Will War Ever End?. Paul K. Chappell
He quotes political scientist John Mueller, who “has gone so far as to assert that war between such states has become ‘subrationally unthinkable,’ not even on the radar screen of options to be considered as a means of resolving disputes.”
With the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact gone, the goal of democracies around the world is to foster democracy. Once a nation has become a democracy, it has effectively been “inoculated” against going to war with other democracies.
Thus, there is, in our time, cause to hope for an end to war. And we didn’t just get here overnight. If we look for it, we can observe a persistent trend toward “limiting” war. We can see it with the classical Greeks, who for four centuries refused to implement use of the bow and arrow even after being introduced to it in a most unpleasant way by Persian archers.
In Giving Up the Gun, Noel Perrin tells how the Japanese banned firearms after their introduction by the Portuguese in the 1500s. The Japanese quickly recognized that the military use of gunpowder threatened their society and culture. Thus they moved aggressively to defend their way of life. The feuding Japanese warlords destroyed all existing firearms and made the production or import of any new guns punishable by death. Three centuries later, when Commodore Perry forced the Japanese to open their ports, they did not even have the technology to make firearms. Similarly, the Chinese invented gunpowder but elected not to use it in warfare.
The most encouraging examples of restraining killing technology have all occurred in the twentieth century. After the tragic experience of using poisonous gases in World War I the world has generally rejected their use ever since. The atmospheric nuclear test ban treaty and the ban on the deployment of antisatellite weapons are both still going strong across many turbulent decades, and the United States and the former USSR have been steadily reducing their stockpiles of nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War.
Heckler points out that there has been “an almost unnoticed series of precedents for reducing military technology on moral grounds,” precedents that show the way for understanding that we do have a choice about how we think about war, about killing, and about the value of human life in our society.
In recent years we have exercised the choice to step back from the brink of nuclear destruction. We have moved the world toward democratically elected states that are “inoculated” against going to war with each other. There is, indeed, good cause to hope for an end to war. And I believe, with all my heart, that in this book Paul K. Chappell has made a major contribution toward that most worthy and noble endeavor.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, U.S. Army (ret.) has served as an Airborne Ranger infantry officer and West Point psychology professor, and is the Director of the Warrior Science Group. He is the author or co-author of several books, including On Killing, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
A Manifesto for Waging Peace
As fire does not extinguish fire, so evil cannot extinguish evil. Only goodness, meeting evil and not infected by it, conquers evil. That this is so is in man’s spiritual world an immutable law comparable to the law of Galileo.
—Leo Tolstoy 1
The Soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
—General Douglas MacArthur 2
Since my earliest memories, I have been obsessed with war. My father served in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and when I was young I saw how war can ruin families. I grew up as an only child in Alabama, and I have fond memories of being three years old and watching my father tend to his garden, feed the birds in our backyard, and chase away a spider that almost frightened me to death. But when I was four years old, everything changed.
I was sleeping peacefully late one night when I felt someone grab my leg and drag me from my bed onto the floor. This person pulled my leg so hard that I heard my pajama pants rip down the middle. Looking up and seeing my father, I began to panic as he pulled my hair and told me he was going to kill me. His cursing and my screaming woke my mother, who ran into the room and bear-hugged him until he finally calmed down.
When I was four years old, something else occurred that I could not understand at the time, but that I would later attribute to my father’s experiences during war. One evening, I heard my father screaming at my mother as he threatened to shoot himself with his pistol. This was the first time I heard him threaten to commit suicide, but it would not be the last. Throughout my childhood, I watched my father lose his grip on reality, and his frightening behavior caused me to struggle with my own sanity. Rage overshadowed his once peaceful nature, and when I heard him complain about violent nightmares, I realized that something called war had taken my gentle father from me.
During these years, I internalized my father’s despair and longed for an escape from his violent behavior. When I was five, this trauma led to my lifelong obsession with suffering and war—when I had a vivid dream that I killed myself. I still remember the dream clearly: I walked through the front door of my house, where I saw both my parents lying dead in coffins. Without thinking, I went to the bathroom cabinet with the intent of stabbing myself in the heart. I opened a drawer and saw a large pair of scissors, but their menacing size frightened me. Next to them, I saw a smaller pair of scissors that my mother used to clip my fingernails. I picked them up, stabbed myself in the chest, and watched as blood covered my hands. Then I walked to my mother’s coffin and laid in it with her, where I waited to die so that my anguish would finally end.
Ever since I woke up from that dream, I have been obsessed with learning if and how war could ever end. Seeing how war had affected my parents fueled this obsession throughout my childhood. Growing up during the Great Depression in Virginia, my father was half white and half black, and he joined the army when it was still segregated. My father was a career soldier who spent thirty years in the military, was decorated for valor during combat, and retired at the highest enlisted rank. My mother was not a stranger to war either. Born in Japan, she experienced war as a small girl during World War II. Her family later moved to Korea, where she lived during the Korean War.
When I was a teenager, I wanted to know if war will ever end. But I realized that I could never know the answer to this question unless I also asked and answered some fundamental questions about human nature. Are human beings naturally violent? Throughout world history, why does war seem like the norm and why does peace seem like the anomaly? Is war an inescapable part of human nature?
When I was in eighth grade I asked one of my teachers, “Where does war come from?”
“Human beings are naturally violent and warlike,” she told me. “War is a part of human nature, because people are evil. It is human nature to be greedy, hateful, and selfish.”
As I pondered her response to my question, I realized that her answer did not make sense. If human beings are naturally violent and warlike, why does war drive so many people like my father insane?
From that point onward, I was determined to study war the way a doctor studies an illness. Only then could I understand if world peace would ever become more than a cliché. By studying war, I hoped to learn if General Douglas MacArthur was correct when he said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”3 I also hoped to learn if war is truly an inescapable part of human nature or if it is even possible to define human nature. I did not know where these questions would take me, but I did know that if war and violence were truly a part of human nature, it would be naïve to assume war would ever end. As I explored the causes and cure for war, however, I began to find strong evidence which showed that people are not naturally violent.
When I attended West Point in 1998 as a freshman, I read a book called On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. This book was written by Dave Grossman, a lieutenant colonel