Findings
Study of War Conferences
ANTHROPOLOGY AND WAR (28 January 1994)
BIOLOGY AND WAR (22 April 1994)
ECONOMICS AND WAR (Sept 15 1994)
SOCIOLOGY AND WAR (Nov 18 1994)
LAW AND WAR (Jan 20 1995)
PSYCHOLOGY AND WAR (Apr 21 1995)
POLITICAL SCIENCE AND WAR (Sept 15 1995)
CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND WAR (Sept 16 1995)
HISTORY AND WAR (March 22 1996)
THE HUMANITIES AND WAR (Nov 22 1996)
"Anthropology And War" Conference
Sheraton University Center, Durham, N.C.
28 January 1994
About the Speakers. The five anthropologists who made presentations at the conference exhibited a wide range of research interests. Robert L. Carneiro, Curator at the American Museum of Natural History, has done extensive field work among Indian groups in South America. Currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University, he received his doctorate at the University of Michigan. Carol R. Ember has been a professor of anthropology at Hunter College, City University of New York since 1970. She has published widely in the field, often collaborating with her husband (see immediately following). She earned her doctorate at Harvard University. Melvin Ember, formerly chairman of the anthropology department at Hunter College, has held the post of president of the Human Relations Area Files since 1987. He has lectured and published widely on the subject of the conference. He received his doctorate from Yale University. Jonathan Haas, vice president of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, has spent some twenty-five years in archeological field work, mainly in the southwestern United States. He earned two masters degrees and a doctorate from Columbia University. Rutgers University's R. Brian Ferguson also earned his doctorate at Columbia. Much of his field work has been done in Puerto Rico. He has published and spoken widely in the field -- as indeed have all of the Conference presenters.
Conference Proceedings. With some ninety persons in attendance, Jonathan Haas began the conference with a talk entitled, "The Origins of War and Ethnic Violence." Haas first questioned the assumptions that war is an inherent part of the human condition and that ethnic groups naturally see each other with fear and hatred. Observing that humans existed for hundreds of thousands of years before the advent of written histories, Haas turned to archaeological evidence from the North American continent to isolate the factors that he believes originated war and ethnic violence. The archaeological record shows no evidence of warfare or organized violence in the first 10,000 years that people inhabited the North American continent. Haas used a case study of the Anasazi peoples of the American Southwest to argue that the beginnings of settled agriculture and gradual ethnic differentiation were preconditions for the development of conflict. Yet, he argued, these differences alone were not enough to lead to war. It took a combination of unfavorable factors including climatic change, population pressure, and environmental stress to produce a competition for resources that, by the thirteenth century A.D., produced warfare. Haas concluded that violence was the last resort of people faced with imminent extinction.
When members of the panel began their comments, Brian Ferguson expressed curiosity as to how evidence of Anasazi cannibalism fit into Haas' conceptualization of the origins of war. Haas replied that cannibalism appeared in his area of investigation before the advent of warfare and suggested that its extremely violent nature could indicate a ritual, rather than a subsistence function. Haas added, in response to comments from the panel, that the victims most likely were prisoners; he suggested that ritual violence may be part of the process by which warfare transforms "the other" into non-human, a process he views as connected with tribalism and linguistic differentiation. Professor Ferguson noted that this kind of cultural difference does not necessarily bring on war, and Haas agreed, observing that the reasons for beginning a war were often quite different from those for continuing a conflict; once war appeared in the archaeological record, however, it never went away. At the same time, he maintained, the incidence of conflict did decline as environmental stresses lessened.
After the floor was opened to discussion by conference participants, Haas responded to questions about variables he might have found to account for internal conflict or terrorism. He observed that many motives for violence exist that are difficult or impossible to infer from archaeological evidence. A conference participant asked Haas for his views on conflict between pastoral and agrarian cultures as an origin of war, especially when only one group had the use of horses. Haas responded that we cannot automatically assume cultures to be in conflict in the absence of other factors, but noted the advantage gained by the people of the North American plains when they began to use horses after contact with Spaniards. Haas then replied to several questions on the significance of cannibalism, pointing out that scholars are re-evaluating archaeological evidence, but that it remains difficult to discern possible uses of cannibalism. He cited as possible evidence of cannibalism used as a political tool the destruction of a whole village, an act that seemed to have been outside the material standard for the area. In response to a query about specific linguistic examples of cultures that have words for themselves as "people," and others as "not people," the panel generally agreed that cross-cultural studies are needed to determine the true incidence of these linguistic patterns and their significance for conceptualization of "the other."
R. Brian Ferguson began his lecture on "Local and Global Factors in Generating War" by suggesting that anthropologists can build explanations for war in places such as Africa and Eastern Europe by examining war as a specific form of social and cultural organization and by using cross-cultural analysis to show the significance of a wide variety of factors. Local conflict, in Ferguson's opinion, is inextricably linked to national and global processes. In order to understand the process of war, supra-local influences must be recognized as crucial. The most important of these, he maintained, are the pressures brought to bear by expanding states, with European expansion being the best known example. Even seemingly unaffected societies can be subtly changed by expanding states, especially in terms of increased war and indigenous violence. Ferguson then turned to a case study of the Yanamami peoples of the Brazilian rain forest, whom, scholars have maintained, are some of the most isolated but "most warlike" peoples on earth. Questioning whether the Yanamami are normally warlike, he asserted that internal violence may simply be a reaction to external state pressure. A market in western goods, in particular, has transformed social relations among the Yanamami. Material goods become the primary basis of social action, he argued, even when the Yanamami cite personal or moral justifications for conflict. Ferguson then applied this theory to Africa, noting that the United Nations is now having to deal with armed groups not associated with states. Because state building in Africa was artificial, superpowers propped up authoritarian governments and the World Bank managed their economies. For those reasons, he concluded that social relations within African states are inextricably connected to external powers. Thus, Ferguson hypothesized, there may be no such thing as a purely local war. Because ethnicity becomes linked to current economic or political relations, the international system may be unconsciously creating conditions that tear it apart.
The panel discussion began with a question from Carol Ember about possible biases in anthropological sources, as many early observers of non-industrial societies were military or commercial personnel. Ferguson replied that many first contact reports do not seem to be reliable; anthropologists can construct village histories and correlate them with changes in the contact situation. Panelist Robert Carneiro, acknowledging his long-standing differences of opinion with Ferguson, stated that he saw war in South America as an integral part of state-building, not as a result of contact. Ferguson stressed in his response that he was not suggesting that indigenous peoples were "noble savages" before contact, but rather that he was advocating the inclusion of external factors in models constructed to explain war. When asked about anthropologist Chagnon's biological explanation of Yanamami warfare, which holds that warriors have the most reproductive success, Ferguson questioned Chagnon's classification of warriors, in that it includes tribal leaders. In his view, truly warlike individuals died in battle before they could have many children; thus, they had a very low success rate in passing on their genes.
As the discussion period opened, a member of the audience put forth the counter-example of the Roman Empire, which achieved peace by wiping out the enemies of its Gallic allies. Ferguson remarked that this example reflects fundamental differences between older world systems and the modern one. Panelist Melvin Ember added that his cross-cultural research found only forty percent of cases in which initial contact resulted in pacification. Of the remaining sixty percent, eighty-nine percent of those cultures engaged in war at least every ten years. Jonathan Haas then suggested that the incidence of pacification may be related to the impact of superpower interests in a given situation. Several questions followed on ritual warfare, including competitions, games, sports, and tests of champions. Professor Ferguson noted that military sports correlate with the presence of war and that early contact reports often commented on war as ritual; competition between champions, however, does not seem to have been employed. Ritual, he argued, is the institutionalization of self-interest in a conflict situation. Returning to the question of sources, Ferguson responded to the suggestion that confusion over time might be common in periods of conflict by noting that ethno-historians could avoid misunderstanding by constructing a core of genealogy and village movements, for which times can be established by determining who was born in which location. A conference participant then asked how cultural models for warfare became dominant in view of the supposition that, genetically speaking, warfare is unprofitable and risky. In the discussion that followed, conference participants stressed the lack of genetic evidence for aggression and questioned the use of methodologies that correlate evidence with explanation on the basis of human rationality and assumptions of functionality. Panel members pointed out that theories of material rationality for warfare are still under active dispute in the anthropological field; they expressed a consensus that the evidence falls on the side of cultural explanations for war.
Melvin R. Ember led off the afternoon session with a talk on "Causes and Consequences of War: A Cross-Cultural Study." Using statistical cross-cultural analysis to test hypotheses, Ember and his colleagues determined that a statistically significant result for a particular time should be obtained if the variables correlate. The advantages of this type of study, he argued, are that conclusions drawn from such world-wide comparisons come closest to expressing a universal phenomenon. He differentiated his study from cross-national comparisons, noting that his data compare societies as defined primarily by linguistic differentiation. His major findings point to an ecological explanation for war, which he defined as armed combat between units, usually not involving specific forces or politically unified societies. His multiple regression analyses found that, where unpredictable natural disasters destroyed food supplies, societies faced with the threat of scarcity chronically engaged in conflict. The actual incidence of scarcity was not important and victors took resources even when they did not have an immediate resource problem. Further, socialization for aggression did not seem to be a predictor of war, but socialization for mistrust was highly predictive. Thus, fear predicts war, whether fear of others or of nature. Professor Ember hypothesized that unpredictable disaster may make people less trustful and noted that his findings could be applied to complex industrial societies if disaster is defined in terms of complex economic interdependencies.
Discussion centered at first on issues of fear and security, one conference participant hypothesizing that fear could explain the tendency of nation-states to fight for security. Panelist Carol Ember noted that national security is a constant concern, but its importance varies in proportion to the magnitude of insecurities at a given time. A conference attendee underscored the correlation between economic downturn and war and held that economic difficulties can be seen as a kind of "natural disaster." One of the panelists then commented that socialization for mistrust seems more a consequence of warfare than a cause. Professor Carol Ember proposed an environmental explanation for this type of socialization, noting specifically that temperate regions, with their unpredictable weather patterns, saw a higher incidence of socialization for mistrust. When questioned about the correlation between military technology and a willingness to initiate conflict, she cited a cross-national study which indicates that military parity makes war more likely than a vast inequality of armed strength. When asked to what extent their correlation assumed rational decision making, she noted that people's stated motivations and their actions were often quite different; for example, protagonists may claim to be fighting for revenge, but end up taking land.
Carol Ember then turned to her presentation on "Democracy and Peace: A Cross-Cultural Study." She began by explaining that her study was designed as a test of results from cross-national analyses that found a lower incidence of warfare between democracies -- states which, however, were found to engage in conflict with non-democracies at a usual frequency. Scholars have questioned the assumption that people within a democracy respect the individual rights of others if those people are self-governing and are less restrained when considering non-democracies; a cross-cultural study would test whether this vision of "the other" indeed justifies hostile policies on the part of democracies. Because the cultures in their sample were not unified beyond the community level, Ember and her colleagues had to construct an analog of democracy based on various factors. These included levels of participation and decision making, concentration of political power, including rates of adult participation, levels of local decision-making, and the frequency of community fission. Thus, their revised hypothesis was that political units with wider participation and more willingness to agree to disagree go to war with each other less often than with other polities. Excluding cases where coders disagreed, excluding pacified societies, and controlling for community size and physical conditions, the cross-cultural results were consistent with the cross-national data. Low levels of political participation predict internal war, with multiple regression analysis showing that the local level is more important than the actions of higher political authorities.
The majority of questions from the floor concerned methodology, including how Dr. Ember and her co-researchers defined democracy and what they considered indicators of procedural democracy. A conference participant cited the example of the American Civil War as a case in which there were limits to dissension that a system could stand, but in which fission did not take place. Ember observed that disagreement seems to produce war or gridlock. India and Ireland were suggested as anomalous situations where lack of commonality produced internal conflict.
Discussion then turned to distinctions between internal and external war and the researchers' definition of society based on language. A panelist expressed the view that the two studies presented in this session fit together, and a member of the audience wondered if it was possible to correlate fear with the perception of another country as a democracy. When asked whether there was a correlation between female participation and war, the Embers replied that societies with higher overall frequencies of war were more likely to exclude women from political participation.
Robert L. Carneiro rounded out the afternoon with his talk, "From Autonomous Village to the State: the Role of Warfare." He began by drawing a distinction between dispersive warfare and aggregative warfare, which he saw as connected with the beginnings of settled agriculture, especially in borderlands with a less-hospitable environment. Aggregative warfare, he argued, produced simple and compound "chiefdoms," the latter of which began to resemble small states. Thus, in his view, aggregative warfare is the process that underlies all political evolution. As evidence for this statement, Carneiro turned to a case study of state development in Spain between 2500 B.C. and 1479 A.D. Tracing Iberian evolution from the Neolithic peoples, to the three tribes noted by the Roman invaders, through Greek colonization and pre-Moorish barbarian invasions, Carneiro linked war to political unification. After the seventh century A.D., the interplay between the Moors and Spain's Christian defenders resulted in the final unification of Spain under Christian kings. He emphasized the non-rectilinear development of a unified kingdom, and linked the phenomenon to the unwillingness of autonomous political units to surrender their sovereignty without a fight. In conclusion, Carneiro surmised, in light of the development of the European Community and other international phenomena, that there may be new state-building mechanisms at work which have taken over the aggregative function of warfare.
The discussion period opened with the presentation of several examples of amalgamation without warfare and the observation that some polities put together in conflict now appear to be breaking apart in conflict. A conference participant pointed out that it is easy, from a historical perspective, to find examples for several different points of view on the importance of war in state formation and noted that the pace of change during a given time period may be a factor that Professor Carneiro's thesis does not take into account. The exchange of views then turned to the question of aggregation in response to an outside threat in contrast with aggregation after submission to an external authority. A conference participant noted that some groups do not submit to authority and that various degrees of autonomy can exist within a formally unified area. Another conference participant pointed out that Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union were often paired as examples of state-formation through violence, but the actual circumstances of their formation and disintegration were quite distinct. Finally, several panel members observed that recent examples of consolidation without conflict may suggest new aggregative mechanisms operating within the international system.
In conclusion, members of the audience asked the panelists to summarize their views on how cultural anthropology, including the analysis of symbolism, rhetoric, and ritual, can influence studies of war, peace, and the military. The panel generally agreed that cultural anthropology offers a valuable perspective in that it tries to explain the meaning of war instead of focusing solely on its practice. Noting that symbolic systems, particularly languages, correlate to perceptions of how war occurs, the panelists agreed that more cross-cultural studies were needed to clarify the role of symbolic systems in war. One panelist noted the tendency of anthropologists to rely on their own interpretations instead of asking people inside a culture for theirs. This comment elicited several different opinions from conference participants on the relative significance of the ethnographer's bias, the role of self-reflection, and the importance of bringing several viewpoints to bear in a given study. As a final comment, the panelists concurred that anthropology, more readily than other disciplines, can offer a useful cross-cultural perspective in the study of war.
The Biological Sciences and War"
Carolina Inn, Chapel Hill, N.C.
22 April 1994
About the Speakers. Ronald J. Barfield, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is with the Department of Biological Sciences at Rutgers University. He has authored or co-authored numerous publications on sexual and aggressive behavior. Professor-emeritus George W. Barlow, whose doctorate is from UCLA, retired recently from the Department of Zoology and Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written numerous articles and two books, including Sociology, Beyond Nature/Nurture? (1980). Benson E. Ginsburg is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut and chairs the Behavioral Genetics Laboratory. The author of many publications, including a forthcoming study of aggressive behavior in mice, he earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago. Duke University's Peter H. Klopfer has been with the Department of Zoology since 1958. Among his many studies is a recent work, with J. Polemics, on aggression in children. He earned his Ph.D. at Yale University.
Conference Proceedings. George W. Barlow led off the conference, attended by fifty scholars, with a presentation entitled AWar as an Adaptation Gone Wrong. " He introduced his comments by observing that one of the most important characteristics of human society is cooperation for both constructive purposes (such as saving lives in a hospital) and for destructive purposes (such as war). Barlow noted that while he would approach his talk from an evolutionary biologist's perspective, he cautioned conference attendees that he was not attempting to draw strict homologies between animal and human behavior. As a basis for his observations of human behavior, he referred to cooperation among animals in their struggles to reproduce and raise their young, which ranges from relatively simple one-parent cases (where all parental duties are taken care of by one parent) to more complex situations (where the biological parents are assisted in raising the young by Ahelpers such as the older siblings of the latest arrivals). In all examples of animal cooperation, the perception of kinship provides the Aglue that holds relationships together. Barlow contended that all relationships are based on a cost/benefit calculus. This framework implies that as genetic relationships become more distant, greater benefits must accrue for an individual to help another individual.
In Barlow's view, conflict can be explained in evolutionary biological terms by the Aeconomics of aggression in that the benefits must outweigh the costs for a conflict to occur. The benefits of these battles always center around competition for limited resources such as food and water and for reproductive rights. Barlow observed that coalitions of animals sometimes act in tandem to achieve access to important resources, such as small groups of roving male lions violently taking over another group of lions, killing the other males and cubs. This situation raised a central question: Are these instances of aggression between animals equivalent to wars between humans? Answering in the affirmative, Barlow argued that war should be conceived of as a continuum from the relatively simple aggressions in animals to the more complex warfare in humans. Defining war as existing whenever groups of animals have conflicts with other groups of animals over limited resources, he identified several parallels between biological wars and human wars concerning territoriality, clan warfare, and ethnicity. The commonality between biological and human warfare is that all of these conflicts are based upon the perception of both kinship and limited resources.
Barlow then turned to an assessment of the possibilities for overcoming man's propensity for warfare. While war once served a useful purpose for humans, the high costs associated with modern, industrialized warfare make war generally maladaptive. Although the costs associated with modern war are now much greater than in the past, he conceded that some are still using warfare successfully to achieve their aims; examples are the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia and the dominant Somali clans. Professor Barlow remains pessimistic about the possibilities for achieving an end to warfare, but he concluded that two avenues might hold promise. First, even in ethnic conflicts such as the one in the former Yugoslavia, a minority of individuals still rise above their kinship ties and refuse to participate in the conflict. An examination of the motivations and perceptions of these individuals, Barlow suggested, may shed light on a possible solution. Second, mass communication might be used to stem the division of society into the sub-groups (such as ethnic groups) necessary for warfare.
In the lively panel discussion that followed, Peter Klopfer held that animals relate differently to their siblings than they do to non-siblings, even though no visible markings of kinship exist. Klopfer asserted that this dynamic implies that the sense of kinship is genetically based in animals. On the other hand, kinship for humans is a social construct that may or may not be coincidental with actual genetic relationships. Barlow granted that the mechanism behind kinship recognition may differ between humans and animals, but argued that this point did not really matter. Because Barlow was merely using animals as an analogy, his key point was that a great deal of human behavior is based on the perception of kinship. Klopfer asked: If the underlying mechanism is different, what do biologists have to contribute to the matters involving human warfare? Barlow then reiterated his opinion that teaching merely reinforces the genetic relationship and that the principles and conclusions derived from kinship dynamics would remain the same. Benson Ginsburg related the experience of Israel in its attempt to address the issue of who should be counted as a Jew. The central conflict was between biological kinship and cultural kinship; the question arose as to whether the Jewish people entering Israel were closer to each other as Jews or to their former nations. In order to allay this tension, Israel substituted a universal language, Hebrew, as the national language in place of the separate national languages of new immigrants to build kinship ties within the country.
During the question period, one audience member asked whether any of the animals pursued what could be considered strategy in their combat. Barlow responded that chimpanzees often used cooperative behavior with effective tactics to achieve their ends, especially in food acquisition. Extended battles often break out among these animals over resources. Professor Klopfer, however, previewing his later presentation, took exception to the entire notion of Aanimal warfare and argued that animal behavior is distinct from the sorts of conflicts that humans undertake. In specific regard to chimps, he observed that a significant question exists in the literature over the extent to which chimpanzees fight, noting that a recent study argues that Awar-like chimpanzee behavior has more to do with human perceptions than actual chimpanzee actions. One other questioner suggested that evolutionary biology might be used in two competing ways, either to establish a general rule to be applied across all species or to reconstruct the adaptive history of a single species, holding that the latter showed more potential. Barlow agreed that the focus should be on the role of adaptation in single species; even so, modern warfare would be difficult to explain in a strictly biological manner.
Peter Klopfer began his presentation on AEvolutionary Processes in the Development of Sociality with the statement that extrapolation from one species to another most often is based upon fallacies. In order to improve future efforts at such extrapolation, the speaker examined four common misconceptions. Klopfer described the first as the belief that one can speak of Agenes for a trait." Implicit in most of the literature on the subject is the assumption that it makes sense to speak of genes for aggression. Instead, Klopfer argued that traits are the consequences of genes, the environment, and the interaction between genes and the environment. Because of the interaction variable, a one-to-one relationship could never exist between any trait and the genetic or environmental components. He suggested that a second fallacy occurs when researchers assume that assigning identical names to disparate phenomena renders the phenomena operationally similar. The speaker referred to a fish species that defended a territory of varying size and shape depending on the type of intruder. On the other hand, humans react to aggression in a complex behavioral pattern including cognitive, emotional, and motor aspects. Klopfer contended that while one can refer to both Aaggressive fish and Aaggressive humans, these two phenomena should not be treated as if they were the same, observing that aggression is not an attribute of a subject such as having five digits on a hand. Third, he identified the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, defined as the assumption that functional similarity is synonymous with ontogenetic similarity. The speaker explained this aspect with reference to the concept of territoriality (the prevention of encroachment into an animal's space). Researchers in this field often assume that territoriality refers to a single form of behavior. However, Klopfer asserted that most species do not exhibit territoriality and that enormous variations exist in behavior and purpose among species that are territorial; territoriality is often used as a single word implying a single trait, yet it applies to numerous forms of behavior. A fourth fallacy is the assumption that the behavior of other animals serves better than human behavior to explain human actions. Klopfer observed that the animal kingdom contains such great diversity that any possible human evolutionary pattern could find a compatible analogy from some animal. He concluded with the statement that warfare is a response to specific conditions and that a reliance upon genes to explain behavior will not advance the understanding of war.
In the panel discussion, Barlow challenged some of Klopfer's claims. Barlow stated that concepts such as aggression must be defined operationally or the project will fail because researchers cannot include notions of intentions and cognition in their models of animal behavior. He also took exception to the notion that biologists pick animal behavior to fit their preconceptions; evolutionary biologists attempt to extract principles that can be applied to humans from animal behavior and these insights should be used as fresh ways of viewing human behavior rather than exact analogies. Klopfer responded that attention should not focus on whether an action such as infanticide in humans and other primates is evidence of a common principal, but whether human infanticide is similar to that seen in other animals. Barlow reiterated his view that the value of citing other animals is to pose meaningful questions about humans, not to pose an exact analogy. Joining the exchange, Professor Ginsburg referred to the dynamics of funding to explain part of the attention recently applied to the search for specific genes to control particular behavior. While most researchers assume that behavior is a heterogeneous phenomenon, granting agencies tend to give money only for genetically-based studies. Ginsburg argued that this Amythology of the genetic basis for all behavior has entered the granting agency philosophy and has shut off discussion of some points.
One member of the audience noted that the emphasis on the search for a genetic cause of war may exist because of a desire to have a clear-cut solution to warfare and to provide something easy to manipulate. If environmental factors play a large role, then a solution may be more difficult to discover. Barlow observed that the answer to the question of whether war is caused by the environment or genes is a complicated one. Humans change in response to many different stimuli and the environment itself is complex and changing. The best that can be hoped for is to try to extract simple principles to see what can be discovered. Ronald Barfield noted that part of the problem is that the questions asked of biologists regarding warfare are too broad. The primary question asked, in Barfield's view, is equivalent to Awhat about this war thing?" He continued that political scientists and historians need to provide better questions to guide biological research regarding warfare. Another conference attendee commented on the fact that humans can be motivated to fight by philosophy while fish, for example, cannot, thus making animals a poor analogy for human behavior. Barlow responded by relating that Che Guevara said that revolution only occurs when a scarcity of resources exists and philosophy is only a mechanism to motivate action in response to disputes over resources. Because the scarcity of resources remains the basis of the conflict, the use of philosophy to motivate war would not deny the biological underpinnings. Ginsburg noted that in addition to the scarcity of resources, a mentality pitting "us against them and a charismatic leader were needed to pull a society together for war. Leaders often use patriotism to establish the kinship relationship to motivate a state's people for war.
Benson Ginsburg referred to scholar Quincy Wright in his presentation on AGenes, Experience, and Social Aggression." Ginsburg recalled that Wright came into contact extensively with biologists at the University of Chicago during his examination of war. This contact seemed to have influenced Wright to infer that warfare is not outside of human nature and led him to include a chapter on animals in his famous treatise on war. Ginsburg pointed out that nature is conservative in the manner in which genes are used in both humans and animals -- ninety-six per cent of the DNA in humans is also in chimpanzees. However, the genes in humans are organized differently than even in chimpanzees. The speaker contended that animal research can be useful in understanding humans; it can give specific information that can be used to learn about the similarities between humans and animals. Ginsburg referred to animal social groups that are organized in hierarchies. These organized social groups allow the collective, although not necessarily the individual, to be better off than if the members of the group were left to fend for themselves. Based on his research, the speaker found that wolves raised apart from other wolves were still able to behave in species-specific patterns. Ginsburg concluded that social behavior is genetically based. In the animal kingdom, these genetically based behavior patterns provide the social cement for communication and group organization. In the modem nation-state, patriotism serves as the bonding glue between individuals. Ginsburg observed that while aggression might be based on genes, violence as well as war are culturally derived phenomena that use aggression as the basis for this behavior. In essence, humans are a hierarchical-structural species with xenophobic tendencies, and these predispositions are molded and manipulated in the service of warfare.
In the panel discussion, Klopfer held that genes do not make up an organism's behavior, in the same sense that a dictionary cannot write a sentence. Ginsburg agreed with this conclusion, noting that there are genes for certain things, but just because an individual has a gene does not mean that the behavior will arise in the same manner between individuals. Barfield queried whether Ginsburg could substantiate his differentiation between human aggression and violence. Ginsburg responded that aggression (such as pushing) can be observed occurring naturally in children, but violence is learned from environmental sources such as the media and culture. Studies have also shown that children will imitate the violent behavior they observe. He continued that animals have such a tremendous selection against violence that wolves will drive out an overly aggressive member.
A commentator from the conference audience observed that Ginsburg's presentation would seem to apply to the growth of violent crime in the United States. Ginsburg responded that a characteristic of human nature is to form hierarchical, social organizations. At present, many of the social structures that have characterized society such as the family, extended family, and community are breaking down and being replaced by organizations such as gangs. The solution to these problems might be attempts to form alternative peer groups to instill different social values. Ginsburg concluded that defective social organizations need to be replaced with other proactive and preemptive hierarchical organizations.
Ronald Barfield based his presentation, AAnimal Models for the Understanding of Human Aggression," on his research concerning the effect of testosterone on animal behavior. Although rats become less aggressive when castrated, the relationship between hormones and behavior is more complicated in humans because of developmental experiences. Barfield cautioned that if both human and animal behavior of a specific type are not understood, researchers may reach erroneous conclusions when attempting to compare them and make generalizations. He remarked that it is comrnonly thought that when a threat exists to a subsystem (such as mating, nesting, or territoriality behavior) aggression is regulated by the hormone testosterone. Barfield suggested, however, an alternate model in which aggressive behavior is not directly affected by testosterone, but rather in which aggression can be called into play with or without testosterone. In addition, it has not yet been possible to identify the site of the hormonal control of aggression. This result, he contended, forces researchers to consider other determinants of aggression such as context and experience and to move away from hormonal determinants. In sum, Barfield concluded that aggression is not a unitary drive system and that attention needs to be paid to the entire system.
One member of the audience expressed the idea that human nature as a cause of war seems indeterminate. Klopfer responded that human nature is the outcome of a developmental process affected by a multitude of factors. He contended that there is no operational way to say that humans have hierarchical or xenophobic tendencies because there is no basis for a comparison. The only possible comparison is intra-species (cross-cultural) due to the fact that there is no other human species with which to compare. Ginsburg remarked that it does make sense to speak of a predisposition for humans to have certain characteristics. Another questioner raised the possibility that decisions to make war and individual aggressive behavior could now be two separate phenomena because the actual fighters may not be the ones who choose to go to war. Ginsburg noted that the dehumanizing nature of war needed to be examined. Using the example of a pilot during the Gulf War, Ginsburg argued that individuals no longer have to engage their own feelings in battle, but can just react to blips on the radar. Barlow differed from this view and claimed that going to war in modern nations still requires some degree of emotion that has to be mobilized through mass communications. On the individual level, he observed that pilots still get a "rush" when in planes during combat, and modern warfare is not as free from emotion as assumed. Another conference attendee held that most human activity is focused on cooperation, rather than aggression, and cautioned that too much emphasis should not be placed on war. Ginsburg replied that a biological tendency for cooperation existed in all species and has been exploited and manipulated q in humans for the purposes of warfare.
One final questioner asked if, given a social science model of Awar-like-ness" and two hypothetical communities, one that was and one that was not war-like, biology could help disaggregate the explanatory factors accounting for the two communities' characteristics? Klopfer expressed a pessimistic view, noting that biology certainly is part of the explanation for a society's behavior, but researchers will not likely be capable of parceling out specific determinants of outcomes. Barlow expressed a more optimistic viewpoint; he contended that biology may be able to address a number of variables of which genes might be one of the important ones. Ginsburg, in a last comment, expressed doubt that genes could be deterministic in this regard because of interaction with the Environment.
D.C.F.
Economics and War
Carolina Inn, Chapel Hill, N.C.
September 15, 1994
About the Speakers. TUSS invited four distinguished economists to make presentations about their discipline=s perspective on war. Craufurd D. Goodwin is James B. Duke Professor of Economics at Duke University. He has written extensively on economic thought and policy, higher education, and the economies of war and national defense, including editing Economics and National Security: A History of /Their Interaction (Duke University Press, 1991). Christopher M. Davis is Lecturer in Russian and East European Political Economy at Oxford University and a Fellow of Wolfson College. He has numerous publications to his credit on the economy, the health sector, and defense in the Soviet Union and its successor states. Charles Wolf, Jr., is Dean of the RAND Graduate School and Director of RAND=s research program in International Economics. He has written numerous articles and books on economics, defense, and international affairs, including Long-term Economic and Military Trends (1989)and Economic Transformation and the Changing International Economic Environment (1993). Martin Shubik is currently Seymour H. Knox Professor of Mathematical Institutional Economics at Yale University. He has written extensively on game theory and political economy. His recent works include The Mathematics of Conflict (1983) and Risk, Organizations, and Society: Studies in Risk and uncertainty (1991)
Conference Proceedings.
After Richard Kohn welcomed the eighty people assembled for the conference, Craufurd Goodwin addressed himself to AWhat Economists Say about War, and Why. He noted that the subject of war could be thought of as antithetical to what usually interests economists. Economists generally dwell on equilibria -- war, however, represents quintessential disequilibrium. Neoclassical economists like to apply a model in which actors are economically rational -- under conditions of war, however, their model is less likely to apply. Furthermore, "Pareto-optimality," a game theoretic concept whereby a certain outcome is assumed to be stable because players cannot move without making at least one player worse off -- is often used to explain outcomes by economists. In the case of war, however, one party will necessarily be made worse off, so the usefulness of this concept is limited. Finally, neoclassical economists are resistant to assigning major analytical importance to the state. War, however, is not fought by competitive firms.
For economists, the above considerations make war a subject that is methodologically distasteful. Defense economics has had low prestige within the discipline. Funding is episodic, and when it does flow, it tends to come from agencies that clearly carry an attitudinal bias regarding the subject. Nevertheless, Goodwin stated that there has been some interesting work done by economists on the subject of war.
He first discussed the fundamental issue of why there are wars. The old "institutionalist" school of economics would offer the dearth of international institutions as one important cause. Economic studies from the 18th century discussed war in terms of the failure of nation-states to enter into encompassing contracts. Taking a different approach to the issue, Adam Smith wrote that war could be a profitable investment for a country. Peace, according to Smith, was bound to be unstable if a cost-benefit calculation favored a decision to go to war.
Another more recent body of literature, which Thomas Schelling leads, sees war as the result of competition run amok among nation-states. This school of thought sees countries as oligopolistic firms. Understood in this way, war and arms races are more an unintended consequences of competition than tools for national self-aggrandizement.
In contrast to these micro-economic and classical analyses, the historical-institutionalist current of economics literature more often uses macro-economic models and tends to conceive of actors as boundedly-rational. Some economists from this school have hypothesized that war is related to the early stages of a country accumulating national wealth. There is, it is claimed, a changing attitude toward war during the nation-building stage. This theory is used to account for Germany's and Japan's aggressive behavior. These countries had not yet developed wasteful consumption habits, possessed a surplus of resources, and applied them to war-making projects. A different sort of "historical-institutionalist" line of analysis, perhaps best represented by John K. Galbraith's work on the Vietnam War, abandons the neo-classicists assumption that war is a consequence of the actions of rational actors. Galbraith found that US leaders trapped themselves into adhering to their initial explanation for the war in Southeast Asia, which revolved around a perceived Soviet-Chinese conspiracy. Galbraith also asserted that there were sub-national interest groups in the West who could benefit from the war.
Historical institutionalists also link war to the truism that people do not want to starve. Based on a rough sort of empiricism, it is claimed that people place their demand for employment ahead of political values. When the business cycle is at its low point, people are more likely to be attracted by the rhetoric of aggressively nationalist politicians like Hitler or a Mussolini, who in turn are more likely to begin wars.
Turning to the issue of what economics has to say about the question of how to prevent war, Goodwin first noted that those who focused on the absence of institutions as a source of war naturally advocate their establishment as a means of preventing it. In other words, efforts should be made to move away from nation-states existing in a Hobbesian "state of nature." Institutional devices can be designed to help resolve disputes. Thinking of the problem as analogous to one those occurring in national-level politics, an industrial relations model could be extended to problems of international relations.
If one adheres to Adam Smith=s analysis of the causes of war, understanding it as the intentional product of a cost-benefit calculation, the most obvious way to prevent it is to do whatever possible to ensure that the costs of war exceed the benefits for potential aggressors. Measures to accomplish this end could include rules against prize-taking, insuring that the costs of a military build-up are clearly revealed, and the integration of the international economy such that trade dependence can make war less profitable.
Another prescription would be to constrain competition in expenditures and arms races through alliance formation and arms control. Goodwin noted that some economists have gone so far as to defend empires as a way of reducing direct Great Power competition. In the twentieth century, one finds analysts who portray the European Community (Union) and the Association of South Eastern Asian Nations (ASEAN) as ways to reduce inter-state competition. Finally, economists concerned with the allegedly aggressive predilections of business leaders would have the state maintain a safe distance in its relationships with such actors.
If privation causes war, then one plausible way to avert it would be to maintain full employment in the industrialized democracies. This principle could be seen as a driving force in the policies of the United States for twenty-five years following World War II, as reflected in the Marshall Plan and the creation of a foreign aid institution, the Agency for International Development. More recently, however, such policies have faded in importance, as has the mode of analysis apparently behind them.
Turning to what economists have to say about the costs of war, Goodwin said that the question could not be answered until two paradoxes were confronted. The first is that countries defeated in war often experience subsequent vigorous growth. One explanation for this phenomenon derived mostly from social psychological analysis hypothesizes that defeat reinforces the attitudes and beliefs that lie behind peoples' savings and investment behavior. Such behavior contributes to growth following defeat. The second paradox is that although the destruction of a country's capital stock should reduce national output, Caldor, Baran, and Galbraith, found that strategic bombing tends to increase productivity in the targeted area. They argue that the bombing has unexpected effects on incentives and time variables.
Economists are much more at home doing research on the issue of the trade-off between quantity and quality of armaments, or "bang for the buck.." They generally apply the same logic that they would apply to marketable goods. The widgets in this case, however, happen to be items like the B-1 bomber and the nuclear submarines. The economists' marginal cost-benefit analysis, however, runs up against some countervailing forces, notably powerful business interests, armed service rivalries, and bureaucratic rules of thumb.
Some economists, such as Milton Friedman, have recommended market mechanisms to deal with the problems of defense armaments, while others have preferred more heterodox approaches. The latter, notably the economists of the New Deal, had the opportunity to experiment with some tools of a command economy during World War II. Detractors of a market approach note that there may be several socially undesirable outcomes of letting laissez faire govern a system of national defense. First, regarding the acquisition of human resources, these critics have expressed concern that an all-volunteer army will disproportionately be composed of the poor and underprivileged. Second, they have argued that manufactured war goods have tended to be produced by oligopolists, rather than by a large number of competing producers, and that government intervention and regulation is therefore necessary. A related argument is that a market in defense goods would not be able to adapt rapidly enough to huge surges in the demand for product that could suddenly arise in a war situation. Third, some have argued that raw materials supplies must be protected from the possibility that market forces might lead to their premature exhaustion.
In his conclusion, Goodwin offered some observations about the readiness of the discipline of economics to contribute to the study of war. He said that he felt that economics is no longer positioned to contribute to the questions about the causes of war or the costs of war. This is due in part to the fact that the discipline has taken a strong turn toward prioritizing the development of abstract models and away from questions about institutions and other issues requiring the use of qualitative data. Game theory models, he argued, have contributed to social scientists' understanding of superpower rivalry and conflict, but have contributed little to understanding such events as the Gulf War and U.S. intervention in Somalia and Haiti. The discipline does stand ready to contribute on the question of bang for the buck in a war-fighting system. Finally, Goodwin noted that one can reverse the question of how much economics has helped us to understand war and instead ask how war has helped spur growth in the understanding of economics. Many economists have had their thinking profoundly altered by the experience of war, because it has forced them to confront real world conditions not always dealt with in the discipline.
During the comment and question and answer period Charles Wolf commented that he thought it important to attempt to distinguish between what economists say as economists and what they say as political actors. He suspects, for instance, that Adam Smith's writings on war can be more appropriately interpreted as falling under the latter category than the former.
Concerning what economics currently is likely to contribute to the study of war, there was some disagreement from Goodwin's fellow panelists. Charles Wolf argued that currently there is interesting research being conducted on democratization and changes in information flows that might contribute to peace. Martin Shubik added that advances in mathematically based institutional economics will allow economics to have more to say about war than in the past. An audience member pointed out that some economists have studied the issue of warfare against another country's economy through sanctions, citing the work of Hufbauer, Schott and Elliot.
One conference participant argued that a potential cause of some wars has been that decision makers have listened to "bad" economists and made improper decisions. This allegedly was the case during the inter-war period in Europe, when attention was distracted from Hitler's racist drive for expansion by the supposed need to recognize Germany's economic grievances. Martin Shubik responded that there are of course many causes of war, and that what seems to be in one case a particularly powerful set of explanatory variables illuminated by one discipline may become virtually irrelevant in another.
Christopher Davis provided an analysis of some of the similarities and differences between Quincy Wright's treatment of economics and war in his 1941 book, A Study of War, and that of Marxist and Soviet economists. Davis argued that Wright neither distinguished himself as an economic theorist nor included much in the way of empirical analysis of any economic issues. Though Wright rarely referred to the work of Marxist or Soviet economists, Davis argued that the idea of comparing them is not too farfetched.
First, Wright and the Marxist economists both were attentive to the issue of the evolution of civilizations and the relationship of this process to war. Like the Marxists, Wright tried to link various types of civilizations with characteristics that were particularly likely to make them war-prone. Both Wright and the Marxists were attentive to the relationship between technology and war. Where they sharply differ, however, is their hypotheses about the relationship between capitalism and war. While Wright believed that modern capitalism is the most peaceful of systems, Marxists have of course emphasized how the development of states dominated by the interests of finance capital is linked to imperialistic warfare.
Marxist economists have said far more than Wright on the subject of the economic consequences of warfare. Marxists acknowledge that war can both cause the destruction of natural resources and cause technology to progress (though this progress generally is greatest in the nonproductive sphere of the economy). War also is believed by Marxist economists to discredit the ruling class, contributing to the eventual overthrow of the mode of production and an elevation to a higher stage of economic development.
On the topic of what economics has to say about preventing war, Wright argued that financial incentives had to be attached to a system of institutions that in their turn would help nations disarm and preserve peace. For Marx and Lenin, however, disarmament was not conceivable in an era of finance capital or in a period when capitalist and socialist nation-states compete against one another. In the subsequent discussion, Charles Wolf pointed out the Wright's book is not social scientific in the sense of trying to make causal arguments, but is instead more encyclopedic and taxonomic. Alex Roland agreed, noting that the pre-science stage of an academic discipline often revolves around the production of a few viable taxonomies. Marxist economists who have studied war, on the other hand, quite clearly have a theory of causation. Wolf also argued that we need to disaggregate the concept of "warfare" given numerous past and present forms of conflict. One should not attempt to analyze global conventional war, local conventional war, police actions, unilateral actions, and other diverse forms of international conflict in the same way. Finally, one participant noted that the idea of the correlation of forces, which derives from Marxist economics, can be useful in discussing how nations go about waging war. Balance of payments theory may be relevant for the study of the conduct of war, and even for the issue of the sustainability of peace.
Entitling his talk AA happier side to the dismal science? Charles Wolf presented three non-dismal, realistic propositions concerning economics and war. He claimed that (1) economic factors can be instrumental in avoiding war; (2) the economic causes of war are minor and diminishing; and (3) that the formerly distinct metrics of economic power and military power are blurring.
Wolf argued that we still have not yet fully grasped the significance of the recent U.S. "victory" in a Great Power struggle that never reached the point of becoming a "hot war." This historically significant event was heavily influenced by economic factors. Economic performance in the Soviet Union exhibited constantly declining rates of reported growth as the country staggered under the burden of an overdeveloped military and extensive external "empire." Furthermore, the economic performance outside the Soviet Union contributed to growing skepticism within the Soviet Union over Khrushchev's famous prediction that the Soviet Union would bury the West. Doubt accumulated within the Soviet bureaucracy as the West enjoyed relatively strong growth in the 1980s.
Wolf argues that in part, the United States attempted to manipulate economic factors in order to hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union. Wolf did not try to assign a relative weight to the influence of U.S. economic strategy against U.S. military strategy in "winning" the Cold War . He noted that some analysts have argued that the United States could have saved itself some money on defense expenditures because it underestimated how badly the Soviet Union was doing. Wolf argued that there was a fine line that US decision makers had to be careful not to cross in making and publicizing these judgments: if they had repeatedly played up the relative gaps between Western and Eastern economic performance, hardliners in the Soviet Union might have been strengthened. Such a development would not have served the purpose of bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end favoring the West.
Wolf's second main point was that economic causes of war are minor and diminishing. He dismissed the idea that the US went to war against Iraq because of the issue of control over a natural resource, oil, although he did note that control of additional resources would have accelerated Saddam's ability to wield weapons of mass destruction. Economic research reveals, Wolf said, that natural resources and economic size are not very important for economic development. Instead, he stated that technological progress is more important in independently accounting for economic growth. Economic conflict, Wolf argued, is unlikely to be transformed into military conflict.
Finally, Wolf asserted that the distinctions between economic power and military power increasingly are becoming blurred and perhaps less important. He pointed to the examples of dual-use technology and the use of military logistics in humanitarian interventions. Furthermore, research is progressing on whether economic inducements, of either a positive or negative nature, can be effective in attaining state goals. For instance, Rand researchers are beginning to suspect that for wealthier countries, the use of economic penalties may be effective, whereas in cases of relations with poorer countries, positive economic inducements are more likely to be effective.
Following Wolf=s talk, a number of comments were made on the instrumental use of economic factors in the United States-Soviet rivalry. One person noted that the West waged economic warfare in a number of ways against the Soviet Union since at least the 1940s, so these strategies could hardly be treated as an innovation of the Reagan era. Another pointed out that the growth rate of the Soviet economy had been declining since 1965, well before the Carter and Reagan spending spurts on strategic arms and defense systems. Wolf responded generally that what was especially important during the 1980s was a combination of factors: Soviet deteriorating economic performance; and the bolstering of the NATO military shield to deter Soviet Union decision makers from developing a "use it or lose it" mentality.
One participant asked if the Paul Kennedy thesis about imperial overstretch and the rise and decline of great powers offered any insight about the future of the United States. Wolf responded by saying he does not think that U.S. military spending is a major drain on national wealth, citing an estimate that defense spending accounts for four percent of U.S. GDP. Related to this point was a suggestion by another participant that at times in history it seems as though there are such things as free lunches: military spending need not be correlated with a decline in economic growth, as evidenced by the United States experience during the World War II rearmament years.
Addressing the subject of ATerrorism, technology and the socio-economics of death,Martin Shubik devoted his presentation to the economic rationality of investments by state and non-state actors in biological warfare technology.
Shubik drew participants' attention to the potential lethality of small, well-organized, reasonably-well financed terrorist groups. Such groups may be financed by third parties, complicating the question that defense analysts ask about who one needs to defend oneself against. During the Cold War, there were fairly clear definitions of deterrence, as well as a clear understanding of who one=s friends and enemies were. This is no longer the case. In twenty years or so, Shubik asserts, developments in biotechnology could produce a situation in which one or two individuals could develop and use biological weapons.
To provide a reference point, Shubik provided the audience with an estimate of the cost of acquiring nuclear weapons. Nuclear power requires a financial investment of about $200 million. Biological warfare, however, currently requires around only $10 million, and this cost should decline with time.
The logic of developing biological weapons is, unfortunately, compelling from an economic standpoint. Economists have long argued that the industries likely to grow most quickly are those featuring low entry-costs for new firms, a relatively small plant size, products with multiple uses, a high growth potential, and relatively cheap inputs. Two biological weapons Aindustries fit these criteria well: the production of anthrax and botulism.
Economics has also contributed to military operations research, an area that also points to the "advantages" of biological weapons. According to Shubik. military operations research is interested in the costs of killing. Recent improvements in international communications technology have increased dramatically the permeability of the nation-state. While "old" terrorist technology has been capable of killing only relatively small numbers of people, such as the 250 killed in the Beirut Marine barracks truck bombing, the "new" technology changes things dramatically. Biological weapons are the ultimate as far as "bang for the buck" is concerned. "Entrepreneurs" in the biological weapons industry do not have to innovate much to produce a product with plenty of bang. Some of the previously high costs of production brought on by the handling and delivery of the material have been lowered dramatically by virtue of the development of such things as aerosol devices. Finally, Shubik noted that Acounter-technology, such as inoculations and damage control measures is to date far less well-developed and tends to be very expensive.
Shubik concluded in part by saying that one question that needs to be researched is why have things to date been so good, considering the likelihood of the imaginable horrific scenarios involving biological warfare technology and small groups of political actors. In order to approach this issue, disciplines other than economics will be more helpful, such as social psychology. When one thinks about various defensive measures effective in reducing risks posed by potentially "dangerous" groups, questions immediately come up regarding civil liberties and freedom of information. Dealing with such issues obviously also falls outside the purview of economics.
In the comment and question period, one person asked if what Shubik is talking about is really a police issue rather than a subject related to the study of war. Shubik responded that what appears to be a small group terrorist action may in fact be sponsored by some other country. When one considers a scenario in which hypothetical countries one and two are involved in a tense situation, and country three sponsors a biological attack on one or both, it could set off an all-out conflict between one and two that somehow benefits country three.
Another questioner raised the issue of the rationality of large organizations (especially nation-states) utilizing weapons against which they have no means of defense in the event of retaliation. Shubik responded that if we first set aside the issue of "psychopaths" using such weapons (on the grounds that such cases are not instances of "war"), there is still the important problem of an attacked nation distinguishing friends from enemies and enemies from terrorists.
Sociology and War
The North Carolina State University Faculty Club
Raleigh, N.C.
November 18, 1994
About the Speakers. Four sociologists with diverse theoretical orientations agreed to participate in our workshop by discussing their discipline=s contributions to the study of war. Michael Mann is Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Center for European and Russian Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he has worked since 1987. He has written extensively on the relationship between war, the state, and society. Some of his recent publications include States, War and Capitalism (1990), The Sources of Social Power, Vol. II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914 (1993), and ANation-States in Europe and other continents: diversifying, developing, not dying, Daedalus 122 (3), Summer 1993. Martin Shaw is Professor of Political and International Sociology and Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Hull, England. He has contributed to numerous academic journals and collections on both sides of the Atlantic. Some of his recent publications include Dialectics of War: An Essay on the Social Theory of War and Peace (1988), Post-Military Society: Militarism, Demilitarization and War at the End of the Twentieth Century (1991), and Global Society and International Relations: Sociological Concepts and Political Perspectives (1994). He is now working on a new book, Distant Violence: Media and Civil Society in Global Crises (forthcoming, 1995). James Burk is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at Texas A & M University. A fellow of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, he is the incoming editor of that society=s journal, Armed Forces and Society. His recent work includes contributions to and editorship of The Military in New Times (1994) and authorship of APower, Morals, and Military Uniqueness in Society (November/December 1993). Laura Miller is a Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University. Her publications include AFighting for a Just Cause: Soldiers Attitudes on Gays in the Military, in Wilbur J. Scott and Sandra Carson Stanley, eds., Gays and Lesbians in the Military: Issues, Concerns, and Contrasts (1994) and (with Charles Moskos) AHumanitarians or Warriors? Race, Gender and Combat Status in Operation Restore Hope, Armed Forces and Society (forthcoming).
Michael Mann addressed the 50 conference participants with a talk entitled "A Macro-Sociological Approach to the History of War." Mann focused on militarism, which he defined as "the persistent use of organized violence in pursuit of social goals," as it related to the different development patterns of modern authoritarian and liberal states. He contended that militarism was central to the historical experience of both types of societies, while the inherently different material and ideological structures of each state determined the form which that militarism would take. Authoritarian states, such as Germany and Russia/Soviet Union display what he called "militarism of the neighborhood" because their security concerns resided almost totally on their immediate borders. As a result, they had large standing military establishments that were extremely visible in the lives of the domestic population. In contrast, Mann ascribed "militarism of the globe" to liberal states such as Britain, it former colonies, and the United States. Their militaries were generally stationed abroad and globally oriented, both removing the armed forces from daily contact with the population and engendering what Mann called "spectator sport militarism."
Mann argued that during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries both types of state legitimized themselves through different forms of popular sovereignty, the authoritarian through mass mobilization, and the liberal through democracy. At the same time, modern ideology infused both states with a sense of mission. In authoritarian states the state itself was presented as the bearer of this moral project, while in liberal states the moral project was diffused throughout the individuals who made up civil society. In both instances, but at different times, violent racism became central to the national ideologies, but the way the ideology was translated into policy was a function of the type of militarism that characterized a particular society. Mann pointed to the clearly state-led racial militarism of National Socialist Germany as an example of the former, while the exterminationist settler policies in places like Australia epitomized civil-society militarism in which the state was either absent or just a bystander to civilian initiatives. In other words, liberal states, led by elements within civil-society, have displayed a tendency to seek lebensraum similar to authoritarian states when a group was defined as outside the moral boundaries of the nation as defined by popular sovereignty. However, the key phenomenon, which occurred in authoritarian states as well, was the initiative and active participation of civil-society in militaristic activity, whether in conjunction with or in the absence of state leadership.
During the panel discussion, James Burk asked whether Mann saw any fundamental differences in the racism that characterized liberal and authoritarian societies, given the distinct ideological rationales behind each. Mann replied that the key element of the racism in both instances was the identification of certain groups as "others," conceptualized as beyond the pale of the in-group's society. In short, he perceived no basic differences. Martin Shaw then expressed reservations about the importance that Mann had ascribed to civil-society militarism. He wondered whether the broader historical context which included the progressive intensification of state militarism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not provide a more useful basis for analyzing the increasing militarism of society in general. He gave the example of the advent of total war, which militarized politics and society, as the crucial link between militarism on the one hand and totalitarianism and genocide on the other. Mann agreed with this explanation for the majority of the twentieth century, but reminded the audience that the civil-society led genocides of indigenous peoples by settlers had largely ended before World War I, rendering an analysis in terms of total war anachronistic. He saw civil-society militarism as a latent force that could possibly regain its former significance in the changing post-Cold War world.
Martin Shaw commenced his lecture "Analyzing the Fragmentary Peace: New Challenges for the Sociology of War and Militarism" with the contention that sociologists who study war have traditionally focused too exclusively on the role of war in society rather than analyzing its nature as a distinctive kind of social action. Shaw described Clausewitz as the theorist who first showed the inner character or war to be a process of social action. Clausewitz proposed two limits on absolute warfare, political context and friction, that Shaw used to illustrate war's changing nature in the twentieth century. Increasingly, states tried to overcome these limits by deepening the degree to which their societies were organized for war, with greater levels of total war demanding greater levels of social mobilization. This social participation provided the political context that limited a government's options, while the great difficulties in sustaining and fighting a total war created the friction.
Shaw then noted that the advent and spread of nuclear weapons in the two decades after World War II had essentially abolished both friction and political context as limits to war's destructive power. This development uncoupled total war from total social mobilization, opening up space for a "post-military society" to evolve. This process has split the world into two spheres: a precariously pacified core and a periphery of conventional warfare. From this situation, Shaw saw the concomitant rise of what he calls the "Western state" as the major transition of international relations since 1945. He described the Western state as an extended framework of state power, which has emerged since the end of the Cold War as the core of a "global state" utilizing the United Nations as a legitimizing framework.
Shaw concluded by proposing an agenda for future work on the sociology of war. He stated that the discipline needs both a theoretical historical sociology of war and an empirical sociological analysis of current wars in the context of civil society.
During the ensuing discussion, Michael Mann inquired about the process through which the Western state was becoming the global state. Shaw replied that the Cold War had kept the system that concentrated around the Western powers from becoming a global one, but that the end of a Soviet alternative to a Western state has facilitated the broadening of its security framework and the growing sense that legitimacy for its actions radiates from the United Nations. Alex Roland asked both Shaw and Mann how one differentiates between war and other forms of social violence if one does not take the state as the primary actor. Claiming a Weberian heritage, Roland questioned whether studying war as a phenomenon below the state level might not be a slippery slope toward no clear definition at all. Mann replied, and Shaw concurred, that one could distinguish a war for the purposes of sociological analysis by determining whether the combatants were fighting over the constitution of their political order, whether that be domestic, racial, or international. At this point, another conference participant asked how the historical profession could help in Shaw's proposed new look at the sociology of war. Shaw answered that the two disciplines should work together, with historians providing the empirical grist for the sociologist's theoretical mill.
James Burk began the afternoon session with a talk entitled "Major Trends in Civil-Military Relations." He argued that the issue of civil-military relations has only become a pressing one for the United States since the advent of the Cold War, when it became clear that the large standing military establishment would be maintained for the foreseeable future. Since then, sociologists have generally been concerned with two broad issues: the social isolation of the contemporary military and the social standing of the officer corps.
Regarding the first issue, sociologists originally feared that the standing military would become increasingly isolated from democratic society. Burk noted that empirical research has not borne out these sociologists= concerns that the military would diverge from society. Instead, he remarked that the military and society in general have come closer together. For instance, the military must now respond to market forces in order to recruit personnel. Additionally, Congress now exercises a much more intrusive and aggressive oversight of the military budget than it did in the 1950s and early 1960s. Therefore, Burk concluded, the increasing strains in civil-military relations result from closer contact between these two protagonists rather than their isolation from one another.
Concerning the social standing of the officer corps, Burk noted the debate between Morris Janowitz, who argued that the standing army would blur the boundaries between society and the military, and Samuel Huntington, who contended that only profound isolation between civilian society and the officer corps could foster military professionalism and military security. Burk argued that there has been a tendency for society to make increasing demands on the military establishment, while its deference to professional military authority decreased markedly. He suggested that the public is skeptical of all professions, but that this has a particularly important effect on the military, which must communicate with the civil-society regarding matters of national security. His prescription for the future of civil-military relations is to create a corps of "soldier-scholars" whose job it would be to bring expert opinions to the public debate without partisanship or advocacy in order to inform the public.
Michael Mann began the panel discussion by questioning the practicality of Burk's "soldier-scholar" model, wondering whether it would degrade military professionalism. Burk answered that he was not advocating that all individual officers become soldier-scholars; rather, he saw it as an institutional response to a current need. He said that a small group of officers would be picked and trained for such a role, functioning as a buffer between a thoroughly professionalized officer corps and the political establishment. He insisted that the presence of a small number of officers in the soldier-scholar role would not undermine the professional ethic of the entire corps because the two capacities could easily exist together. Martin Shaw then observed that he thought military affairs, especially the budget, involved too many vested interests to make such a detached attitude feasible.
At that point, a questioner asked whether or not perhaps military values were diverging from the broader society, even as they were coming together in other ways. He used as an example the decline in deference to obedience in civil society, compared to the need for that quality in military personnel. Burk answered that he agreed with the questioner's assessment of obedience in civil society, but believed that the military had also followed this social movement because it has de-emphasized blind obedience and stressed initiative at lower levels of command. What Burk did not know, was whether the gap between the military and civil society on this issue was growing or shrinking.
Regarding the soldier-scholar, Richard Kohn expressed concern that Burk's proposal placed the entire onus for relieving the current strain in civil-military relations on the military itself rather than on the civilian leadership. Burk replied by stressing the importance of public opinion and the practical reality that the public expected this kind of broad strategic thinking from the military, and that only the military was in a position to make the long-term institutional changes necessary to create effective communications with society.
Laura Miller began her presentation, "Women Soldiers and the Changing Face of War" by questioning the relevance of the traditional assumption that large scale war involves primarily bloody ground combat with more or less clearly demarcated front and rear zones of operation. This scenario has generally bolstered arguments against allowing women into combat, but Miller contended that the changing nature of military technology has both obliterated the distinction between front and rear and made military operations more fluid, blurring the distinction between combat and non-combat personnel. She cited the recent experiences of United States troops in Somalia and Haiti, as well as in the Persian Gulf, to suggest that several models exist that do not include protracted ground fighting, but involve either unconventional missions or standard operations within a greatly expanded battlefield. In these situations, attempts to protect women from danger become less relevant. She argued that empirical data does not corroborate the notion that the American public will not tolerate female casualties: more precisely, it appears that Americans will tolerate almost no casualties at all. Additionally, she maintained that the data show that men and women have proven themselves capable of working together in all manner of military specializations without a breakdown of discipline or morale.
Martin Shaw began the panel discussion with the observation that the increasing role of women in warfare has generally led the way for greater gains by women in society at large. He then asked why the movement to include women in military roles had not progressed farther in countries other than the United States. Miller answered that she saw a general correlation between the level of technology that a military employed and the degree to which it utilized women. As the most technologically sophisticated military establishment in the world, the United States has more opportunities to employ women outside of the standard ground war scenario. James Burk then asked why technology played such a key role in this equation, when the issue of unit cohesion usually dominates the debate over women in combat. Miller answered the issue of unit cohesion by pointing to empirical data that suggests that women in heavy support roles quickly gained the acceptance of their male counterparts through a process of socialization. Regarding technology, she said that the expansion of more cerebral specialties tended to undermine the issue of physical strength in debating women=s' participation.
Richard Kohn argued that he was pessimistic about the society accepting women in combat roles because it would mean female participation in any potential future drafts. Arguing against the assumption that another mass-war was unlikely, he expressed concern over whether society was ready to accept a situation where able-bodied men remained behind while women were drafted. Miller concurred that this was a salient issue, observing that fear over female conscription partially motivated opposition to the ERA. However, she raised the issue of post-traumatic stress syndrome and the vast empirical evidence of large numbers of men avoiding modern war in order to question the traditional notion that war was a uniquely masculine activity. She contrasted the total government commitment to racial integration of the military with the piecemeal approach to female participation, which, she argued, has itself engendered much of institutional backlash against allowing women into traditional combat roles.
Law and War
January 20, 1995
The Thomas Center, Fuqua School of Business
Duke University
About the Speakers. John Norton Moore is the Walter L. Brown Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law and directs the University=s Center for National Security Law and the Center for Oceans Law & Policy. He chaired the American Bar Association=s Standing Committee on Law and National Security for five terms. He is the author or editor of eighteen books and over 140 articles and served for two decades on the editorial board of the American Journal of International Law. Leslie Green is University Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Alberta. He has written extensively on a variety of aspects of international law and especially on the law of armed conflict, his most important works in the field being Essays on the Modern Law of War (1984) and The Contemporary Law of Armed Conflict (1993), which was based on the draft he prepared for the Canadian Department of Defence for its Manual of War Law. Ruth Wedgwood is Professor of Law at Yale University Law School, and Senior Fellow and Director of the Project on International Organizations and Law at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has written on proportionality in the use of force, the national security decision making process, the law of war crimes, and the law of the United Nations. James P. Terry is a colonel in the United States Marine Corps. He has served as Legal Counsel to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since June 1992. His career includes service in Vietnam as well as more than twenty years as a military lawyer. He has also written numerous articles on military law and policy including AThe Evolving U.S. Policy for Peace Operations, 19 Southern Illinois University (1994), and AOperation Desert Storm: Stark Contrasts in Compliance with the Rule of Law, 41 Naval Law Review (1993). Yoram Dinstein is President of Tel Aviv University, where he is also Professor of International Law and Yanowicz Professor of Human Rights. He has written extensively on subjects relating to international law, human rights, and laws of armed conflict. He is the founder and editor of the Israel Yearbook on Human Rights (20 volumes of which have been issued in English since 1971). His other publications include a six-volume treatise (in Hebrew) on international law. His latest book in English is War, Aggression and Self-Defence (2nd edition, 1994.)
Conference Proceedings. With slightly over ninety persons in attendance, John Norton Moore led off the conference with a presentation entitled "Democracy, Deterrence and War: Toward a New Paradigm in War Avoidance and Foreign Policy." Moore opened by cautioning that many of our traditional assumptions about war causation and avoidance are easily undermined due to the wide variation in the empirical record and welter of different theoretical explanations. Scholars face a confusing taxonomy of civil wars, international struggles, and low intensity conflicts with little that would enable them meaningfully to compare these struggles. Further complicating our study of war is the fact that many of its perceived causes are not necessarily linked. Equally disappointing are our traditional theories of war avoidance, whose weaknesses seem to outweigh their merits. For example, while military strength is one component of deterrence, analyses focusing on the creation of a balance of power often fail to consider elements of deterrence such as communications between governments, the role of government structures, and expectations of authorities in other countries. Moore argued that, despite these problems, the United States has consistently sought to follow the Holy Grail of war avoidance in pursuit of its foreign policy goals.
In addition to war avoidance, the most important United States foreign policy objectives have been the promotion of human rights, the protection of our own environment and the global environment, and economic development. To achieve these four goals, the United States should do all in its power to foster the creation of stable democracies worldwide. Democracy, Moore suggested, would check the aggression in the nature of man that is so often magnified by totalitarianism. Governments with a system of checks and balances preventing the concentration of power not only tend to avoid wars, but are also unlikely to engage in the crime of democide??the mass slaughter of a nation's population by its own government. Drawing upon the work of Rudolph J. Rummel, Moore noted that, during the twentieth?century, nearly 80 percent of mass deaths have resulted from democide conducted by totalitarian states while war can account for only 19.6 percent of instances involving massive loss of life.
In addition to the protection and promotion of human rights, democratic structures would assist our foreign policy goal of economic development. Politically open societies subscribing to the rule of law and market allocation of resources grow at dramatic rates, thus ensuring a healthy economic climate. Lastly, in terms of our goal of war avoidance, healthy democratic states would be less likely to engage in aggression. In a survey of more than 350 conflicts occurring between 1815 and 1991, Moore noted that only a tiny minority were caused by democracies behaving in an aggressive manner. Indeed, despite the best efforts of collective security or the use of third parties to settle disputes, the major conflicts of the twentieth?century appear consistently to fit the picture of a non?democratic regime deciding to wage war.
Moore's contention that democracies do not initiate wars drew the greatest criticism during the lively panel discussion that followed. Pointing to the Mexican and Spanish?American Wars, Yoram Dinstein questioned the assertion that democratic nations are always the defender and totalitarian states the aggressor in international conflicts. Moore responded to this criticism by arguing that such counter-examples are few in number and should not bury the usefulness of the data underpinning his survey. While conceding that democracies can use force in an aggressive manner, Moore argued that the majority of the wars occurring between 1816 and 1991 indicate that totalitarian regimes are far more likely to force an outbreak of war. Aside from Dr. Dinstein's contention that Moore had ignored wars launched by democracies, panel members also found Moore's America-centrism disturbing. Canadian Leslie Green raised the point that what is in the best interest of the United States may not necessarily be in the interest of other democracies. Nor might other nations share our concept of what democracy is, a point countered by Moore's argument that the democratic ideal is worldwide and not peculiarly American.
Following Moore's presentation, Leslie C. Green spoke on "Enforcing the Law in International and Non?International Conflicts." Dr. Green opened with a review of efforts by nations throughout history to check abuses by their armed forces during wartime. Although codes of military conduct have lengthy histories, as indicated by their inclusion in the biblical book of Deuteronomy, it was not until the end of the nineteenth?century that the first international codification of the laws of war appeared. Prior to conventions held in 1899 and 1907, laws regarding war crimes drew upon customary rather than treaty law. The years following the world wars witnessed increased efforts, such as the 1929 Geneva Convention and the Genocide Convention of 1948, to define what was and was not permissible during war. The height of this trend to create worldwide standards of conduct arrived during the late 1970s in an international movement to try war criminals who had participated in multi?national conflicts. However, punishment and enforcement of these conventions has too frequently been left to individual nations due to the lack of international tribunals.
In his concluding remarks Dr. Green pointed to several troubling aspects of international attempts to circumscribe the actions of individual soldiers. Foremost of these concerns is that there is no clear law governing internal wars of liberation and whether or not civil wars are struggles subject to international codes of conduct. Given that enforcing the law of war is often left up to individual nations, a danger exists that, in the wake of a civil war, successful rebels will turn war crimes trials into acts of vengeance hidden behind an international code of conduct concerning humanity.
In the panel discussion that followed, Dr. Dinstein seconded Green's concern about the lack of law covering unconventional military conflict. Equally troublesome, according to Dinstein, is the fact that international tribunals have not effectively handled the distinction between an international conflict and a civil war and thus determined what is permissible and what is not in these struggles. Joining the discussion over jurisdiction, Yale's Ruth Wedgwood urged that international courts, rather than being concerned with individual crimes--whether committed during multi?national or internal conflicts--should be reserved for massive, organized crimes.
Ruth Wedgwood, in her presentation "Current Controversies in the Law of War," pointed to several troubling issues. Chief among these are the dangers involved when combatants disguise themselves as civilians and thus endanger the civilian population, the use of land mines, and the issue of who determines losses in warfare. In her remarks, Professor Wedgwood argued that a soldier disguised as a civilian should not be subject to summary execution since this practice endangers true civilians caught up in searches for guerrillas. Rather, we should treat captured guerrillas as prisoners of war with all the rights attaching to this status.
Professor Wedgwood=s arguments about captured guerrillas received considerable attention from Yoram Dinstein in the discussion that followed. While maintaining that distinctions between combatants and civilians are necessary and that we should do everything possible to draw this line clearly, Dinstein argued that Third World nations do not care about conventions regarding this matter and that abuses will continue in these states, much to the consternation of the developed world. As to Professor Wedgwood's fear that land mines not removed after the end of a conflict will continue to kill and maim noncombatants and that we should therefore seek to limit their use, Dinstein again maintained that the Third World will not respect First World conventions on this matter. Agreeing with Wedgwood that mines should be either capable of self?destruction after a certain period or remain under the control of the forces laying them, Dinstein contended that Third World states are neither able to afford such sophisticated weaponry nor are they willing to give up weapons they can produce and use cheaply. As for prohibiting the use of land mines, should the First World prove willing to do this, there is no guarantee that underdeveloped nations would follow suit.
Professor Wedgwood's remarks on determining the proportionality of losses, which she treated as a decision strongly influenced by politics, drew an equally lively response from Dinstein and from Colonel Terry, both of whom argued that losses in warfare must be determined by military leaders rather than politicians or lawyers. Although political leaders are understandably concerned with the scale of troop losses, proportionality must be tied to the target and how that target is linked to the end of the campaign. Colonel Terry repeatedly pointed out that the military's determination of the size of forces to be used and selection of targets is consistently undertaken with a minimization of casualties in mind. Professor Wedgwood responded that as long as the Department of Defense remains under civilian control, political issues, such as proportionality, will continue to intrude into the military's decisions.
Speaking on "Issues of Operational Law," James Terry argued that current crises such as Somalia and Haiti have presented the United States with more opportunities to commit its forces and more challenges than ever before seen. While this situation results in part from the disappearance of the bipolar world and the need to intervene in areas formerly under the influence of the Soviet Union, much of our involvement in these regions is the result of a revitalized United Nations. Colonel Terry argued that if the United States is to secure a position of leadership in military and peacekeeping operations conducted by the newly energized United Nations, a number of conditions would have to be met. Foremost among these, argues Terry, is the need to ensure that participating countries send capable troops, both in terms of their armament and training. Not only should the troops offered be of the highest caliber, but, in accepting aid, the United Nations can afford to be far more selective than it has been previously. Equally important is the need to develop a creditable decision?making process that knows when to say no and admit failure. Without these reforms, the wedge driven between the President and Congress by failed United Nations operations will only continue to widen.
Despite failures such as Somalia, there have been successes, the most notable of which were the interventions in Haiti and Kuwait during the fall of 1994. The movement into Kuwait last September proved not only that the United States was capable and committed, but that timely reactions to halt possible aggression are critical and that maintaining regional coalitions are essential to success. At the same time, Haiti provided evidence of the U.S. commitment to ensure that there is a realistic end point to U.N.-sponsored military actions.
Agreeing with Terry that U. S. leadership is crucial to the success of a United Nations sponsored operation, John Norton Moore argued in the panel discussion that a re?invigorated U. N. is a promising tool in war avoidance. To make it effective, it is necessary to have a clear picture of the United Nation's role in deterrence, and to make the U. N. more involved in the pre?commitment of military forces and more selective as to where to intervene. Moore agrees with Terry that a timely reaction is crucial to winning and, once committed, the United Nations should strive to win quickly (a point that received further support from Yoram Dinstein).
Further support for Terry's argument came from Leslie Green, who seconded the use of the right forces as peacekeepers. Referring to the failed Somali intervention, Green urged that we make sure that the peacekeepers are carefully schooled in the culture of the country to which they will be sent. Additional cautions were added by Ruth Wedgwood, who strongly suggested that future peacekeeping operations would be unsuccessful unless prior plans exist for multi?national forces. As no planning body currently exists within the U. N. to handle this task, Wedgwood argued that these plans should be drawn up by the United States.
Closing the conference, Yoram Dinstein spoke on "The Legal Lessons of the Gulf War." Reminding his audience that major wars serve not only as a crucible for laws devised during peacetime, but also create new laws governing areas that previously had not received much attention, Professor Dinstein proceeded to discuss several lessons learned from the Gulf War. The first hurdle overcome was the determination by the United Nations that a "threat to the peace" existed in sense set out in the Security Council's charter. This seemingly easy task was complicated by the charter's sketchy definition of such a threat. Having decided that a threat did indeed exist, the Security Council proceeded cautiously and imposed economic sanctions backed with a naval blockade against Iraq. As events unfolded, the classic model of a clearly delineated blockade would change as Iraqi ships began using Jordanian Red Sea ports. Faced with this evasion of the sanctions, the Security Council turned the blockade into a worldwide net that included the closure of the neutral Jordanian port of Aqaba.
Not only did the Gulf War challenge the U.N.'s definition of a blockade, it also tested the belief that the nation attacked should have the right to determine how far a war of self?defense can be carried. In this case, the United States rather than Kuwait decided when to halt the Gulf War. Yet for all its challenges to conventions drawn up in time of peace, the Gulf War did affirm the wisdom of the U. N.'s Article 51, which allows other nations to come to the aid of the country under attack should the Security Council issue a call for collective self?defense. In reviewing this point, Dinstein cautioned his listeners that the United States cannot become the world's policeman and should exercise restraint, since Article 51 expressly prohibits the unilateral use of force.
Professor Dinstein's contention that, contrary to U.N. Resolutions 660 and 678, the United States?led forces could have pressed their offensive to Baghdad sparked spirited discussion from the panel. Both James Terry and Leslie Green argued that the U.S. was hamstrung by these resolutions and was forced to halt after liberating Kuwait, a position adamantly rejected by Dinstein. Additional discussion focused on the weakness of economic sanctions. During his presentation, while reviewing the steps taken against Iraq, Dinstein had alluded to the restraints imposed against Southern Rhodesia, noting that, after thirteen years, these restrictions provided the world with its only successful case of economic sanctions. John Norton Moore echoed Dinstein's skepticism about economic sanctions, asserting that they are hardly worth pursuing without some credible accompanying threat of force.
Joshua McKaughan, Rapporteur.
Psychology and War
April 21, 1995
The Siena Hotel, Chapel Hill, NC
About the Speakers. Gregory Belenky received his B.A. degree in Psychology from Yale University and his M.D. from Stanford University. Currently, he is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and Chief of the Department of Behavioral Biology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, as well as an active-duty colonel in the U.S. Army. In addition to authoring multiple articles, he has edited two forthcoming books, Contemporary Studies in Combat Psychiatry and A Shield in the Storm: Mental Health Operations during the Gulf War. Anthony Kellett is responsible for analyses of political and military developments relating to Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union at the Directorate of Strategic Analysis of the Canadian Department of National Defence. He is a graduate in History from Cambridge University (BA, Hons, 1968) and McGill University (MA, 1992). He is the author of Combat Motivation. The Behavior of Soldiers in Battle (1982) as well as other works on subjects ranging from combat motivation, to terrorism, to the Egyptian Army. Robert J. Ursano is Professor of Psychiatry and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, where he has been since 1979. He is also a Professor (National Naval Medical Center) in the Department of Psychiatry at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, having joined the Department in 1980. He received his B.A. from the University of Notre Dame in 1969, and his M.D. from Yale University in 1973. He has published many books and articles on human responses to trauma and disaster, including Individual and Community Responses to Trauma and Disaster: The Structure of Human Chaos (1994) and with Carol S. Fullerton, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: Acute and Long-Term Responses to Trauma and Disaster (in press). Michael G. Wessells is Professor of Psychology and Coordinator of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Department of Psychology at Randolph-Macon College. He received his B.A. from Roanoke College and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He is the author of three books, and he has written and taught extensively on issues related to the psychology of war and conflict. His recent work has focused on the psychology of nuclear proliferation and on the role of psychology in peace education.
Conference Proceedings. Following a welcome to the panelists and audience by Richard Kohn and Alex Roland, the sixth conference in the Study of War Project began on the morning of Friday, April 21, 1995, at the Siena Hotel in Chapel Hill. The first panelist, Dr. Gregory Belenky, gave a presentation entitled "Organized Warfare and Combat Operations: The Interaction of Neurobiology and Technology." Dr. Belenky began his talk by noting that humans are behaving organisms with an evolutionary past and history. Like our higher primate cousins, we operate in a social field or environment in which we can adjust our behavior rapidly in reaction to what others are doing. To demonstrate the power of environment for modern human beings, he recounted an incident after the Gulf War cease-fire in which a soldier was killed accidentally after stepping on an unexploded bomblet (which in turn exploded his grenades). Other soldiers attempted to revive him as did two recently trained army medics. Their efforts were unsuccessful because his wounds were too serious and numerous to overcome. Subsequently, one of the medics became uncommunicative and withdrawn. Dr. Belenky's team of psychiatrists were called upon to treat him. They went to the medic's group and did a reconstruction of the events, beginning with the early stages of offensive operations against Iraq. The medic in question stood up and recounted the gruesome attempt at resuscitation. The atmosphere changed noticeably within his group as a result of this information. Comrades of the soldier who had not been present at the time of the accident became less skeptical about the quality of care he received. Some even admitted that they would have been unable to do what the medic had done. Group therapy created a clearer picture of what had happened and the evaluation of the medic increased in both his own eyes and those of the group as a result. By the end of the reconstruction, the medic was more readily able to communicate and interact with the group. Deeming on-site group support important to the medic's recovery, Dr. Belenky suggested that it was more effective than individual psychotherapy at a later date.
Dr. Belenky continued by noting that warfare is a special case of organized aggressive behavior pursued by groups. Our ability to get along and cooperate is what makes organized combat operations possible. Through the use of cave paintings, he illustrated how old warfare (broadly defined) was. In the two pictures used, the figures showed lines, columns, and flanking maneuvers. He suggested that there was some evidence indicating the importance of environment in making such activity possible. The need to conduct open field savannah warfare and hunting operations led to a natural process of selection for traits that facilitated those activities. In particular, he noted evolutionary changes that were affective and cognitive. In the former case, he detailed the importance of group solidarity and cohesion, rather than the quality of the weapons, as being more important for effective combat operations. War is hell but its participants also recognize the power of bonding in that environment. Dr. Belenky hypothesized that there was an evolutionary selection process at work that enhanced the ability of humans to bond in order to conduct open field warfare. In terms of cognition, studies show a reliable (but small) difference between men and women in terms of spatial versus verbal abilities. On average, men score better on the former and women on the latter. Belenky intimated the former result may be linked to its usefulness in pursuing operations in the open field, as well as for other activities such as making tools. He referred to "suggestive" evidence that these differences were biologically based.
Nevertheless, Dr. Belenky doubted that this cognitive difference had any implications for combat operations today. First, the size of the difference between men and women was very small. Second, the focus on the individual is becoming outmoded as a result of technological changes in which crews are the standard unit of operation. Further, he noted a convergence between virtual reality and actual combat. Soldiers more often study computer screens than visually track the enemy. Training and real combat look more and more alike. As a result, technology can compensate for a lack of spatial ability, with soldiers using computers and positioning systems to pinpoint both friend and foe.
During the question-and-answer period another panelist suggested a need to define what "war" was and be specific about "pre-" and "post-" war periods. In talking about the effects of war (or any other event) on humans, time and context are important to the "meaning" of the event. Another asked how Dr. Belenky would explain why studies suggest that 20-25 percent of pre-industrial societies were not inclined to engage in warfare. In response, he suggested that ecology may provide the best answer. These societies lived in areas where the resource distribution did not lead to scarcity. From the audience, an anthropologist suggested the need to be careful about generalizing across cultures and time periods from a few cave paintings and noted that early societies different greatly from one another. Dr. Belenky agreed that human behavior might have been so varied "at the start" that genetic selection could not get started.
After a short break, Anthony Kellett presented a talk entitled "Combat Motivation: The Behavior of Soldiers in Battle." Explicitly drawing from Western historical experience (and primarily that of ground forces), Mr. Kellett detailed the various motivations that affect the behavior of soldiers. At the onset, he delineated between motivations during a peacetime/garrison context and those during combat. In the first instance, he stressed the importance of six elements: group cohesion, the regimental system, manpower policies, socialization, training, and discipline. He offered brief comments on each. Of note, he said group cohesion plays a major role in boosting morale while measures to enhance personnel stability are important to enhancing and maintaining such support.
Turning to combat, he divided motivations and behavior in combat into three categories: the institutional (his primary focus), the individual, and the situational. Institutionally, five elements affecting group dynamics stood out: the importance of primary groups, regimental pride, personnel practices, discipline, and leadership. In the first instance, the primary group was usually the squad, which functioned to support and sustain its individual members. Tightly integrated groups, such as those found among Israeli units, were more prone to heroic acts while poorly integrated ones were more apt to have soldiers suffering from psychological breakdown and desertion. He mentioned the Russian experience in Chechnya as an example of the latter case. However, group cohesion can have negative consequences when group dynamics lead to a greater concern for survival than carrying out the mission. To support this point, he cited the "fragging" of commanders in Vietnam. Kellett held that regimental pride was also important to individual motivation. Using Great Britain as an example, he noted that its armed forces were able to create high levels of loyalty to the regiment by recruiting around territorial or racial lines. Similarly, the link-pin leadership mechanism whereby units were attached to the larger regiment's organizational structure through non-commissioned officers also functioned well in this regard. Kellett suggested that this system might be more valuable for fighting wars of the future. The U.S. model is based on the mass conscription for fighting large scale conflicts, while future warfare will probably be at lower levels of intensity.
Kellett also argued that personnel policy is important to individual motivation. He found the unit-rotation practice of the regimental system, rather than an individual-rotation system, was more effective. Self-respect was termed the key to discipline and he noted that during combat soldiers found ways to comply with the letter, if not the spirit, of the rules governing their behavior. Finally, he emphasized the importance of leadership in motivating soldiers. Combat tends to produce confusion and inertia and action of any kind can have a big influence on the behavior of individual soldiers. In this light, the Israeli armed forces developed a "follow me" doctrine to exploit this tendency. The perceived proficiency of the commanding officer was seen as very influential on soldiers' trust in their leaders.
Turning specifically to individual motivations, Mr. Kellett discussed a continuum of sources going from "root" influences prior to combat to "acute" influences as combat commences. Soldiers move towards combat in incremental steps and often are surprised when combat begins. Once it does, acute sources of motivation prove highly influential. Root influences included "commitment" linked to patriotism, political indoctrination, etc. Kellett found that these were not very influential within Western armies. Also playing a role was "reward and recognition" although little of this came the way of ordinary soldiers. Public recognition was most important for combat motivation but that this was often fleeting. Feelings of isolation experienced by British soldiers in Burma once the second front opened in Europe during World War II was cited as an example of lowered morale as a result of feeling "forgotten" by the civilians back home. Acute sources of motivation include self-preservation, group cohesion, and leadership.
The final group of motivational influences on combat behavior are "situational." These include mental preparation, the combat environment, combat stress, and combat behavior. In the first case, he said it was important that soldiers have realistic expectations so that they are confronted with as few surprises as possible in combat. The combat environment, comprised of elements such as the level of danger, casualties, success/failure, and deprivation, can affect motivation. Similarly, stress bred by fear can lead to psychological breakdown, although leadership can play a role in reducing these effects. Finally, he noted that combat behavior was influenced by a complex host of motivation-situational elements.
Mr. Kellett then tried to extend his observations. He suggested that naval and air forces were more likely to emphasize teamwork and thus group motivations were most likely to be important. Leadership practices also differed from one branch of the service to another. Sailors in ships and crews on planes have no alternative but to go where their captains take them. He then offered a hypothesis about differences between conscription-based and all-volunteer armies suggesting that there may be some differences in root and acute motivations. In the case of professional soldiers, Kellett said they always fight since their professionalism is linked to their identities.
In conclusion, Kellett made five observations. First, pre-combat and combat motivations often differ substantially. Second, many soldiers fight because they lack alternatives. Third, the influence of aggressive and committed men is disproportionate to their numbers. Fourth, there is no single motivator that will appeal to all equally for any length of time---a variety should be used. Finally, he concluded that regulars and short-service soldiers will have different attitudes.
A number of the other panelists noted the importance of "buddies" for combat motivation and commented that little had been done to study such dyadic behavior. One question concerned the impact of high technology systems on large-scale war and the primary group. Mr. Kellett responded that certain technologies could strongly affect primary group cohesion. One example was the suits needed to fight in a chemical and biological weapons environment. The ensuing isolation may have a negative impact. In response to a question from the audience, Mr. Kellett found no clear historical evidence on relationships between gender or sexual orientation in combat groups and combat motivation and behavior. Examples could be cited where homosexual and women-based units performed well in combat.
After lunch, Robert Ursano presented a talk on "Psychiatric Responses to the Trauma of War and Disasters." Dr. Ursano began by orienting the audience to the issue he would address. His focus was on war as an independent variable (i.e., war as a cause of psychological trauma) and on individuals rather than the group focus of the earlier presentations. His commentary was directed at detailing the wide variety of individuals that are affected by disasters (of which war is one type) as well as the nature of individual responses to trauma. Using the Gander, Newfoundland, airplane crash as an example, Dr. Ursano used a ring of concentric circles to identify graphically the assortment of groups that were affected by disaster. In the center circle were the next of kin. Radiating out from the middle were the bereaved, the service providers, support providers, and the infrastructure. Because of mass communication, those affected by disasters are no longer confined to geographically specific areas and it is more proper to speak of a "Disaster Community" represented by these rings.
Dr. Ursano presented a temporal model of the effects of a traumatic event. The model began with the event itself, allowed for the effects of stress mediators, continued on to individuals= responses (behavioral, psychological, physiological), and finally considered the outcome (psychological, physiological, biological). He remarked that the severity of the traumatic event was the best predictor of the severity of the outcome. Turning to the responses to trauma, he noted four types. The first was resiliency or the ability to avoid the development of an illness as a result of the trauma. He emphasized that the vast majority of trauma victims fall into this category. Second, some responses include the reorganization of life values and goals. The final two responses were the development of physical or psychological illnesses. Among the latter group, those most often observed included post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depression, substance abuse, generalized anxiety disorder, and adjustment disorder.
Turning to combat, Dr. Ursano presented the findings of a variety of studies examining its psychological effects. One important conclusion was that pre-existing psychological illness was neither nece