NOTES ON WAR
(Simulation,
Vol. 74, Number 1, January 2000)
Efforts to prevent, limit,
and/or settle wars, whether by armies, peace activists, or anyone else,
requires an understanding of the system within which war is taking place. We must start with a model of the global
system of tomorrow.
The impact of the Soviet
Union breaking up is not the main
causal agent. The main causes are coming from the eruption of a new
civilization. Nation-states as the basic unit of power are changing, and their
hard edges are eroding. For instance, one-third of U.N. countries are now under
some level of violent threat by Ethnic groups, Rebel groups, Dissident groups,
and/or Governments in exile.
The emergence of city states,
as new power blocs, have produced soft-edged host national states.
Transportation businesses are bypassing the old nation states framework
allowing socio-economic status to be regarded as the new source of power.
Transnational associations and organizations are larger than the national
interests, and have their own global organizations and agendas. Transborder
electronic and communication networks often play an end run on any government
intervention. One-quarter of all world trade is now between subsidiaries!
The emerging Global Model is
now commonly divided into 3 distinct segments, resulting in a trisected Global
System:1
·
Agrarian, requiring access to water, and lacking
diversification.
·
Industrial, being moderately independent, but
needing access to cheap labor.
·
Informational, where knowledge is convertible
into wealth, hyper-connectivity.
Most powerful countries are
tied down by a variety of commitments and thus are becoming less "free". For instance,
hotspots can materialize and erupt into war overnight, and Governments don't
have time to respond to these or other dramatic events before they digest their
significance. Politicians are compelled to make more and more decisions about
things they know less and less about.
Differences in time
consciousness, with an emphasis on temporal over spatial factors, create a
dependence on speed of communication and movement. Differences in national
interest, and even the units that make up the system, are variables to be
assessed in our model. In the new arena of war, connectivity, speed, and
survival requirements are the components of both the new war form and the new
peace form that will comprise the 21st century global system.
There are a number of
assumptions that will also need to be addressed:
·
No one wants war = false
·
Global System is rational = false
·
Linear model requires external threat to trigger
war = false
·
Atom bombs will not be triggered by anger =
false
·
USA is out of ballistic missile range = soon to
be false
·
Digital revolution has potential to educate
billions = true
·
New model will have to be nonlinear = true
- small input can trigger a
gigantic affect
- positive feedback loops are
multiplying
-
persistence of human groups after their purpose fulfilled
- susceptibility to chance
·
The Global System is getting more complex, and
harder to simulate = true
We will also need to model
the relationship of Knowledge and Wealth on War. War is fueled by a military
bureaucracy, business interests (profit), and the careers of those within them.
We are prisoners of this machine built on the distribution of unnecessary
labor, where the success of one firm increases the chances of others. Our
domestic economy is tightly tied to the military. In the past this has always been a threat to any nation,
e.g., Germany and Japan. This misplaced power has always lead to war.
Arms merchants and related
businesses create a climate of fear and evoke war scares. Bribing government
officials is viewed as a normal business practice. They engage in disseminating
false reports on military and naval programs between various countries, and
influence public opinion through control of media and right-wing think tanks.
International armament rings play one country off another and organized
armament trusts are very effective at increasing the price of arms sold to governments.
The powerful continuously intercept the fruits of labor and expend them on war.
The army is a body of pure
consumers, which can help fuel the depth of conflict on their own momentum.
Quality production relies on quality consumption and nothing insures
replacement like organized destruction.
Governments have a vested
interest in arms production. It is often perceived to help maintain employment,
protect the country's balance of payments, and balance the need to unload
massive overproduction. From 1960 through 1985, there was a 14 trillion dollar
increase in world military expenditures, and only an 8.6 trillion dollar
increase in world economic product. NATO spent six times more on defense than
the Warsaw Pact during the final years of the Cold War. The price of war and
the associated profits are also increasing - $800 billion was spent during the
Vietnam War. During World War II a total of 1.5 million tons of bombs were
used, while 8 million tons of bombs were used in Vietnam. We also used 18 million
gallons of defoliants and 400,000 tons of napalm in Vietnam.2
Often not included in the
cost of war is the cleanup and the humanitarian disaster effecting the local
civilian population. For instance, there are often land mines, unexploded ordinance, effects of chemical and
biological weapons, pollution from bombing oil refineries, factories, etc., and
radiation in the form of depleted uranium now used in anti-armor warheads. For
instance, depleted uranium was used by A-10 tank-buster aircraft for more than
a month in at least 40 locations in Kosovo.3 On two occasions,
refugee columns were bombed with these munitions by mistake, in the belief they
were military convoys. And this war was supposed to be about averting
humanitarian disaster! We now have two, where before we had one. Not far away,
the Turks "ethnically cleansed" 400,000 - 500,000 Kurds recently.
Instead of being bombed by NATO, the Turkish government was congratulated on
its "fight against terrorism".4
The cause of most wars are
the efforts of powerful people to control capital and trade in order to
intercept the production of others labor. Financing the Cold War cost the world
5 times the resources, labor, and capital required to have industrialized the
entire globe. At the inception of the Cold War there was no military threat
from the Soviet Union, World War II destroyed them and they had no missiles
pointed at any one. Most of the American fears of being attacked have been
engineered by groups with their own, often hidden, agendas. The threat of these
activities will be difficult to quantify and plug into our model.
If we demilitarized and had
peace instead of war, 1 million instead of 11 million people would-be an
adequate number of military and support workers.
"That a few powerful people
are able, through patronage and the creation of enemies, to control a wasteful
social policy for their gain - while depriving billions throughout the world,
depleting resources, and devastating the ecosystem - points to the urgent need
for all people to reclaim the last of their rights: the right to work at a productive job, claim their proper share
of the world's wealth, and start healing the damage to our mother earth."2
Technical fixes are not
tenable for the major social and environmental problems of our age. We have a
delusion of limitless, and desperately need to learn to live within the
ecological limits of a Sustainable Society. This universalism will lead to a
"Tragedy of Commons". There is no world government to regulate the
emerging global "free-market", and would a one world government even
be desirable if it could be built?
Ideals of civil rights are
contradicted by the reality that we are the plague destroying the planet! It is
rare for cancers to stop being cancers, can we stop being human? Can we avert
self destruction? Humanity is not going to change its ways because it cannot.
If great and well-meaning institutions can't save us, where are we going to
turn?
There is also a fundamental
lack of purpose in human life. Throughout history, individuals have been
willing to follow the herd and kill one another. Mankind is influenced
decisively only by the ideas all can share. Therefore, the best deterrent to
war is conscience. It is useless to appeal to man's better nature in terms of
faith, hope, and love because of the level of fear that each of us has been
obliged to carry since childhood. Who stood up and challenged Hitler when he
ridiculously accused Poland of armed aggression, or called foul when he decided
to gobble up Poland? When Neville Chamberlain met with Hitler to discuss this
issue they didn't even invite a representative from Poland! Down with the main
point, hurrah for the incidentals!
A short look at some of the
choices men have made over the last centuries should help clarify.
·
Paul's compulsory way of life was chosen over
the love and majestic simplicity of Jesus; the cruel Inquisition was chosen
over Galileo's truth
·
During the French Revolution's "Reign of
Terror, Maximilien Robespierre was lifted to power, while Georges Danton was
guillotined.
·
Marx's insight into the productivity of living
labor was forgotten when the state obtained power, Stalin's dictatorship was
chosen over Lenin's initial democratic constitution
·
Freud's early detection of the sexual core of
psychic disorders has been dropped in favor of his theory of cultural
adaptation
·
Hitler's subhuman man was chosen over
Nietzsche's superman
·
Atomic Energy was chosen over Life Energy
How can we come to terms with
the "terror of the situation". Where were we and what were we
thinking when Hitler had only murdered a few hundred? What has changed in the
world since we hung the Nazi "murderers" after the Nuremberg Trials?
Could we have warned the Japanese civilians before we dropped two atom bombs?
Before the First World War there were no passports, you could cross any border
you pleased with no formalities. Is the world now a safer place for democracy
with the personal and political boundaries we have accepted? Is our government
still managed with the same mindfulness our forefathers demonstrated?
Moral injunctions without
sanctions don't work, even then the outcome is not always as we anticipate, and
we now seem to have lost all sanctions except that of survival. We are faced
with the need to make sacrifices for a future we may not live to enjoy. While
few are capable of this level of self denial, our welfare is co-dependant on
the future of the entire global system. We have a part to play in this drama,
and must accept our role or perish. Our personal well being depends on the way
we serve all life on our earth and can only be achieved by "conscious
labor and intentional suffering" for the good of others.
Specialization in this light
can be viewed as part of the problem, not the solution. Our human situation is
showing signs of progressive and accelerating deterioration. There is an
increasing level of "mechanicalness" and mass hypnosis as we slowly
are losing the capacity for independent judgement in the social and political
arena, while concurrently science, religion, and new age adherents are finding
more examples of our interconnectedness. Earlier in this century, George
Gurdjieff expressed this in his "Doctrine of Reciprocal Maintenance":
"everything that exists maintains and is maintained by other existences
and this must apply to man also".5
How can we replace our
current self destructive model with one that will bring our system back to
stasis? If the true purpose of human existence is to ensure the conscious and
creative evolution of the earth and all that it contains, can we learn to
accept service and sacrifice as our way of life? This will require a
fundamental change in values, which consist in putting nature first and man
second.
Some Model parameters to consider:
·
There are no requirements to be a leader, even
Hollywood is now providing them.
·
The U.N. is not an effective organization for
generating a single line of action.
·
There is no common planetary religion or
language.
·
Education is too often directed to acceptance of
contrived conclusions, rather than encouraging reflection and pondering. Often
information is packaged by corporations with vested interests in promoting a
product or lifestyle.
·
Problem-solving based on questioning the
credibility of the sources, verifying the information against the experiences
of others, and validating its truth in one's own life is a rarity.
·
Man's thinking today is lopsided. The brain,
heart, and spine don't act in harmony, such as not allowing an honest and
sincere thought process, an emotional sensing of the reality in a given
situation, and integrating these with our instinctive actions/re-actions, in
the moment.
·
The evolution of the United States government
has been a 200 year process of sacrificing rights for privileges.
The outer essence of the
problem of war is that the inherency for war has been fixed in the psyche of
mankind for thousands of years and can't be de-crystallized in the course of a
few decades. Therefore, mankind should devote attention and power to working
solely for the welfare of beings of future generations. This should include
putting an end to the practice of exalting military leaders to the rank of
"hero" and rewarding them with honors and decorations, destroying the
idea that war is necessary, and replacing food, sex, and profit as prime motivating
factors in the life of mankind.
The inner essence of the
problem of war was termed the "Emotional Plague" by Wilhelm Reich,
MD. He encouraged his patients to pursue personal freedom, rather than national
freedom, and self respect over respect for the state. He felt the average man
was afraid of jumping into the stream of life and having to swim by his own
efforts. He knew all men had opinions, but most don't feel safe enough to
express and stand up for them.
"If once you knew that
you do count for something, that you do have a sound opinion of your own, that
your field and factory are meant to provide for life and not for death... you
wouldn't need any diplomats. ...Instead of laying your national consciousness
at the feet of your Prince Blowhard or your marshal of the world proletariat to
be trampled on, you'd oppose them with your consciousness of your own worth and
pride in your work. You'd be able to get acquainted with your brother, the
little man in Japan, China, and every other Hun country, to give him your sound
opinion of your function as a worker, doctor, farmer, father, and husband, and
convince him in the end that to make war impossible he need only stick to his
work and his love. ...Make it plain that you have no time for a war, that you
have more important things to do. Outside every big city on earth, mark off a
field, build high walls around it, and there let the diplomats and marshals of
the earth shoot each other."
"You'll have a good,
secure life when being alive means more to you than security; love more than
money; your freedom more than public or partisan opinion; ...when you pay the
men and women who teach your children better than politicians; when truths
inspire you and empty formulas repel you; ...and when the human faces you see
on the street are no longer drawn with grief and misery but glow with freedom,
vitality, and serenity..."6
Time alone can end War.
1. Toffler, Alvin and Heidi. War & Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st
Century. (New York: Little, Brown, & Co., 1993) toffler.com
2. Smith, J.W. The
Worlds Wasted Wealth 2: Save our Wealth, Save our Environment. (Cambria,
CA, Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994) http://he.net/~jwsmith/index.html
3. Depleted
Uranium Weapons - Growing Problems. (OBRL News List-Serve, Orgone
Biophysical Research Lab, Ashland, OR, 1999) orgonelab.com
4. Recent
Upheavals. (FES List-Serve [Fuzzball Eaters Society of Empowered
Engineers], 1999) statewave.com
5. Gurdjieff, George. Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson: An Objectively Impartial Criticism of
the Life of Man. (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1950) gurdjieff.org
6. Reich, Wilhelm. Listen
Little Man. (New York: Noonday Press, 1974, Orgone Institute Press, 1948)
somtel.com/~wreich/index.html
Prepared for John McLeod by:
Mark Clymer
November 27, 1999