SECTION 4 - WAR AND PEACE AS SOCIAL SYSTEMS
We have dealt only sketchily with proposed disarmament scenarios and
economic analyses, but the reason for our seemingly casual dismissal of so
much serious and sophisticated work lies in no disrespect for its competence. It
is rather a question of relevance. To put it plainly, all these programs, however
detailed and well developed, are abstractions. The most carefully reasoned
disarmament sequence inevitably reads more like the rules of a game or a
classroom exercise in logic than like a prognosis of real events in the real world.
This is as true of today's complex proposals as it was of the Abbé de St. Pierre's
"Plan for Perpetual Peace in Europe" 250 years ago.
Some essential element has clearly been lacking in all these schemes. One of
our first tasks was to try to bring this missing quality into definable focus, and
we believe we have succeeded in doing so. We find that at the heart of every
peace study we have examined--from the modest technological proposal (e.g.,
to convert a poison gas plant to the production of "socially useful" equivalents)
to the most elaborate scenario for universal peace in out time--lies one common
fundamental misconception. It is the source of the miasma of unreality
surrounding such plans. It is the incorrect assumption that war, as an institution,
is subordinate to the social systems it is believed to serve.
This misconception, although profound and far-reaching, is entirely
comprehensible. Few social clichés are so unquestioningly accepted as the
notion that war is an extension of diplomacy (or of politics, or of the pursuit of
economic objectives). If this were true, it would be wholly appropriate for
economists and political theorists to look on the problems of transition to peace
as essentially mechanical or procedural---as indeed they do, treating them as
logistic corollaries of the settlement of national conflicts of interest. If this were
true, there would be no real substance to the difficulties of transition. For it is
evident that even in today's world there exist no conceivable conflict of interest,
real or imaginary, between nations or between social forces within nations, that
cannot be resolved without recourse to war--if such resolution were assigned a
priority of social value. And if this were true, the economic analyses and
disarmament proposals we have referred to, plausible and well conceived as
they may be, would not inspire, as they do, an inescapable sense of indirection.
The point is that the cliché is not true, and the problems of transition are indeed
substantive rather than merely procedural. Although was is "used" as an
instrument of national and social policy, the fact that a society is organized for
any degree of readiness for war supersedes its political and economic structure.
War itself is the basic social system, within which other secondary modes of
We have dealt only sketchily with proposed disarmament scenarios and
economic analyses, but the reason for our seemingly casual dismissal of so
much serious and sophisticated work lies in no disrespect for its competence. It
is rather a question of relevance. To put it plainly, all these programs, however
detailed and well developed, are abstractions. The most carefully reasoned
disarmament sequence inevitably reads more like the rules of a game or a
classroom exercise in logic than like a prognosis of real events in the real world.
This is as true of today's complex proposals as it was of the Abbé de St. Pierre's
"Plan for Perpetual Peace in Europe" 250 years ago.
Some essential element has clearly been lacking in all these schemes. One of
our first tasks was to try to bring this missing quality into definable focus, and
we believe we have succeeded in doing so. We find that at the heart of every
peace study we have examined--from the modest technological proposal (e.g.,
to convert a poison gas plant to the production of "socially useful" equivalents)
to the most elaborate scenario for universal peace in out time--lies one common
fundamental misconception. It is the source of the miasma of unreality
surrounding such plans. It is the incorrect assumption that war, as an institution,
is subordinate to the social systems it is believed to serve.
This misconception, although profound and far-reaching, is entirely
comprehensible. Few social clichés are so unquestioningly accepted as the
notion that war is an extension of diplomacy (or of politics, or of the pursuit of
economic objectives). If this were true, it would be wholly appropriate for
economists and political theorists to look on the problems of transition to peace
as essentially mechanical or procedural---as indeed they do, treating them as
logistic corollaries of the settlement of national conflicts of interest. If this were
true, there would be no real substance to the difficulties of transition. For it is
evident that even in today's world there exist no conceivable conflict of interest,
real or imaginary, between nations or between social forces within nations, that
cannot be resolved without recourse to war--if such resolution were assigned a
priority of social value. And if this were true, the economic analyses and
disarmament proposals we have referred to, plausible and well conceived as
they may be, would not inspire, as they do, an inescapable sense of indirection.
The point is that the cliché is not true, and the problems of transition are indeed
substantive rather than merely procedural. Although was is "used" as an
instrument of national and social policy, the fact that a society is organized for
any degree of readiness for war supersedes its political and economic structure.
War itself is the basic social system, within which other secondary modes of
