Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
From: pierce@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (
f_gautjw@ccsvax.sfasu.edu writes:
>inalienable rights of man to one more akin to that expressed by
>
THE REPORT OF THE SPECIAL STUDY GROUP
Letter of Transmittal
To the convener of this group:
Attached is the Report of the Special Study
We have completed our assignment to the best of our ability, subject to the limitations of time and resources available to us. Our conclusions of fact and our recommendations are unanimous; those of us who differ in certain secondary respects from the findings set forth herein do not consider these differences sufficient to warrant the filing of a minority report. It is our earnest hope that the fruits of our deliberations will be of value to our government in its efforts to provide leadership to the nation in solving the complex and far-reaching problems we have examined, and that our recommendations for subsequent Presidential action in this area will be adopted.
Because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the establishment
of this
We deeply regret that the necessity of anonymity, a prerequisite to our Group's unhindered pursuit of its objectives, precludes proper acknowledgement of our gratitude to the many persons in and out of government who contributed so greatly to our work.
{For the Special Study
[signature withheld]
30 September, 1966}
Introduction
The report which follows summarizes the results of a two-and-a-half-year study of the broad problems to be anticipated in
the event of a general transformation of
Our work has been predicated on the belief that some kind of general
peace may soon be negotiable. The {de facto} admission of
It is surely no exaggeration to say that a condition of general world peace would lead to changes in the social structures of the nations of the world of unparalleled and revolutionary magnitude. The economic impact of general disarmament, to name only the most obvious consequence of peace, would revise the production and distribution patterns of the globe to a degree that would make the changes of the past fifty years seem insignificant. Political, sociological, cultural, and ecological changes would be equally far-reaching. What has motivated our study of these contingencies has been the growing sense of thoughtful men in and out of government that the world is totally unprepared to meet the demands of such a situation.
We had originally planned, when our study was initiated, to address ourselves to these two broad questions and their components: {What can be expected if peace comes? What should we be prepared to do about it?} But as our investigation proceeded it became apparent that certain other questions had to be faced. What, for instance, are the real functions of war in modern societies, beyond the ostensible ones of defending and advancing the "national interests" of nations? In the absence of war, what other institutions exist or might be devised to fulfill these functions? Granting that a "peaceful" settlement of disputes is within the range of current international relationships, is the abolition of war, in the broad sense, really possible? If so, is it necessarily desirable, in terms of social stability? If not, what can be done to improve the operation of our social system in respect to its war-readiness?
The word {peace}, as we have used it in the following pages, describes a permanent, or quasi-permanent, condition entirely free >from the national exercise, or contemplation, of any form of the organized social violence, or threat of violence, generally known as war. It implies total and general disarmament. It is not used to describe the more familiar condition of "cold war," "armed peace, " or other mere respite, long or short, from armed conflict. Nor is it used simply as a synonym for the political settlement of international differences. The magnitude of modern means of mass destruction and the speed of modern communications require the unqualified working definition given above; only a generation ago such an absolute description would have seemed utopian rather than pragmatic. Today, any modification of this definition would render it almost worthless for our purpose. By the same standard, we have used the word {war} to apply interchangeably to conventional ("hot") war, to the general condition of war preparation or war readiness, and to the general "war system." The sense intended is made clear in context.
The first section of our Report deals with its scope and with the assumptions on which our study was based. The second considers the effects of disarmament on the economy, the subject of most peace research to date. The third takes up so-called "disarmament scenarios" which have been proposed. The fourth, fifth, and sixth examine the nonmilitary functions of war and the problems they raise for a viable transition to peace; here will be found some indications of the true dimensions of the problem, not previously coordinated in any other study. In the seventh section we summarize our findings, and in the eighth we set forth our recommendations for what we believe to be a practical and necessary course of action.
SECTION 1: Scope of the Study
When the Special Study
These guideposts are by no means as obvious as they may appear at first glance, and we believe it necessary to indicate clearly how they were to inform our work. For they express succinctly the limitations of previous "peace studies," and imply the nature of both government and unofficial dissatisfaction with these earlier efforts. It is not our intention here to minimize the significance of the work of our predecessors, or to belittle the quality of their contributions. What we have tried to do, and believe we have done, is extend their scope. We hope that our conclusions may serve in turn as a starting point for still broader and more detailed examinations of every aspect of the problems of transition to peace and of the questions which must be answered before such a transition can be allowed to get under way.
It is a truism that objectivity is more often an intention expressed
than an attitude achieved, but the intention - conscious, unambiguous,
and constantly self-critical - is a precondition to its achievement.
We believe it no accident that we were charged to use a "military
contingency" model for our study, and we owe a considerable debt
to the civilian war planning agencies for their pioneering work in
the objective examination of the contingencies of nuclear war.
There is no such precedent in peace studies. Much of the usefulness
of even the most elaborate and carefully reasoned programs for
economic conversion to peace, for example, has been vitiated by a
wishful eagerness to demonstrate that peace is not only possible,
but even cheap or easy. One official report is replete with references
to the critical role of "dynamic optimism" on economic developments,
and goes on to submit, as evidence, that it "would be hard to
imagine that the
An intention to avoid preconceived value judgments is if anything
even more productive of self-delusion. We claim no immunity, as
individuals, from this type of bias, but we have made a continuously
self-conscious effort to deal with the problems of peace without,
for example, considering that a condition of peace is {per se}
"good" or "bad." This has not been easy, but it has been obligatory;
to our knowledge, it has not been done before. Previous studies
have taken the desirability of peace, the importance of human life,
the superiority of democratic institutions, the greatest "good"
for the greatest number, the "dignity" of the individual, the
desirability of maximum health and longevity, and other such wishful
premises as axiomatic values necessary for the justification of a
study of peace issues. We have not found them so. We have attempted
to apply the standards of physical science to our thinking, the
principal characteristic of which is not quantification, as is
popularly believed, but that, in Whitehead's words, "... it ignores
all judgments of value; for instance, all esthetic and moral
judgments." [4] Yet it is obvious that any serious investigation
of a problem, however "pure," must be informed by some normative
standard. In this case it has been simply the survival of human
society in general, of
It is interesting, we believe, to note that the most dispassionate
planners of nuclear strategy also recognize that the stability of
society is the one bedrock value that {cannot} be avoided. Secretary
McNamara has defended the need for
The third criterion - breadth - has taken us still farther afield >from peace studies made to date. It is obvious to any layman that the economic patterns of a warless world will be drastically different from those we live with today, and it is equally obvious that the political relationships of nations will not be those we have learned to take for granted, sometimes described as a global version of the adversary system of our common law. But the social implications of peace extend far beyond its putative effects on national economies and international relations. As we shall show, the relevance of peace and war to the internal political organization of societies, to the sociological relationships of their members, to psychological motivations, to ecological processes, and to cultural values is equally profound. More important, it is equally critical in assaying the consequences of a transition to peace, and in determining the feasibility of any transition at all.
It is not surprising that these less obvious factors have been generally ignored in peace research. They have not lent themselves to systematic analysis. They have been difficult, perhaps impossible, to measure with any degree of assurance that estimates of their effects could be depended on. They are "intangibles," but only in the sense that abstract concepts in mathematics are intangible compared to those which can be measured, at least superficially; and international relationships can be verbalized, like law, into logical sequences.
We do not claim that we have discovered an infallible way of measuring these other factors, or of assigning them precise weights in the equation of transition. But we believe we have taken their relative importance into account to this extent: we have removed them from the category of the "intangible," hence scientifically suspect and therefore somehow of secondary importance, and brought them out into the realm of the objective. The result, we believe, provides a context of realism for the discussion of the issues relating to the possible transition to peace which up to now has been missing.
This is not to say that we presume to have found the answers we were seeking. But we believe that our emphasis on breadth of scope has made it at least possible to begin to understand the questions.
SECTION 2: Disarmament and the Economy
In this section we shall briefly examine some of the common features
of the studies that have been published dealing with one or another
aspect of the expected impact of disarmament on the
General agreement prevails with respect to the more important economic problems that general disarmament would raise. A short survey of these problems, rather than a detailed critique of their comparative significance, is sufficient for our purposes in this Report.
The first factor is that of size. The "world war industry," as one
writer [7] has aptly called it, accounts for approximately a tenth
of the output of the world's total economy. Although this figure
is subject to fluctuation, the causes of which are themselves
subject to regional variation, it tends to hold fairly steady. The
United States, as the world's richest nation, not only accounts
for the largest single share of this expense, currently upward of
$60 billion a year, but also "... has devoted a higher {proportion}
[emphasis added] of its gross national product to its military
establishment than any other major free world nation. This was true
even before our increased expenditures in
Conversion of military expenditures to other purposes entails a
number of difficulties. The most serious stems from the degree of
high specialization that characterizes modern war production, best
exemplified in nuclear and missile technology. This constituted no
fundamental problem after
This inflexibility is geographical and occupational, as well as
industrial, a fact which has led most analysts of the economic
impact of disarmament to focus their attention on phased plans for
the relocation of war industry personnel and capital installations
as much as on proposals for developing new patterns of consumption.
One serious flaw common to such plans is the kind called in the
natural sciences the "macroscopic error." An impli
Even more questionable are the models proposed for the retraining of labor for nonarmaments occupation. Putting aside for the moment the unsolved questions dealing with the nature of new distribution patterns - retraining for what? - the increasingly specialized job skills associated with war industry production are further depreciated by the accelerating inroads of the industrial techniques loosely described as "automation." It is not too much to say that general disarmament would require the scrapping of a critical proportion of the most highly developed occupational specialties in the economy. The political difficulties inherent in such an "adjustment" would make the outcries resulting from the closing of a few obsolete military and naval installations in 1964 sound like a whisper.
In general, discussion of the problems of conversion have been
characterized by an unwillingness to recognize its special quality.
This is best exemplified by the 1965 report of the
Let us assume, however, despite the lack of evidence that a viable program for conversion can be developed in the framework of the existing economy, that the problems noted above can be solved. What proposals have been offered for utilizing the productive capabilities that disarmament would presumably release?
The most commonly held theory is simply that general economic reinvestment would absorb the greater part of these capabilities. Even though it is now largely taken for granted (and even by today's equivalent of traditional laissez-faire economists) that unprecedented government assistance (and concomitant government control) will be needed to solve the "structural" problems of transition, a general attitude of confidence prevails that new consumption patterns will take up the slack. What is less clear is the nature of these patterns.
One school of economists has it that these patterns will develop on their own. It envisages the equivalent of the arms budget being returned, under careful control, to the consumer, in the form of tax cuts. Another, recognizing the undeniable need for increased "consumption" in what is generally considered the public sector of the economy, stresses vastly increased government spending in such areas of national concern as health, education, mass transportation, low-cost housing, water supply, control of the physical environment, and, stated generally, "poverty."
The mechanisms proposed for controlling the transition to an arms-free economy are also traditional - changes in both sides of the federal budget, manipulation of interest rates, etc. We 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.
More sophisticated, and less sanguine, analysts contemplate the 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.
Without singling out any one of the several major studies of the expected impact of disarmament on the economy for special criticism, we can summarize our objections to them in general terms as follows:
1. No proposed program for economic conversion to disarmament sufficiently takes into account the unique magnitude of the required adjustments it would entail.
2. Proposals to transform arms production into a beneficent scheme of public works are more the products of wishful thinking than of realistic understanding of the limits of our existing economic system.
3. Fiscal and monetary measures are inadequate as controls for the process of transition to an arms-free economy.
4. Insufficient attention has been paid to the political acceptability of the objectives of the proposed conversion models, as well as of the political means to be employed in effectuating a transition.
5. No serious consideration has been given, in any proposed conversion
plan, to the fundamental nonmilitary function of war and armaments
in modern society, nor has any expli
SECTION 3: Disarmament Scenarios
Scenarios, as they have come to be called, are hypothetical
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
All such scenarios that have been seriously put forth imply dependence
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
recipro
The READ model for disarmament (developed by
The economic implications assigned by their authors to various
disarmament scenarios diverge widely. The more conservative models,
like that
Without examining disarmament scenarios in greater detail, we may characterize them with these general comments:
1. Given genuine agreement of intent among the great powers, the 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.
2. No major power can proceed with such a program, however, until
it has developed an economic conversion plan fully integrated with
each phase of disarmament. No such plan has yet been developed in
3. Furthermore, disarmament scenarios, like proposals for economic
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
SECTION 4:
We have dealt only sketchily with proposed disarmament scenarios 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.
Some essential element has clearly been lacking in all these schemes. One of our first tasks was to try to bring this missing quality into definable focus, and we believe we have succeeded in doing so. We find that at the heart of every peace study we have examined - from the modest technological proposal (e.g., to convert a poison gas plant to the production of "socially useful" equivalents) to the most elaborate scenario for universal peace in our time - lies one common fundamental misconception. It is the source of the miasma of unreality surrounding such plans. {It is the incorrect assumption that war, as an institution, is subordinate to the social systems it is believed to serve.}
This misconception, although profound and far-reaching, is entirely comprehensible. Few social cliches are so unquestioningly accepted as the notion that war is an extension of diplomacy (or of politics, or of the pursuit of economic objectives). If this were true, it would be wholly appropriate for economists and political theorists to look on the problems of transition to peace as essentially mechanical or procedural - as indeed they do, treating them as logistic corollaries of the settlement of national conflicts of interest. If this were true, there would be no real substance to the difficulties of transition. For it is evident that even in today's world there exists no conceivable conflict of interest, real or imaginary, between nations or between social forces within nation, that cannot be resolved without recourse to war - {if} such resolution were assigned a priority of social value. And if this were true, the economic analyses and disarmament proposals we have referred to, plausible and well conceived as they may be, would not inspire, as they do, an inescapable sense of indirection.
The point is that the cliche is not true, and the problems of
transition are indeed substantive rather than merely procedural.
Although war is "used" as an instrument of national and social
policy, the fact that a society is organized for any degree of
readiness for war supersedes its political and economic structure.
Once this is correctly understood, the true magnitude of the problems entailed in a transition to peace - itself a social system, but without precedent except in a few simple preindustrial societies - becomes apparent. At the same time, some of the puzzling superficial contradictions of modern societies can then be readily rationalized. The "unnecessary" size and power of the world war industry; the preeminence of the military establishment in every society, whether open or concealed; the exemption of military or paramilitary institutions from the accepted social and legal standards for behavior required elsewhere in the society; the successful operation of the armed forces and the armaments producers entirely outside the framework of each nation's economic ground rules: these and other ambiguities closely associated with the relationship of war to society are easily clarified, once the priority of war-making potential as the principal structuring force in society is accepted. Economic systems, political philosophies, and corpora jures serve and extend the war system, not vice versa.
It must be emphasized that the precedence of a society's war-making potential over its other characteristics is not the result of the "threat" presumed to exist at any one time from other societies. This is the reverse of the basic situation; "threats" against the "national interest" are usually created or accelerated to meet the changing needs of the war system. Only in comparatively recent times has it been considered politically expedient to euphemize war budgets as "defense" requirements. The necessity for governments to distinguish between "aggression" (bad) and "defense" (good) has been a by-product of rising literacy and rapid communication. The distinction is tactical only, a concession to the growing inadequacy of ancient war-organizing political rationales.
We find further that most of the confusion surrounding the myth that war-making is a tool of state policy stems from a general misapprehension of the functions of war. In general, these are conceived as: to defend a nation from military attack by another, or to deter such an attack; to defend or advance a "national interest" - economic, political, ideological; to maintain or increase a nation's military power for its own sake. These are the visible, or ostensible, functions of war. If there were no others, the importance of the war establishment in each society might in fact decline to the subordinate level it is believed to occupy. And the elimination of war would indeed be the procedural matter that the disarmament scenarios suggest.
But there are other, broader, more profoundly felt functions of war in modern societies. It is these invisible, or implied, functions that maintain war-readiness as the dominant force in our societies. And it is the unwillingness or inability of the writers of disarmament scenarios and reconversion plans to take them into account that has so reduced the usefulness of their work, and that has made it seem unrelated to the world we know.
SECTION 5: The Functions of
As we have indicated, the preeminence of the concept of war as the principal organizing force in most societies has been insufficiently appreciated. This is also true of its extensive effects throughout the many nonmilitary activities of society. These effects are less apparent in complex industrial societies like our own than in primitive cultures, the activities of which can be more more easily and fully comprehended.
We propose in this section to examine these nonmilitary, implied, 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 interest" by means of organized violence. It is often necessary for a national military establishment to create a need for its unique powers - to maintain the franchise, so to speak. And a healthy military apparatus requires regular "exercise," by whatever rationale seems expedient, to prevent its atrophy.
The nonmilitary functions of the war system are more basic. They 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 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.
Economic
The production of weapons of mass destruction has always been
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
In the case of military "waste," there is indeed a larger social
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 capa
This function is often viewed, oversimply, as a device for the
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
The {principal} economic function of war, in our view, is that it 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.
But even in the context of the general civilian economy war cannot
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
It should also be noted that war production has a dependable
stimulation effect outside itself.
But {negatively} phrased public recognitions of the importance of
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
>from
Although we do not imply that a substitute for war in the economy 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.
Political
The political functions of war have been up to now even more critical 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.
These functions are essentially organizational. First of all, the
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.
The war system not only has been essential to the existence of 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 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.
The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in
its war powers. (There is, in fact, good reason to believe that
codified law had its origins in the rules of conduct established
by military victors for dealing with the defeated enemy, which were
later adapted to apply to all subject populations. [19]) On a
day-to-day basis, it is represented by the institution of police,
armed organizations charged expressly with dealing with "internal
enemies" in a military manner. Like the conventional "external"
military, the police are also substantially exempt from many civilian
legal restraints on their social behavior. In some countries, the
artificial distinction between police and other military forces
does not exist. On the long-term basis, a government's emergency
war powers - inherent in the structure of even the most libertarian
of nations - define the most significant aspect of the relation
between state and
In advanced modern democratic societies, the war system has provided
political leaders with another political-economic function of
increasing importance: it has served as the last great safeguard
against the elimination of necessary social classes. As economic
productivity increases to a level further and further above that
of minimum subsistence, it becomes more and more difficult for a
society to maintain distribution patterns insuring the existence
of "hewers of wood and drawers of water." The further progress of
automation can be expected to differentiate still more sharply
between "superior" workers and what
The arbitrary nature of war expenditures and of other military activities make them ideally suited to control these essential class relationships. Obviously, if the war system were to be discarded, new political machinery would be needed at once to serve this vital subfunction. Until it is developed, the continuance of the war system must be assured, if for no other reason, among 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.
Sociological
Under this heading, we will examine a nexus of functions served by 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.
The most obvious of these functions is the time-honored use of
military institutions to provide antisocial elements with an
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
in every age. In earlier days these conditions were dealt with
directly by the military without the complications of due process,
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
This system and its analogues elsewhere furnish remarkably clear 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.
Nor can it be considered a coincidence that overt military activity, 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.
Although it cannot be said absolutely that such critical measures
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
Sporadic efforts have been made to promote general recognition of 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.
In general, the war system provides the basic motivation for primary
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.
It follows, from the patterns of human behavior, that the credibility
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
What gives the war system its preeminent role in social organization,
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
A brief look at some defunct premodern societies is instructive.
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
- as was the case with several of the great pre-
In these societies, the blood sacrifice served the purpose of
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
It does not follow that a transition to total peace in modern 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.
The existence of an accepted external menace, then, is essential 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.
Ecological
Man, like all other animals, is subject to the continuing process 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.
Ethologists [24] have often observed that the organized slaughter 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.
The regressive genetic effect of war has been often noted [25] and 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.
But as the polemologist
Man's ability to increase his productivity of the essentials of 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, 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 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.
The second relevant factor is the efficiency of modern methods of
mass destruction. Even if their use is not required to meet a world
population crisis, they offer, perhaps paradoxically, the first
opportunity in the history of man to halt the regressive genetic
effects of natural selection by war. Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate.
Their application would bring to an end the disproportionate
destruction of the physically stronger members of the species (the
"warriors") in periods of war. Whether this prospect of genetic
gain would offset the unfavorable mutations anticipated from
Another secondary ecological trend bearing on projected population
growth is the regressive effect of certain medical advances.
Pestilence, for example, is no longer an important factor in
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
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 declared order of values in modern societies gives a high place 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.
Of all the countless dichotomies invented by scholars to account
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 impli
It is also instructive to note that the character of a society's
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 relationship of war to scientific research and discovery is
more expli
Beginning with the development of iron and steel, and proceeding
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 impli
The most direct relationship can be found in medical technology.
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
Other
We have elected to omit from our discussion of the nonmilitary 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:
{
{
{
{
We have also foregone extended characterization of those functions
we assume to be widely and expli
SECTION 6: Substitutes for the Functions of
By now it should be clear that the most detailed and comprehensive 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.
In this section we will consider some possible substitutes for
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 expli
Economic
Economic surrogates for war must meet two principal criteria. They
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
Those few economic conversion programs which by implication 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]
{Health.} Drastic expansion of medical research, education, and 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.
{
{Housing.} Clean, comfortable, safe, and spacious living space for all, at the level now enjoyed by about 15 percent of the population in this country (less in most others).
{
{Physical environment.} The development and protection of water supplies, forests, parks, and other natural resources; the elimination of chemical and bacterial contaminants from air, water, and soil.
{Poverty.} The genuine elimination of poverty, defined by a standard consistent with current economic productivity, by means of guaranteed annual income or whatever system of distribution will best assure its achievement.
This is only a sampler of the more obvious domestic social welfare
items, and we have listed it in a deliberately broad, perhaps
extravagant, manner. In the past, such a vague and ambitious-sounding
"program"
If this seems paradoxical, it must be remembered that up to now 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.
Since the list is general, we have elected to forestall the tangential controversy that surrounds arbitrary cost projections by offering no individual cost estimates. But the maximum program that could be physically effected along the lines indicated could approach the established level of military spending only for a limited time - in our opinion, subject to a detailed cost-and-feasibility analysis, less than ten years. In this short period, at this rate, the major goals of the program would have been achieved. Its capital-investment phase would have been completed, and it would have established a permanent comparatively modest level of annual operating cost - {within the framework of the general economy}.
Here is the basic weakness of the social-welfare surrogate. On the short-term basis, a maximum program of this sort could replace a normal military spending program, provided it was designed, like the military model, to be subject to arbitrary control. Public housing starts, for example, or the development of modern medical centers might be accelerated or halted from time to time, as the requirements of a stable economy might dictate. But on the long-term basis, social-welfare spending, no matter how often redefined, would necessarily become an integral, accepted part of the economy, of no more value as a stabilizer than the automobile industry or old age and survivors' insurance. Apart from whatever merit social-welfare programs are deemed to have for their own sake, their function as a substitute for war in the economy would thus be self-liquidating. They might serve, however, as expedients pending the development of more durable substitute measures.
Another economic surrogate that has been proposed is a series of
giant "space research" programs. These have already demonstrated
their utility in more modest scale within the military economy.
What has been implied, although not yet expressly put forth, is
the development of a long-range sequence of space-research projects
with largely unattainable goals. This kind of program offers several
advantages lacking in the social welfare model. First, it is unlikely
to phase itself out, regardless of the predictable "surprises"
science has in store for us: the universe is too big. In the event
some individual project unexpectedly succeeds there would be no
dearth of substitute problems. For example, if colonization of
the moon proceeds on schedule, it could then become "necessary" to
establish a beachhead on
In Section 3 we pointed out that certain disarmament models, which we called conservative, postulated extremely expensive and elaborate inspection systems. Would it be possible to extend and institutionalize such systems to the point where they might serve as economic surrogates for war spending? The organization of failsafe inspection machinery could well be ritualized in a manner similar to that of established military processes. "Inspection teams" might be very like armies, and their technical equipment might be very like weapons. Inflating the inspection budget to military scale presents no difficulty. The appeal of this kind of scheme lies in the comparative ease of transition between two parallel systems.
The "elaborate inspection" surrogate is fundamentally fallacious, however. Although it might be economically useful, as well as politically necessary, during the disarmament transition, it would 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 defined. Massive inspection also implies sanctions, and thus war-readiness.
The same fallacy is more obvious in plans to create a patently
useless "defense conversion" apparatus. The long-discredited
proposal to build "total" civil defense facilities is one example;
another is the plan to establish a giant antimissile missile complex
(
A more sophisticated variant is the proposal to establish the
"
Political
The war system makes the stable government of societies possible. It does this essentially by providing an external necessity for a society to accept political rule. In so doing, it establishes the basis for nationhood and the authority of government to control its constituents. What other institution or combination of programs might serve these functions in its place?
We have already pointed out that the end of war means the end of 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.
A number of proposals have been made governing the relations between 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 may or may not serve their ostensible postmilitary purpose of settling international disputes, but we need not discuss that here. None would offer effective external pressure on a peace-world nation to organize itself politically.
It might be argued that a well-armed international police force,
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
"
Credibility, in fact, lies at the heart of the problem of developing 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.
Nevertheless, an effective political substitute for war would 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.
It is true that the rate of pollution could be increased selectively 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.
However unlikely some of the possible alternate enemies we have 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.
Sociological
Of the many functions of war we have found convenient to group 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.
Most proposals that address themselves, expli
The problem has been addressed, in the language of popular sociology,
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
It seems clear that Mr. McNamara and other proponents of the
peace-corps surrogate for this war function lean heavily on the
success of the paramilitary
Another possible surrogate for the control of potential enemies of
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
{
When it comes to postulating a credible substitute for war capable 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, tangible, and directly felt threat of destruction. It must justify the need for taking and paying a "blood price" in wide areas of human concern.
In this respect, the possible substitute enemies noted earlier would be insufficient. One exception might be the environmental-pollution model, if the danger to society it posed was genuinely imminent. The fictive models would have to carry the weight of extraordinary conviction, underscored with a not inconsiderable actual sacrifice of life; the construction of an up-to-date mythological or religious structure for this purpose would present difficulties in our era, but must certainly be considered.
Games theorists have suggested, in other contexts, the development
of "blood games" for the effective control of individual aggressive
impulses. It is an ironic commentary on the current state of war
and peace studies that it was left not to scientists but to the
makers of a commercial film [36] to develop a model for this notion,
on the implausible level of popular melodrama, as a ritualized
manhunt. More realistically, such a ritual might be socialized, in
the manner of the
It is also possible that the two functions considered under this heading may be jointly served, in the sense of establishing the antisocial, for whom a control institution is needed, as the "alternate enemy" needed to hold society together. The relentless and irreversible advance of unemployability at all levels of society, and the similar extension of generalized alienation from accepted values [37] may make some such program necessary even as an adjunct to the war system. As before, we will not speculate on the specific forms this kind of program might take, except to note that there is again ample precedent, in the treatment meted out to disfavored, allegedly menacing, ethnic groups in certain societies during historical periods. [38]
Ecological
Considering the the shortcomings of war as a mechanism of selective
population control, it might appear that devising substitutes for
this function should be comparatively simple.
It must be remembered that the limitation of war in this function
is entirely eugenic.
There is no question but that a universal requirement that procreation be limited to the products of artificial insemination would provide a fully adequate substitute control for population levels. Such a reproductive system would, of course, have the added advantage of being susceptible of direct eugenic management. Its predictable further development - conception and embryonic growth taking place wholly under laboratory conditions - would extend these controls to their logical conclusion. The ecological function of war under these circumstances would not only be superseded but surpassed in effectiveness.
The indicated intermediate step - total control of conception with 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.
The real question here, therefore, does not concern the viability
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.
Since the eugenic solution cannot be achieved until the transition 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.
Strictly speaking, the function of war as the determinant of cultural 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.
So far as the creative arts are concerned, there is no reason to 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."
What may be expected to happen is that art would be reassigned the 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.
So far as science is concerned, it might appear at first glance 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.
Apart from these partial substitutes for war, it must be kept in
mind that the momentum given to scientific progress by the great
wars of the past century, and even more by the anticipation of
This leads unavoidably to another matter: the intrinsic value of 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.
SECTION 7: Summary and Conclusions
The Nature of
Economic analyses of the anticipated problems of transition to 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.
The Functions of
The visible, military function of war requires no elucidation; it 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.
1. {Economic}.
2. {Political}. The permanent possibility of war is the foundation
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
3. {Sociological}.
4. {Ecological}.
5. {
Substitutes for the Functions of
The foregoing functions of war are essential to the survival of 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 reasonably be hypothecated that the loss or partial loss of any one function need not destroy the viability of future societies.
Such substitute institutions and hypotheses must meet varying criteria. In general, they must be technically feasible, politically acceptable, and potentially credible to the members of the societies that adopt them. Specifically, they must be characterized as follows:
1. {Economic}. An acceptable economic surrogate for the war system will require the expenditure of resources for completely nonproductive purposes at a level comparable to that of the military expenditures otherwise demanded by the size and complexity of each society. Such a substitute system of apparent "waste" must be of a nature that will permit it to remain independent of the normal supply-demand economy; it must be subject to arbitrary political control.
2. {Political}. A viable political substitute for war must posit a generalized external menace to each society of a nature and degree sufficient to require the organization and acceptance of political authority.
3. {Sociological}. First, in the permanent absence of war, new 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.
4. {Ecological}. A substitute for war in its function as the uniquely 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.
5. {
Substitutes for the Functions of
The following substitute institutions, among others, have been 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.
1. {Economic}. a) A comprehensive social-welfare program, directed 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.
2. {Political}. a) An omnipresent, virtually omnipotent international police force. b) An established and recognized extraterrestrial menace. c) Massive global environmental pollution. d) Fictitious alternate enemies.
3. {Sociological: Control function}. a) Programs generally derived
>from the
4. {Ecological}. A comprehensive program of applied eugenics.
5. {Cultural}. No replacement institution offered. {Scientific}. The secondary requirements of the space research, social welfare, and/or eugenics programs.
Substitutes for the Functions of
The models listed above reflect only the beginning of the quest 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]
Nevertheless, some tentative and cursory comments on these proposed functional "solutions" will indicate the scope of the difficulties involved in this area of peace planning.
{Economic}. The social-welfare model cannot be expected to remain 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.
{Political}. Like the inspection-scheme surrogates, proposals for 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.
{Sociological: Control function}. Although the various substitutes
proposed for this function that are modeled roughly on the Peace
{Ecological}. The only apparent problem in the application of an 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.
{Cultural}. No plausible substitute for this function of war has 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.
General Conclusions
It is apparent, from the foregoing, that no program or combination 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.
Until such a unified program is developed, at least hypothetically, 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.
Such solutions, if indeed they exist, will not be arrived at without
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
Nor, simply because we have not discussed them, do we minimize the 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.
It is uncertain, at this time, whether peace will ever be possible. 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.
Government decision-makers tend to choose peace over war whenever
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
If it were necessary at this moment to opt irrevocably for the 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.
A more expedient reason for pursuing the investigation of alternate ways and means to serve the current functions of war is narrowly political. It is possible that one or more major sovereign nations may arrive, through ambiguous leadership, at a position in which a ruling administrative class may lose control of basic public opinion or of its ability to rationalize a desired war. It is not hard to imagine, in such circumstance, a situation in which such governments may feel forced to initiate serious full-scale disarmament proceedings (perhaps provoked by "accidental" nuclear explosions), and that such negotiations may lead to the actual disestablishment of military institutions. As our Report has made clear, this could be catastrophic. It seems evident that, in the event an important part of the world is suddenly plunged without sufficient warning into an inadvertent peace, even partial and inadequate preparation for the possibility may be better than none. The difference could even be critical. The models considered in the preceding chapter, both those that seem promising and those that do not, have one positive feature in common - an inherent flexibility of phasing. And despite our strictures against knowingly proceeding into peace-transition procedures without thorough substantive preparation, our government must nevertheless be ready to move in this direction with whatever limited resources of planning are on hand at the time - if circumstances so require. An arbitrary all-or-nothing approach is no more realistic in the development of contingency peace programming than it is anywhere else.
But the principal cause for concern over the continuing effectiveness of the war system, and the more important reason for hedging with peace planning, lies in the backwardness of current war-system programming. Its controls have not kept pace with the technological advances it has made possible. Despite its inarguable success to date, even in this era of unprecedented potential in mass destruction, it continues to operate largely on a laissez-faire basis. To the best of our knowledge, no serious quantified studies have ever been conducted to determine, for example:
- optimum levels of armament production, for purposes of economic control, at any given series of chronological points and under any given relationship between civilian production and consumption patterns;
- correlation factors between draft recruitment policies and mensurable social dissidence;
- minimum levels of population destruction necessary to maintain war-threat credibility under varying political conditions;
- optimum cyclical frequency of "shooting" wars under varying circumstances of historical relationship.
These and other war-function factors are fully susceptible to
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
their lack of utilization to greater capa
Our final conclusion, therefore, is that it will be necessary for 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.
SECTION 8: Recommendations
(1) We propose the establishment, under executive order of the
President, of a permanent
(2) The first of the
The Agency's Peace Research activities will necessarily include, but not be limited to, the following:
(a) The creative development of possible substitute institutions for the principal nonmilitary functions of war.
(b) The careful matching of such institutions against the criteria summarized in this Report, as refined, revised, and extended by the agency.
(c) The testing and evaluation of substitute institutions, for 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.
(d) The development and testing of the correlativity of multiple 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.
(e) The preparation of a wide-ranging schedule of partial, uncorrelated, crash programs of adjustment suitable for reducing the dangers of an unplanned transition to peace effected by {force majeure}.
Peace research methods will include but not be limited to, the following:
(a) The comprehensive interdisciplinary application of historical, scientific, technological, and cultural data.
(b) The full utilization of modern methods of mathematical modeling, analogical analysis, and other, more sophisticated, quantitative techniques in process of development that are compatible with computer programming.
(c) The heuristic "peace games" procedures developed during the
course of its assignment by the Special Study
(3) The
(a) {Quantification of existing application of the nonmilitary
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
(b) {Establishment of a priori modern criteria for the execution 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.
(c) {Reconciliation of these criteria with prevailing economic,
political, sociological, and ecological limitations}. The ultimate
object of this phase of
(a) The collation of economic, military, and other relevant data into uniform terms, permitting the reversible translation of heretofore discrete categories of information. [45]
(b) The development and application of appropriate forms of cost-effectiveness analysis suitable for adapting such new constructs to computer terminology, programming, and projection. [46]
(c) Extension of the "war games" methods of systems testing to apply, as a quasi-adversary proceeding, to the nonmilitary functions of war. [47]
(4) Since both programs of the
Notes
1. {
2.
3.
4. Alfred
5. At
6. Louis J. Halle, "Peace in Our Time? Nuclear Weapons as a
Stabilizer," {
7.
8. McNamara, in
9. {Report of
10.
11. {
12.
13. Arthur I.
14. David T. Bazelon, "The Politics of the Paper Economy," {Commentary} (November 1962), p. 409.
15. {The Economic Impact of Disarmament} (
16. David T. Bazelon, "The Scar
17.
18. A random example, taken in this case from a story by David
Deitch in the
19. {
20. K. Fischer, {Das Militaer} (
21. The obverse of this phenomenon is responsible for the principal combat problem of present-day infantry officers: the unwillingness of otherwise "trained" troops to fire at an enemy close enough to be recognizable as an individual rather than simply as a target.
22.
23. John D.
24. {
25. Beginning with
26. As in recent draft-law controversy, in which the issue of selective deferment of the culturally privileged is often carelessly equated with the preservation of the biologically "fittest."
27. G. Bouthoul, in {La Guerre} (
28. This seemingly premature statement is supported by one of our own test studies. But it hypothecates both the stabilizing of world population growth and the institution of fully adequate environmental controls. Under these two conditions, the probability of the permanent elimination of involuntary global famine is 68 percent by 1976 and 95 percent by 1981.
29. This round figure is the median taken from our computations, which cover varying contingencies, but it is sufficient for the purpose of general discussion.
30. But less misleading than the more elegant traditional metaphor, in which war expenditures are referred to as the "ballast" of the economy but which suggests incorrect quantitative relationships.
31. Typical in generality, scope, and rhetoric. We have not used any published program as a model; similarities are unavoidably coincidental rather than tendentious.
32. {
33.
34. By several current theorists, most extensively and effectively
by
35. In
36. {The Tenth Victim}.
37. For an examination of some of its social implications, see
38. As in
39. By teams of experimental biologists in
40. Expressed in the writings of H.
41. This rather optimistic estimate was derived by plotting a
three-dimensional distribution of three arbitrarily defined variables;
the macro-structural, relating to the extension of knowledge beyond
the capa
42. Since they represent an examination of too small a percentage 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.
43.
44. E.g., the highly publicized "
45. A primer-level example of the obvious and long overdue need
for such translation is furnished by
46. Again, an overdue extension of an obvious application of
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
47. The inclusion of institutional factors in war-game techniques
has been given some rudimentary consideration in the Hudson
Institute's {Study for Hypothetical Narratives for Use in Command
and