The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (60 page)
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Authors: Steven Pinker
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BOOK: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
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The code of the Ethical Warrior, even as an aspiration, shows that the American armed forces have come a long way from a time when its soldiers referred to Vietnamese peasants as
gooks, slopes,
and
slants
and when the military was slow to investigate atrocities against civilians such as the massacre at My Lai. As former Marine captain Jack Hoban, who helped to implement the Ethical Warrior program, wrote to me, “When I first joined the Marines in the 1970s it was ‘Kill, kill, kill.’ The probability that there would have been an honor code that trained marines to be ‘protectors of all others—including the enemy, if possible’ would have been 0 percent.”
gooks, slopes,
and
slants
and when the military was slow to investigate atrocities against civilians such as the massacre at My Lai. As former Marine captain Jack Hoban, who helped to implement the Ethical Warrior program, wrote to me, “When I first joined the Marines in the 1970s it was ‘Kill, kill, kill.’ The probability that there would have been an honor code that trained marines to be ‘protectors of all others—including the enemy, if possible’ would have been 0 percent.”
To be sure, the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the first decade of the 21st century show that the country is far from reluctant to go to war. But even they are nothing like the wars of the past. In both conflicts the interstate war phase was quick and (by historical standards) low in battle deaths.
181
Most of the deaths in Iraq were caused by intercommunal violence in the anarchy that followed, and by 2008 the toll of 4,000 American deaths (compare Vietnam’s 58,000) helped elect a president who within two years brought the country’s combat mission to an end. In Afghanistan, the U.S. Air Force followed a set of humanitarian protocols during the height of the anti-Taliban bombing campaign in 2008 that Human Rights Watch praised for its “very good record of minimizing harm to civilians.”
182
The political scientist Joshua Goldstein, in a discussion of how policies of smart targeting had massively reduced civilian deaths in Kosovo and in both Iraq wars, comments on the use of armed drones against Taliban and Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009:
181
Most of the deaths in Iraq were caused by intercommunal violence in the anarchy that followed, and by 2008 the toll of 4,000 American deaths (compare Vietnam’s 58,000) helped elect a president who within two years brought the country’s combat mission to an end. In Afghanistan, the U.S. Air Force followed a set of humanitarian protocols during the height of the anti-Taliban bombing campaign in 2008 that Human Rights Watch praised for its “very good record of minimizing harm to civilians.”
182
The political scientist Joshua Goldstein, in a discussion of how policies of smart targeting had massively reduced civilian deaths in Kosovo and in both Iraq wars, comments on the use of armed drones against Taliban and Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009:
Where an army previously would have blasted its way in to the militants’ hideouts, killing and displacing civilians by the tens of thousands as it went, and then ultimately reducing whole towns and villages to rubble with inaccurate artillery and aerial bombing in order to get at a few enemy fighters, now a drone flies in and lets fly a single missile against a single house where militants are gathered. Yes, sometimes such attacks hit the wrong house, but by any historical comparison the rate of civilian deaths has fallen dramatically.So far has this trend come, and so much do we take it for granted, that a single errant missile that killed ten civilians in Afghanistan was front-page news in February 2010. This event, a terrible tragedy in itself, nonetheless was an exception to a low overall rate of harm to civilians in the middle of a major military offensive, one of the largest in eight years of war. Yet, these ten deaths brought the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan to offer a profuse apology to the president of Afghanistan, and the world news media to play up the event as a major development in the offensive. The point is not that killing ten civilians is OK, but rather that in any previous war, even a few years ago, this kind of civilian death would barely have caused a ripple of attention. Civilian deaths, in sizable numbers, used to be universally considered a necessary and inevitable, if perhaps unfortunate, by-product of war. That we are entering an era when these assumptions no longer apply is good news indeed.
183
Goldstein’s assessment was confirmed in 2011 when
Science
magazine reported data from WikiLeaks documents and from a previously classified civilian casualty database of the American-led military coalition. The documents revealed that around 5,300 civilians had been killed in Afghanistan from 2004 through 2010, the majority (around 80 percent) by Taliban insurgents rather than coalition forces. Even if the estimate is doubled, it would represent an extraordinarily low number of civilian deaths for a major military operation—in the Vietnam War, by comparison, at least 800,000 civilians died in battle.
184
Science
magazine reported data from WikiLeaks documents and from a previously classified civilian casualty database of the American-led military coalition. The documents revealed that around 5,300 civilians had been killed in Afghanistan from 2004 through 2010, the majority (around 80 percent) by Taliban insurgents rather than coalition forces. Even if the estimate is doubled, it would represent an extraordinarily low number of civilian deaths for a major military operation—in the Vietnam War, by comparison, at least 800,000 civilians died in battle.
184
As big as the change in American attitudes toward war has been, the change in Europe is beyond recognition. As the foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan puts it, “Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus.”
185
In February 2003 mass demonstrations in European cities protested the impending American-led invasion of Iraq, drawing a million people each in London, Barcelona, and Rome, and more than half a million in Madrid and Berlin.
186
In London the signs read “No Blood for Oil”; “Stop Mad Cowboy Disease”; “America, the Real Rogue State”; “Make Tea, Not War”; “Down with This Sort of Thing”; and simply “No.” Germany and France conspicuously refused to join the United States and Britain, and Spain pulled out soon afterward. Even the war in Afghanistan, which aroused less opposition in Europe, is being fought mainly by American soldiers. Not only do they make up more than half of the forty-four-nation NATO military operation, but the continental forces have acquired a certain reputation when it comes to martial virtues. A Canadian armed forces captain wrote to me from Kabul in 2003:
185
In February 2003 mass demonstrations in European cities protested the impending American-led invasion of Iraq, drawing a million people each in London, Barcelona, and Rome, and more than half a million in Madrid and Berlin.
186
In London the signs read “No Blood for Oil”; “Stop Mad Cowboy Disease”; “America, the Real Rogue State”; “Make Tea, Not War”; “Down with This Sort of Thing”; and simply “No.” Germany and France conspicuously refused to join the United States and Britain, and Spain pulled out soon afterward. Even the war in Afghanistan, which aroused less opposition in Europe, is being fought mainly by American soldiers. Not only do they make up more than half of the forty-four-nation NATO military operation, but the continental forces have acquired a certain reputation when it comes to martial virtues. A Canadian armed forces captain wrote to me from Kabul in 2003:
During this morning’s Kalashnikov concerto, I was waiting for the tower guards in our camp to open fire. I think they were asleep. That’s par for the course. Our towers are manned by the Bundeswehr, and they haven’t been doing a good job . . . when they’re actually there. I qualified that last comment because the Germans have already abandoned the towers several times. The first time was when we got hit by rockets. The remaining instances had something to do with it being cold in the towers. A German Lieutenant with whom I spoke about this lack of honour and basic soldier etiquette replied that it was Canada’s responsibility to provide heaters for the towers. I snapped back by mentioning that it was Germany’s responsibility to provide warm clothing to its soldiers. I was tempted to mention something about Kabul not being Stalingrad, but I held my tongue.The German army of today is not what it once was. Or, as I’ve heard mentioned here several times: “This ain’t the Wehrmacht.” Given the history of our people, I can make the argument that that’s a very good thing indeed. However, since my safety now rests upon the vigilance of the Herrenvolk’s progeny, I’m slightly concerned to say the least.
187
In a book titled
Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe
(and in Britain,
The Monopoly on Violence: Why Europeans Hate Going to War
), the historian James Sheehan argues that Europeans have changed their very conception of the state. It is no longer the proprietor of a military force that enhances the grandeur and security of the nation, but a provisioner of social security and material well-being. Nonetheless, for all the differences between the American “mad cowboys” and the European “surrender monkeys,” the parallel movement of their political culture away from war over the past six decades is more historically significant than their remaining differences.
IS THE LONG PEACE A NUCLEAR PEACE?Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe
(and in Britain,
The Monopoly on Violence: Why Europeans Hate Going to War
), the historian James Sheehan argues that Europeans have changed their very conception of the state. It is no longer the proprietor of a military force that enhances the grandeur and security of the nation, but a provisioner of social security and material well-being. Nonetheless, for all the differences between the American “mad cowboys” and the European “surrender monkeys,” the parallel movement of their political culture away from war over the past six decades is more historically significant than their remaining differences.
What went right? How is it that, in defiance of experts, doomsday clocks, and centuries of European history, World War III never happened? What allowed distinguished military historians to use giddy phrases like “a change of spectacular proportions,” “the most striking discontinuity in the history of warfare,” and “nothing like this in history”?
To many people, the answer is obvious: the bomb. War had become too dangerous to contemplate, and leaders were scared straight. The balance of nuclear terror deterred them from starting a war that would escalate to a holocaust and put an end to civilization, if not human life itself.
188
As Winston Churchill said in his last major speech to Parliament, “It may well be that we shall by a process of sublime irony have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.”
189
In the same vein, the foreign policy analyst Kenneth Waltz has suggested that we “thank our nuclear blessings,” and Elspeth Rostow proposed that the nuclear bomb be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
190
188
As Winston Churchill said in his last major speech to Parliament, “It may well be that we shall by a process of sublime irony have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.”
189
In the same vein, the foreign policy analyst Kenneth Waltz has suggested that we “thank our nuclear blessings,” and Elspeth Rostow proposed that the nuclear bomb be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
190
Let’s hope not. If the Long Peace were a nuclear peace, it would be a fool’s paradise, because an accident, a miscommunication, or an air force general obsessed with precious bodily fluids could set off an apocalypse. Thankfully, a closer look suggests that the threat of nuclear annihilation deserves little credit for the Long Peace.
191
191
For one thing, weapons of mass destruction had never braked the march to war before. The benefactor of the Nobel Peace Prize wrote in the 1860s that his invention of dynamite would “sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions, [since] as soon as men will find that in one instant whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they will surely abide in golden peace.”
192
Similar predictions have been made about submarines, artillery, smokeless powder, and the machine gun.
193
The 1930s saw a widespread fear that poison gas dropped from airplanes could bring an end to civilization and human life, yet that dread did not come close to ending war either.
194
As Luard puts it, “There is little evidence in history that the existence of supremely destructive weapons alone is capable of deterring war. If the development of bacteriological weapons, poison gas, nerve gases, and other chemical armaments did not deter war in 1939, it is not easy to see why nuclear weapons should do so now.”
195
192
Similar predictions have been made about submarines, artillery, smokeless powder, and the machine gun.
193
The 1930s saw a widespread fear that poison gas dropped from airplanes could bring an end to civilization and human life, yet that dread did not come close to ending war either.
194
As Luard puts it, “There is little evidence in history that the existence of supremely destructive weapons alone is capable of deterring war. If the development of bacteriological weapons, poison gas, nerve gases, and other chemical armaments did not deter war in 1939, it is not easy to see why nuclear weapons should do so now.”
195
Also, the theory of the nuclear peace cannot explain why countries without nuclear weapons also forbore war—why, for example, the 1995 squabble over fishing rights between Canada and Spain, or the 1997 dispute between Hungary and Slovakia over damming the Danube, never escalated into war, as crises involving European countries had so often done in the past. During the Long Peace leaders of developed countries never had to calculate which of their counterparts they could get away with attacking (yes for Germany and Italy, no for Britain and France), because they never contemplated a military attack in the first place. Nor were they deterred by nuclear godparents—it wasn’t as if the United States had to threaten Canada and Spain with a nuclear spanking if they got too obstreperous in their dispute over flatfish.
As for the superpowers themselves, Mueller points to a simpler explanation for why they avoided fighting each other: they were deterred plenty by the prospect of a conventional war. World War II showed that assembly lines could mass-produce tanks, artillery, and bombers that were capable of killing tens of millions of people and reducing cities to rubble. This was especially obvious in the Soviet Union, which had suffered the greatest losses in the war. It’s unlikely that the marginal difference between the unthinkable damage that would be caused by a nuclear war and the thinkable but still staggering damage that would be caused by a conventional war was the main thing that kept the great powers from fighting.
Finally, the nuclear peace theory cannot explain why the wars that did take place often had a nonnuclear force provoking (or failing to surrender to) a nuclear one—exactly the matchup that the nuclear threat ought to have deterred.
196
North Korea, North Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Panama, and Yugoslavia defied the United States; Afghan and Chechen insurgents defied the Soviet Union; Egypt defied Britain and France; Egypt and Syria defied Israel; Vietnam defied China; and Argentina defied the United Kingdom. For that matter, the Soviet Union established its stranglehold on Eastern Europe during just those years (1945–49) when the United States had nuclear weapons and it did not. The countries that goaded their nuclear superiors were not suicidal. They correctly anticipated that for anything but an existential danger, the implicit threat of a nuclear response was a bluff. The Argentinian junta ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands in full confidence that Britain would not retaliate by reducing Buenos Aires to a radioactive crater. Nor could Israel have credibly threatened the amassed Egyptian armies in 1967 or 1973, to say nothing of Cairo.
196
North Korea, North Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Panama, and Yugoslavia defied the United States; Afghan and Chechen insurgents defied the Soviet Union; Egypt defied Britain and France; Egypt and Syria defied Israel; Vietnam defied China; and Argentina defied the United Kingdom. For that matter, the Soviet Union established its stranglehold on Eastern Europe during just those years (1945–49) when the United States had nuclear weapons and it did not. The countries that goaded their nuclear superiors were not suicidal. They correctly anticipated that for anything but an existential danger, the implicit threat of a nuclear response was a bluff. The Argentinian junta ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands in full confidence that Britain would not retaliate by reducing Buenos Aires to a radioactive crater. Nor could Israel have credibly threatened the amassed Egyptian armies in 1967 or 1973, to say nothing of Cairo.
Schelling, and the political scientist Nina Tannenwald, have each written of “a nuclear taboo”—a shared perception that nuclear weapons fall into a uniquely dreadful category.
197
The use of a single tactical nuclear weapon, even one comparable in damage to conventional weaponry, would be seen as a breach in history, a passage into a new world with unimaginable consequences. The obloquy has attached itself to every form of nuclear detonation. The neutron bomb, a weapon that would cause minimal blast damage but would kill soldiers with a transient burst of radiation, fell deadborn from the military lab because of universal loathing, even though, as the political scientist Stanley Hoffman pointed out, it satisfied the moral philosophers’ requirements for waging a just war.
198
The half-crazed “Atoms for Peace” schemes of the 1950s and 1960s, in which nuclear explosions would be harnessed to dig canals, excavate harbors, or propel rockets into space, are now the stuff of incredulous reminiscences of a benighted age.
197
The use of a single tactical nuclear weapon, even one comparable in damage to conventional weaponry, would be seen as a breach in history, a passage into a new world with unimaginable consequences. The obloquy has attached itself to every form of nuclear detonation. The neutron bomb, a weapon that would cause minimal blast damage but would kill soldiers with a transient burst of radiation, fell deadborn from the military lab because of universal loathing, even though, as the political scientist Stanley Hoffman pointed out, it satisfied the moral philosophers’ requirements for waging a just war.
198
The half-crazed “Atoms for Peace” schemes of the 1950s and 1960s, in which nuclear explosions would be harnessed to dig canals, excavate harbors, or propel rockets into space, are now the stuff of incredulous reminiscences of a benighted age.
To be sure, the nonuse of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki falls short of an out-and-out taboo.
199
Nuclear bombs don’t build themselves,and nations have devoted enormous thought to the design, construction, delivery, and terms of use of these weapons. But this activity has been compartmentalized into a sphere of hypotheticals that barely intersects with the planning of actual wars. And there are telltale signs that the psychology of taboo—a mutual understanding that certain thoughts are evil to think—has been engaged, starting with the word that is most commonly applied to the prospect of nuclear war: unthinkable. In 1964, after Barry Goldwater had mused about how tactical nuclear weapons might be used in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson’s electoral campaign aired the famous “Daisy” television ad, in which footage of a girl counting the petals of a daisy segues into a countdown to a nuclear explosion. The ad has been given some of the credit for Johnson’s landslide election victory that year.
200
Religious allusions have surrounded nuclear weapons ever since Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad-Gita when he viewed the first atomic test in 1945: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” More commonly the language has been biblical: Apocalypse, Armageddon, the End of Days, Judgment Day. Dean Rusk, secretary of state in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, wrote that if the country had used a nuclear weapon, “we would have worn the mark of Cain for generations to come.”
201
The physicist Alvin Weinberg, whose research helped make the bomb possible, asked in 1985:
199
Nuclear bombs don’t build themselves,and nations have devoted enormous thought to the design, construction, delivery, and terms of use of these weapons. But this activity has been compartmentalized into a sphere of hypotheticals that barely intersects with the planning of actual wars. And there are telltale signs that the psychology of taboo—a mutual understanding that certain thoughts are evil to think—has been engaged, starting with the word that is most commonly applied to the prospect of nuclear war: unthinkable. In 1964, after Barry Goldwater had mused about how tactical nuclear weapons might be used in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson’s electoral campaign aired the famous “Daisy” television ad, in which footage of a girl counting the petals of a daisy segues into a countdown to a nuclear explosion. The ad has been given some of the credit for Johnson’s landslide election victory that year.
200
Religious allusions have surrounded nuclear weapons ever since Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad-Gita when he viewed the first atomic test in 1945: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” More commonly the language has been biblical: Apocalypse, Armageddon, the End of Days, Judgment Day. Dean Rusk, secretary of state in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, wrote that if the country had used a nuclear weapon, “we would have worn the mark of Cain for generations to come.”
201
The physicist Alvin Weinberg, whose research helped make the bomb possible, asked in 1985:
Are we witnessing a gradual sanctification of Hiroshima—that is, the elevation of Hiroshima to the status of a profoundly mystical event, an event ultimately of the same religious force as biblical events? I cannot prove it, but I am convinced that the 40th Anniversary of Hiroshima, with its vast outpouring of concern, bears resemblance to the observance of major religious holidays.... This sanctification of Hiroshima is one of the most hopeful developments of the nuclear era.
202
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