war system no longer exists to meet them, substitute
|
|
|
|
|
institutions will have to be established for the purpose. These
|
|
|
|
|
surrogates must be "realistic," which is to say of a scope and
|
|
|
|
|
nature that can be conceived and implemented in the context of
|
|
|
|
|
present-day social capabilities. This is not the truism it may
|
|
|
|
|
appear to be; the requirements of radical social change often reveal
|
|
|
|
|
the distinction between a most conservative projection and a wildly
|
|
|
|
|
utopian scheme to be fine indeed.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>In this section we will consider some possible substitutes for
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
these functions. Only in rare instances have they been put forth
|
|
|
|
|
for the purposes which concern us here, but we see no reason to
|
|
|
|
|
limit ourselves to proposals that address themselves explicitly to
|
|
|
|
|
the problem as we have outlined it. We will disregard the ostensible,
|
|
|
|
|
or military, functions of war; it is a premise of this study that
|
|
|
|
|
the transition to peace implies absolutely that they will no longer
|
|
|
|
|
exist in any relevant sense. We will also disregard the noncritical
|
|
|
|
|
functions exemplified at the end of the preceding section.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Economic</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>Economic surrogates for war must meet two principal criteria. They
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
must be "wasteful," in the common sense of the word, and they must
|
|
|
|
|
operate outside the normal supply-demand system. A corollary that
|
|
|
|
|
should be obvious is that the magnitude of the waste must be
|
|
|
|
|
sufficient to meet the needs of a particular society. An economy
|
|
|
|
|
as advanced and complex as our own requires the planned average
|
|
|
|
|
annual destruction of not less than 10 percent of gross national
|
|
|
|
|
product [29] if it is effectively to fulfill its stabilizing
|
|
|
|
|
function. When the mass of a balance wheel is inadequate to the
|
|
|
|
|
power it is intended to control, its effect can be self-defeating,
|
|
|
|
|
as with a runaway locomotive. The analogy, though crude, [30] is
|
|
|
|
|
especially apt for the American economy, as our record of cyclical
|
|
|
|
|
depressions shows. All have taken place during periods of grossly
|
|
|
|
|
inadequate military spending.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Those few economic conversion programs which by implication
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
acknowledge the nonmilitary economic function of war (at least to
|
|
|
|
|
some extent) tend to assume that so-called social-welfare expenditures
|
|
|
|
|
will fill the vacuum created by the disappearance of military
|
|
|
|
|
spending. When one considers the backlog of unfinished business -
|
|
|
|
|
proposed but still unexecuted - in this field, the assumption seems
|
|
|
|
|
plausible. Let us examine briefly the following list, which is
|
|
|
|
|
more or less typical of general social welfare programs. [31]</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{Health.} Drastic expansion of medical research, education, and
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
training facilities; hospital and clinic construction; the general
|
|
|
|
|
objective of {complete} government-guaranteed health care for all,
|
|
|
|
|
at a level consistent with current developments in medical technology.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{Education.} The equivalent of the foregoing in teacher training;
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
schools and libraries; the drastic upgrading of standards, with
|
|
|
|
|
the general objective of making available for all an attainable
|
|
|
|
|
educational goal equivalent to what is now considered a professional
|
|
|
|
|
degree.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{Housing.} Clean, comfortable, safe, and spacious living space for
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
all, at the level now enjoyed by about 15 percent of the population
|
|
|
|
|
in this country (less in most others).</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{Transportation.} The establishment of a system of mass public
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
transportation making it possible for all to travel to and from
|
|
|
|
|
areas of work and recreation quickly, comfortably, and conveniently,
|
|
|
|
|
and to travel privately for pleasure rather than necessity.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{Physical environment.} The development and protection of water
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
supplies, forests, parks, and other natural resources; the elimination
|
|
|
|
|
of chemical and bacterial contaminants from air, water, and soil.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{Poverty.} The genuine elimination of poverty, defined by a standard
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
consistent with current economic productivity, by means of guaranteed
|
|
|
|
|
annual income or whatever system of distribution will best assure
|
|
|
|
|
its achievement.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>This is only a sampler of the more obvious domestic social welfare
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
items, and we have listed it in a deliberately broad, perhaps
|
|
|
|
|
extravagant, manner. In the past, such a vague and ambitious-sounding
|
|
|
|
|
"program" wold have been dismissed out of hand, without serious
|
|
|
|
|
consideration; it would clearly have been, {prima facie}, far too
|
|
|
|
|
costly, quite apart from its political implications. [32] Our
|
|
|
|
|
objection to it, on the other hand, could hardly be more contradictory.
|
|
|
|
|
As an economic substitute for war, it is inadequate because it
|
|
|
|
|
would be far too cheap.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>If this seems paradoxical, it must be remembered that up to now
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
all proposed social-welfare expenditures have had to be measured
|
|
|
|
|
{within} the war economy, not as a replacement for it. The old
|
|
|
|
|
slogan about a battleship or an ICBM costing as much as {x} hospitals
|
|
|
|
|
or {y} schools or {z} homes takes on a very different meaning if
|
|
|
|
|
there are to be no more battleships or ICBM's.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Since the list is general, we have elected to forestall the tangential
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
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controversy that surrounds arbitrary cost projections by offering
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|
no individual cost estimates. But the maximum program that could
|
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|
be physically effected along the lines indicated could approach
|
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|
the established level of military spending only for a limited time
|
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- in our opinion, subject to a detailed cost-and-feasibility
|
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|
analysis, less than ten years. In this short period, at this rate,
|
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the major goals of the program would have been achieved. Its
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capital-investment phase would have been completed, and it would
|
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have established a permanent comparatively modest level of annual
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operating cost - {within the framework of the general economy}.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
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<p>Here is the basic weakness of the social-welfare surrogate. On
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
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the short-term basis, a maximum program of this sort could replace
|
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a normal military spending program, provided it was designed, like
|
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the military model, to be subject to arbitrary control. Public
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housing starts, for example, or the development of modern medical
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centers might be accelerated or halted from time to time, as the
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|
|
requirements of a stable economy might dictate. But on the long-term
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basis, social-welfare spending, no matter how often redefined,
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would necessarily become an integral, accepted part of the economy,
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of no more value as a stabilizer than the automobile industry or
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|
old age and survivors' insurance. Apart from whatever merit
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social-welfare programs are deemed to have for their own sake,
|
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|
their function as a substitute for war in the economy would thus
|
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|
|
be self-liquidating. They might serve, however, as expedients
|
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|
pending the development of more durable substitute measures.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Another economic surrogate that has been proposed is a series of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
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|
giant "space research" programs. These have already demonstrated
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their utility in more modest scale within the military economy.
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|
What has been implied, although not yet expressly put forth, is
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the development of a long-range sequence of space-research projects
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with largely unattainable goals. This kind of program offers several
|
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|
advantages lacking in the social welfare model. First, it is unlikely
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|
|
to phase itself out, regardless of the predictable "surprises"
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|
science has in store for us: the universe is too big. In the event
|
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|
some individual project unexpectedly succeeds there would be no
|
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|
dearth of substitute problems. For example, if colonization of
|
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|
|
the moon proceeds on schedule, it could then become "necessary" to
|
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|
establish a beachhead on Mars or Jupiter, and so on. Second, it
|
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|
need be no more dependent on the general supply-demand economy than
|
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|
|
its military prototype. Third, it lends itself extraordinarily well
|
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|
|
to arbitrary control.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Space research can be viewed as the nearest modern equivalent yet
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
devised to the pyramid-building, and similar ritualistic enterprises,
|
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|
|
of ancient societies. It is true that the scientific value of the
|
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|
space program, even of what has already been accomplished, is
|
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|
substantial on its own terms. But current programs are absurdly
|
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|
|
and obviously disproportionate, in the relationship of the knowledge
|
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|
sought to the expenditures committed. All but a small fraction of
|
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|
the space budget, measured by the standards of comparable scientific
|
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|
|
objectives, must be charged {de facto} to the military economy.
|
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|
Future space research, projected as a war surrogate, would further
|
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|
|
reduce the the "scientific" rationale of its budget to a minuscule
|
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|
|
percentage indeed. As a purely economic substitute for war, therefore,
|
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|
|
extension of the space program warrants serious consideration.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>In Section 3 we pointed out that certain disarmament models, which
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
we called conservative, postulated extremely expensive and elaborate
|
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|
|
inspection systems. Would it be possible to extend and institutionalize
|
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|
|
such systems to the point where they might serve as economic
|
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|
|
surrogates for war spending? The organization of failsafe inspection
|
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|
|
machinery could well be ritualized in a manner similar to that of
|
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|
|
established military processes. "Inspection teams" might be very
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|
like armies, and their technical equipment might be very like
|
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|
|
weapons. Inflating the inspection budget to military scale presents
|
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|
|
no difficulty. The appeal of this kind of scheme lies in the
|
|
|
|
|
comparative ease of transition between two parallel systems.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The "elaborate inspection" surrogate is fundamentally fallacious,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
however. Although it might be economically useful, as well as
|
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|
|
politically necessary, during the disarmament transition, it would
|
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|
|
fail as a substitute for the economic function of war for one simple
|
|
|
|
|
reason. Peacekeeping inspection is part of a war system, not of
|
|
|
|
|
a peace system. It implies the possibility of weapons maintenance
|
|
|
|
|
or manufacture, which could not exist in a world at peace as here
|
|
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|
|
defined. Massive inspection also implies sanctions, and thus
|
|
|
|
|
war-readiness.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The same fallacy is more obvious in plans to create a patently
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
useless "defense conversion" apparatus. The long-discredited
|
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|
|
proposal to build "total" civil defense facilities is one example;
|
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|
|
another is the plan to establish a giant antimissile missile complex
|
|
|
|
|
(Nike-X, {et al}.). These programs, of course, are economic rather
|
|
|
|
|
than strategic. Nevertheless, they are not substitutes for military
|
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|
|
spending but merely different forms of it.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>A more sophisticated variant is the proposal to establish the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
"Unarmed Forces" of the United States. [33] This would conveniently
|
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|
|
maintain the entire institutional military structure, redirecting
|
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|
|
it essentially toward social-welfare activities on a global scale.
|
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|
|
It would be, in effect, a giant military Peace Corps. There is
|
|
|
|
|
nothing inherently unworkable about this plan, and using the existing
|
|
|
|
|
military system to effectuate its own demise is both ingenious and
|
|
|
|
|
convenient. But even on a greatly magnified world basis, social-welfare
|
|
|
|
|
expenditures must sooner or later reenter the atmosphere of the
|
|
|
|
|
normal economy. The practical transitional virtues of such a scheme
|
|
|
|
|
would thus be eventually negated by its inadequacy as a permanent
|
|
|
|
|
economic stabilizer.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Political</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>The war system makes the stable government of societies possible.
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
It does this essentially by providing an external necessity for a
|
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|
|
|
society to accept political rule. In so doing, it establishes the
|
|
|
|
|
basis for nationhood and the authority of government to control
|
|
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|
|
its constituents. What other institution or combination of programs
|
|
|
|
|
might serve these functions in its place?</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>We have already pointed out that the end of war means the end of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
national sovereignty, and thus the end of nationhood as we know it
|
|
|
|
|
today. But this does not necessarily mean the end of nations in
|
|
|
|
|
the administrative sense, and internal political power will remain
|
|
|
|
|
essential to a stable society. The emerging "nations" of the peace
|
|
|
|
|
epoch must continue to draw political authority from some source.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>A number of proposals have been made governing the relations between
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
nations after total disarmament; all are basically juridical in
|
|
|
|
|
nature. They contemplate institutions more or less like a World
|
|
|
|
|
Court, or a United Nations, but vested with real authority. They
|
|
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|
|
may or may not serve their ostensible postmilitary purpose of
|
|
|
|
|
settling international disputes, but we need not discuss that here.
|
|
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|
|
None would offer effective external pressure on a peace-world nation
|
|
|
|
|
to organize itself politically.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>It might be argued that a well-armed international police force,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
operating under the authority of such a supranational "court,"
|
|
|
|
|
could well serve the function of external enemy. This, however,
|
|
|
|
|
would constitute a military operation, like the inspection schemes
|
|
|
|
|
mentioned, and, like them, would be inconsistent with the premise
|
|
|
|
|
of an end to the war system. It is possible that a variant of the
|
|
|
|
|
"Unarmed Forces" idea might be developed in such a way that its
|
|
|
|
|
"constructive" (i.e., social welfare) activities could be combined
|
|
|
|
|
with an economic "threat" of sufficient size and credibility to
|
|
|
|
|
warrant political organization. Would this kind of threat also be
|
|
|
|
|
contradictory to our central premise? - that is, would it be
|
|
|
|
|
inevitably military? Not necessarily, in our view, but we are
|
|
|
|
|
skeptical of its capacity to evoke credibility. Also, the obvious
|
|
|
|
|
destabilizing effect of any global social welfare surrogate on
|
|
|
|
|
politically necessary class relationships would create an entirely
|
|
|
|
|
new set of transition problems at least equal in magnitude.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Credibility, in fact, lies at the heart of the problem of developing
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
a political substitute for war. This is where the space-race
|
|
|
|
|
proposals, in many ways so well suited as economic substitutes for
|
|
|
|
|
war, fall short. The most ambitious and unrealistic space project
|
|
|
|
|
cannot of itself generate a believable external menace. It has been
|
|
|
|
|
hotly argued [34] that such a menace would offer the "last, best
|
|
|
|
|
hope of peace," etc., by uniting mankind against the danger of
|
|
|
|
|
destruction by "creatures" from other planets or from outer space.
|
|
|
|
|
Experiments have been proposed to test the credibility of an
|
|
|
|
|
out-of-our-world invasion threat; it is possible that a few of the
|
|
|
|
|
more difficult-to-explain "flying saucer" incidents of recent years
|
|
|
|
|
were in fact early experiments of this kind. If so, they could
|
|
|
|
|
hardly have been judged encouraging. We anticipate no difficulties
|
|
|
|
|
in making a "need" for a giant super space program credible for
|
|
|
|
|
economic purposes, even were there not ample precedent; extending
|
|
|
|
|
it, for political purposes, to include features unfortunately
|
|
|
|
|
associated with science fiction would obviously be a more dubious
|
|
|
|
|
undertaking.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Nevertheless, an effective political substitute for war would
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
require "alternate enemies," some of which might seem equally
|
|
|
|
|
farfetched in the context of the current war system. It may be,
|
|
|
|
|
for instance, that gross pollution of the environment can eventually
|
|
|
|
|
replace the possibility of mass destruction by nuclear weapons as
|
|
|
|
|
the principal apparent threat to the survival of the species.
|
|
|
|
|
Poisoning of the air, and of the principal sources of food and
|
|
|
|
|
water supply, is already well advanced, and at first glance would
|
|
|
|
|
seem promising in this respect; it constitutes a threat that can
|
|
|
|
|
be dealt with only through social organization and political power.
|
|
|
|
|
But from present indications it will be a generation to a generation
|
|
|
|
|
and a half before environmental pollution, however severe, will be
|
|
|
|
|
sufficiently menacing, on a global scale, to offer a possible basis
|
|
|
|
|
for a solution.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>It is true that the rate of pollution could be increased selectively
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
for this purpose; in fact, the mere modifying of existing programs
|
|
|
|
|
for the deterrence of pollution could speed up the process enough
|
|
|
|
|
to make the threat credible much sooner. But the pollution problem
|
|
|
|
|
has been so widely publicized in recent years that it seems highly
|
|
|
|
|
improbable that a program of deliberate environmental poisoning
|
|
|
|
|
could be implemented in a politically acceptable manner.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>However unlikely some of the possible alternate enemies we have
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
mentioned may seem, we must emphasize that one {must} be found, of
|
|
|
|
|
credible quality and magnitude, if a transition to peace is ever
|
|
|
|
|
to come about without social disintegration. It is more probable,
|
|
|
|
|
in our judgment, that such a threat will have to be invented, rather
|
|
|
|
|
than developed from unknown conditions. For this reason, we believe
|
|
|
|
|
further speculation about its putative nature ill-advised in this
|
|
|
|
|
context. Since there is considerable doubt, in our minds, that
|
|
|
|
|
{any} viable political surrogate can be devised, we are reluctant
|
|
|
|
|
to compromise, by premature discussion, any possible option that
|
|
|
|
|
may eventually lie open to our government.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Sociological</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>Of the many functions of war we have found convenient to group
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
together in this classification, two are critical. In a world of
|
|
|
|
|
peace, the continuing stability of society will require: 1) an
|
|
|
|
|
effective substitute for military institutions that can neutralize
|
|
|
|
|
destabilizing social elements and 2) a credible motivational
|
|
|
|
|
surrogate for war that can insure social cohesiveness. The first
|
|
|
|
|
is an essential element of social control; the second is the basic
|
|
|
|
|
mechanism for adapting individual human drives to the needs of
|
|
|
|
|
society.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Most proposals that address themselves, explicitly or otherwise,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
to the postwar problem of controlling the socially alienated turn
|
|
|
|
|
to some variant of the Peace Corps or the so-called Job Corps for
|
|
|
|
|
a solution. The socially disaffected, the economically unprepared,
|
|
|
|
|
the psychologically unconformable, the hard-core "delinquents,"
|
|
|
|
|
the incorrigible "subversives," and the rest of the unemployable
|
|
|
|
|
are seen as somehow transformed by the disciplines of a service
|
|
|
|
|
modeled on military precedent into more or less dedicated social
|
|
|
|
|
service workers. This presumption also informs the otherwise
|
|
|
|
|
hardheaded ratiocination of the "Unarmed Forces" plan.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The problem has been addressed, in the language of popular sociology,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
by Secretary McNamara. "Even in our abundant societies, we have
|
|
|
|
|
reason enough to worry over the tensions that coil and tighten
|
|
|
|
|
among underprivileged young people, and finally flail out in
|
|
|
|
|
delinquency and crime. What are we to expect ... where mounting
|
|
|
|
|
frustrations are likely to fester into eruptions of violence and
|
|
|
|
|
extremism?" In a seemingly unrelated passage, he continues: "It
|
|
|
|
|
seems to me that we could move toward remedying that inequity [of
|
|
|
|
|
the Selective Service System] by asking every young person in the
|
|
|
|
|
United States to give two years of service to his country - whether
|
|
|
|
|
in one of the military services, in the Peace Corps, or in some
|
|
|
|
|
other volunteer developmental work at home or abroad. We could
|
|
|
|
|
encourage other countries to do the same." [35] Here, as elsewhere
|
|
|
|
|
throughout this significant speech, Mr. McNamara has focused,
|
|
|
|
|
indirectly but unmistakably, on one of the key issues bearing on
|
|
|
|
|
a possible transition to peace, and has later indicated, also
|
|
|
|
|
indirectly, a rough approach to its resolution, again phrased in
|
|
|
|
|
the language of the current war system.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>It seems clear that Mr. McNamara and other proponents of the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
peace-corps surrogate for this war function lean heavily on the
|
|
|
|
|
success of the paramilitary Depression programs mentioned in the
|
|
|
|
|
last section. We find the precedent wholly inadequate in degree.
|
|
|
|
|
Neither the lack of relevant precedent, however, nor the dubious
|
|
|
|
|
social-welfare sentimentality characterizing this approach warrant
|
|
|
|
|
its rejection without careful study. It may be viable - provided,
|
|
|
|
|
first, that the military origin of the Corps format be effectively
|
|
|
|
|
rendered out of its operational activity, and second, that the
|
|
|
|
|
transition from paramilitary activities to "developmental work"
|
|
|
|
|
can be effected without regard to the attitudes of the Corps
|
|
|
|
|
personnel or to the "value" of the work it is expected to perform.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Another possible surrogate for the control of potential enemies of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
society is the reintroduction, in some form consistent with modern
|
|
|
|
|
technology and political processes, of slavery. Up to now, this
|
|
|
|
|
has been suggested only in fiction, notably in the works of Wells,
|
|
|
|
|
Huxley, Orwell, and others engaged in the imaginative anticipation
|
|
|
|
|
of the sociology of the future. But the fantasies projected in
|
|
|
|
|
{Brave New World} and {1984} have seemed less and less implausible
|
|
|
|
|
over the years since their publication. The traditional association
|
|
|
|
|
of slavery with ancient preindustrial cultures should not blind us
|
|
|
|
|
to its adaptability to advanced forms of social organization, nor
|
|
|
|
|
should its equally traditional incompatibility with Western moral
|
|
|
|
|
and economic values. It is entirely possible that the development
|
|
|
|
|
of a sophisticated form of slavery may be an absolute prerequisite
|
|
|
|
|
for social control in a world at peace. As a practical matter,
|
|
|
|
|
conversion of the code of military discipline to a euphemized form
|
|
|
|
|
of enslavement would entail surprisingly little revision; the
|
|
|
|
|
logical first step would be the adoption of some form of "universal"
|
|
|
|
|
military service.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>When it comes to postulating a credible substitute for war capable
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of directing human behavior patterns in behalf of social organization,
|
|
|
|
|
few options suggest themselves. Like its political function, the
|
|
|
|
|
motivational function of war requires the existence of a genuinely
|
|
|
|
|
menacing social enemy. The principal difference is that for purposes
|
|
|
|
|
of motivating basic allegiance, as distinct from accepting political
|
|
|
|
|
authority, the "alternate enemy" must imply a more immediate,
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|
tangible, and directly felt threat of destruction. It must justify
|
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|
the need for taking and paying a "blood price" in wide areas of
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|
human concern.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>In this respect, the possible substitute enemies noted earlier
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
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|
would be insufficient. One exception might be the environmental-pollution
|
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|
model, if the danger to society it posed was genuinely imminent.
|
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|
The fictive models would have to carry the weight of extraordinary
|
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|
conviction, underscored with a not inconsiderable actual sacrifice
|
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|
|
of life; the construction of an up-to-date mythological or religious
|
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|
structure for this purpose would present difficulties in our era,
|
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|
|
but must certainly be considered.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Games theorists have suggested, in other contexts, the development
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of "blood games" for the effective control of individual aggressive
|
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|
|
|
impulses. It is an ironic commentary on the current state of war
|
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|
|
|
and peace studies that it was left not to scientists but to the
|
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|
|
makers of a commercial film [36] to develop a model for this notion,
|
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|
on the implausible level of popular melodrama, as a ritualized
|
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|
|
manhunt. More realistically, such a ritual might be socialized, in
|
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|
the manner of the Spanish Inquisition and the less formal witch
|
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|
trials of other periods, for purposes of "social purification,"
|
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|
|
"state security," or other rationale both acceptable and credible
|
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|
to postwar societies. The feasibility of such an updated version
|
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|
of still another ancient institution, though doubtful, is considerably
|
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|
less fanciful than the wishful notion of many peace planners that
|
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|
|
a lasting condition of peace can be brought about without the most
|
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|
|
painstaking examination of every possible surrogate for the essential
|
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|
|
|
functions of war. What is involved here, in a sense, is the quest
|
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|
|
for William James's "moral equivalent of war."</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>It is also possible that the two functions considered under this
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
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heading may be jointly served, in the sense of establishing the
|
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|
antisocial, for whom a control institution is needed, as the
|
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|
|
"alternate enemy" needed to hold society together. The relentless
|
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|
|
and irreversible advance of unemployability at all levels of society,
|
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|
|
and the similar extension of generalized alienation from accepted
|
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|
values [37] may make some such program necessary even as an adjunct
|
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|
|
to the war system. As before, we will not speculate on the specific
|
|
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|
|
forms this kind of program might take, except to note that there
|
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|
|
is again ample precedent, in the treatment meted out to disfavored,
|
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|
|
allegedly menacing, ethnic groups in certain societies during
|
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|
historical periods. [38]</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Ecological</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>Considering the the shortcomings of war as a mechanism of selective
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
population control, it might appear that devising substitutes for
|
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|
|
this function should be comparatively simple. Schematically this
|
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|
|
so, but the problem of timing the transition to a new ecological
|
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|
|
balancing device makes the feasibility of substitution less certain.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>It must be remembered that the limitation of war in this function
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
is entirely eugenic. War has not been genetically progressive. But
|
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|
|
as a system of gross population control to preserve the species it
|
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|
|
|
cannot fairly be faulted. And, as has been pointed out, the nature
|
|
|
|
|
of war is itself in transition. Current trends in warfare - the
|
|
|
|
|
increased strategic bombing of civilians and the greater military
|
|
|
|
|
importance now attached to the destruction of sources of supply
|
|
|
|
|
(as opposed to purely "military" bases and personnel) - strongly
|
|
|
|
|
suggest that a truly qualitative improvement is in the making.
|
|
|
|
|
Assuming the war system is to continue, it is more than probable
|
|
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|
|
that the regressively selective quality of war will have been
|
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|
|
reversed, as its victims become more genetically representative of
|
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|
|
their societies.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>There is no question but that a universal requirement that procreation
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
be limited to the products of artificial insemination would provide
|
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|
|
a fully adequate substitute control for population levels. Such a
|
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|
|
reproductive system would, of course, have the added advantage of
|
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|
|
being susceptible of direct eugenic management. Its predictable
|
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|
|
further development - conception and embryonic growth taking place
|
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|
|
wholly under laboratory conditions - would extend these controls
|
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|
|
to their logical conclusion. The ecological function of war under
|
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|
|
|
these circumstances would not only be superseded but surpassed in
|
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|
|
|
effectiveness.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The indicated intermediate step - total control of conception with
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
a variant of the ubiquitous "pill," via water supplies or certain
|
|
|
|
|
essential foodstuffs, offset by a controlled "antidote" - is already
|
|
|
|
|
under development. [39] There would appear to be no foreseeable
|
|
|
|
|
need to revert to any of the outmoded practices referred to in the
|
|
|
|
|
previous section (infanticide, etc.) as there might have been if
|
|
|
|
|
the possibility of transition to peace had arisen two generations
|
|
|
|
|
ago.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The real question here, therefore, does not concern the viability
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of this war substitute, but the political problems involved in
|
|
|
|
|
bringing it about. It cannot be established while the war system
|
|
|
|
|
is still in effect. The reason for this is simple: excess population
|
|
|
|
|
is war material. As long as any society must contemplate even a
|
|
|
|
|
remote possibility of war, it must maintain a maximum supportable
|
|
|
|
|
population, even when so doing critically aggravates an economic
|
|
|
|
|
liability. This is paradoxical, in view of war's role in reducing
|
|
|
|
|
excess population, but it is readily understood. War controls the
|
|
|
|
|
{general} population level, but the ecological interest of any
|
|
|
|
|
single society lies in maintaining its hegemony vis-a-vis other
|
|
|
|
|
societies. The obvious analogy can be seen in any free-enterprise
|
|
|
|
|
economy. Practices damaging to the society as a whole - both
|
|
|
|
|
competitive and monopolistic - are abetted by the conflicting
|
|
|
|
|
economic motives of individual capital interests. The obvious
|
|
|
|
|
precedent can be found in the seemingly irrational political
|
|
|
|
|
difficulties which have blocked universal adoption of simple
|
|
|
|
|
birth-control methods. Nations desperately in need of increasing
|
|
|
|
|
unfavorable production-consumption ratios are nevertheless unwilling
|
|
|
|
|
to gamble their possible military requirements of twenty years
|
|
|
|
|
hence for this purpose. Unilateral population control, as practiced
|
|
|
|
|
in ancient Japan and in other isolated societies, is out of the
|
|
|
|
|
question in today's world.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Since the eugenic solution cannot be achieved until the transition
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
to the peace system takes place, why not wait? One must qualify
|
|
|
|
|
the inclination to agree. As we noted earlier, a real possibility
|
|
|
|
|
of an unprecedented global crisis of insufficiency exists today,
|
|
|
|
|
which the war system may not be able to forestall. If this should
|
|
|
|
|
come to pass before an agreed-upon transition to peace were completed,
|
|
|
|
|
the result might be irrevocably disastrous. There is clearly no
|
|
|
|
|
solution to this dilemma; it is a risk which must be taken. But
|
|
|
|
|
it tends to support the view that if a decision is made to eliminate
|
|
|
|
|
the war system, it were better done sooner than later.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Cultural and Scientific</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>Strictly speaking, the function of war as the determinant of cultural
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
values and as the prime mover of scientific progress may not be
|
|
|
|
|
critical in a world without war. Our criterion for the basic
|
|
|
|
|
nonmilitary functions of war has been: Are they necessary to the
|
|
|
|
|
survival and stability of society? The absolute need for substitute
|
|
|
|
|
cultural value-determinants and for the continued advance of
|
|
|
|
|
scientific knowledge is not established. We believe it important,
|
|
|
|
|
however, in behalf of those for whom these functions hold subjective
|
|
|
|
|
significance, that it be known what they can reasonably expect in
|
|
|
|
|
culture and science after a transition to peace.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>So far as the creative arts are concerned, there is no reason to
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
believe they would disappear, but only that they would change in
|
|
|
|
|
character and relative social importance. The elimination of war
|
|
|
|
|
would in due course deprive them of their principal conative force,
|
|
|
|
|
but it would necessarily take some time for the effect of this
|
|
|
|
|
withdrawal to be felt. During the transition, and perhaps for a
|
|
|
|
|
generation thereafter, themes of sociomoral conflict inspired by
|
|
|
|
|
the war system would be increasingly transferred to the idiom of
|
|
|
|
|
purely personal sensibility. At the same time, a new aesthetic
|
|
|
|
|
would have to develop. Whatever its name, form, or rationale, its
|
|
|
|
|
function would be to express, in language appropriate to the new
|
|
|
|
|
period, the once discredited philosophy that art exists for its
|
|
|
|
|
own sake. This aesthetic would reject unequivocally the classic
|
|
|
|
|
requirement of paramilitary conflict as the substantive content of
|
|
|
|
|
great art. The eventual effect of the peace-world philosophy of
|
|
|
|
|
art would be democratizing in the extreme, in the sense that a
|
|
|
|
|
generally acknowledged subjectivity of artistic standards would
|
|
|
|
|
equalize their new, content-free "values."</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>What may be expected to happen is that art would be reassigned the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
role it once played in a few primitive peace-oriented systems. This
|
|
|
|
|
was the function of pure decoration, entertainment, or play, entirely
|
|
|
|
|
free of the burden of expressing the sociomoral values and conflicts
|
|
|
|
|
of a war-oriented society. It is interesting that the groundwork
|
|
|
|
|
for such a value-free aesthetic is already being laid today, in
|
|
|
|
|
growing experimentation in art without content, perhaps in anticipation
|
|
|
|
|
of a world without conflict. A cult has developed around a new kind
|
|
|
|
|
of cultural determinism, [40] which proposes that the technological
|
|
|
|
|
form of a cultural expression determines its values rather than
|
|
|
|
|
does its ostensibly meaningful content. Its clear implication is
|
|
|
|
|
that there is no "good" or "bad" art, only that which is appropriate
|
|
|
|
|
to its (technological) times and that which is not. Its cultural
|
|
|
|
|
effect has been to promote circumstantial constructions and unplanned
|
|
|
|
|
expressions; it denies to art the relevance of sequential logic.
|
|
|
|
|
Its significance in this context is that it provides a working
|
|
|
|
|
model of one kind of value-free culture we might reasonably anticipate
|
|
|
|
|
in a world at peace.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>So far as science is concerned, it might appear at first glance
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
that a giant space-research program, the most promising among the
|
|
|
|
|
proposed economic surrogates for war, might also serve as the basic
|
|
|
|
|
stimulator of scientific research. The lack of fundamental organized
|
|
|
|
|
social conflict inherent in space work, however, would rule it out
|
|
|
|
|
as an adequate motivational substitute for war when applied to
|
|
|
|
|
"pure" science. But it could no doubt sustain the broad range of
|
|
|
|
|
{technological} activity that a space budget of military dimensions
|
|
|
|
|
would require. A similarly scaled social-welfare program could
|
|
|
|
|
provide a comparable impetus to low-keyed technological advances,
|
|
|
|
|
especially in medicine, rationalized construction methods, educational
|
|
|
|
|
psychology, etc. The eugenic substitute for the ecological function
|
|
|
|
|
of war would also require continuing research in certain areas of
|
|
|
|
|
the life sciences.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Apart from these partial substitutes for war, it must be kept in
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
mind that the momentum given to scientific progress by the great
|
|
|
|
|
wars of the past century, and even more by the anticipation of
|
|
|
|
|
World War III, is intellectually and materially enormous. It is
|
|
|
|
|
our finding that if the war system were to end tomorrow this momentum
|
|
|
|
|
is so great that the pursuit of scientific knowledge could reasonably
|
|
|
|
|
be expected to go forward without noticeable diminution for perhaps
|
|
|
|
|
two decades. [41] It would then continue, at a progressively
|
|
|
|
|
decreasing tempo, for at least another two decades before the "bank
|
|
|
|
|
account" of today's unresolved problems would become exhausted. By
|
|
|
|
|
the standards of the questions we have learned to ask today, there
|
|
|
|
|
would no longer be anything worth knowing still unknown; we cannot
|
|
|
|
|
conceive, by definition, of the scientific questions to ask once
|
|
|
|
|
those we can not comprehend are answered.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>This leads unavoidably to another matter: the intrinsic value of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
the unlimited search for knowledge. We of course offer no independent
|
|
|
|
|
value judgments here, but it is germane to point out that a
|
|
|
|
|
substantial minority of scientific opinion feels that search to be
|
|
|
|
|
circumscribed in any case. This opinion is itself a factor in
|
|
|
|
|
considering the need for a substitute for the scientific function
|
|
|
|
|
of war. For the record, we must also take note of the precedent
|
|
|
|
|
that during long periods of human history, often covering thousands
|
|
|
|
|
of years, in which no intrinsic social value was assigned to
|
|
|
|
|
scientific progress, stable societies did survive and flourish.
|
|
|
|
|
Although this could not have been possible in the modern industrial
|
|
|
|
|
world, we cannot be certain it may not again be true in a future
|
|
|
|
|
world at peace.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>SECTION 7: Summary and Conclusions</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>The Nature of War</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>War is not, as is widely assumed, primarily an instrument of policy
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
utilized by nations to extend or defend their expressed political
|
|
|
|
|
values or their economic interests. On the contrary, it is itself
|
|
|
|
|
the principal basis of organization on which all modern societies
|
|
|
|
|
are constructed. The common proximate cause of war is the apparent
|
|
|
|
|
interference of one nation with the aspirations of another. But
|
|
|
|
|
at the root of all ostensible differences of national interest lie
|
|
|
|
|
the dynamic requirements of the war system itself for periodic
|
|
|
|
|
armed conflict. Readiness for war characterizes contemporary social
|
|
|
|
|
systems more broadly than their economic and political structures,
|
|
|
|
|
which it subsumes.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Economic analyses of the anticipated problems of transition to
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
peace have not recognized the broad preeminence of war in the
|
|
|
|
|
definition of social systems. The same is true, with rare and only
|
|
|
|
|
partial exceptions, of model disarmament "scenarios." For this
|
|
|
|
|
reason, the value of this previous work is limited to the mechanical
|
|
|
|
|
aspects of transition. Certain features of these models may perhaps
|
|
|
|
|
be applicable to a real situation of conversion to peace; this will
|
|
|
|
|
depend on their compatibility with a substantive, rather than a
|
|
|
|
|
procedural, peace plan. Such a plan can be developed only from the
|
|
|
|
|
premise of full understanding of the nature of the war system it
|
|
|
|
|
proposes to abolish, which in turn presupposes detailed comprehension
|
|
|
|
|
of the functions the war system performs for society. It will
|
|
|
|
|
require the construction of a detailed and feasible system of
|
|
|
|
|
substitutes for those functions that are necessary to the stability
|
|
|
|
|
and survival of human societies.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The Functions of War</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>The visible, military function of war requires no elucidation; it
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
is not only obvious but also irrelevant to a transition to the
|
|
|
|
|
condition of peace, in which it will by definition be superfluous.
|
|
|
|
|
It is also subsidiary in social significance to the implied,
|
|
|
|
|
nonmilitary functions of war; those critical to transition can be
|
|
|
|
|
summarized in five principal groupings.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>1. {Economic}. War has provided both ancient and modern societies
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
with a dependable system for stabilizing and controlling national
|
|
|
|
|
economies. No alternate method of control has yet been tested in
|
|
|
|
|
a complex modern economy that has shown itself remotely comparable
|
|
|
|
|
in scope or effectiveness.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>2. {Political}. The permanent possibility of war is the foundation
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
for stable government; it supplies the basis for general acceptance
|
|
|
|
|
of political authority. It has enabled societies to maintain
|
|
|
|
|
necessary class distinctions, and it has ensured the subordination
|
|
|
|
|
of the citizen to the state, by virtue of the residual war powers
|
|
|
|
|
inherent in the concept of nationhood. No modern political ruling
|
|
|
|
|
group has successfully controlled its constituency after failing
|
|
|
|
|
to sustain the continuing credibility of an external threat of war.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>3. {Sociological}. War, through the medium of military institutions,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
has uniquely served societies, throughout the course of known
|
|
|
|
|
history, as an indispensable controller of dangerous social dissidence
|
|
|
|
|
and destructive antisocial tendencies. As the most formidable of
|
|
|
|
|
threats to life itself, and as the only one susceptible to mitigation
|
|
|
|
|
by social organization alone, it has played another equally
|
|
|
|
|
fundamental role: the war system has provided the machinery through
|
|
|
|
|
which the motivational forces governing human behavior have been
|
|
|
|
|
translated into binding social allegiance. It has thus ensured the
|
|
|
|
|
degree of social cohesion necessary to the viability of nations.
|
|
|
|
|
No other institution, or group of institutions, in modern societies,
|
|
|
|
|
has successfully served these functions.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>4. {Ecological}. War has been the principal evolutionary device
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
for maintaining a satisfactory ecological balance between gross
|
|
|
|
|
human population and supplies available for its survival. It is
|
|
|
|
|
unique to the human species.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>5. {Cultural and Scientific}. War-orientation has determined the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
basic standards of value in the creative arts, and has provided
|
|
|
|
|
the fundamental motivational source of scientific and technological
|
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|
|
|
progress. The concepts that the arts express values independent of
|
|
|
|
|
their own forms and that the successful pursuit of knowledge has
|
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|
|
|
intrinsic social value have long been accepted in modern societies;
|
|
|
|
|
the development of the arts and sciences during this period has
|
|
|
|
|
been corollary to the parallel development of weaponry.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Substitutes for the Functions of War: Criteria</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>The foregoing functions of war are essential to the survival of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
the social systems we know today. With two possible exceptions they
|
|
|
|
|
are also essential to any kind of stable social organization that
|
|
|
|
|
might survive in a warless world. Discussion of the ways and means
|
|
|
|
|
of transition to such a world are meaningless unless a) substitute
|
|
|
|
|
institutions can be devised to fill these functions, or b) it can
|
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|
|
|
reasonably be hypothecated that the loss or partial loss of any
|
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|
|
|
one function need not destroy the viability of future societies.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Such substitute institutions and hypotheses must meet varying
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
criteria. In general, they must be technically feasible, politically
|
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|
|
|
acceptable, and potentially credible to the members of the societies
|
|
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|
|
that adopt them. Specifically, they must be characterized as
|
|
|
|
|
follows:</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>1. {Economic}. An acceptable economic surrogate for the war system
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
will require the expenditure of resources for completely nonproductive
|
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|
|
|
purposes at a level comparable to that of the military expenditures
|
|
|
|
|
otherwise demanded by the size and complexity of each society. Such
|
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|
|
|
a substitute system of apparent "waste" must be of a nature that
|
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|
|
will permit it to remain independent of the normal supply-demand
|
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|
|
|
economy; it must be subject to arbitrary political control.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>2. {Political}. A viable political substitute for war must posit
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
a generalized external menace to each society of a nature and degree
|
|
|
|
|
sufficient to require the organization and acceptance of political
|
|
|
|
|
authority.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>3. {Sociological}. First, in the permanent absence of war, new
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
institutions must be developed that will effectively control the
|
|
|
|
|
socially destructive segments of societies. Second, for purposes
|
|
|
|
|
of adapting the physical and psychological dynamics of human behavior
|
|
|
|
|
to the needs of social organization, a credible substitute for war
|
|
|
|
|
must generate an omnipresent and readily understood fear of personal
|
|
|
|
|
destruction. This fear must be of a nature and degree sufficient
|
|
|
|
|
to ensure adherence to societal values to the full extent that they
|
|
|
|
|
are acknowledged to transcend the value of an individual human
|
|
|
|
|
life.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>4. {Ecological}. A substitute for war in its function as the uniquely
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
human system of population control must ensure the survival, if
|
|
|
|
|
not necessarily the improvement, of the species, in terms of its
|
|
|
|
|
relation to environmental supply.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>5. {Cultural and Scientific}. A surrogate for the function of war
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
as the determinant of cultural values must establish a basis of
|
|
|
|
|
sociomoral conflict of equally compelling force and scope. A
|
|
|
|
|
substitute motivational basis for the quest for scientific knowledge
|
|
|
|
|
must be similarly informed by a comparable sense of internal
|
|
|
|
|
necessity.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Substitutes for the Functions of War: Models</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>The following substitute institutions, among others, have been
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
proposed for consideration as replacements for the nonmilitary
|
|
|
|
|
functions of war. That they may not have been originally set forth
|
|
|
|
|
for that purpose does not preclude or invalidate their possible
|
|
|
|
|
application here.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>1. {Economic}. a) A comprehensive social-welfare program, directed
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
toward maximum improvement of general conditions of human life. b)
|
|
|
|
|
A giant open-end space research program, aimed at unreachable
|
|
|
|
|
targets. c) A permanent, ritualized, ultra-elaborate disarmament
|
|
|
|
|
inspection system, and variants of such a system.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>2. {Political}. a) An omnipresent, virtually omnipotent international
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
police force. b) An established and recognized extraterrestrial
|
|
|
|
|
menace. c) Massive global environmental pollution. d) Fictitious
|
|
|
|
|
alternate enemies.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>3. {Sociological: Control function}. a) Programs generally derived
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
>from the Peace Corps model. b) A modern, sophisticated form of
|
|
|
|
|
slavery. {Motivational function}. a) Intensified environmental
|
|
|
|
|
pollution. b) New religious or other mythologies. c) Socially
|
|
|
|
|
oriented blood games. d) Combination forms.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>4. {Ecological}. A comprehensive program of applied eugenics.</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>5. {Cultural}. No replacement institution offered. {Scientific}.
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
The secondary requirements of the space research, social welfare,
|
|
|
|
|
and/or eugenics programs.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Substitutes for the Functions of War: Evaluation</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>The models listed above reflect only the beginning of the quest
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
for substitute institutions for the functions of war, rather than
|
|
|
|
|
a recapitulation of alternatives. It would be both premature and
|
|
|
|
|
inappropriate, therefore, to offer final judgments on their
|
|
|
|
|
applicability to a transition to peace and after. Furthermore,
|
|
|
|
|
since the necessary but complex project of correlating the
|
|
|
|
|
compatibility of proposed surrogates for different functions could
|
|
|
|
|
be treated only in exemplary fashion at this time, we have elected
|
|
|
|
|
to withhold such hypothetical correlation as were tested as
|
|
|
|
|
statistically inadequate. [42]</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Nevertheless, some tentative and cursory comments on these proposed
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
functional "solutions" will indicate the scope of the difficulties
|
|
|
|
|
involved in this area of peace planning.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{Economic}. The social-welfare model cannot be expected to remain
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
outside the normal economy after the conclusion of its predominantly
|
|
|
|
|
capital-investment phase; its value in this function can therefore
|
|
|
|
|
be only temporary. The space-research substitute appears to meet
|
|
|
|
|
both major criteria, and should be examined in greater detail,
|
|
|
|
|
especially in respect to its probable effects on other war functions.
|
|
|
|
|
"Elaborate inspection" schemes, although superficially attractive,
|
|
|
|
|
are inconsistent with the basic premise of transition to peace.
|
|
|
|
|
The "unarmed forces" variant, logistically similar, is subject to
|
|
|
|
|
the same functional criticism as the general social-welfare model.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{Political}. Like the inspection-scheme surrogates, proposals for
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
plenipotentiary international police are inherently incompatible
|
|
|
|
|
with the ending of the war system. The "unarmed forces" variant,
|
|
|
|
|
amended to include unlimited powers of economic sanction, might
|
|
|
|
|
conceivably be expanded to constitute a credible external menace.
|
|
|
|
|
Development of an acceptable threat from "outer space," presumably
|
|
|
|
|
in conjunction with a space-research surrogate for economic control,
|
|
|
|
|
appears unpromising in terms of credibility. The environmental-pollution
|
|
|
|
|
model does not seem sufficiently responsive to immediate social
|
|
|
|
|
control, except through arbitrary acceleration of current pollution
|
|
|
|
|
trends; this in turn raises questions of political acceptability.
|
|
|
|
|
New, less regressive, approaches to the creation of fictitious
|
|
|
|
|
global "enemies" invite further investigation.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{Sociological: Control function}. Although the various substitutes
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
proposed for this function that are modeled roughly on the Peace
|
|
|
|
|
Corps appear grossly inadequate in potential scope, they should
|
|
|
|
|
not be ruled out without further study. Slavery, in a technologically
|
|
|
|
|
modern and conceptually euphemized form, may prove a more efficient
|
|
|
|
|
and flexible institution in this area. {Motivational function}.
|
|
|
|
|
Although none of the proposed substitutes for war as the guarantor
|
|
|
|
|
of social allegiance can be dismissed out of hand, each presents
|
|
|
|
|
serious and special difficulties. Intensified environmental threats
|
|
|
|
|
may raise ecological dangers; mythmaking dissociated from war may
|
|
|
|
|
no longer be politically feasible; purposeful blood games and
|
|
|
|
|
rituals can far more readily be devised than implemented. An
|
|
|
|
|
institution combining this function with the preceding one, based
|
|
|
|
|
on, but not necessarily imitative of, the precedent of organized
|
|
|
|
|
ethnic repression, warrants careful consideration.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{Ecological}. The only apparent problem in the application of an
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
adequate eugenic substitute for war is that of timing; it cannot
|
|
|
|
|
be effectuated until the transition to peace has been completed,
|
|
|
|
|
which involves a serious temporary risk of ecological failure.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>{Cultural}. No plausible substitute for this function of war has
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
yet been proposed. It may be, however, that a basic cultural
|
|
|
|
|
value-determinant is not necessary to the survival of a stable
|
|
|
|
|
society. {Scientific}. The same might be said for the function of
|
|
|
|
|
war as the prime mover of the search for knowledge. However, adoption
|
|
|
|
|
of either a giant space-research program, a comprehensive
|
|
|
|
|
social-welfare program, or a master program of eugenic control
|
|
|
|
|
would provide motivation for limited technologies.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>General Conclusions</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>It is apparent, from the foregoing, that no program or combination
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of programs yet proposed for a transition to peace has remotely
|
|
|
|
|
approached meeting the comprehensive functional requirements of a
|
|
|
|
|
world without war. Although one projected system for filling the
|
|
|
|
|
economic function of war seems promising, similar optimism cannot
|
|
|
|
|
be expressed in the equally essential political and sociological
|
|
|
|
|
areas. The other major nonmilitary functions of war - ecological,
|
|
|
|
|
cultural, scientific - raise very different problems, but it is at
|
|
|
|
|
least possible that detailed programming of substitutes in these
|
|
|
|
|
areas is not prerequisite to transition. More important, it is not
|
|
|
|
|
enough to develop adequate but separate surrogates for the major
|
|
|
|
|
war functions; they must be fully compatible and in no degree
|
|
|
|
|
self-canceling.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Until such a unified program is developed, at least hypothetically,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
it is impossible for this or any other group to furnish meaningful
|
|
|
|
|
answers to the questions originally presented to us. When asked
|
|
|
|
|
how best to prepare for the advent of peace, we must first reply,
|
|
|
|
|
as strongly as we can, that the war system cannot responsibly be
|
|
|
|
|
allowed to disappear until 1) we know exactly what it is we plan
|
|
|
|
|
to put in its place, and 2) we are certain, beyond reasonable doubt,
|
|
|
|
|
that these substitute institutions will serve their purposes in
|
|
|
|
|
terms of the survival and stability of society. It will then be
|
|
|
|
|
time enough to develop methods for effectuating the transition;
|
|
|
|
|
procedural programming must follow, not precede, substantive
|
|
|
|
|
solutions.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Such solutions, if indeed they exist, will not be arrived at without
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
a revolutionary revision of the modes of thought heretofore considered
|
|
|
|
|
appropriate to peace research. That we have examined the fundamental
|
|
|
|
|
questions involved from a dispassionate, value-free point of view
|
|
|
|
|
should not imply that we do not appreciate the intellectual and
|
|
|
|
|
emotional difficulties that must be overcome on all decision-making
|
|
|
|
|
levels before these questions are generally acknowledged by others
|
|
|
|
|
for what they are. They reflect, on an intellectual level, traditional
|
|
|
|
|
emotional resistance to new (more lethal and thus more "shocking")
|
|
|
|
|
forms of weaponry. The understated comment of then-Senator Hubert
|
|
|
|
|
Humphrey on the publication of {On Thermonuclear War} is still very
|
|
|
|
|
much to the point: "New thoughts, particularly those which appear
|
|
|
|
|
to contradict current assumptions, are always painful for the mind
|
|
|
|
|
to contemplate."</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Nor, simply because we have not discussed them, do we minimize the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
massive reconciliation of conflicting interest which domestic as
|
|
|
|
|
well as international agreement on proceeding toward genuine peace
|
|
|
|
|
presupposes. This factor was excluded from the purview of our
|
|
|
|
|
assignment, but we would be remiss if we failed to take it into
|
|
|
|
|
account. Although no insuperable obstacle lies in the path of
|
|
|
|
|
reaching such general agreements, formidable short-term private-group
|
|
|
|
|
and general-class interest in maintaining the war system is well
|
|
|
|
|
established and widely recognized. The resistance to peace stemming
|
|
|
|
|
>from such interest is only tangential, in the long run, to the
|
|
|
|
|
basic functions of war, but it will not be easily overcome, in this
|
|
|
|
|
country or elsewhere. Some observers, in fact, believe that it
|
|
|
|
|
cannot be overcome at all in our time, that the price of peace is,
|
|
|
|
|
simply, too high. This bears on our overall conclusions to the
|
|
|
|
|
extent that timing in the transference to substitute institutions
|
|
|
|
|
may often be the critical factor in their political feasibility.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>It is uncertain, at this time, whether peace will ever be possible.
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
It is far more questionable, by the objective standard of continued
|
|
|
|
|
social survival rather than that of emotional pacifism, that it
|
|
|
|
|
would be desirable even if it were demonstrably attainable. The
|
|
|
|
|
war system, for all its subjective repugnance to important sections
|
|
|
|
|
of "public opinion," has demonstrated its effectiveness since the
|
|
|
|
|
beginning of recorded history; it has provided the basis for the
|
|
|
|
|
development of many impressively durable civilizations, including
|
|
|
|
|
that which is dominant today. It has consistently provided unambiguous
|
|
|
|
|
social priorities. It is, on the whole, a known quantity. A viable
|
|
|
|
|
system of peace, assuming that the great and complex questions of
|
|
|
|
|
substitute institutions raised in this Report are both soluble and
|
|
|
|
|
solved, would still constitute a venture into the unknown, with
|
|
|
|
|
the inevitable risks attendant on the unforeseen, however small
|
|
|
|
|
and however well hedged.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Government decision-makers tend to choose peace over war whenever
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
a real option exists, because it usually appear to be the "safer"
|
|
|
|
|
choice. Under most immediate circumstances they are likely to be
|
|
|
|
|
right. But in terms of long-range social stability, the opposite
|
|
|
|
|
is true. At our present state of knowledge and reasonable inference,
|
|
|
|
|
it is the war system that must be identified with stability, the
|
|
|
|
|
peace system with social speculation, however justifiable the
|
|
|
|
|
speculation may appear, in terms of subjective moral or emotional
|
|
|
|
|
values. A nuclear physicist once remarked, in respect to a possible
|
|
|
|
|
disarmament agreement: "If we could change the world into a world
|
|
|
|
|
in which no weapons could be made, that would be stabilizing. But
|
|
|
|
|
agreements we can expect with the Soviets would be destabilizing."
|
|
|
|
|
[43] The qualification and the bias are equally irrelevant; {any}
|
|
|
|
|
condition of genuine total peace, however achieved, would be
|
|
|
|
|
destabilizing until proved otherwise.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>If it were necessary at this moment to opt irrevocably for the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
retention or for the dissolution of the war system, common prudence
|
|
|
|
|
would dictate the former course. But it is not yet necessary, late
|
|
|
|
|
as the hour appears. And more factors must eventually enter the
|
|
|
|
|
war-peace equation than even the most determined search for
|
|
|
|
|
alternative institutions for the functions of war can be expected
|
|
|
|
|
to reveal. One group of such factors has been given only passing
|
|
|
|
|
mention in this Report; it centers around the possible obsolescence
|
|
|
|
|
of the war system itself. We have noted, for instance, the limitations
|
|
|
|
|
of the war system in filling its ecological function and the
|
|
|
|
|
declining importance of this aspect of war. It by no means stretches
|
|
|
|
|
the imagination to visualize comparable developments which may
|
|
|
|
|
compromise the efficacy of war as, for example, an economic controller
|
|
|
|
|
or as an organizer of social allegiance. This kind of possibility,
|
|
|
|
|
however remote, serves as a reminder that all calculations of
|
|
|
|
|
contingency not only involve the weighing of one group of risks
|
|
|
|
|
against another, but require a respectful allowance for error on
|
|
|
|
|
both sides of the scale.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>A more expedient reason for pursuing the investigation of alternate
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
ways and means to serve the current functions of war is narrowly
|
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|
|
|
political. It is possible that one or more major sovereign nations
|
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|
|
|
may arrive, through ambiguous leadership, at a position in which
|
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|
|
a ruling administrative class may lose control of basic public
|
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|
|
|
opinion or of its ability to rationalize a desired war. It is not
|
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|
|
hard to imagine, in such circumstance, a situation in which such
|
|
|
|
|
governments may feel forced to initiate serious full-scale disarmament
|
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|
|
proceedings (perhaps provoked by "accidental" nuclear explosions),
|
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and that such negotiations may lead to the actual disestablishment
|
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|
|
of military institutions. As our Report has made clear, this could
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|
be catastrophic. It seems evident that, in the event an important
|
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|
part of the world is suddenly plunged without sufficient warning
|
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|
|
into an inadvertent peace, even partial and inadequate preparation
|
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|
for the possibility may be better than none. The difference could
|
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|
|
even be critical. The models considered in the preceding chapter,
|
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both those that seem promising and those that do not, have one
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positive feature in common - an inherent flexibility of phasing.
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|
And despite our strictures against knowingly proceeding into
|
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peace-transition procedures without thorough substantive preparation,
|
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our government must nevertheless be ready to move in this direction
|
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|
with whatever limited resources of planning are on hand at the time
|
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- if circumstances so require. An arbitrary all-or-nothing approach
|
|
|
|
|
is no more realistic in the development of contingency peace
|
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|
|
programming than it is anywhere else.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>But the principal cause for concern over the continuing effectiveness
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of the war system, and the more important reason for hedging with
|
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|
peace planning, lies in the backwardness of current war-system
|
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|
|
|
programming. Its controls have not kept pace with the technological
|
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|
|
advances it has made possible. Despite its inarguable success to
|
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|
|
date, even in this era of unprecedented potential in mass destruction,
|
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|
|
it continues to operate largely on a laissez-faire basis. To the
|
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|
|
best of our knowledge, no serious quantified studies have ever been
|
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|
conducted to determine, for example:</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>- optimum levels of armament production, for purposes of economic
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
control, at any given series of chronological points and under any
|
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|
|
given relationship between civilian production and consumption
|
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|
patterns;</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>- correlation factors between draft recruitment policies and
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
mensurable social dissidence;</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>- minimum levels of population destruction necessary to maintain
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
war-threat credibility under varying political conditions;</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>- optimum cyclical frequency of "shooting" wars under varying
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
circumstances of historical relationship.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>These and other war-function factors are fully susceptible to
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
analysis by today's computer-based systems, [44] but they have not
|
|
|
|
|
been so treated; modern analytical techniques have up to now been
|
|
|
|
|
relegated to such aspects of the ostensible functions of war as
|
|
|
|
|
procurement, personnel deployment, weapons analysis, and the like.
|
|
|
|
|
We do not disparage these types of application, but only deplore
|
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|
|
|
their lack of utilization to greater capacity in attacking problems
|
|
|
|
|
of broader scope. Our concern for efficiency in this context is
|
|
|
|
|
not aesthetic, economic, or humanistic. It stems from the axiom
|
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|
|
|
that no system can long survive at either input or output levels
|
|
|
|
|
that consistently or substantially deviate from an optimum range.
|
|
|
|
|
As their data grow increasingly sophisticated, the war system and
|
|
|
|
|
its functions are increasingly endangered by such deviations.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Our final conclusion, therefore, is that it will be necessary for
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
our government to plan in depth for two general contingencies. The
|
|
|
|
|
first, and lesser, is the possibility of a viable general peace;
|
|
|
|
|
the second is the successful continuation of the war system. In
|
|
|
|
|
our view, careful preparation for the possibility of peace should
|
|
|
|
|
be extended, not because we take the position that the end of war
|
|
|
|
|
would necessarily be desirable, if it is in fact possible, but
|
|
|
|
|
because it may be thrust upon us in some form whether we are ready
|
|
|
|
|
for it or not. Planning for rationalizing and quantifying the war
|
|
|
|
|
system, on the other hand, to ensure the effectiveness of its major
|
|
|
|
|
stabilizing functions, is not only more promising in respect to
|
|
|
|
|
anticipated results, but is essential; we can no longer take for
|
|
|
|
|
granted that it will continue to serve our purposes well merely
|
|
|
|
|
because it always has. The objective of government policy in regard
|
|
|
|
|
to war and peace, in this period of uncertainty, must be to preserve
|
|
|
|
|
maximum options. The recommendations which follow are directed to
|
|
|
|
|
this end.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>SECTION 8: Recommendations</p>
|
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|
<p>(1) We propose the establishment, under executive order of the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
President, of a permanent War/Peace Research Agency, empowered and
|
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|
|
mandated to execute the programs describe in (2) and (3) below.
|
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|
|
This agency (a) will be provided with nonaccountable funds sufficient
|
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|
|
to implement its responsibilities and decisions at its own discretion,
|
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|
|
and (b) will have authority to preempt and utilize, without
|
|
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|
|
restriction, any and all facilities of the executive branch of the
|
|
|
|
|
government in pursuit of its objectives. It will be organized along
|
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|
|
the lines of the National Security Council, except that none of
|
|
|
|
|
its governing, executive, or operating personnel will hold other
|
|
|
|
|
public office or governmental responsibility. Its directorate will
|
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|
|
be drawn from the broadest practicable spectrum of scientific
|
|
|
|
|
disciplines, humanistic studies, applied creative arts, operating
|
|
|
|
|
technologies, and otherwise unclassified professional occupations.
|
|
|
|
|
It will be responsible solely to the President, or to other officers
|
|
|
|
|
of government temporarily deputized by him. Its operation will be
|
|
|
|
|
governed entirely by its own rules of procedure. Its authority will
|
|
|
|
|
expressly include the unlimited right to withhold information on
|
|
|
|
|
its activities and its decisions, from anyone except the President,
|
|
|
|
|
whenever it deems such secrecy to be in the public interest.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(2) The first of the War/Peace Research Agency's two principal
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
responsibilities will be to determine all that can be known,
|
|
|
|
|
including what can reasonably be inferred in terms of relevant
|
|
|
|
|
statistical probabilities, that may bear on an eventual transition
|
|
|
|
|
to a general condition of peace. The findings in this Report may
|
|
|
|
|
be considered to constitute the beginning of this study and to
|
|
|
|
|
indicate its orientation; detailed records of the investigations
|
|
|
|
|
and findings of the Special Study Group on which this Report is
|
|
|
|
|
based, will be furnished the agency, along with whatever clarifying
|
|
|
|
|
data the agency deems necessary. This aspect of the agency's work
|
|
|
|
|
will hereinafter be referred to as "Peace Research."</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>The Agency's Peace Research activities will necessarily include,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
but not be limited to, the following:</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(a) The creative development of possible substitute institutions
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
for the principal nonmilitary functions of war.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(b) The careful matching of such institutions against the criteria
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
summarized in this Report, as refined, revised, and extended by
|
|
|
|
|
the agency.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(c) The testing and evaluation of substitute institutions, for
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
acceptability, feasibility, and credibility, against hypothecated
|
|
|
|
|
transitional and postwar conditions; the testing and evaluation of
|
|
|
|
|
the effects of the anticipated atrophy of certain unsubstituted
|
|
|
|
|
functions.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(d) The development and testing of the correlativity of multiple
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
substitute institutions, with the eventual objective of establishing
|
|
|
|
|
a comprehensive program of compatible war substitutes suitable for
|
|
|
|
|
a planned transition to peace, if and when this is found to be
|
|
|
|
|
possible and subsequently judged desirable by appropriate political
|
|
|
|
|
authorities.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(e) The preparation of a wide-ranging schedule of partial,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
uncorrelated, crash programs of adjustment suitable for reducing
|
|
|
|
|
the dangers of an unplanned transition to peace effected by {force
|
|
|
|
|
majeure}.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Peace research methods will include but not be limited to, the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
following:</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(a) The comprehensive interdisciplinary application of historical,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
scientific, technological, and cultural data.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(b) The full utilization of modern methods of mathematical modeling,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
analogical analysis, and other, more sophisticated, quantitative
|
|
|
|
|
techniques in process of development that are compatible with
|
|
|
|
|
computer programming.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(c) The heuristic "peace games" procedures developed during the
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
course of its assignment by the Special Study Group, and further
|
|
|
|
|
extensions of this basic approach to the testing of institutional
|
|
|
|
|
functions.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(3) The War/Peace Research Agency's other principal responsibility
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
will be "War Research." Its fundamental objective will be to ensure
|
|
|
|
|
the continuing viability of the war system to fulfill its essential
|
|
|
|
|
nonmilitary functions for as long as the war system is judged
|
|
|
|
|
necessary to or desirable for the survival of society. To achieve
|
|
|
|
|
this end, the War Research groups within the agency will engage in
|
|
|
|
|
the following activities:</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(a) {Quantification of existing application of the nonmilitary
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
functions of war}. Specific determinations will include, but not
|
|
|
|
|
be limited to: 1) the gross amount and the net proportion of
|
|
|
|
|
nonproductive military expenditures since World War II assignable
|
|
|
|
|
to the need for war as an economic stabilizer; 2) the amount and
|
|
|
|
|
proportion of military expenditures and destruction of life,
|
|
|
|
|
property, and natural resources during this period assignable to
|
|
|
|
|
the need for war as an instrument for political control; 3) similar
|
|
|
|
|
figures, to the extent that they can be separately arrived at,
|
|
|
|
|
assignable to the need for war to maintain social cohesiveness; 4)
|
|
|
|
|
levels of recruitment and expenditures on the draft and other forms
|
|
|
|
|
of personnel deployment attributable to the need for military
|
|
|
|
|
institutions to control social disaffection; 5) the statistical
|
|
|
|
|
relationship of war casualties to world food supplies; 6) the
|
|
|
|
|
correlation of military actions and expenditures with cultural
|
|
|
|
|
activities and scientific advances (including necessarily, the
|
|
|
|
|
development of mensurable standards in these areas).</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(b) {Establishment of a priori modern criteria for the execution
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of the nonmilitary functions of war}. These will include, but not
|
|
|
|
|
be limited to: 1) calculation of minimum and optimum ranges of
|
|
|
|
|
military expenditure required, under varying hypothetical conditions,
|
|
|
|
|
to fulfill these several functions, separately and collectively;
|
|
|
|
|
2) determination of minimum and optimum levels of destruction of
|
|
|
|
|
life, property, and natural resources prerequisite to the credibility
|
|
|
|
|
of external threat essential to the political and motivational
|
|
|
|
|
functions; 3) development of a negotiable formula governing the
|
|
|
|
|
relationship between military recruitment and training policies
|
|
|
|
|
and the exigencies of social control.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(c) {Reconciliation of these criteria with prevailing economic,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
political, sociological, and ecological limitations}. The ultimate
|
|
|
|
|
object of this phase of War Research is to rationalize the heretofore
|
|
|
|
|
informal operations of the war system. It should provide practical
|
|
|
|
|
working procedures through which responsible governmental authority
|
|
|
|
|
may resolve the following war-function problems, among others,
|
|
|
|
|
under any given circumstances: 1) how to determine the optimum
|
|
|
|
|
quantity, nature, and timing of military expenditures to ensure a
|
|
|
|
|
desired degree of economic control; 2) how to organize the recruitment,
|
|
|
|
|
deployment, and ostensible use of military personnel to ensure a
|
|
|
|
|
desired degree of acceptance of authorized social values; 3) how
|
|
|
|
|
to compute on a short-term basis, the nature and extent of the loss
|
|
|
|
|
of life and other resources which should be suffered and/or inflicted
|
|
|
|
|
during any single outbreak of hostilities to achieve a desired
|
|
|
|
|
degree of internal political authority and social allegiance; 4)
|
|
|
|
|
how to project, over extended periods, the nature and quality of
|
|
|
|
|
overt warfare which must be planned and budgeted to achieve a
|
|
|
|
|
desired degree of contextual stability for the same purpose; factors
|
|
|
|
|
to be determined must include frequency of occurrence, length of
|
|
|
|
|
phase, intensity of physical destruction, extensiveness of geographical
|
|
|
|
|
involvement, and optimum mean loss of life; 5) how to extrapolate
|
|
|
|
|
accurately from the foregoing, for ecological purposes, the continuing
|
|
|
|
|
effect of the war system, over such extended cycles, on population
|
|
|
|
|
pressures, and to adjust the planning of casualty rates accordingly.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>War Research procedures will necessarily include, but not be limited
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
to, the following:</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(a) The collation of economic, military, and other relevant data
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
into uniform terms, permitting the reversible translation of
|
|
|
|
|
heretofore discrete categories of information. [45]</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(b) The development and application of appropriate forms of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
cost-effectiveness analysis suitable for adapting such new constructs
|
|
|
|
|
to computer terminology, programming, and projection. [46]</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(c) Extension of the "war games" methods of systems testing to
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
apply, as a quasi-adversary proceeding, to the nonmilitary functions
|
|
|
|
|
of war. [47]</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>(4) Since both programs of the War/Peace Research Agency will share
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
the same purpose - to maintain governmental freedom of choice in
|
|
|
|
|
respect to war and peace until the direction of social survival is
|
|
|
|
|
no longer in doubt - it is of the essence of this proposal that
|
|
|
|
|
the agency be constituted without limitation of time. Its examination
|
|
|
|
|
of existing and proposed institutions will be self-liquidating when
|
|
|
|
|
its own function shall have been superseded by the historical
|
|
|
|
|
developments it will have, at least in part, initiated.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>Notes</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>1. {The Economic and Social Consequences of Disarmament: U.S.
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
Reply to the Inquiry of the Secretary-General of the United Nations}
|
|
|
|
|
(Washington, D.C.: USGPO, June 1964), pp. 8-9.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>2. Herman Kahn, {Thinking About the Unthinkable} (<span class="GPE" title="GPE">New York</span>: Horizon,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
1962), p. 35.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>3. Robert S. McNamara, in an address before the American Society
|
2023-04-28 08:18:41 -04:00
|
|
|
of Newspaper Editors, <span class="GPE" title="GPE">Montreal</span>, P.Q., <span class="GPE" title="GPE">Canada</span>, 18 May 1966.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>4. Alfred <span class="LOC" title="LOC">North Whitehead</span>, in "The Anatomy of Some Scientific
|
2023-04-28 08:18:41 -04:00
|
|
|
Ideas," included in {The Aims of Education} (<span class="GPE" title="GPE">New York</span>: Macmillan,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
1929).</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>5. At Ann Arbor, Michigan, 16 June 1962.</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>6. Louis J. Halle, "Peace in Our Time? Nuclear Weapons as a
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
Stabilizer," {The New Republic} (28 December 1963).</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>7. Kenneth E. Boulding, "The World War Industry as an Economic
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
Problem," in Emile Benoit and Kenneth E. Boulding (eds.), {Disarmament
|
2023-04-28 08:18:41 -04:00
|
|
|
and the Economy} <span class="GPE" title="GPE">New York</span>: Harper and Row, 1963).</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>8. McNamara, in ASNE <span class="GPE" title="GPE">Montreal</span> address cited.</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>9. {Report of the Committee on the Economic Impact of Defense and
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
Disarmament} (Washington: USGPO, July 1965).</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>10. Sumner M. Rosen, "Disarmament and the Economy," {War/Peace
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
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|
Report} (March 1966).</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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<p>11. {Vide} William D. Grampp, "False Fears of Disarmament," {Harvard
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
Business Review} (Jan.-Feb. 1964) for a concise example of this
|
|
|
|
|
reasoning.</p>
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2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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<p>12. Seymour Melman, "The Cost of Inspection for Disarmament," in
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
Benoit and Boulding, {op}. {cit}.</p>
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2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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|
<p>13. Arthur I. Waskow, {Toward the Unarmed Forces of the United
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2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
States} (Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1966), p. 9.
|
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(This is the unabridged edition of the text of a report and proposal
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|
prepared for a seminar of strategists and Congressmen in 1965; it
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was later given limited distribution among other persons engaged
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|
|
|
|
in related projects.)</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>14. David T. Bazelon, "The Politics of the Paper Economy," {Commentary}
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
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|
(November 1962), p. 409.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>15. {The Economic Impact of Disarmament} (Washington: USGPO, January
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2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
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|
1962).</p>
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2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>16. David T. Bazelon, "The Scarcity Makers," {Commentary} (October
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2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
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|
1962), p. 298.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>17. Frank Pace, Jr., in an address before the American Bankers'
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2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
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|
Association, September 1957.</p>
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2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>18. A random example, taken in this case from a story by David
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2023-04-28 08:18:41 -04:00
|
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|
Deitch in the <span class="GPE" title="GPE">New York</span> {Herald Tribune} (9 February 1966).</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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|
<p>19. {Vide} L. Gumplowicz, in {Geschichte der Staatstheorien}
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2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
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|
(Innsbruck: Wagner, 1905) and earlier writings.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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|
<p>20. K. Fischer, {Das Militaer} (Zurich: Steinmetz Verlag, 1932),
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
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|
pp. 42-43.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>21. The obverse of this phenomenon is responsible for the principal
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
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|
combat problem of present-day infantry officers: the unwillingness
|
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|
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|
of otherwise "trained" troops to fire at an enemy close enough to
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|
be recognizable as an individual rather than simply as a target.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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<p>22. Herman Kahn, {On Thermonuclear War} (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
University Press, 1960), p. 42.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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|
<p>23. John D. Williams, "The Nonsense about Safe Driving," {Fortune}
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
(September 1958).</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>24. {Vide} most recently K. Lorenz, in {Das Sogenannte Boese: zur
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
Naturgeschichte der Aggression} (Vienna: G. Borotha-Schoeler
|
|
|
|
|
Verlag, 1964).</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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|
<p>25. Beginning with Herbert Spencer and his contemporaries, but
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
largely ignored for nearly a century.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>26. As in recent draft-law controversy, in which the issue of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
selective deferment of the culturally privileged is often carelessly
|
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|
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|
equated with the preservation of the biologically "fittest."</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>27. G. Bouthoul, in {La Guerre} (Paris: Presses universitaires de
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
France, 1953) and many other more detailed studies. The useful
|
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|
|
|
concept of "polemology," for the study of war as an independent
|
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|
|
|
discipline, is his, as is the notion of "demographic relaxation,"
|
|
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|
|
the sudden temporary decline in the rate of population increase
|
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|
|
after major wars.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
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|
<p>28. This seemingly premature statement is supported by one of our
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
own test studies. But it hypothecates both the stabilizing of world
|
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|
|
population growth and the institution of fully adequate environmental
|
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|
|
|
controls. Under these two conditions, the probability of the
|
|
|
|
|
permanent elimination of involuntary global famine is 68 percent
|
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|
|
by 1976 and 95 percent by 1981.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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|
<p>29. This round figure is the median taken from our computations,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
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|
which cover varying contingencies, but it is sufficient for the
|
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|
purpose of general discussion.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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|
<p>30. But less misleading than the more elegant traditional metaphor,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
in which war expenditures are referred to as the "ballast" of the
|
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|
|
economy but which suggests incorrect quantitative relationships.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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<p>31. Typical in generality, scope, and rhetoric. We have not used
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
any published program as a model; similarities are unavoidably
|
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|
|
coincidental rather than tendentious.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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|
<p>32. {Vide} the reception of a "Freedom Budget for all Americans,"
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
proposed by A. Philip Randolph {et al}; it is a ten-year plan,
|
|
|
|
|
estimated by its sponsors to cost $185 billion.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>33. Waskow, {op}. {cit}.</p>
|
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|
|
<p>34. By several current theorists, most extensively and effectively
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
by Robert R. Harris in {The Real Enemy}, an unpublished doctoral
|
|
|
|
|
dissertation made available to this study.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>35. In ASNE <span class="GPE" title="GPE">Montreal</span> address cited.</p>
|
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|
<p>36. {The Tenth Victim}.</p>
|
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|
<p>37. For an examination of some of its social implications, see
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
Seymour Rubenfeld, {Family of Outcasts: A New Theory of Delinquency}
|
2023-04-28 08:18:41 -04:00
|
|
|
(<span class="GPE" title="GPE">New York</span>: Free Press, 1965).</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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|
<p>38. As in Nazi Germany; this type of "ideological" ethnic repression,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
directed to specific sociological ends, should not be confused with
|
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|
|
|
traditional economic exploitation, as of Negroes in the U.S., South
|
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|
|
Africa, etc.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>39. By teams of experimental biologists in Massachusetts, Michigan,
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
and California, as well as in Mexico and the U.S.S.R. Preliminary
|
|
|
|
|
test applications are scheduled in Southeast Asia, in countries
|
|
|
|
|
not yet announced.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
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|
<p>40. Expressed in the writings of H. Marshall McLuhan, in {Understanding
|
2023-04-28 08:18:41 -04:00
|
|
|
Media: The Extensions of Man} (<span class="GPE" title="GPE">New York</span>: McGraw-Hill, 1964) and
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
elsewhere.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>41. This rather optimistic estimate was derived by plotting a
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
three-dimensional distribution of three arbitrarily defined variables;
|
|
|
|
|
the macro-structural, relating to the extension of knowledge beyond
|
|
|
|
|
the capacity of conscious experience; the organic, dealing with
|
|
|
|
|
the manifestations of terrestrial life as inherently comprehensible;
|
|
|
|
|
and the infra-particular, covering the subconceptual requirements
|
|
|
|
|
of natural phenomena. Values were assigned to the known and unknown
|
|
|
|
|
in each parameter, tested against data from earlier chronologies,
|
|
|
|
|
and modified heuristically until predictable correlations reached
|
|
|
|
|
a useful level of accuracy. "Two decades" means, in this case, 20.6
|
|
|
|
|
years, with a standard deviation of only 1.8 years. (An incidental
|
|
|
|
|
finding, not pursued to the same degree of accuracy, suggests a
|
|
|
|
|
greatly accelerated resolution of issues in the biological sciences
|
|
|
|
|
after 1972.)</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>42. Since they represent an examination of too small a percentage
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
of the eventual options, in terms of "multiple mating," the subsystem
|
|
|
|
|
we developed for this application. But an example will indicate
|
|
|
|
|
how one of the most frequently recurring correlation problems -
|
|
|
|
|
chronological phasing - was brought to light in this way. One of
|
|
|
|
|
the first combinations tested showed remarkably high coefficients
|
|
|
|
|
of compatibility, on a {post hoc} static basis, but no variations
|
|
|
|
|
of timing, using a thirty-year transition module, permitted even
|
|
|
|
|
marginal synchronization. The combination was thus disqualified.
|
|
|
|
|
This would not rule out the possible adequacy of combinations using
|
|
|
|
|
modifications of the same factors, however, since minor variations
|
|
|
|
|
in a proposed final condition may have disproportionate effects on
|
|
|
|
|
phasing.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>43. Edward Teller, quoted in {War/Peace Report} (December 1964).</p>
|
|
|
|
|
<p>44. E.g., the highly publicized "Delphi technique" and other, more
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
sophisticated procedures. A new system, especially suitable for
|
|
|
|
|
institutional analysis, was developed during the course of this
|
|
|
|
|
study in order to hypothecate mensurable "peace games"; a manual
|
|
|
|
|
of this system is being prepared and will be submitted for general
|
|
|
|
|
distribution among appropriate agencies. For older, but still
|
|
|
|
|
useful, techniques, see Norman C. Dalkey's {Games and Simulations}
|
|
|
|
|
(Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1964).</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>45. A primer-level example of the obvious and long overdue need
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
for such translation is furnished by Kahn (in {Thinking About the
|
|
|
|
|
Unthinkable}, p. 102). Under the heading "Some Awkward Choices" he
|
|
|
|
|
compares four hypothetical policies: a certain loss of $3000; a
|
|
|
|
|
.1 chance of loss of $300000; a
|
|
|
|
|
.01 chance of loss of $30000000; and a .001 chance of loss
|
|
|
|
|
of $3000000000. A government decision-maker would "very likely"
|
|
|
|
|
choose in that order. But what if "lives are at stake rather than
|
|
|
|
|
dollars"? Kahn suggests that the order of choice would be reversed,
|
|
|
|
|
although current experience does not support this opinion. Rational
|
|
|
|
|
war research can and must make it possible to express, without
|
|
|
|
|
ambiguity, lives in terms of dollars and vice versa; the choices
|
|
|
|
|
need not be, and cannot be, "awkward."</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>46. Again, an overdue extension of an obvious application of
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
techniques up to now limited to such circumscribed purposes as
|
|
|
|
|
improving kill-ammunition ratios determining local choice between
|
|
|
|
|
precision and saturation bombing, and other minor tactical, and
|
|
|
|
|
occasionally strategic, ends. The slowness of Rand, I.D.A., and
|
|
|
|
|
other responsible analytic organizations to extend cost-effectiveness
|
|
|
|
|
and related concepts beyond early-phase applications has already
|
|
|
|
|
been widely remarked on and criticized elsewhere.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
<p>47. The inclusion of institutional factors in war-game techniques
|
2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
|
|
|
has been given some rudimentary consideration in the Hudson
|
|
|
|
|
Institute's {Study for Hypothetical Narratives for Use in Command
|
|
|
|
|
and Control Systems Planning} (by William Pfaff and Edmund Stillman;
|
|
|
|
|
Final report published 1963). But here, as with other war and peace
|
|
|
|
|
studies to date, what has blocked the logical extension of new
|
|
|
|
|
analytic techniques has been a general failure to understand and
|
|
|
|
|
properly evaluate the nonmilitary functions of war.</p>
|
2023-05-03 17:06:31 -04:00
|
|
|
</div>
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2023-04-27 21:33:38 -04:00
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</body>
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</html>
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