The idea that human beings generally want peace is considered common sense, and yet all empirical evidence argues to the contrary: We support the concept of peace, isolated from sociopolitical context or immediate emotion. In operational fact, this support is little more substantive than acknowledging that "life is good, death is bad" - a trivial principle that has very little motivating effect except when the death in question is faced immediately by the individual. We did not evolve to place a very high value on the lives of people we never see, so it has been distressingly easy in history for that value to disappear altogether when various psychological factors have provided even modest impulses in the other direction.
Peace demands solutions, but we never reach living solutions - we only work toward them. A fixed solution is, by definition, a dead solution. The trouble with peace is that it tends to punish mistakes instead of rewarding brilliance.
-- Children of Dune
I. Definitions of War & Peace
This is another subject most people consider obvious, but is actually far from it: Do an ongoing series of border skirmishes with continuous casualties represent a war? Are you at peace when hostile parties are both merely looking for an advantageous time to strike? Is a "police action" a peace-time activity? Is low-grade mutual predation with an ongoing body count a war, though no territory is ever exchanged or direct strikes conducted? Out of this confusion we get such clumsy and paradoxical terms as "Cold War" and "uneasy peace."
But all paradox ultimately stems from a failure of comprehension, not of reality, so we can make meaningful definitions of war and peace that are a lot more useful and less easily manipulated than mere consensus impression. These definitions begin by recognizing a crucial fact: The absence of war is not peace, so they do not border each other - rather, they both fringe on an unstable third condition between them (imagine it as a hill) upon which a society ultimately slides toward one or the other. We can call this hill "Indeterminacy," although "aimlessness" and "stagnation" both have their own merits and limitations for describing the third condition.
For one society, this hill is steeper on the approach to war than to peace, so they tend to be at peace; for another, the reverse is true. Likewise, some societies have shallow inclines in both directions, so they slide into and out of conflict on a regular basis with relatively little invested in either condition, while others go all-out to mobilize in war and all-out to build thriving civilizations when peace is secured. Furthermore, this "hill" is fractal in nature - you can telescope outward in time and find that the current hill is merely a bump on one side or another a much larger one, with long-term conditions favoring war or peace regardless of short-term appearances.
In defining war, we must focus on the defining unit of warfare - the orders given to the individual soldier. We are tempted by historiography and political theory to define war in terms of geopolitical strategies, grand declarations, or else arbitrary quantitative boundaries - e.g., x amount of casualties, x proportion of an economy invested in the military, etc. The problem with such definitions is that they merely describe a secondary consequence and degree of commitment, not a fundamental property - they are only useful for describing the steepness of the current side of the hill, not defining which side it is.
A soldier - indeed, anyone, anywhere - is universally recognized to have the right of self-defense when their life is immediately threatened, so killing by soldiers is not a sufficient definition of war. If one person points a gun at a soldier and is killed, is that war? What if it was five people, either all at once or spread out over several months? The fact is, even if it was a million people, as long as soldiers are responding entirely to the imperatives of individual self-defense on a case-by-case basis, they are not at war, but acting as a police force.
The point at which war ensues is when the order is given to abandon the principle of individual self-defense in favor of collective self-defense - the point when a soldier may shoot someone who appears to be "the enemy," regardless of whether that person is immediately threatening them. War, then, would include conditions where military forces are deployed internally to quell riots and authorized to open fire on looters or curfew violators, but would exclude "peacekeeping" missions regardless of how massively armed they are. We thus have the basis for a rigorous definition of war:
War is the state of authorized lethal force beyond immediate defense of life.
But the negation of this condition does not mean a society is at peace - think about all the connotations of the word, and how utterly most of them would fail to apply to 1920s Germany, for instance - so we have to run farther afield to come at our second definition. It is not merely the absence of danger that people value in seeking to avoid war, but the presence of freedom and opportunity - all of the positive qualities of life that are compromised or destroyed in a state of war.
And yet the negation of war does not, by itself, provide these things: We have come to define peace only through the eyes of the warriors who dominated history, as merely a negation of their profession, and not the farmers, builders, artists, explorers, and creative minds who actually account for it.
A substantive definition of peace thus requires addressing what people actually want to do with their resources in the absence of war: It hardly qualifies if all they do is look for new wars to fight, internally or externally - in that case they are not at peace, but simply temporarily deprived of targets. Our definition of peace is therefore both obvious in retrospect and yet strangely surprising:
Peace is the state of a society animated by constructive purpose.
This purpose can be something as humble as just running a farm and raising a family, or it can be grandiose - building wonders, achieving glory through scientific and technological achievements, or pursuing artistic beauty to dizzying heights. But every civilization at peace is animated above all else by some constructive purpose that shapes and is shaped by their identity - a purpose that feeds energy into their society rather than bleeding it away. A society at peace will only relinquish it if that is the only way to ever see it again, not because they yearn for the adrenaline and imposed unity of conflict.
Without unifying purpose, in the diseased middle ground of Indeterminacy, a society's energy is frittered away on trivial distractions or else stagnates and breeds latent rage. As a result, the proverbial "best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with terrible passion." Society becomes infertile to constructive purpose, with those who would support it only doing so in the abstract, while those with ominous agendas are vigorous in seeking its failure.
II. Psychological Roots of War
We know the reasons that governments start wars: Mainly to steal resources, murder competitors, distract attention from domestic problems, and justify political repression. But while these explain why imperial conspiracies are hatched, it does not explain why they succeed - why the average citizen of an aggressive power would willingly go along with, or even vocally support, the transparent plot of an insular elite that harms them both individually and as a society. Without this support, warmongering would be a dead letter and politically damage those who endorsed it. The bases of this support are as follows:
Social / Psychological Roots of War
- Intensifies or creates collective identity / ego.
- Provides clear common purpose.
- Creates the illusion of control over events.
- Is vicariously exciting to people with no direct stake.
- Self-perpetuates military culture.
Both war and peace intrinsically relate to matters of identity: A people with a clear sense of itself committed to a constructive purpose will not quietly permit its resources to be devoted to military aggression - if the government or economic elites attempt to force the issue under those conditions, difficult internal conflicts will follow. Under most circumstances, it could not even be practically brought up - only in rare, tenuous conditions of a society at peace also being a military superpower (i.e., the United States in the 1960s) can war and peace collide in the same space, at the same time: Under those conditions, a kind of "split personality" is at work.
In general, however, a cohesive identity committed to a constructive purpose is a necessity of peace, and its absence or decline a necessity of war. With a weak or threatened identity, people will be attracted to the cohesion and enforced unity of a society defined by the simplest of all activities, destruction. Even those who reject a war under those conditions are socially weakened by it, because they have to fight an attraction that would not exist at all if a strong, constructive-oriented identity already existed and was secure.
The common purpose of war goes in tandem with the identity it provides, and is the single strongest of all identity bases because of its ultimate simplicity and self-justifying circularity: "We are that which destroys, and we destroy that which is not us." In fact, it is so strong and rigid that the only reason peace exists is its adaptive superiority over war - if two countries exhaust each other's resources in war, a third country of similar resources that spent the time cultivating itself will dominate them both by the time someone "wins" or they come to an arrangement. But this fact does not eliminate the psychological reasons that wars are begun: Lacking a constructive common purpose, that provided by armed conflict will be unconsciously highly attractive.
Another root of war is that it makes people feel collectively in control, even though what they are actually doing is rolling dice and leaping blindly into shadows. Because it involves action - highly visible, strenuous, concerted action - people tend to subconsciously believe that going to war is an act of strength whereby a country can take control of events, when it is in fact the opposite. Only a society in a state of peace recognizes the inherent chaos, waste, and desperation involved, and prioritizes war accordingly as an absolute last resort. But in a state of stagnant indeterminacy or neurotic fear, a society may view any dramatic action, regardless of how mad, as tantamount to a solution.
Then there is the "Chickenhawk Factor," which is at play even in societies with a universal draft: Most people at any given time will be outside the age range to be drafted, and most people in uniform will not personally take part in combat, so the vast majority of citizens are making a decision about how to spend their tax money and commit the lives of people they will never know.
Even if there is an abstract threat of the enemy ultimately coming to their doorstep as a result of their aggression, they lack the experience to intuitively understand what that would be like, so for the most part they have no knowledge of what war is apart from being a more dramatic sports competition between Our Team and Their Team. Polished ceremonies and weeping matrons only heighten the drama without revealing the real nature of war as chaos and waste - it's too easy for those so inclined to see such tragedies as part of the attraction rather than as the horror show it is.
People crave to Make Things Happen, and if they lack opportunities to do that by creating, they will instead destroy in exchange for the thrill of action leading up to that destruction: The parades, the uniforms, the flags, the weapons factories gearing up, the sham order and false unity of a society at war merely because it has nothing better to do. It's not a conscious decision so much as a default consequence - neurotic fears and degenerate attitudes undermine support for peaceful ventures that might be equally exciting, so when their blood cries out Do Something! they go to war instead of exploring space, learning about nature, building futuristic cities, or engineering colossal wonders that are as useful as they are beautiful.
War exhibits market failure in this respect and one other - it provides excitement to people who do not bear its burdens, and deprives those who do of a choice by collectivizing their identity: They will not abandon their comrades, so they fight even when fighting is simply wrong, and politically defend an evil war to "honor" the memory of fallen brethren. Meanwhile, to avoid causing pain to families of the fallen, offending soldiers, or being seen as unpatriotic, others with serious objections may remain silent or unduly temper their criticisms and thereby allow a war to continue that should not.
III. War Cessation / Indeterminacy
All wars end, even if the societies fighting them are intractably warlike: Since it is inherently unproductive, one or both sides will run out of resources or become socially exhausted with the human costs unless a victory or accommodation is achieved in a reasonable span of time. But as I have said, the mere cessation of war is not peace, and in the absence of general prosperity and social health it is usually just a regrouping while the dominant party consolidates gains and the damaged one seeks to regenerate its forces.
It is in this state that Indeterminacy exists, and is the reason that the 1920s and early 1930s are spoken of as the "inter-War period" and not "peace": Germany was merely regrouping, and the Allied powers were lost in their own thicket of internal economic and political problems, confused and directionless. One way or another, they were either going to reiterate the experiment of the Great War or sit around aimlessly until a new generation came along and revitalized things. As it turned out, war came well before that new generation had a chance to make its mark on the world, but luckily did not destroy their spirit as it had their fathers'.
IV. Psychological Roots of Peace
In order to live in peace, a society must provide all of the same things that would otherwise make war unconsciously attractive to its people: A reasonably cohesive and seemingly meaningful identity, a sense of having clear and proud common purposes, a feeling of mastery over destiny, and real opportunities for heroic danger and dramatic, constructive excitement. Fail to provide any of these, and the most active elements of society will be that much more receptive to the siren song of militarism. Meanwhile, those who would be against it will be that much weaker and more feeble in defense of peace.
Most of the ideal depictions of peace in history are pure fantasy, and contain the seeds of their own failure because they do not provide one or more of the above qualities. Rockwellian small-town / family-farm culture, for instance, tends to have very cohesive communities and sense of shared purpose (namely, that of maintaining the status quo), but it creates a large pool of potentially dangerous latent energy - the unfortunately true cliche of the naive farm boy suddenly offered the chance to go off and see the world on the taxpayer dime, meet exotic women, and be called a hero for just doing what he's told.
A good living, safe community, and security of identity are not enough - a lot of people (particularly young men) need access to real, unvarnished danger and new horizons, and if they aren't provided in a way that benefits society, those who desire them will just fall back on destructive or pointless means: Gang violence, crime, street racing, drugs, military enlistment, idiotic "extreme" sports, etc.
This is particularly a problem today in the US, because you would have to actively try to be denied enlistment in the military, but have to compete for acceptance into programs like the Peace Corps that pay next to nothing, and may not even pay for living expenses. If you're going overseas (or even to another US state) to build a school or clinic, you are unlikely to receive anything like the housing, healthcare, or meals provided to soldiers - you're pretty much on your own unless you're someone with major skills valued by the program. Why, if a Peace Corps volunteer says "I served my country," do people assume they're referring to the military? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't our priorities be such that one assumes the service in question did not directly or indirectly involve killing people?
It takes a ridiculous amount of effort to contribute to peace in this country through any official channel: Our government is disturbingly hostile to any form of altruism that average people can do other than putting on a uniform and killing on command, so we have to change that by recognizing the need to provide for such opportunities. The Peace Corps and Americorps were baby steps in that direction, but they are woefully inadequate - there is no parity whatsoever with the ease of access to the military, nor with compensation for military personnel who may do similar things under some conditions with much greater support. I say this is unacceptable, because it should be easier, not harder, to serve one's country in a constructive, civilian capacity than to join the military, and at least as supported.
Perhaps the single biggest psychological problem with people's understanding of peace is that they associate it with tranquillity - "peace and tranquillity" are often spoken of in the same breath. But in the sense of being a word contrasted with war, peace cannot actually tolerate tranquillity - social energy builds up and needs release in dramatic endeavors. Only in that way can problems that have been long ignored get attention; aimless people who depend on society to give them direction find their way to a productive purpose; and adrenaline junkies who would otherwise be criminals, career soldiers, or sportsmen do something that matters.
Unfortunately, peace ironically has a lot of enemies in the antiwar community - some of whom are negative people who oppose war not in order to open up the opportunities of peace, but because they are inherently suspicious, fearful, and resentful of dramatic action of any kind, and have an aesthetic aversion to common purpose or large-scale organization. The bolder and more exciting an initiative is, even if it's entirely humanitarian, the more inclined they will be to see it as some kind of threat.
The Peace Corps, for instance, was hit with accusations of promoting "neo-colonialism" for simply spreading knowledge of American culture and goodwill toward the United States. And the space program, of course, is a perpetual target of such pseudo-reality antagonism (e.g., "It's taking money away from problems down here") precisely because it remains even today the single purest, most inspiring, and most exciting endeavor ever undertaken by humanity.
So, ironically, part of the difficulty of securing peace is all the antiwar people who refuse to support the kind of inspirational endeavors that unite people. Their attitude simply augments that of war-lovers who prefer to have the money spent on the military, and so programs of that nature are always in jeopardy from both sides - people who want to spend more on mundane chores that do nothing to unify or inspire the citizenry, and people who want more for some pork-barrel weapons system, covert budget, or other military funding black hole.
V. Conclusions
Securing peace is not rocket science, although rocket science is ironically one of the possibilities for doing so: People looking for danger and excitement who can find them by serving humanity rather than debasing it will generally choose the more constructive option. Imagine you're an average person, and two recruiters are begging you to join their respective organizations - one is a Marine, and the other is from NASA.
The Marine is telling you all about the exotic places you'll go, the skills you'll learn, the social cachet of being a Marine, all for the low-low price of being an instrument of mass-death, and possibly coming home with PTSD, an odd number of limbs, or in a casket. The other recruiter is from an imaginary NASA with a huge budget and a large corps of blue-collar astronauts, and wants you to work on putting people back on the Moon, going to Mars, visiting asteroids, orbiting Venus, repairing space telescopes that take pictures of the universe, and other such trivial things that will merely define the future of the human species.
If you join NASA, you'd learn high-tech skills, visit waaaaay more exotic places than Iraq or Afghanistan, and also have tremendous social cachet, but instead of cowering in bunkers to hide from RPGs, you cower in bunkers to hide from solar flares. Just to be fair, let's say the NASA gig pays the same as the Marine Corps, but with fewer benefits. Now, who are you going to pick?
This scenario wouldn't even be a competition. Virtually no one would join the military if all of the same psychological attractions - adventure, excitement, exotic locales, social status, job skills, strong internal cultural, etc. - were available in an equally accessible job that benefited mankind, inspired people the world over, energized education, and didn't involve any moral quandaries. The only reason we don't have anything like this, and probably never will, is that the lowest common denominator of both sides of the argument both agree on their hostility to large-scale endeavors that benefit humanity. And yet the fact stands: If such a thing were available, the same people who would otherwise join the military would instead sign up in droves to be astronauts, and the military would have to start paying $50,000 enlistment bonuses to get anyone.
Likewise, all the contractors who now do business with the military would do most of it with this imaginary NASA, and Senators and Congressmen with space-related factories would do everything they could to defend bold new exploratory programs rather than wars and the weapons systems to fight them. But no - for some sick, twisted reason, though dramatic military action silences criticism, dramatic civilian action that inspires all mankind brings the shrillest criticism crawling out of the woodwork, forcing its supporters to be forever on the defensive. So instead of this imaginary NASA, we have one that keeps its head down and aspires to nothing lest it draw the combined fire of the left and the right.
There are other civilian agencies that could serve some of the same purposes, but none quite as potently or completely as NASA. Firefighters (to think of one alternative example) have much the same heroic archetype as soldiers, but the danger is possibly greater with less pay, fewer benefits, minimal externally-applicable job skills, and not much in the way of large-scale influence over politics or society. Basically, if you're going to replace the social function of the military in our society so that it stops distorting our politics, space is the only viable option: It's every bit as exciting and dangerous as war, but educational and inspiring rather than promoting lies, suffering, and despair. I wrote a diary along these lines some time ago that you may wish to examine for more detailed comment on this front:
Space Is America's Purpose.
But ultimately the summary conclusion of this diary is that people will not choose the absence of war just as a matter of course - they have to have something specific that they want to do collectively as a society, that emboldens and enlivens them, inspires them to take action, and speaks to their identity as a people: Something that can build peace. They need the opportunity for danger on behalf of a deeply-committed mission, as part of a special group of people admired for their heroism and supported both rhetorically and materially by their countrymen. The more staid bulk of society doesn't look for danger or excitement, but it still needs a strong sense of community, shared purpose, and the optimistic belief that their destiny is in their own hands to avoid either being attracted to militarism or being too weak to fight it.
Fail to provide any of these things, and you get exactly what we've had: A culture of weak-willed, frivolous people mostly wrapped up in their own navels, barely batting an eyelash as the government fell under the control of out-and-out fascists 2001-2008. Peace doesn't occur in diplomatic negotiations, treaties, or street protests - it occurs on farms, in laboratories, in schoolrooms, at restaurants, movie theaters, bedrooms, gardens, launchpads, factories, art galleries, museums, and all other places that people do the things worth doing. It occurs where people are glad to be alive not because they fear death, because they love what they're doing and can't wait for tomorrow. Peace is made by the people who know what it's for, not timid, passionless sepulchres hiding from the open sky because they fear its size. So the first and biggest step to peace is recognizing that the following question is not rhetorical: Why do you want peace?