Read The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined Online
Authors: Steven Pinker
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (56 page)
Another soldier asks how wars get started and is told, “Mostly by one country badly offending another.” The soldier replies, “A country? I don’t follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat.”
133
The upshot of this literature, Mueller notes, was that war was no longer seen as glorious, heroic, holy, thrilling, manly, or cleansing. It was now immoral, repulsive, uncivilized, futile, stupid, wasteful, and cruel.
133
The upshot of this literature, Mueller notes, was that war was no longer seen as glorious, heroic, holy, thrilling, manly, or cleansing. It was now immoral, repulsive, uncivilized, futile, stupid, wasteful, and cruel.
And perhaps just as important, absurd. The immediate cause of World War I had been a showdown over honor. The leaders of Austria-Hungary had issued a humiliating ultimatum to Serbia demanding that it apologize for the assassination of the archduke and crack down on domestic nationalist movements to their satisfaction. Russia took offense on behalf of its fellow Slavs, Germany took offense at Russia’s offense on behalf of its fellow German speakers, and as Britain and France joined in, a contest of face, humiliation, shame, stature, and credibility escalated out of control. A fear of being “reduced to a second-rate power” sent them hurtling toward each other in a dreadful game of chicken.
Contests of honor, of course, had been setting off wars in Europe throughout its bloody history. But honor, as Falstaff noted, is just a word—a social construction, we might say today—and “detraction will not suffer it.” Detraction there soon was. Perhaps the best antiwar film of all time is the Marx Brothers’
Duck Soup
(1933). Groucho plays Rufus T. Firefly, the newly appointed leader of Freedonia, and is asked to make peace with the ambassador of neighboring Sylvania:
Duck Soup
(1933). Groucho plays Rufus T. Firefly, the newly appointed leader of Freedonia, and is asked to make peace with the ambassador of neighboring Sylvania:
I’d be unworthy of the high trust that’s been placed in me if I didn’t do everything within my power to keep our beloved Freedonia at peace with the world. I’d be only too happy to meet Ambassador Trentino and offer him on behalf of my country the right hand of good fellowship. And I feel sure he will accept this gesture in the spirit in which it is offered.But suppose he doesn’t. A fine thing that’ll be. I hold out my hand and he refuses to accept it. That’ll add a lot to my prestige, won’t it? Me, the head of a country, snubbed by a foreign ambassador. Who does he think he is that he can come here and make a sap out of me in front of all my people? Think of it. I hold out my hand. And that hyena refuses to accept it. Why, the cheap, four-flushing swine! He’ll never get away with it, I tell you! [The ambassador enters.] So, you refuse to shake hands with me, eh? [He slaps the ambassador.]Ambassador:
Mrs. Teasdale, this is the last straw! There’s no turning back now! This means war!
Whereupon an outlandish production number breaks out in which the Marx Brothers play xylophone on the pickelhauben of the assembled soldiers and then dodge bullets and bombs while their uniforms keep changing, from Civil War soldier to Boy Scout to British palace guard to frontiersman with coonskin cap. War has been likened to dueling, and recall that dueling was eventually laughed into extinction. War was now undergoing a similar deflation, perhaps fulfilling Oscar Wilde’s prophecy that “as long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.”
The butt of the joke was different in the other classic war satire of the era, Charlie Chaplin’s
The Great Dictator
(1940). It was no longer the hotheaded leaders of generic Ruritanian countries that were the target, since by now virtually everyone was allergic to a military culture of honor. Instead the buffoons were thinly disguised contemporary dictators who anachronistically embraced that ideal. In one memorable scene, the Hitler and Mussolini characters confer in a barbershop and each tries to dominate the other by raising his chair until both are bumping their heads against the ceiling.
The Great Dictator
(1940). It was no longer the hotheaded leaders of generic Ruritanian countries that were the target, since by now virtually everyone was allergic to a military culture of honor. Instead the buffoons were thinly disguised contemporary dictators who anachronistically embraced that ideal. In one memorable scene, the Hitler and Mussolini characters confer in a barbershop and each tries to dominate the other by raising his chair until both are bumping their heads against the ceiling.
By the 1930s, according to Mueller, Europe’s war aversion was prevalent even among the German populace and its military leadership.
134
Though resentment of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles was high, few were willing to start a war of conquest to rectify them. Mueller ran through the set of German leaders who had any chance of becoming chancellor and argued that no one but Hitler showed any desire to subjugate Europe. Even a coup by the German military, according to the historian Henry Turner, would not have led to World War II.
135
Hitler exploited the world’s war-weariness, repeatedly professing his love of peace and knowing that no one was willing to stop him while he was still stoppable. Mueller reviews biographies of Hitler to defend the idea, also held by many historians, that one man was mostly responsible for the world’s greatest cataclysm:
134
Though resentment of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles was high, few were willing to start a war of conquest to rectify them. Mueller ran through the set of German leaders who had any chance of becoming chancellor and argued that no one but Hitler showed any desire to subjugate Europe. Even a coup by the German military, according to the historian Henry Turner, would not have led to World War II.
135
Hitler exploited the world’s war-weariness, repeatedly professing his love of peace and knowing that no one was willing to stop him while he was still stoppable. Mueller reviews biographies of Hitler to defend the idea, also held by many historians, that one man was mostly responsible for the world’s greatest cataclysm:
After seizing control of the country in 1933, [Hitler] moved quickly and decisively to persuade, browbeat, dominate, outmaneuver, downgrade, and in many instances, murder opponents or would-be opponents. He possessed enormous energy and stamina, exceptional persuasive powers, an excellent memory, strong powers of concentration, an overwhelming craving for power, a fanatical belief in his mission, a monumental self-confidence, a unique daring, a spectacular facility for lying, a mesmerizing oratory style, and an ability to be utterly ruthless to anyone who got in his way or attempted to divert him from his intended course of action....Hitler needed the chaos and discontent to work with—although he created much of it, too. And surely he needed assistance—colleagues who were worshipfully subservient; a superb army that could be manipulated and whipped into action; a population capable of being mesmerized and led to slaughter; foreign opponents who were confused, disorganized, gullible, myopic, and faint-hearted; neighbors who would rather be prey than fight—although he created much of this as well. Hitler took the conditions of the world as he found them and then shaped and manipulated them to his own ends.
136
Fifty-five million deaths later (including at least 12 million who died in Japan’s own atavistic campaign to dominate East Asia), the world was once again in a position to give peace a chance.
THE LONG PEACE: SOME NUMBERSI have spent a lot of this chapter on the statistics of war. But now we are ready for the most interesting statistic since 1945: zero. Zero is the number that applies to an astonishing collection of categories of war during the two-thirds of a century that has elapsed since the end of the deadliest war of all time. I’ll begin with the most momentous.
• Zero is the number of times that nuclear weapons have been used in conflict. Five great powers possess them, and all of them have waged wars. Yet no nuclear device has been set off in anger. It’s not just that the great powers avoided the mutual suicide of an all-out nuclear war. They also avoided using the smaller, “tactical” nuclear weapons, many of them comparable to conventional explosives, on the battlefield or in the bombing of enemy facilities. And the United States refrained from using its nuclear arsenal in the late 1940s when it held a nuclear monopoly and did not have to worry about mutually assured destruction. I’ve been quantifying violence throughout this book using proportions. If one were to calculate the amount of destruction that nations have actually perpetrated as a proportion of how much they
could
perpetrate, given the destructive capacity available to them, the postwar decades would be many orders of magnitudes more peaceable than any time in history.
could
perpetrate, given the destructive capacity available to them, the postwar decades would be many orders of magnitudes more peaceable than any time in history.
None of this was a foregone conclusion. Until the sudden end of the Cold War, many experts (including Albert Einstein, C. P. Snow, Herman Kahn, Carl Sagan, and Jonathan Schell) wrote that thermonuclear doomsday was likely, if not inevitable.
137
The eminent international studies scholar Hans Morgenthau, for example, wrote in 1979, “The world is moving ineluctably towards a third world war—a strategic nuclear war. I do not believe that anything can be done to prevent it.”
138
The
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
, according to its Web site, aims to “inform the public and influence policy through in-depth analyses, op-eds, and reports on nuclear weapons.” Since 1947 it has published the famous Doomsday Clock, a measure of “how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction—the figurative midnight.” The clock was unveiled with its minute hand pointing at 7 minutes to midnight, and over the next sixty years it was moved back and forth a number of times between 2 minutes to midnight (in 1953) and 17 minutes to midnight (in 1991). In 2007 the
Bulletin
apparently decided that a clock with a minute hand that moved two minutes in sixty years was due for an adjustment. But rather than tuning the mechanism, they redefined midnight. Doomsday now consists of “damage to ecosystems, flooding, destructive storms, increased drought, and polar ice melt.” This is a kind of progress.
137
The eminent international studies scholar Hans Morgenthau, for example, wrote in 1979, “The world is moving ineluctably towards a third world war—a strategic nuclear war. I do not believe that anything can be done to prevent it.”
138
The
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
, according to its Web site, aims to “inform the public and influence policy through in-depth analyses, op-eds, and reports on nuclear weapons.” Since 1947 it has published the famous Doomsday Clock, a measure of “how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction—the figurative midnight.” The clock was unveiled with its minute hand pointing at 7 minutes to midnight, and over the next sixty years it was moved back and forth a number of times between 2 minutes to midnight (in 1953) and 17 minutes to midnight (in 1991). In 2007 the
Bulletin
apparently decided that a clock with a minute hand that moved two minutes in sixty years was due for an adjustment. But rather than tuning the mechanism, they redefined midnight. Doomsday now consists of “damage to ecosystems, flooding, destructive storms, increased drought, and polar ice melt.” This is a kind of progress.
• Zero is the number of times that the two Cold War superpowers fought each other on the battlefield. To be sure, they occasionally fought each other’s smaller allies and stoked proxy wars among their client states. But when either the United States or the Soviet Union sent troops to a contested region (Berlin, Hungary, Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan), the other stayed out of its way.
139
The distinction matters a great deal because as we have seen, one big war can kill vastly more people than many small wars. In the past, when an enemy of a great power invaded a neutral country, the great power would express its displeasure on the battlefield. In 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the United States expressed its displeasure by withdrawing its team from the Moscow Summer Olympics. The Cold War, to everyone’s surprise, ended without a shot in the late 1980s shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to power. It was followed by the peaceful tear-down of the Berlin Wall and then by the mostly peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union.
139
The distinction matters a great deal because as we have seen, one big war can kill vastly more people than many small wars. In the past, when an enemy of a great power invaded a neutral country, the great power would express its displeasure on the battlefield. In 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the United States expressed its displeasure by withdrawing its team from the Moscow Summer Olympics. The Cold War, to everyone’s surprise, ended without a shot in the late 1980s shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to power. It was followed by the peaceful tear-down of the Berlin Wall and then by the mostly peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union.
• Zero is the number of times that any of the great powers have fought each other since 1953 (or perhaps even 1945, since many political scientists don’t admit China to the club of great powers until after the Korean War). The war-free interval since 1953 handily breaks the previous two records from the 19th century of 38 and 44 years. In fact, as of May 15, 1984, the major powers of the world had remained at peace with one another for the longest stretch of time since the Roman Empire.
140
Not since the 2nd century BCE, when Teutonic tribes challenged the Romans, has a comparable interval passed without an army crossing the Rhine.
141
140
Not since the 2nd century BCE, when Teutonic tribes challenged the Romans, has a comparable interval passed without an army crossing the Rhine.
141
• Zero is the number of interstate wars that have been fought between countries in Western Europe since the end of World War II.
142
It is also the number of interstate wars that have been fought in Europe as a whole since 1956, when the Soviet Union briefly invaded Hungary.
143
Keep in mind that up until that point European states had started around two new armed conflicts
a year
since 1400.
142
It is also the number of interstate wars that have been fought in Europe as a whole since 1956, when the Soviet Union briefly invaded Hungary.
143
Keep in mind that up until that point European states had started around two new armed conflicts
a year
since 1400.
• Zero is the number of interstate wars that have been fought since 1945 between major developed countries (the forty-four with the highest per capita income) anywhere in the world (again, with the exception of the 1956 Hungarian invasion).
144
Today we take it for granted that war is something that happens in smaller, poorer, and more backward countries. But the two world wars, together with the many hyphenated European wars from centuries past (Franco-Prussian, Austro-Prussian, Russo-Swedish, British-Spanish, AngloDutch) remind us that this was not always the way things worked.
144
Today we take it for granted that war is something that happens in smaller, poorer, and more backward countries. But the two world wars, together with the many hyphenated European wars from centuries past (Franco-Prussian, Austro-Prussian, Russo-Swedish, British-Spanish, AngloDutch) remind us that this was not always the way things worked.
• Zero is the number of developed countries that have expanded their territory since the late 1940s by conquering another country. No more Poland getting wiped off the map, or Britain adding India to its empire, or Austria helping itself to the odd Balkan nation. Zero is also the number of times that any country has conquered even
parts
of some other country since 1975, and it is not far from the number of permanent conquests since 1948 (a development we’ll soon examine more closely).
145
In fact the process of great power aggrandizement went into reverse. In what has been called “the greatest transfer of power in world history,” European countries surrendered vast swaths of territory as they closed down their empires and granted independence to colonies, sometimes peacefully, sometimes because they had lost the will to prevail in colonial wars.
146
As we will see in the next chapter, two entire categories of war—the imperial war to acquire colonies, and the colonial war to keep them—no longer exist.
147
parts
of some other country since 1975, and it is not far from the number of permanent conquests since 1948 (a development we’ll soon examine more closely).
145
In fact the process of great power aggrandizement went into reverse. In what has been called “the greatest transfer of power in world history,” European countries surrendered vast swaths of territory as they closed down their empires and granted independence to colonies, sometimes peacefully, sometimes because they had lost the will to prevail in colonial wars.
146
As we will see in the next chapter, two entire categories of war—the imperial war to acquire colonies, and the colonial war to keep them—no longer exist.
147
• Zero is the number of internationally recognized states since World War II that have gone out of existence through conquest.
148
(South Vietnam may be the exception, depending on whether its unification with North Vietnam in 1975 is counted as a conquest or as the end of an internationalized civil war.) During the first half of the 20th century, by comparison, twenty-two states were occupied or absorbed, at a time when the world had far fewer states to begin with.
149
Though scores of nations have gained independence since 1945, and several have broken apart, most of the lines on a world map of 1950 are still present on a world map in 2010. This too is an extraordinary development in a world in which rulers used to treat imperial expansion as part of their job description.
148
(South Vietnam may be the exception, depending on whether its unification with North Vietnam in 1975 is counted as a conquest or as the end of an internationalized civil war.) During the first half of the 20th century, by comparison, twenty-two states were occupied or absorbed, at a time when the world had far fewer states to begin with.
149
Though scores of nations have gained independence since 1945, and several have broken apart, most of the lines on a world map of 1950 are still present on a world map in 2010. This too is an extraordinary development in a world in which rulers used to treat imperial expansion as part of their job description.
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