“War, War never changes.” - Fallout
“Violent competition... is the rule throughout nature.” - Azar Gat
The first and most striking feature of War in Human Civilization is its size, a beast of a book. But take heart, it is “only” 800 or so pages, with almost 150 of those being endnotes and indices, and the size of the book is justified by its grand scope. The second is WAR in big red letters, and the rest of the title in much smaller black print. I’d guess he really wanted to just call it WAR but needed a few more words to make it sound less generic.
Azar Gat is a professor at Tel Aviv university and book’s academic nature is clear throughout. The research that has gone into the book is testified to by the copious end notes, which take up a sixth of the book. However, mercifully, the writing avoids the pitfalls of much academic writing and is straightforward and clear. The workmanlike writing style does not in itself draw the reader in, that is left to the subject matter and information presented, but it never gets in the way of Gat’s presenting and the reader’s understanding of this information.
WAR is exactly what it says on the cover, an overview of the causes and nature of war throughout human civilization, from pre-history to modern liberal democracy. In the preface, Gat poses the Riddle of War, why do men fight? The book then explores the Riddle in great depth across human history. The cover makes the grand historical scope of the work clear, juxtaposing an ancient relief of Assyrian chariots wrapping the book with a picture of a plane about to hit one of the smoldering twin towers on the back cover. When the book was published in 2006, 9/11 was still a fresh event, occurring a bit past halfway through the book’s 9-year writing process.
WAR is a book dense and, as is a necessity for a work of this scope, it covers a lot of a lot of historical information in very few words. Gat will examine numerous examples of different countries and how they were similar and how they differed due to differing historical contingencies in a handful of pages. These examples are generally not included in the review, unless they are particularly interesting, as it is long enough already. Suffice to say, a lot of historical information and evidence Gat goes over summarily, this review ignores or glosses over.
The leads to the one problem with WAR: due to its vast scope, the discussion of history often seems unordered. In discussing concepts and ideas, Gat will have wide transitions terms of both geography and time, linking various polities to these concepts, and so the discussion will often jump backwards or forwards for particular societies or trends, often not keeping events and ideas within a linear flow of either time that most history writing uses. He will often drop ideas or concepts to discuss others, then naturally return to them chapters later, so even the ideas don’t flow linearly. This is likely inevitable with a book of this scope and density, but it is what it is. This review generally follows Gat’s ordering of concepts and events, so perhaps you may notice some of this jumping around here as well.
WAR is divided into 3 major sections. The first discusses war in pre-history, the second, war in pre-modern history, and the last, war in modernity. As the book divides the history of war along these rather natural lines, so too will this review be divided.
The first section on pre-modern war is the shortest, about 150 pages, to the roughly 250 pages for each of the other two sections, but it is, at least according to me, and I’m the one writing this review, also the most important. It starts by asking the question, “is war grounded, perhaps inescapably, in human nature?” He then goes on to answer the question over the course of this section with a resounding yes, thoroughly dismantling of the idea of the “noble savage” and the Rousseauian view of the state of nature, with studies of primitive hunter-gatherer societies throughout the world, showing they regularly engaged in violence and war, real deadly war, not ritualistic war, and more complex gatherers engaged in slavery. He establishes the evolutionary basis for war; war and aggression is both innate and optional, but a major option always near the surface and easily triggered, given the right conditions.
And the causes of these wars in hunter-gatherer societies are, what Gat terms, a web of desire, interlinking motivations of subsistence resources, sex, status, revenge, and the security dilemma.
He asserts that men are driven to reproduce their genes and act according to evolutionary calculus. War is a costly action, risking death and dismemberment, but was carried out when it was evolutionarily cost-effective, when it could attain sex and resources that enhance reproductive success. But if it was too costly, men would avoid it if there were less-costly options, such as moving elsewhere, to a less competitive area, which entailed its own risks, which may in turn be worse than fighting.
Along these evolutionary lines, hunter gatherers organized within clans, made up of close kin, and tribes, larger kin groups of related clans. The more closely related the king, the more cohesive the group and the more likely an individual was to commit violence or take risks for it. While intra-clan violence was not uncommon, inhibitions and proscriptions against violence where stronger the more closely related the kin group.
Resources and sex get their own chapter as the root evolutionary motivations. People needed food, shelter, water, and the like to live, but above all, food was the primary resource motivator. Prior to agriculture, food was very scarce; hunger and starvation was a real and ever-looming threat. Acquiring meat and the land meat was found on, was necessary to base survival, so access to meat was a very common motivator of war. And Gat specifically emphasizes meat, as its nutrient profile was the best food for survival. Game depletion was an ever-present threat, so competition over meat and land where meat was found, was intense. Veganism was a moral luxury hunter-gatherers did not have; even among animals, herbivores rarely fought over food access, because it was too low in nutrition value to be worth monopolizing.
Reproduction was the other motivator. Available women were rare and highly sought after in hunter-gatherer societies due to female infanticide (creating sex ratios averaging 127:100 in favour of boys) and polygyny. One of the advantages of acquiring more resources was it allowed men to take on more wives and have more children, achieving greater reproductive success. This lack of women was ameliorated by three main trends: violent death, war, and marriage age. Young men would fight to both acquire wives from the outgroup or to gain status to win wives from the ingroup. Fighting over women (and resources and status) would result in many young men’s deaths, which itself normalized the sex ratio. Finally, women were married young, at puberty, while most men were married in their late 20s.
Other motivations for war, such as honour, revenge, and security, grew from this and are all bundled in a single chapter. Gat goes to great lengths to stress that motivations were often mixed with no sole motivation driving violence by itself, that even though these motivations are secondary, they are no less real, and that even though secondary motivations may be ultimately evolutionarily based on the two primary motivations, the motivated often held the secondary motivation as valuable in itself.
Honour, status, esteem, respect, or however you would call it, was often fought over. At base honour allowed more reproductive access. Men in primitive societies would go to great lengths to preserve their honour through both direct and indirect competition; a reputation for success and success where mutually reinforcing. War, bravery, and hurting your enemies all contributed to honour.
Revenge were common motivation for war. In the anarchic state of nature, there was not greater authority to protect or distribute justice, so individuals and tribes had to do so on their own. If someone killed the ingroup, the tribe would kill them to both enact justice and deter future killings. However, this would provoke further retaliatory killings, leading to cycles of retaliation no party could back down from. It would continue until either one tribe was defeated or a truce was established, often through a third party and with compensation.
The security dilemma was another related cause of war and escalation. In the anarchic state of nature, everybody is fundamentally insecure. The other is a potential opponent and the other necessarily views you as a potential opponent. So, you must take measures to increase your security from the other, but any measures you take are increase the insecurity of the other, so they must in turn increase their security, which makes you more insecure, and so the cycle goes. Even “defensive” measures increase your capabilities, making the other more insecure. This creates an ever-escalating arms race, resulting in what is known as the Red Queen effect, where both sides are continually racing, but never gaining an advantage. This fear, this insecurity, becomes self-fulfilling, as you must strike the other when you have the advantage or the other will strike you when they have advantage. It is an inescapable prisoner’s dilemma, where the cost of cooperating when the other defects is extinction for you and your tribe.
Beyond these, Gat discusses a handful of other motivations for war, such as religion, sorcery, cannibalism, and sadism and enjoyment. However, he dismisses these as non-causal and marginal, which generally only coexist along with and subordinate to other motivations.
Finally, Gat goes into how primitive warfare was carried out, and it the answer is, it was basically guerilla warfare. Head-to-head battle did occur, sometimes when one side was greatly superior or two groups of raiders accidently met each other, but generally, head-to-head battles were pre-arranged and ritualistic, with chances for death and injury minimized, not to avoid killing, but to avoid injury to self. The open battle was a way to channel competition into a less lethal form of war. However, these battles were not particularly deadly and weren’t where the real killing happened. The real killing took place during the raid.
Just as the motivations follow an evolutionary calculus, so too does the implementation. Warriors, as much as possible, tried to reduce risk to themselves while maximizing the damage they could do to enemies, so the standard method of warfare was to kill the enemy while he was unaware or relatively helpless. Raids in the night, to kill the enemy when they couldn’t fight back were the most lethal and common form of warfare. Here the security dilemma rears its head; the most effective form of warfare was to raid and kill the unsuspecting other while they were sleeping, but that was also the other’s most effective form of warfare. The obvious solution was to strike first and kill the other unawares before the other could strike first kill you in your sleep. Anarchic insecurity pushed towards the genocidal first strike.
Gat concludes that there are two main factors which correlate with violent conflict: scarcity and channels of non-violent competition. The more deprived of a necessary good, the more likely men are to fight over it; scarcity is real and it generates violence. The existence of non-violent alternatives, such as the relatively non-violent ritualistic head-to-head battles, can steer the impulse to fight into less violent actions.
The next large section deals with warfare during history and the transition from pre-history to history. It concentrates on how agriculture, pastoralism, and state formation impacted warfare.
Before he begins, he develops the concept of relative time. Given that his scope is global and over all history, different cultures developed at differing times. However, the paths of development towards increasing societal complexity had general, non-rigid, but similar stages of parallel evolution based on similar biocultural and environmental constraints. So, relative time compares societies at similar stages of complexity and development, even if occurring at different times in absolute time, which makes the generalities and patterns he points out unlinked from a specific time.
During the rise of agriculture, human societies developed into two general types of new tribal societies, what Gat calls Agraria, those who engage in stationary agriculture, and Pastoralia, those who in engage in mobile pastoralism, who existed alongside traditional hunter-gatherers. With the development of farming, a modulated relationship between farmers and hunter-gatherers developed. The farmers, having more food had denser populations and higher numbers, and so could not be moved by hunter-gatherers. However, having to stay with their crops, they could neither pursue nor eliminate the more mobile hunter-gatherers, leaving them perpetually vulnerable to raids, which mostly stole livestock and women, as crops were harder to obtain by force. This led to the development of defensive measures, such as walls and fortifications, at least in places, like the Middle East, where the local geography supported more intensive agriculture and denser populations.
Over time, as agriculture expanded, weight of numbers pushed the hunter-gatherers were pushed back, away from the most abundant lands. As hunter-gatherers were pushed to increasingly marginal land around the fringes of agricultural societies, they used this land for animal husbandry and developed into nomadic pastoralists. The Agraria/Pastoralia dichotomy developed. These pastoralists fought amongst themselves along tribal lines, generally through mobile raids to seize livestock and women. The earlier stated dynamic of hunter-gatherers raiding farmers intensified, as pastoralists had the mobility of hunter gatherers, with greater population densities afforded by animal husbandry.
The domestication of horses and development of the wheel and chariot further intensified the agricultural-pastoralist dynamic, granting the pastoralists a major advantage in war, in most places. This led to expansion of Indo-European pastoralist from the steppes over much of Eurasia. However, among other exceptions, Gat points out the Egyptian development of the chariot gave advantage to the urban elite.
During this development, another transition was taking place. The surplus created by agriculture allowed for the development of actual wealth, something not possible for subsistence hunter-gatherers. The creation of wealth led to the stratification of society, leading to the development of chiefs and “big men” in most more complex tribal societies. Chiefs held an official position with some limited authority. On the other hand, the big man, had status from his wealth, charisma, and skill, gaining power by offering aid and protection in exchange for subordination. During this transition, while tribal warfare remained mainly focused on voluntary, kin-based raids, set battles became increasingly important and bloody as the development of wealth provided something worth risking life in open battle for.
Over time, the creation of wealth and increasing stratification, led to tribal societies developing away from kinship. Chiefs and big men began to develop private, armed retinues whose main occupation was war. As this process continued, power centralized and formalized under the chiefs, and society became more hierarchical and authoritarian. A class of professional warriors developed from the retinues, becoming societal elites; these retinues were instrumental in transforming tribes into states.
The new states concentrated, accumulated, and institutionalized power. Gifts to chiefs became formalized taxation and bureaucracies developed. Private retinues transformed into royal guards, who in turn subjected tribal militias under the power of the state and to military discipline. Tribes were merged into ethnos. Tribal leadership evolved into petty states under warrior-kings which in turn evolved into larger states with true kings. Centralized (petty) states with organized militaries expanded, conquering and integrating less organized polities around them. This expansion in turn forced neighbours to centralize, organize, and expand to defend themselves. As militaries became more professional, local militias generally waned in strength under oppression. Gat outlines this process for societies in northern Europe, Egypt, Japan, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere. Throughout the world, the evolution of tribal societies through petty states into larger states was remarkably similar.
In some areas, Gat point to Greece, Indus, and central America, evolved into city-states, a form of petty state. These city states always evolved in large clusters of city states, and developed as a defence mechanism against other city states. Despite being developed for defence, these city states often didn’t develop fortifications for significant periods; it was the size of the city state itself that protected them. Neither hunter-gatherers or early militias of other city states could sustain forces long enough to conquer these city states. However, over time as these city states developed, the accumulated wealth, allowing them the ability to sustain armies for periods of time long enough to conquer other city states. This necessitated the development of fortification for defence, so there was a co-evaluation of offensive capabilities and defensive structures.
In addition, city states generally took the opposite evolution of armed forces to larger states. Instead of increasingly centralized warrior class, city states usually evolved from aristocratic retinues to strong citizen militias. The concentrated demographic mass and ease of communication in large city states, made political organization effective, allowing citizens to push back against centralized aristocratic power and the development of popular citizen militias. Small territories and short distances to other city states allowed city states unprecedented mobilization. City states often became commercial, mercantile polities, bringing in wealth, allowing the creation of large fleets and the hiring of mercenaries.
However, over time these city states coalesced, as larger, richer city states swallowed nearby city states and created hegemonic alliance control over more distant city states. And as some started to centralize, neighbours needed to centralize to defend themselves creating an evolutionary arms race of consolidation. In the end, most city states ended up either being swallowed up their own into larger states or were conquered by larger, more unified states.
Gat also discusses the development of various governance methods in Eurasia. Gat puts the early development of Eurasia compared to the rest of the world, on Jared Diamond’s thesis from Guns, Germs, and Steel, that Eurasia’s early advantage flowed from the availability of large domesticated animals and cereal package package and the East-West axis of Eurasia. Gat puts much focus on the historical contingency that the horse only lived on the Eurasian steppe. The horse’s primary military advantage was mobility, and in worked best in flat terrain, larger theatres of operation, and less densely inhabited land. The differing formation of states in Eurasia often rested on how fit local geography was for equestrian warfare.
Feudalism can only where the horse exists, is given preference in war (the terrain is advantageous to it), and agrarian economies lack the taxation bureaucracy to sustain an equestrian war force without land grants. Feudalism allowed states to maintain equestrian forces they could not otherwise pay for. By giving the equestrian warrior class power over land, the generator of wealth, feudalism led to a system decentralized power resting in the warrior class. True feudalism only developed in China, Europe, and Japan, but many other Eurasian states had hybrid form of feudalism and centralized states, depending on how conducive local circumstances were to feudalism. As feudal states increased in power, centralized authority, and developed taxation bureaucracy, they began to curb the power of equestrian aristocracy. Often the central authority would align with the free populace against aristocratic authority.
The general tendency of Eurasian states was the development of large empires unifying previously distinct peoples into a single polity. The size of these empires allowed them to dominate and swallow smaller petty states, further increasing in size. And the larger the empires grew, the more ineffective local militias. Instead, these states developed varying forms of levies, conscription, and professional standing armies, with the latter being best value. Here Gat discusses and compares the various military system of large empires, including Rome, China, and Persia.
Over time these large empires waxed and waned, and they’re military systems changed with them. Driven centralizers who formed the empires died and were replaced with kings who preferred the luxuries of power over the responsibilities. Bureaucracies grew, resulting in ever-growing taxes. Centralization would strip the aristocratic elite of their local leadership role, so they would enter the bureaucracy, stripping the empire of its military core. Aristocratic and central authorities stripped the rural populace of liberties and reduced freeholders, alienating them and destroying the power of local militias. These processes tended to switch the primary purpose of the empires’ militaries from conquest to squashing rebellions, which came in two main types, rebellions by peasants, serfs, and slaves or succession and usurpation conflicts. If locked in a struggle with another empire, a dynamic equilibrium was often reached until one fell. If not, large empires were liable to fall prey to barbarians. Sometimes, empires would create barbarian marches to forestall this.
The large, flat plain of the Eurasian steppes gave birth to fully nomadic pastoralists with strong military advantages over sedentary polities. They were highly mobile, hunting and herding were life-long training for war, and the nomads could never be cornered into an unwelcome fight, because they had nothing stationary to protect and so could withdraw at will. Despite their relatively small numbers, these nomads dominated and extorted sedentary societies near them and were decisive in shaping Eurasia. However, unlike eastern empires, western Europe was never dominated by nomads due to its ragged landscape, lacking in pasturelands.
All this comes together to explain why Europe came to the forefront. The east, due to their wide-open plains and the centralizing nature of their intensive river valley agriculture, were vulnerable to being conquered and centralized. The rugged, mountainous of western and southern Europe and the dispersed nature of dry farming, prevented the large imperial consolidations found elsewhere. This political fragmentation and decentralized power reduced economic and political polarization. Smaller, more numerous states, allowed for increased mobilization and, outside of the feudalism era, this increased preponderance of infantry power increasing the popular bargaining power. This mobilization allowed led to a unique form of warfare, the western mass infantry close quarter shock battle, compared to the eastern mode of stand-off missile battles and the predomination of cavalry and chariots.
Violence was the primary means of the continual power and resource accumulation of the state which in turn allowed the continued strengthening of coercive structures. The development of the coercive structures for coercion both within and between states evolved in tandem. The stronger the state, the greater its ability to coerce and regulate its own society and to mobilize it. The growth of the state grew the size and complexity of war, transforming war. Warriors became soldiers, ritualistic stand-off battles and raids became long-term campaigns with heavy, high-causality face-to face fighting. Interestingly, the increase in size of war corresponded with a relative decrease in casualties; state violence was generally less lethal than anarchic pre-state violence.
Even with the transformation of war, the base motivations for war remained. While in the state of nature, the struggle for resources was a zero-sum competition over very scarce resource; fighting destroyed the competitors but generally left resources intact. However, with agriculture, the cost of fighting greatly increased; the resources and future resource production were regularly destroyed, but it also made predatory existence off the resources produced by others possible. War destroyed resources overall, but some benefitted at the expense of others. There were also spinoff benefits, both technological and in state capacity to secure peace and to coordinate.
The base motivation of sex remained as well. Success in warfare led to success in reproduction. Rape, harems, and the kidnapping of women were regular parts of warfare, with the winners of war taking and reproducing with the losers’ women. The greatest winners often had massive harems and many children, with Ghengis Khan being the ur-example. Gat notes that European monogamy was a product of the already mentioned European fragmentation; relative political and economic egalitarianism led to relative sexual egalitarianism.
The growth in societal the power of state, exponentially grew the power, honour, and resources that could be acquired by winners. Competition was fierce both externally and internally; external competition created both collective and individual gains, while internal competition allowed a greater slice of the pie. Gat has a section going over the atrociously high rates of violent death among monarchs.
While great benefits could be gained from war, the increasing costs led ethical and ideological opposition to war. Increased state capacity and resources allowed increased literacy, resulting in the growth of religions and ideologies. These both bounding states and peoples together, increasing capacities for war, and introduced ideological restraints and rejections of violence.
Finally, Gat concludes this section arguing that war is both serious and rational and senseless and absurd. Great gains are available for those successful in war, however, the Red Queen’s race and security dilemma often rationally states to large and wasteful expenditures of resources on security with no real benefits to any of the participants.
The final section examines modern war. The explosion of wealth and power of modernity and the lead up to it, freed modern powers from the threat of the barbarian marches and created a positive feedback loop between wealth and military strength. The wealth and power of the modern system was effective at replicating itself, everyone this system came in contact with was forced to adapt to it or be swallowed by it.
To being this section, Gat explores why Europe was where this system, based on the three revolutionary innovations of firearms, ocean navigation, and printing, took off, even though none of those developments originated in Europe. He first argues, that these technologies themselves did start the explosion of national states in Europe, the process of national unifications and centralization from feudalism and city states into large states, was underway before these technologies were introduced, but they appeared closely after they began and became inextricably tied up with this process. As when he explained why Eurasia developed pre-modern systems earlier, Gat argues that geographical contingencies are the reason. The three innovations took off in Europe, because the geography of Europe made pursuing these technologies more advantageous than in other regions.
The first innovation, the military revolution was tied to, but not caused by, the introduction of firearms. Firearms were more useful in western Europe, due to its fragmented, antagonistic political nature led to pitched battles and sieges, compared to the larger, more unitary eastern empires, where the major military threat was raid by steppe nomads, against whom infantry, and thus firearms, were ineffective as they did not have settlements and were too mobile to be pinned down. This, along with European metallurgy and mineral resources, caused Europeans to advance firearms technology beyond the east. While the introduction of firearms transformed warfare, even before this, the military revolution had begun.
As noted earlier, the centralization process made mass infantry, which was cheaper than cavalry, the main component of European warfare, moving away from the predominance of the aristocratic equestrian class. The predominance of infantry caused infantry to seek fortification, increasing the importance and number of fortifications. Cannons were then introduced to overcome fortifications. This created a red queen's race: increased fortification required increased reliance on infantry and increased use of cannon, which in turn required more and larger fortifications for defence, and so the cycle went and European warfare moved away from open battle to siege warfare. These fortifications were very expensive; it was the economic growth of the European states, allowing for the high expenditures on siege warfare, that allowed and drove this military revolution as states were caught in the siege warfare security dilemma.
Gunpowder was much more revolutionary in conjunction with the second innovation, ocean navigation, which allowed for a commercial revolution, a global trading system, which funded the military revolution. Why did the Europeans create the global trading system, instead of larger and richer eastern countries with more developed trade systems? Precisely because they were poorer. Asian countries did not need to develop to look outward and develop far-reaching sea travel, because they were already near the valuable markets. However, western Europeans were very distant and needed ocean navigation to reach the valuable Asian markets which had the goods they desired. Europeans, contiually expanded their naval power to expand and defend this international trade system.
The development of this global market fed the nascent manufacturing developing in Europe, growing it. This mercantilism, combined with increased agricultural productivity, the development of deficit financing, and increased ability to tax led to ability to finance the military revolution. Through most of history, power brought wealth, however, as the worldwide trading system, mercantlism, and capitalism developed, wealth increasing bought power. The military and naval race led to huge wastes of resources, but the tying of power to wealth forced European states to modernize and develop their economies to be able to keep up in the red queen’s race.
State's power of taxation was generally linked to how incorporated social groups were in the state, so, states which better incorporated their subjects, tended to have higher powers of taxation, which in turn allowed them greater military capacities. The printing press combined with the growth of the centralized state, national economies, and political participation to create early modern nationalism. (Gat emphasizes early modern nationalism, as he disagrees with the idea that nationalism is a uniquely modern phenomenon and that it existed prior in history; one of the major themes of one of his other books, Nations, which this reviewer has yet to read). The spread of nationalism and national identity, gave national states increased abilities to mobilize, tax, centralize, and grow, climaxing in massive military capabilities of Napoleonic France.
The success of the printing press in Europe, was, again, due to geographic and historical contingencies. European political fragmentation allowed the press to flourish, while the larger, more unified eastern states either banned or obstructed development of the printing press. In addition, east Asian writing systems hindered the practical value of printing presses.
These interlinked processes in Europe of economic growth, mercantilism, global trade, mobilization, and centralization, all fed into each other to propel Europe to the economic and military forefront, even before the industrial revolution.
However, the industrial revolution, which Gat emphasizes wasn’t just a revolution of industry, in the narrow sense, led to massive economic, infrastructural, and technological growth which still continues to this day. This exponential growth led to a corresponding exponential growth in military capabilities, even as relative military spending has drastically reduced. While relative miliary spending has declined, the proportion of military spending spent on hardware has drastically increased. Various technologies acorss a variety of realms, such as in communication, military, transportation, chemical engineering, etc., drastically increased military power and changed the way war was fought. Technological advancement allowed states to acquire decisive military advantages over their neighbours.
This technological explosion vastly increased real wealth for people, progressively moving resource acquisition from a zero-sum game, as it was through most of history and pre-history, where wealth could only be acquired at the expense of others, to one of mutual benefit. International trade also saw increased interdependencies between states. This led to a decline in occurrences war, with some liberals thinking it might end war altogether. However, great powers wars and the two world wars brought this idea lacking. The force of nationalism as a new identity system was a powerful motivating force for war.
Through most of history, imperialism had relatively straightforward material objectives, such as tribute, trade, and agricultural colonization. However, with wealth and power increasingly tied to industrial development and freedom of trade, the objectives of imperialism changed, particularly for Britain. Britain developed free-trade imperialism, an imperialism dedicated to keeping markets open and trade passing. This looked and succeeded differently across the British Empire. Contrary to anti-imperialist rhetoric, free-trade imperialism generally benefited both the empire and it subjects, at least economically, as it developed the industries of both.
However, in the early 20th century, free trade liberalism was in retreat, in Britain and around the world. Many old regimes were trying to industrialize without embracing liberalism. New regimes mobilized around nationalism, communism, and anti-liberalism. Imperial powers lost their empires, and national and ideological wars occurred, but in the end, liberal democracy triumphed over its ideological enemies. Gat concludes that the liberal democrats triumphed in the world wars, not because of any general structural advantage, but primarily because of contingent factors, the biggest of which was the United States was large and sided with the liberal democrats in the “old world”. The liberal democracies simply had more resources, with the US being the biggest bank.
Contrary to the predictions of 19th century liberals, Gat argues the evidence is against the hypothesis that liberal-democratic regimes are more peaceful, but more recently, it has been argued that, although, they are not more peaceful, liberal democracies rarely fight amongst themselves. Gat reviews the various arguments for and against the democratic peace theories and comes to his own synthesis. He finds that liberal democracies are [peaceful among themselves, but argues it is not liberal-democracy that makes countries more peaceful or even the increased costs of war, as the relative costs have decreased; rather the wealth of trade and industry derived from peace radically increased the benefits of peace, making war a generally less compelling alternative.
While the benefits of peace are the main reason for increased peace, Gat also reviews a number of other contributing factors, as he argues, rarely are explanations monocausal, but rather often multiple, sometimes related, factors converging. Increased wealth and comfort means men, particularly elites, are unwilling to endure the hardships war requires. Service economy workers adapt far less naturally to the rigors of military life than farmers and factory workers. The sexual revolution and other decadence increased the availability of sexual outlets and other opportunities sate the natural adventurousness of young men, which, combined with modern rules against military rape, reduced the appeal of the military as an outlet for male restlessness. Relatedly, young males gave been the most aggressive section of society, and proportion of society that is both young and male, has been declining as society has aged and the gender ratio has levelled. Gat entertains the possibility that with the decline in family size, parents with fewer children are less willing to risk their sons in war, but is skeptical. Similarly, Gat thinks women’s franchise may have influenced the decrease in war, but is skeptical. Another major reason is the nuclear bomb makes total war suicidal between major powers, creating a balance of terror preventing lower levels of warfare as well.
For those reasons, modern liberal democracies are generally averse to war and have created a state of true peace between themselves. But they still have to handle those countries who are not rich and peaceful. He argues, they have a general sequence of strategies in this case: first, isolationism, then if that fails appeasement. If appeasement fails to buy peace, they then try containment and cold war.
Gat then speculates on how stable this peaceful order is. Has it gained a large enough foothold in the world that relapse is unlikely, or, being built of the post-WW2 predominance of the US, will it decline if the US hegemony declines, if the US changes its political position, or perhaps if a global economic crisis occurs, especially with the rising of non-liberal powers? Gat raises the question, but does not answer it.
Gat discusses how modern, peaceful societies interact with traditional societies which have resisted this revolution. Traditionally, empire was maintained by violent repression, but liberal ideas at home have made violent repression abroad less palatable, and modern nations have a poor record at counter-insurgency, despite overwhelming military superiority. Perhaps ruthlessness is needed to win counter-insurgencies and modern nations lack the resolve for this brutality. However, he points to arguments that perhaps ruthless brutality is not needed but modern nation can win by soft power, high-tech warfare, and local alliances. WAR, which was finished in 2005, points to Afghanistan as success in counter-insurgency, bolstering this argument, but given the events of last year, it’s not looking good for this hypothesis.
He then discusses terrorism, a modern phenomenon arising in the 19th century and how WMDs, particularly nuclear weapons, greatly magnify the potential destruction of terrorist acts. There is no real defence against nuclear weapons and deterence is useless against terrorists, so Gat argues the only real defence is global coordinated crackdown on terrorism. He then discusses various proposed methods to prevent proliferation and terrorism and disagreements over them: including appeasement, developmental aid, violent foreign intervention, and increased proliferation to create more deterrence. These are fairly contemporary issues, so you, the ACX reader, are likely already somewhat familiar with them.
Gat then warns, and it's an important warning, that history at the time the book was written is as transient as at any other moment. There’s no reason to believe that the current state of affairs is permanent; there are many things that could disrupt it.
Finally, WAR’s concluding chapter by once again ponders the Riddle of War. There is nothing special about human violence and war, violence is ever-prevalent throughout nature, and humans are no exception. The only thing that makes war seem different, is that human coordination, particularly with the advent of the state, greatly increases the scale and scope of violence. War is simply a violent means to attain the same motivations that underlie all other human activity. War, as with all other human activity, originally derives from the original evolutionary calculus of survival and reproduction. Peace has increased in modern society because violent means of fulfilling human desires have become less promising than peaceful means. People have not become better or more altruistic, all that has happened is peaceful means of attainment are generally more effective than violent means for the first time in history.
With a book this large in both size and scope, there are numerous points one could harp on. However, this review is already long and the deadline looms, so it will focus on the two main themes that struck the reviewer: motivation and contingency.
What is most noticeable aspect of in WAR is the observation that war and violence is a rational act of people pursuing their interests and motivations, although, sometime the rational act can irrational outcomes, as in the prisoner’s dilemma. The same motivations driving the rational pursuit of war are found throughout pre-history, history, and into today: resources, sex, honour, and the security dilemma.
From reading WAR we can see that, while society has gotten more peaceful over time, it is not because we are more moral, more enlightened, more evolved, or in any way better people, it is because the triggers of aggression no longer press as hard as they once did because trade and industry during peace makes us exceedingly wealthy, which makes peace, generally, more rational than war. Thanks to modern technological and economic advances, we are free of many of the privations which drove earlier societies to war and, unlike through most of history, war, generally, reduces wealth rather than acquires it.
Likewise, one of the common themes throughout WAR is the importance of historical and geographic contingencies on man, the state, and war. A lot of the trends Gat examines happen not because of any superiority of the people, their beliefs, or their social structures, but rather the people try to best to succeed at filling their basic motivations within the geography and environment they find themselves in, and this environment shapes how the people, beliefs, and social structure evolve.
Men of old did not war just because they were not enlightened liberals, they warred because it was the way to acquire the resources they needed. All that separates us from societies where 25% of men died from violence are the institutions of state, religion, economy, infrastructure, and civic society ensuring the wealth continues to flow. Should these fragile structures collapse, war will return with terror and slaughter as the peace becomes less profitable than war.
We have escaped the terrible state of nature, not due to any intrinsic goodness in ourselves or our beliefs, but solely due to the structures we have built into our environment that satiate our motivations more efficiently than war. The same evolutionary motivations and same evolutionary calculations play out today as they did throughout humanity’s bloody history, but, we satiate them better through peaceful trade than through war.
To illustrate, this review will engage in presentism and briefly examine a current war: we can see these motivations play out today in Ukraine and Russia. The security dilemma rests at the heart of the conflict. The US spreads its influence to increase its security, wealth, and spread its ideology. Russia, fearful of losing its sovereignty to the much stronger US, secures itself by conquering or subordinating its neighbours. Ukraine (and Russia's other neighbours) fearful of losing sovereignty to Russia in turn, look to the US for protection. NovoRussians fearful of subordination to Ukrainians, look to Russia for protection and fight Ukraine; Ukrainians fearful of Russian influence, repress the NovoRussians. The extension of US protection through NATO, though ostensibly defensive, can only be perceived as offensive by Russia due the security dilemma. Everybody pursues their own motivations, seeking security, but never make themselves more secure.
Then, Russia, fearing further NATO expansion, as Ukraine, fearing Russian expansion, suggests NATO membership, engages in a first strike, as is rational in an anarchic system. And war begins, driven by the same motivations as that drove bushmen to raid each other. In response, the US and its allies involved themselves indirectly to maximize their gains, their gains being synonymous with Russian losses, while minimizing their own losses. Despite attempts to impute a moral dimension to the conflict, it is at base, just another example of rational actors unable to extricate themselves from the security dilemma and acting rationally within it.
Should you think, “I am better than that, I would never support attacking another country”, well, given that this blog’s readership is mostly American, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria gainsay that (which violence action(s) you supported likely depended on your own partisan motivations). “But the people were oppressed”. So were the NovoRussians. If you asked the Russians, they would point to American oppressions in Russia during the Rape of Russia. “But we’re more [insert synonym for good here] than the Russians.” Okay then.
Should you still think “I am, we are, better than that”. Well, presumably you believe you would never commit genocide. But ask yourself, if your children were starving and racist MAGAts (or liberal groomers, if you’re the red tribe ACX minority reader) were hogging the land where the meat your children needed to survive lived, would you not enact violence against the racists (or groomers) to feed your children. Surely your children’s survival is more important than allowing racists (or groomers) to get fat. We all, including yourself, know what you’d really choose when the hunger pangs hurt.
Then just remember the other, those MAGAts (or groomers), are under the same constraints; they need the meat, the land, to feed their children; if they let you have it, if they don’t hog it, then their children starve.
And this was the dilemma every people group prior to sometime before the modern era faced. The other, they’re most hated enemies, laid claim to the resources they needed to feed themselves and their children. You are not morally superior, there has been no enlightenment, no moral progress. The only thing that has changed is that you live in such luxury and security that you don’t even need to consider the security dilemma or that your children might starve.
From this, Chesterton’s Fence justifies itself. If the only thing keeping you from genociding the other, and vice versa, is that you are both fat off the luxury produced by the current working system, it behooves you, and the other, to maintain and not undermine that system and what it stands upon. For if it breaks down, you and the other will have no real choice but to war (because letting your children starve so the other’s children do not, is no real choice at all).
The Gods of the Copybook Heading are always near, ever-waiting to, with terror and slaughter, return.
Read WAR in Human Civilization.