War has been with us so long some say it is part of the human condition, whatever that means. That may not be the case at all. Here is one study that suggests it is not. Is it natural for humans to make war? New study of tribal societies reveals conflict is an alien concept.
A study of tribal societies that live by hunting and foraging has found that war is an alien concept and not, as some academics have suggested, an innate feature of so-called “primitive people”.
The findings have re-opened a bitter academic dispute over whether war is a relatively recent phenomenon invented by “civilised” societies over the past few thousand years, or a much older part of human nature. In other words, is war an ancient and chronic condition that helped to shape humanity over many hundreds of thousands of years?
The idea is that war is the result of an evolutionary ancient predisposition that humans may have inherited in their genetic makeup as long ago as about 7 million years, when we last shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees – who also wage a kind of war between themselves.
Be that as it may, we are here in the 21st century and in my 78 years on the planet, war seems part of us. We are an evolving species and war seems to be an integral part of that evolution. Read on below and let's try to understand why.
Early in my life Dwight Eisenhower made the concept of a Military–industrial complex popular. At least it was popular to some.
During the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s students broke into University offices and disclosed documents linking the universities to the military-industrial complex: 1968 protests
The late sixties was also marked by the Vietnam War, and perhaps hit college students the hardest as their peers were routinely sent to battle a war that was highly unpopular on campuses. Columbia's then President Grayson Kirk sat on the board and executive committee at the Institute of Defense Analysis (IDA) and then Columbia Trustee and Lockheed and CBS board member William A.M. Burden was also the chairman of IDA's executive committee. Both Kirk and Burden recruited and recommeneded university professors for IDA's Jason Division, which developed weapons technology that the Pentagon utilized to prolong its war in Indochina, such as the automated electronic battlefield weapons technology (keeping in mind that Columbia's Manhattan Project of the 1920s led to the atomic bombs dropped over Japan to end World War II). Students felt that Kirk had failed to reveal that Columbia had been an institutional member of IDA since December 1959--prior to Columbia SDS discovering in March 1967 that Columbia, indeed, was an institutional member of the Pentagon's IDA weapons research think-tank. Furthermore, Columbia had submitted class rank information to the Selective Service System to be used in selecting draft deferments until the spring of 1967. When Mark Rudd brought his petition of 1,500 signatures from members of the Columbia community to President Kirk's office urging a withdrawal in IDA, he received no reply. It was the combination of these issues that contributed to the uprsising that would follow at Columbia.
Yet Eisenhower was on to this when he spoke about it:
The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex
President Eisenhower originally included "academic" in the draft of his landmark, oft-quoted speech on the military-industrial-complex. Giroux tells why Eisenhower saw the academy as part of the famous complex--and how his warning was vitally prescient for 21st-century America. His newest book details the sweeping post-9/11 assault being waged on the academy by militarization, corporatization, and right-wing fundamentalists who increasingly view critical thought itself as a threat to the dominant political order. Giroux argues that the university has become a handmaiden of the Pentagon and corporate interests, it has lost its claim to independence and critical learning and has compromised its role as a democratic public sphere. And yet, in spite of its present embattled status and the inroads made by corporate power, the defense industries, and the right wing extremists, Giroux defends the university as one of the few public spaces left capable of raising important questions and educating students to be critical and engaged agents. He concludes by making a strong case for reclaiming it as a democratic public sphere.
As we evole so does our relationship with war. These historical cases, as severe as they were, are now being overshadowed by a modern outlook on war and its role in the human condition. We now have the energy depletion motive growing even stronger than before as well as the effects of Global Warming coming on the scene.
Resource Wars: Geopolitics in a World of Dwindling Energy Supplies
As nations compete for currency advantages, they are also eyeing the world’s diminishing resources—fossil fuels, minerals, agricultural land, and water. Resource wars have been fought since the dawn of history, but today the competition is entering a new phase.
Nations need increasing amounts of energy and materials to produce economic growth, but—as we have seen—the costs of supplying new increments of energy and materials are increasing. In many cases all that remains are lower-quality resources that have high extraction costs. In some instances, securing access to these resources requires military expenditures as well. Meanwhile the struggle for the control of resources is re-aligning political power balances throughout the world.
The United States maintains a globe-spanning network of over 800 military bases that formerly represented tokens of security to regimes throughout the world—but that now increasingly only provoke resentment among the locals. This enormous military machine requires a vast supply system originating with American weapons manufacturers that in turn depend on a prodigious and ever-expanding torrent of funds from the Treasury. Indeed, the nation’s budget deficit largely stems from its trillion-dollar-per-year, first-priority commitment to continue growing its military-industrial complex.
Yet despite the country’s gargantuan expenditures on high-tech weaponry, its armed forces appear to be stretched to their limits, fielding around 200,000 troops and even larger numbers of support personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, where supply chains are both vulnerable and expensive to maintain.
In short, the United States remains an enormously powerful nation militarily, with thousands of nuclear weapons in addition to its unparalleled conventional forces, yet it suffers from declining strategic flexibility.
Can Climate Change Cause Conflict? Recent History Suggests So
The U.S. military, for its part, is concerned about the issue, analyzing the possibility for climate change to destabilize countries in recent reports, such as an essay from members of the CNA Military Advisory Board in November, "Climate and Energy the Dominant Challenges of the 21st Century."
“Climate change war” is not a metaphor
The parallels between the political decisions regarding climate change we have made and the decisions that led Europe to World War One are striking – and sobering. The decisions made in 1914 reflected political policies pursued for short-term gains and benefits, coupled with institutional hubris, and a failure to imagine and understand the risks or to learn from recent history.
War and violence do seem to be an inegral part of us even though many seem to escape its hold on them.
Globally, violence takes the lives of more than 1.6 million people annually. Just over 50% due to suicide, some 35% due to homicide, and just over 12% as a direct result of war or some other form of conflict. In Africa, out of every 100,000 people, each year an estimated 60.9 die a violent death. Statistics show that gunfire kills ten children a day in the United States. Corlin, past president of the American Medical Association said: “The United States leads the world—in the rate at which its children die from firearms.” His conclusion? “Gun violence is a threat to the public health of our country.” For each single death due to violence, there are dozens of hospitalizations, hundreds of emergency department visits, and thousands of doctors' appointments. Furthermore, violence often has lifelong consequences for victims' physical and mental health and social functioning and can slow economic and social development.
Violence in many forms is preventable. Evidence shows strong relationships between levels of violence and potentially modifiable factors such as concentrated poverty, income and gender inequality, the harmful use of alcohol, and the absence of safe, stable, and nurturing relationships between children and parents. Scientific research shows that strategies addressing the underlying causes of violence can be effective in preventing violence.
In my younger days I was a victim of my own violent outbursts. Usually it was due to frustration. In spit of this I had the urge to control it and never engage in fights as a kid. Now I am accused of "verbal violence" and I guess that is a result of a sharp tongue and quick wit. I served as an officer in the USMC and was trained by our government to kill in many ways, including with my bare hands. I will never undo that. It is a deep scar on my psyche.
So as we remember those who, for whatever reason, were not as lucky as I and had to engage in combat, let's make it total. Yes so very many beautiful people died. Yet so many also lived after having taken the lives of other humans. And some of us were prepared to do either/both. Everyone was a victim. Today the Nation singles out those who lost their lives. They should be remembered but not worshiped. Their deaths should give us reason to figure out how to change our evolution and teach us how to love strongly enough that we can not tolerate violence.