John Mueller, War is on the Rocks, War on the Rocks, July 1, 2021.
War, or at least interstate war, is on the rocks. Developed countries have managed to avoid major conflicts with one another now for 75 years — perhaps the longest such hiatus in history. And in recent decades, less developed countries have followed suit. Indeed, over the last 30 years, there have been only four interstate wars, conventionally defined as conflicts with at least 1,000 battle-related deaths per year. One was waged by Ethiopia and Eritrea in the last years of the 20th century. One was waged last year by Azerbaijan and Amenia. And the others were the brief regime-toppling invasions by the United States of Afghanistan and Iraq that then devolved into extended counterinsurgency — or counter-occupation — conflicts.
If this condition continues to hold, it would be one of the most important developments in human history. All the more remarkable, the shift away from interstate war appears to be the result not of changing geopolitical circumstances but of changing attitudes toward war itself. It took two world wars, but aversion to interstate war eventually conquered Europe and now is on track to envelop the world. Civil wars may continue, and states may still grapple with each other at less lethal levels. But the time may have come for us to accept the fact that interstate war is merely an idea, an institution that is scarcely required by international society. As Yale’s Robert Dahl pointed out decades ago, “Most social scientists have turned away from the historical movement of ideas.” But in doing so, they may “leave out an important explanatory variable.”
A Culture of Interstate Peace
The European continent took the lead in the turn away from war. It was once the most warlike of continents — Thomas Jefferson, for example, proclaimed it to be “an arena of gladiators.” But since 1945, Europe has been free from substantial interstate warfare for probably the longest period of time since the continent was invented as a concept some 2,500 years ago. Writing in 1986, historian Evan Luard suggested that this was “perhaps the single most striking discontinuity that the history of warfare has anywhere provided.”
That discontinuity has continued, and it demands explanation. In my opinion, it primarily reflects the fact that over the course of the 20th century, a significant shift has taken place in attitudes toward interstate war. Before World War I, it was common, even routine, for serious writers, analysts, and politicians in Europe and North America to exalt war between states as beautiful, honorable, holy, sublime, heroic, ennobling, natural, virtuous, glorious, cleansing, manly, necessary, and progressive. At the same time, they declared peace to be debasing, trivial, empty, bovine, and rotten, characterized by crass materialism, artistic decline, repellant effeminacy, rampant selfishness, base immorality, petrifying stagnation, sordid frivolity, degrading cowardice, and corrupting boredom. After 1918, however, such claims were scarcely ever voiced.
It is not completely clear why World War I was such a turning point. There had been plenty of massively destructive wars before, often fought to the point of complete annihilation. Many of these were equally futile, stupid, and disgusting as well — mud, leaches, and dysentery were not invented in 1914. One possibility is that World War I was the first war in history to be preceded by substantial, organized agitation against interstate war. At times, people in this growing movement even thought it was on the verge of success. In 1911, for example, the distinguished British historian G. P. Gooch concluded hopefully, “We can now look forward with something like confidence to the time when war between civilized nations will be considered as antiquated as the duel.” However, this was still very much a minority movement, and it was largely drowned out by those who exalted war. Nonetheless, its gadfly arguments were persistent and unavoidable, and this may well have helped Europeans and North Americans to look at the institution of international war in a new way after the massive conflict of 1914 to 1918. At any rate, within half a decade, opponents of interstate war, once a derided minority, became a decided majority.
There were, however, two countries that, in different ways, did not get the message. One was Japan — a less developed but increasingly powerful state that had barely participated in World War I. Many people there could still enthuse over war in a manner than had largely vanished in Europe. It took a cataclysmic war for Japan to learn the lessons almost all Europeans had garnered from World War I. The second country was Germany. In contrast to Japan, however, it appears that only one person there was willing to embrace international war, but he proved to be crucial. As military historian John Keegan argues, “Only one European really wanted war: Adolf Hitler.” For historian Gerhard Weinberg, Hitler was “the one man able, willing, and even eager to lead Germany and drag the world into war,” while William Manchester observes that the war Hitler started was one “he alone wanted.” Indeed, Hitler was successful in the 1930s in part because no one else on the continent could imagine that anyone could possibly be so stupid as to desire war. That is to say, but for Hitler, the massive war there would likely never have come about.
World War I, then, shattered what some have called the “war-like spirit” in Europe and North America. It made large majorities there into unapologetic peace-mongers — at least with regard to interstate war. World War II, it appears, reinforced that lesson in those places, probably quite unnecessarily, and it converted the previously militaristic Japanese in Asia. And of late, the aversion to interstate war has been embraced even more widely in international society.
Among the many consequences of this is a changing perception of power itself. “All historians agree,” observed Leo Tolstoy in 1869, “that states express their conflicts in wars and that as a direct result of greater or lesser success in war the political strength of states and nations increases or decreases.” That notion, it appears, has become passé. Prestige now comes not from prowess in armed conflict but from economic progress, maintaining a stable and productive society, and, for many, putting on a good Olympics, sending a rocket to the moon, or successfully managing a pandemic. The post-war success enjoyed by Germany and Japan provides further evidence that the culture of peace has transformed the very idea of “power” in international affairs.
There is more at the link.
Check out the book Charlie Keil and I put together: We Need a Department of Peace: Everybody's Business, Nobody's Job.
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