War and Ideas

Selected Essays

John Mueller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134725502
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Terrorism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book collects the key essays, together with updating notes and commentary, of Professor John Mueller on war and the role of ideas and opinions.

Mueller has maintained that war (and peace) are, in essence, merely ideas, and that war has waned as the notion that 'peace' is a decidedly good idea has gained currency. The first part of the book extends this argument, noting that as ideas have spread, war is losing out not only in the developed world, but now in the developing one, and that even civil war is in marked decline. It also assesses and critiques theories arguing that this phenomenon is caused by the rising acceptance of democracy and/or capitalism.

The second part argues that the Cold War was at base a clash of ideas that were seen to be threatening, not of arms balances, domestic systems, geography, or international structure. It also maintains that there has been a considerable tendency to exaggerate security threats—currently, in particular, the one presented by international terrorism—and to see them in excessively military terms.

The third section deals with the role public opinion plays in foreign policy, and argues that many earlier conclusions about opinion during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, including especially ones concerning the importance of casualties in determining popular support for war, apply to more recent military ventures in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It also assesses the difficulties leaders and idea entrepreneurs often encounter when they try to manage or manipulate public opinion.

This book will be of much interest to students of international relations, security studies, foreign policy and international history.

Part I

War, ideas, and peace

Introduction

One rather good thing about publishing a book contending that major war—war among developed states—may be obsolescent is that even those who disagree with you hope you’re right. That certainly happened to me in 1989 when my book Retreat from Doomsday came out—reviews were peppered with words like “hopeful” and “encouraging.”

In an important respect, that very phenomenon underscored a central message of the book. Had it been published a century earlier, it would have been met by a rash of derisive reviews reacting with horror that anyone would have the temerity to suggest that war could in any sense be on the way out—that a beautiful, honorable, holy, sublime, heroic, ennobling, natural, virtuous, glorious, cleansing, manly, necessary, and progressive institution might be in the process of being replaced by something as debasing, trivial, and rotten as perpetual peace characterized by crass materialism, artistic decline, repellant effeminacy, rampant selfishness, base immorality, petrifying stagnation, sordid frivolity, degrading cowardice, corrupting boredom, and utter emptiness.

The central message of the book is that war is merely an idea, and that the decline of major war has been chiefly due to the way attitudes toward the value and efficacy of war have changed, roughly following the pattern by which the ancient and once-formidable institution of formal slavery became discredited and then obsolete. Key to the process has been the machinations of idea entrepreneurs, not changes in wider-ranging social, economic, or technological developments or in institutions, trade, or patterns of interdependence—which often seem to be more nearly a consequence of peace and of rising war aversion than their cause. The first article reprinted below, “The obsolescence of major war,” summarizes the argument of that book.

Beyond the hope, there was quite a bit of strong agreement in 1989, most notably and gratifyingly in a front-page review in the Sunday Washington Post Book World by McGeorge Bundy. However, the book certainly attracted some distinguished detractors as well. Harvard’s Samuel Huntington assessed it along with then-current discussions about the apparent end of the Cold War and with Francis Fukuyama’s famous essay “The End of History?” Labeling the collective phenomenon “endism,” he pronounced it the “intellectual fad of 1989.” Although willing to concede that “the probability of hot war between the two superpowers is as low as it has ever been” and that war between any of the advanced industrialized democracies was “even more unlikely,” Huntington warned that endism tended to ignore the “weakness and irrationality of human nature” and stressed that human beings were “often stupid, selfish, cruel, and sinful.” Endism, he concluded, provided “an illusion of well-being,” invited “relaxed complacency,” and was accordingly “dangerous and subversive.” Meanwhile, in the New York Times the prominent military and diplomatic historian Michael Howard reviewed the book with considerable skepticism (although with less alarm) about its central thesis. “One would like to believe Mr. Mueller,” he wrote, but the “prudent reader will check that his air raid shelter is in good repair.”

In the ensuing years, the ranks of the “dangerous and subversive” have expanded to include, among others, Robert Jervis in a book in this series, and the developed world seems to have continued, even accelerated, its retreat from doomsday—a word that has picked up a slight aura of quaintness over the ensuing two decades. And, however imprudently, air raid shelters do seem to have been allowed to lapse into disrepair.

However, Retreat from Doomsday has little to say about civil war, the kind of war that was by far the most common then and has continued to be so since. So in 2004 I published The Remnants of War, which sought to assess not only major war, but warfare of all sorts including especially those of the civil variety. It develops a distinction between criminal and disciplined warfare, contending that most (though not all) civil wars, far from stemming from “clashes of civilizations” (Huntington again), more nearly resemble criminal predation or the clashes of thugs. Although developed countries have tried to use military intervention in the wake of the Cold War to deal with civil conflicts and with regimes that are dangers to their own populations, the book identifies bad governance as the chief effective cause of most civil conflict and good governance as the key antidote. The second article reprinted in this section, “Policing the remnants of war,” summarizes much of the argument.

When that book was published, a notable dwindling in the frequency of all forms of war, especially civil war, was evident, and “War has almost ceased to exist: An Assessment” summarizes my overall argument about war in its various forms while updating the data to 2009. It finds that, despite headline-grabbing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the decline of war, as conventionally defined, continues. Although it is far too early to be certain about this trend, particularly with regard to civil war, it is likely, again, that those who disagree with me will hope I am right.

That article also engages in a bit of speculation. If war is in such pronounced decline, many of the explanations spewed out over the centuries for the institution’s existence and persistence may be found wanting. War seems to be waning, but there seem to have been few changes in many of the variables that have often been seen to be causally consequential, whether they stem from biology, psychology, economics, or structural or institutional analysis. Nor are explanations stressing weaponry, resentment, trade, communication, or technology doing very well. In my view, in a phrase I’m afraid I’ve used more than once, war is not a trick of fate, a thunderbolt from hell, a natural calamity, or a desperate plot contrivance dreamed up by some sadistic puppeteer on high. It is merely an idea, an institution that has been grafted onto human existence. Like dueling and formal slavery, it may be natural in some sense, but it is not necessary.

The final article in Part I, “Why isn’t there more violence?” extrapolates on that last consideration. While violence may make use of natural proclivities, it seems to be remarkably infrequent, especially considering the ease with which it can be committed, and non-violence is more nearly the natural, or normal, condition. Violence, in other words, is an aberration (which is why, in part, it garners so much attention), and people seem to be able to live quite well without it. The article also suggests that, while Hobbesian states of nature may exist, they are not conditions in which everyone is the enemy of everyone else, but situations where people unwillingly come under the control of bands, often very small ones, of criminal predators. This perspective can also lead to a re-evaluation of meaning of international “anarchy.”

References

McGeorge Bundy, World Without War, Amen. Washington Post Book World, March 12, 1989.

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History? National Interest, Summer 1989.

Michael Howard, A Death Knell for War? New York Times Book Review, April 30, 1989.

Samuel P. Huntington, No Exit: The Errors of Endism. National Interest, Fall 1989.

Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. New York: Touchstone, 1996.

Robert Jervis, American Foreign Policy in a New Era. New York: Routledge, 2005.

1 The obsolescence of major war

1 Introductory remarks

In discussing the causes of international war, commentators have often found it useful to group theories into what they term levels of analysis. In his classic work Man, the State and War, Kenneth N. Waltz organizes the theories according to whether the cause of war is found in the nature of man, in the nature of the state, or in the nature of the international state system. More recently Jack Levy, partly setting the issue of human nature to one side, organizes the theories according to whether they stress the systemic level, the nature of state and society, or the decision-making process.¹

In various ways, these level-of-analysis approaches direct attention away from war itself and toward concerns which may influence the incidence of war. However, war should not be visualized as a sort of recurring outcome that is determined by other conditions, but rather as a phenomenon that has its own qualities and appeals. And over time these appeals can change. War, in this view, is merely an idea, an institution, like dueling or slavery, that has been grafted onto human existence. Unlike breathing, eating, or sex, war is not something that is somehow required by the human condition, by the structure of international affairs, or by the forces of history.

Accordingly war can shrivel up and disappear, and this can come about without requiring that there be any notable change or improvement on any of the level-of-analysis categories. Specifically, war can die out without changing human nature, without modifying the nature of the state or the nation-state, without changing the international system, without creating an effective world government or system of international law, and without improving the competence or moral capacity of political leaders. It can also go away without expanding international trade, interdependence, or communication; without fabricating an effective moral or practical equivalent; without enveloping the earth in democracy or prosperity; without devising ingenious agreements to restrict arms or the arms industry; without reducing the world’s considerable store of hate, selfishness, nationalism, and racism; without increasing the amount of love, justice, harmony, cooperation, good will, or inner peace in the world; without establishing security communities; and without doing anything whatever about nuclear weapons.

Not only can such a development take place, but it has been taking place for a century or more, at least within the developed world, an area which was once a cauldron of international and civil war. Conflicts of interest are inevitable and continue to persist within the developed world. But the notion that war should be used to resolve them has increasingly been discredited and abandoned there. War, it seems, is becoming obsolete, at least in the developed world: in an area where war was once often casually seen as beneficial, noble, and glorious, or at least as necessary or inevitable, the conviction has now become widespread that war would be intolerably costly, unwise, futile, and debased.²

Some of this may be suggested by the remarkable developments in the Cold War that took place at the end of the 1980s. The dangers of a major war in the developed world clearly declined remarkably, yet this can hardly be attributed to an improvement in human nature, to the demise of the nation-state, to the rise of a world government, or to a notable improvement in the competence of political leaders.

2 Two analogies: dueling and slavery

It may not be obvious that an accepted, time-honored institution which serves an urgent social purpose can become obsolescent and then die out because a lot of people come to find it obnoxious. But the argument here is that something like that has been happening to war in the developed world. To illustrate the dynamic, it will be helpful briefly to assess two analogies: the processes by which the once-perennial institutions of dueling and slavery have all but vanished from the face of the earth.

2.1 Dueling

In some important respects war in the developed world may be following the example of another violent method for settling disputes, dueling, which up until a century ago was common practice in Europe and America among a certain class of young and youngish men who liked to classify themselves as gentlemen.³ Men of the social set that once dueled still exist, they still get insulted, and they still are concerned about their self-respect and their standing among their peers. But they don’t duel. However, they do not avoid dueling today because they evaluate the option and reject it on cost-benefit grounds. Rather, the option never percolates into their consciousness as something that is available. That is, a form of violence famed and fabled for centuries has sunk from thought as a viable, conscious possibility.

The Prussian strategist, Carl von Clausewitz, opens his famous 1832 book, On War, by observing that “War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.”⁴ If war, like dueling, comes to be viewed as a thoroughly undesirable, even ridiculous, policy, and if it can no longer promise gains or if potential combatants no longer come to value the things it can gain for them, then war can fade away as a coherent possibility even if a truly viable substitute or “moral equivalent” for it were never formulated. Like dueling, it could become unfashionable and then obsolete.

2.2 Slavery

From the dawn of prehistory until about 1788 slavery, like war, could be fo...