The Conquest Of War

Alternative Strategies For Global Security

Harry B Hollins, Averill L. Powers, Mark Sommer, Roger D Fisher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367291013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000315622
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores alternative systems and strategies for global security by which the conflicts between nations can be carried on, and ultimately resolved, without recourse to war, examining system changes some of which may take many years to enact.

Chapter One
Conquering War: The Next Step in Human Evolution

When we get to the point, as one day we will, that both sides know that in any outbreak of hostilities, regardless of the element of surprise, destruction will be both reciprocal and complete, possibly we will have enough sense to meet at the conference table with the understanding that the era of armaments has ended and that the human race must conform its action to this truth or die.

—President Dwight D. Eisenhower

We live in an in-between time. For the greater part of a century, a broad consensus has been building across national and social boundaries heretofore thought insurmountable that war as an institution has outlived its usefulness (if ever it had any) and that some less costly means must be found to resolve conflicts between nations. A perennial plague of human history, war in our era has become so lethal and damaging, and preparations for it so exceedingly expensive, that as a species and a planet we can simply no longer afford it. But most of us do not yet believe peace is possible. Those institutions we have established for resolving conflicts between nations languish for lack of use and support and there remains powerful resistance to giving them the means to do the job.

Nor have nuclear weapons abolished war. They may have made superpower conflict less likely, but only at the cost of making it far more catastrophic if or when it does occur. Meanwhile beneath their umbrella, lower-intensity conflicts of immense cumulative destructiveness have continued to proliferate. “Nuclear peace” is not a stable and enduring condition but a fragile truce, a cease-fire without a settlement. It is a strange and anomalous state of affairs, not quite war and not yet peace.

Which way the balance tips will depend in large measure on our collective ability to answer the fundamental question posed by President John F. Kennedy a generation ago: How can the world be made safe for our differences? Religions, ideologies, languages, values, and political and economic institutions all vary widely between nations and within them, supplying abundant fuel for conflicts. These differences are too fundamental to be ignored. But they need not be seen as innately destructive, for many of them add immeasurably to the vitality and wonder of life on this small planet. The conflicts resulting from these differences cannot magically be made to disappear, but they can be managed in such ways that resorting to force to settle them finally becomes an unnecessary and unacceptable option. This book explores alternative systems and strategies for security by which these conflicts can be carried on, and ultimately resolved, without recourse to war.

The Shared Interests of All Nations

The extreme destructiveness of modern weaponry has made a practical necessity of the moral imperative that we are our brothers’ keepers. Contemporary warfare is inescapably suicidal: Aggressors and victims now share a common fate. Security has thus become indivisible: It can no longer be attained at the expense of one’s adversaries but only in cooperation with them. Even the most powerful nations are no longer capable of assuring physical security for their citizens. Indeed, it is the most powerful who have come to join the most insecure and to create the most insecurity.

This vulnerability is paralleled in the realm of economics, where trade has become so thoroughly internationalized that no nation can afford any longer to ignore the opportunities in the global marketplace, nor can any nation long remain insulated from its periodic crises. This mutual vulnerability has never been more clearly demonstrated than in the unprecedented plunge of stock prices throughout the capitalist world on Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when in the space of eight hours, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 508 points, more than 20 percent of its total value. In nine days of trading, the New York Stock Exchange lost $1 trillion, including $500 billion on the day of the plunge. With the stunning suddenness of an earthquake, exchanges throughout the world immediately collapsed in the wake of the tremor from Wall Street.

Though the socialist world remained insulated in the near term from the turbulence in capitalist financial markets, it is clear that a prolonged economic downturn in the West would also doom efforts by the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc nations to revive their own moribund economies by depriving them of essential investment capital and equipment to rebuild their aging industrial infrastructures. This condition of mutual vulnerability, a product of ever-growing economic interdependence, affirms the fundamentally new reality that economic security, like military security, can no longer be attained by wholly unrestrained competition between nations but must be tempered by a measure of cooperation based on a pragmatic assessment of mutual self-interest.

This mutual vulnerability is echoed and intensified by certain ominous trends in the global environment. Deforestation and desertification, toxic pollution of soils and water, the lethal effects of acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, and climatic changes induced by the “greenhouse effect” extend across all national boundaries, menacing large parts of the planet at once. Meanwhile the AIDS epidemic continues to spread, threatening to become the twenty-first century’s Black Plague. Purely national defenses are helpless to shield against the threats to security represented by these environmental trends. Cooperative efforts engaging the energies of many peoples and nations are essential to address these shared perils.

Despite deep and sometimes irreconcilable differences, all nations share certain fundamental concerns that affect their most vital interests. This foundation of shared interests holds promise for constructing a global system of common security.

The Avoidance of Nuclear War. Even proponents of nuclear war-fighting strategies no longer find it politically wise to suggest that a nuclear war is “winnable.” Research into the possible effects of a “nuclear winter” indicates that the aggressor in a nuclear exchange would likely fall victim to the radiation and climatic disruptions triggered by an attack even if the aggressor were not assaulted in return. All nations, regardless of their motives and ambitions, share a stake in avoiding nuclear war.

The Avoidance of Conventional Warfare. Closely related to the prevention of nuclear war is the avoidance of less apocalyptic forms of warfare. Most strategic analysts and other observers understand that any nuclear-armed nation losing a conventional war in which its vital interests are involved would sooner or later—and likely sooner—resort to its ultimate weapon. And with its first use would likely ensue an exchange of nuclear warheads with little or no restraint of any kind. The deadly connection between nuclear and conventional arsenals among the nuclear powers is so intimate that even conventional war between them flirts with apocalypse.² It is thus in the interest of all nations, and especially the superpowers, to prevent all conventional armed conflict.

The Prevention of Nuclear Proliferation. During the first generation since the invention of nuclear weapons, the nuclear “club” has remained an exclusive affair, including six nations (the United States, the USSR, Great Britain, France, India, and China) with an acknowledged capability and two more (Israel and South Africa) with a capacity still unacknowledged but widely credited. Seeking membership in the club is a growing host of lesser candidates (among them Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq). A variety of subnational terrorist groups may also attempt to wield greater influence by the blunt and brutal instrument of nuclear terrorism. Although none of these candidates is believed to have crossed the nuclear threshold, it becomes increasingly likely (with the enormous accumulation and often careless handling of nuclear materials) that other nations and groups will achieve their ambition within the next decade. It is clearly in the interest of the great majority of nations to prevent this occurrence, since it would render an already tenuous restraint on nuclear proliferation essentially obsolete.³

Reductions in Military Spending. High on the agendas of both the Soviet Union and the United States is the task of reinvigorating their ailing economies. The crushing burden of maintaining immense arsenals and armed forces not only depletes the economic vitality of the great powers but robs essential resources from the reconstruction of their declining industrial bases and the provision of basic needs in the developing world. Military spending in the United States is closely related to decreasing innovation in the civilian sector. This declining capacity for innovation in turn has direct impact on domestic economic efficiency and competitiveness in world markets. It is in the immediate interest of all nations to release themselves from this self-imposed and self-destructive burden. Savings liberated by an effective disarming process would not only shrink the Himalayan mountain of debt now accumulating worldwide, but would release the essential resources—financial, material, and human—now lacking for many new and urgently needed undertakings.

Barriers to Agreement

Why, then, do the great powers fail to act in accordance with what appears to be clearly in their most vital interests? Deeply suspicious of their adversaries, most rival states believe that only the possession of superior armed power and technology (most often in the form of offensive threat) will suffice to deter an enemy presumed to be relentless and unprincipled. “They only understand force,” adversaries say of one another. But if each seeks superiority by threatening the other, where does the contest end? “An eye for an eye ‘til everyone is blind,” say the wise words of an Irish folk song. To allow this attitude to determine foreign policies ensures catastrophe.

Others argue that if it has proven so difficult to reach agreement on the small steps entailed in traditional arms control treaties, it is simply not realistic to propose a far larger step like reducing or eliminating the war-making capability of nations. Despite its apparent logic, we question the wisdom of this argument. The degree to which the international system can be transformed depends less on the size of the proposed step than on whether the idea is sufficiently timely and compelling to marshal the effective political will to enact it. This will, in turn, is influenced by at least two factors: the practicality of the idea (that is, whether it appears capable of doing what it promises) and whether it meets the felt needs of people well enough to elicit their commitment to make it real. Taking a big step with unmistakable boldness strikes an emotional chord that fatally compromised and technically obscure half measures like traditional arms control can never inspire.

Two other barriers to agreement are still more deeply seated. If nations were to restrict or eliminate their ability to wage offensive war against one another, they would also relinquish their capacity to intervene militarily in the internal affairs of smaller nations. The numerous military operations now underway with the direct or indirect sponsorship of the superpowers indicate that the inclination to intervene is still their habit and predilection. Yet they cannot achieve enduring security for themselves without eliminating their own capacity to intervene militarily in the affairs of other nations. This is the trade-off. This is the price that must be paid for security in the nuclear age.

Finally, and most tellingly, most nations continue to operate on the assumption that while the nuclear age requires certain modifications in the system of competitive national armaments by which states have so long governed their relations, it does not require a fundamental system change. But even the most ambitious arms control proposals now under consideration, while lessening the immediate threat of conflict, would not alter the essential dynamics of the present system. Lacking a clear sense of direction, political leaders and policymakers on both sides of the East-West divide have made no sustained effort to develop a concrete idea of where they want their nations and the world to be ten, twenty, or fifty years hence. As Einstein so well observed, everything has changed but our way of thinking.

The Urgent Need to Change the System

No mere modification of the present system of international relations will suffice to carry us into the next century with a reasonable assurance of survival and security. A fundamental system shift is now imperative.

Although it is beyond the scope of this inquiry to define the precise structure and evolution of this system transformation, the outlines are clear. By one means or another, the war-making capability of nations must be progressively restricted and ultimately eliminated, and in its place must be established a wide range of alternative means for playing out those conflicts now carried on by warfare.

James W. Rouse, a successful businessman and chairman of the board of the Enterprise Foundation, made the point in his commencement address at Johns Hopkins University in May 1985 that when faced with finding a solution to a problem, the most sensible starting point is to determine where you want to be when you have succeeded.

It is a way of thinking that raises up images of what might be—should be—and thereby helps people to see potential that otherwise might not be understood and evokes action that might not otherwise occur. These images generate energy and forestall early compromise with lesser results. Such images are often dismissed as visionary and impractical. And the state of mind that often evokes that response is one of the burdens of our society. It is a state of mind that inhibits movement towards goals that may be widely accepted as valid and important by discounting them in advance as unachievable.

Linking Principles and Pragmatism

What, then, makes for a successful movement? How are “images of what might be” made real? A successful movement for social change requires both an unwavering commitment to first principles and a flexible and pragmatic set of strategies for attaining them. In matters of war and peace, these twin imperatives are all too often found at odds with one another. Popular peace movements are well attuned to visions of a world without war and are fueled in large part by the emotional inspiration of an inchoate yearning for peace. But they have remained chronically vague about the actual means of enacting these visions. Arms control specialists, on the other hand, have based their cautious, incremental approach to peace on meticulous attention to technical detail. But in their assiduous pursuit of the achievable compromise, they have too often lost sight of larger goals and, indeed, may have unwittingly obstructed their realization.

Our approach is to unite the principled and the pragmatic, enunciating a vision and goal sufficiently ambitious to inspire heroic efforts on their behalf while designing strategies sufficiently practical to make their achievement a realistic possibility. Like other great social causes, from antislavery abolitionism to the environmental, civil rights, and women’s movements, the movement to render war obsolete possesses a moral and spiritual dimension that campaigns to limit or eliminate particular weapons systems wholly lack. This dimension is vitally necessary if the cause is to attract sufficient energy to overcome lingering resistance to change.

At the same time, we take this apparently utopian premise—the possibility of changing the international system—and subject it to rigorous scrutiny, examining the strengths and weaknesses of each of the alternatives considered here. By this principled and pragmatic approach, we seek to demonstrate that what has long been dismissed as visionary is in fact practical. Given intelligent planning and the essential political will, even so great a goal as the abolition of war is not impossible.

Precedents for a System Change: The Case of Slavery

Given present political realities, a world in which organized warfare is no longer accepted as a human institution may seem too much to hope for. Yet human beings have compiled a long and impressive record of achieving the seemingly impossible, and not just in technical feats. In the eighteenth century the so-called “divine right of kings” was annulled, demonstrating that humankind could progress beyond social barriers that had long been accepted as givens. In the nineteenth century, another, still more significant, system shift occurred when chattel slavery, a practice accepted since the earliest known civilizations, was universally abolished. The transformation was all the more remarkable because the time elapsed between the first widespread questioning of the practice and its universal abolition was little more than a hundred years, in an era when social and historical change occurred at a distinctly slower tempo than it occurs today. And in the single generation since World War II (in fact mostly in the 1960s), the great colonial empires erected by the European powers over several centuries were dismantled in an unheralded but largely nonviolent system shift.

The case of slavery and its abolition is worth pondering for a moment. Like war, slavery had been considered innate to the human condition and was taken by many (though not many slaves, no doubt) to be morally sound. For thousands of years, war was celebr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Conquering War: The Next Step in Human Evolution
• PART ONE THE UNITED NATIONS AND SIX ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO GLOBAL SECURITY
• PART TWO KEEPING THE PEACE: ISSUES COMMON TO ALL APPROACHES
• PART THREE PROSPECTS FOR TRANSFORMATION
• Appendix: Current Proposals for Arms Reduction
• Selected Bibliography
• Index