Factors of Conflict and Conditions of Peace E-Book

Saral Sarkar

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 176

Beschreibung

There has hardly ever been a long period of world history without wars and violent conflicts, of one or another kind, in one or another region, between larger or smaller groups of human beings, as well as fights between individuals. At the same time, the vast majority of ordinary people of the world have always desired to spend their life in peace. But they have always failed to prevent occasional outbreaks of wars and other kinds of conflicts. Also Sarkar, who came to West Germany in early 1982, at a time when the country was abuzz with the Peace Movement, witnessed the general failure of the same. He feels compelled to ask Why? We too. In order to understand that, we need to delve deep into several aspects of the human condition, and identify those that have become in the course of history of our species factors of conflict. Basing himself on the research of scholars in various fields, Sarkar has done that in the present essay. He has concluded it with his thoughts on the conditions of peace.

Leseprobe

Dedicated to all peace-activists of the world

Table of Contents

Preface

Editor’s Preface

Chapter 1: Introduction: Aggression, Violence and War among Homo sapiens

Chapter 2: Scarcity, Limits to Growth, Limits to Resources

Chapter 3: Quasi Species of Homo Sapiens

Chapter 4: A Jungle of Collective Identities

Chapter 5: Conclusions

Preface

In my school days, our textbook on the history of India appeared to me to be a series of stories of war and conquest by this king or that emperor. Even Ashoka the Great waged a merciless war against the king of Kalinga (in the 3rd century B.C.) before he felt remorse and became a Buddhist. Similar appeared to me to be the history of Great Britain, which we also had to read as school boys. Ever since, I have been trying to find – for myself only – the answer to the question why there has been wars all through human history.

Recently, I got a sort of answer from a story told by a famous modern historian in a TV broadcast: In 1522, in Rhodos, when the invasion army of the Sultan of Turkey had defeated the then ruling “Knights Hospitaller” and occupied the island, he ordered his soldiers to bring their Grand Master, a prisoner in their hands, to him. The Sultan said to him (in the general sense): Do not be sad. In this world kings and armies fight against one another, one army wins, and the other loses. That is the normal way of this world. (Christopher Clark in ZDF, Terra x)

Later, when I read more history, this impression from my school-days became stronger. A little reading on prehistoric archaeology was enough to see evidence of existence of war-like conflicts even before the dawn of civilization. Of course, in any part of the world, there has always been also shorter or longer periods of peace. But some or other kinds of conflicts – cold or hot – between large or small groups of humans were also always going on somewhere in the world.

Moreover, in times of absence of war, preparedness for war – with standing armies and reservists, and a certain degree of production and stockpiling of weapons – has always been deemed necessary. I have often heard or read about leading statesmen and politicians (e.g., Churchill and Kennedy) repeating a famous aphorism from the times of the Roman Empire: “If you want peace, be prepared for war.”1

Also after the end of the World War II, there have been numerous conflicts that did sometimes end up in violent wars, e.g. the civil war in China in the second half of the 1940s and the Korean War in the 1950s. Generally speaking, conflicting parties have been living in a permanent state of alert and tension. Think of the long period of the Cold War between the two Super Powers. Oftentimes, conflicts are fought out by economic means, such as embargoes, boycotts, and sanctions.

In some Western European countries, there has been a tradition of peace movements, which began around the middle of the 19th century. When I came to West Germany in 1982, a big peace movement was going on there, which was engendered by the decision of the government of the country to deploy some of the latest kind of American middle-range precision nukes (called Pershing) aimed at the Soviet Union. The latter had earlier stationed similar nukes in Eastern Europe. Along with the whole Green Party, I participated in that movement and had thereby opportunities to discuss with many peace activists the question of the basic factors of war and conflict.

They were all quite passionately active in the movement, were not only against any war, but also against any preparedness for war, which is why they were also “conscientious objectors” to compulsory military training/service. In the 1950s, their parents’ generation had bitterly opposed the decision to found in the BRD a German army again, even though it was to be called the “Bundeswehr”, suggesting that its mandate was only to defend their country by military means in case of a foreign invasion.

My discussions with such activists did not help me come any closer to an answer to the question I had in mind. In the second half of the 1990s, however, came for them the moment of truth. Many of the erstwhile radical peace activists, a large majority of whom were also members or voters of the Green Party, supported the decision of the SPD-Green coalition government to take part with its own air force in the NATO’s bombing campaign against Serbia (1999). Cause? Around that time, Serbia was fighting against the armed Kosovar rebels’ attempt to make their small province Kosovo independent of Serbia. Before that, no peace activist had ever imagined this could in some future become possible. So I decided to seek the answer to my question mainly through reading.

General and immediate motives and causes of (particular) past wars have all been studied and written about by scholar-historians. We know that, generally speaking, kings and emperors wanted to conquer new territories, for which they had to wage wars against other kings and emperors. Control over more territory was their main motive, because that was the precondition for more wealth: through tax revenue, tribute payments or through sheer plunder. Later, control of trade and trade routes became important, which is why in the late15th century, the Spaniards and the Portuguese searched for a sea route to India. Still later, desire to gain control over large markets and regions of production of coveted goods (in Asia) led to colonial wars, also between rival European powers. All these motives and causes can be clubbed together in the term economic factors, simply speaking, greed.

But there are also other, basic (for some, one could say, more basic) factors in play. To give here just one example, when, in the previous centuries, European settlers’ colonies were founded in relatively sparsely populated, hitherto undeveloped regions/continents (America, Australia, Africa), the desire of large numbers of poor, even famine-stricken, people in relatively overpopulated European countries to start a new life also played an important role. For that purpose, they were also prepared to fight wars against indigenous peoples, as, for instance, the Dutch settler colonists in South Africa did against the resisting Zulus. Here, actually two factors were involved: economic and demographic.

It may also be that, in some exceptional cases, the spirit of adventure played the decisive role – e. g. in the case of Alexander the Great’s invasive expedition deep into Western India far away from his homeland Macedonia. In the case of the Pilgrim Fathers in the early 17th century, it was the spirit of freedom from religious persecution that was decisive.

In the pages that follow, I have mentioned and also written about these other factors, some of them very basic, as basic as the demographic and economic factors. They do not often come to mind of the average concerned people when they hear about some conflict, because they alone do not usually lead to wars or bloody fights. But they are basic factors nonetheless. They may remain unnoticed or barely noticed for a long time. But they may become manifest as causes of violent conflicts.

In this book I have presented a rather short version of what was originally planned to be a detailed study. It may prove to be a good decision. After all, one hears everywhere that in the age of internet and smartphone, would-be readers eschew detailed studies and are satisfied with short presentations.

I take this opportunity to state that I am not a scholar on any of the subjects dealt with here. I have been and am still an interested student of these subjects. I have read books, newspaper- and journal articles by scholars of these subjects. And I have continuously followed the international news in newspapers and TV news-broadcasts. Whenever I thought exact data are necessary, I have consulted the internet and Wikipedia. This essay is entirely based on knowledge thus acquired. I hope the average reader, particularly the average peace activist will find it interesting and/or useful.

Notes and References (Preface)

1. Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus' Roman writer (4th or 5th century AD)

Editor’s Preface

“Why war?” – this question has probably been on everyone's mind from time to time. In view of the almost unimaginable destruction and terrible human suffering that so often accompany wars, it would mean a genuine progress in human history, if wars could be consigned to the “dustbin of history“. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of people – regardless of where they live - would certainly speak out clearly in favor of living in peace (if they were asked about it).

However, the current predominance in the media of reports on two wars of geopolitical dimensions is a painful daily reminder that we are in this respect still far removed from success in raising human development to a new level. Moreover, in recent years and decades, several smaller wars and armed conflicts have been going on in regions that seem to lie far away from us Western and Central Europeans.

So why do wars and violent conflicts stubbornly persist despite all the obvious atrocities that accompany them? And what are the conditions for peace to reign in and among human societies? Saral Sarkar explores these questions in this – quite long – essay in depth.

In March 2023, when I visited Saral, he told me that he had been working on a text on the topic of conflict and peace for quite some time and that he had originally planned it to be a relatively extensive book. He said he had already collected a large amount of material for this endeavor. But due to the limited energy and lifespan that he, as an old man, may still be left with, Saral decided to limit the volume of his work. At the time we met, he spoke of publishing a brochure. Now it has become a “real“ book after all, albeit a slim one. However, the compactness of the presentation need not be a disadvantage, as Saral also points out in his foreword.

As both layout designer and editor, I only made minor changes to the text. They mainly involved checking and expanding the references, which made the sections on notes and references a little longer.

Many of the quotations in the text (mainly those from German) are translated by Saral himself. In some cases, however, the quotation is a translation done by Saral from the German language edition of the English original. Saral had to do this retranslation because it was not possible to access the English original (at least with reasonable effort). We apologize for any slight inaccuracies that may have resulted because of this procedure.

As we expect the book to be read in both English-speaking and German-speaking countries, some terms appear in both languages. We hope that we are using the correct terms.

Finally, I wish the reader an enjoyable and enlightening read. It is well worth it.

Ernst Schriefl

May 2024

Chapter 1

Introduction: Aggression, Violence and War among Homo sapiens

In ethology (behavioral science), the existence of intraspecific violence is seen as a part of normal behavior of animals. It is even regarded as necessary for, at least conducive to, the survival of a species. If, as is the practice among animals, only the strongest, the healthiest, and the cleverest of the males in a group mate with the females, then the progenies, that will form the next generation, can be expected to have a better chance of survival in the wilderness. For this to happen, however, the particular male must first fight off the rival males from within and outside the group and thus prevent the weak or sickly males from copulating with the females.

In carnivore animal groups, sometimes it also comes to half-violent quarrels over share of the meat of the slain prey. Sometimes even a mother-animal uses mild violence to compel her own grown-up brood-children to leave her territory and seek their own new foraging ground. Such intraspecific violence does not as a rule end in killing of a fellow member of the species, does not thus endanger the further existence of the group or the survival of the species. The weaker (defeated) male animal simply withdraws from the competition.

Konrad Lorenz (1963) calls such violence “the so-called evil”. But he thinks, the so-called evil among animals developed into a real evil among humans, into an evil aggressive instinct. Among humans, it very often comes to intraspecific killing, even to murder, and to mass killings in wars. He thinks it came about in the thousands of years of the Paleolithic Age in the following way:

„When man had reached the stage of having weapons, clothing and social organization, so overcoming the dangers of starving, freezing, and being eaten by wild animals, and these dangers ceased to be the essential factors influencing selection, an evil intra-specific selection must have set in. The factor influencing selection was now the wars waged between hostile neighboring tribes. These must have evolved into an extreme form of all those so-called ‘warrior virtues’ … “(Lorenz 1976: 34)

We see in the above quote that Lorenz assumes, even in earliest human history, the pre-existence of violence, even “war”1 among enemy neighboring hordes.

But why should they have made war at all, two autonomous relatively big groups of humans fighting against one another? This view of Lorenz was strongly rejected by what we may call the progressive or humanist camp. They suspected Lorenz of serving the political interests of conservatives. Erich Fromm, a famous representative of this camp, wrote:

„What could be more welcome to people, […] who fear themselves and feel themselves powerless to change the way of the world that is leading to destruction, than the theory of Lorenz that violence comes from our animal nature and originates from an uncontrollable drive for aggression?“ (Fromm 1974; quoted from Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1988/1997: 208., translated by S. Sarkar)

I find this kind of suspicion unfair. One did not blame Darwin for propounding the theory of evolution, even though his theory was misused by Social-Darwinists and racists.

However, Fromm also has some apparently cogent criticism of Lorenz’s theory of origin of war. He argues as follows: Firstly, in view of the fact that in war, particularly in primitive warfare, very aggressive individuals are killed in large numbers, it is not plausible that hyper-aggression, as Fromm calls it, developed among humans by means of positive genetic selection through war. With the dead young warriors, the gene supposed to be responsible for such aggression should gradually disappear, leading actually to negative selection. The point Fromm is here trying to make is that such a gene does not exist, at least not anymore, if it had ever existed.

Secondly, Fromm argues further, before the advent of civilization, foragers (primitive hunters and gatherers) could not have much economic motivation to wage war. For population growth was negligible, there was not much moveable property that could be carried off, and slaves could not produce any surplus. Conflicts over hunting grounds or water holes were probably settled without battle. The stronger group (horde) just gradually pushed the weaker away.

I do not actually know whether Lorenz and ethologists of his school responded to Fromm’s first objection, but I can imagine their response. They could respond by slightly revising their assertion, saying that such hyper-aggression is an innate drive and that it is present in every human male ever since humans evolved from our ancestral ape species. That is why the death of some particularly aggressive warriors cannot erase this drive from the human genome.

While we are at it, before proceeding further in the debate, let me present in short the aggression theories of Lorenz and Fromm.

Excursus (a): Aggression Theory of Lorenz (and his school)

Lorenz does not see behind aggression any interest-led drive. According to him, intra-specific aggression among animals is the result of an instinct that also exists among humans. But in this matter, there is a difference between animals and humans. Among animals, this aggression has a positive function for the survival of the species. It ensures that in the available habitat, individuals of the species are distributed at sufficient distance from one another; it guarantees selection of genetically better males (stronger, more capable of surviving), and it constructs a social hierarchical order that is useful in any group living. Aggression has fulfilled this function much better, ever since, in the evolution process, deadly aggression was transformed into symbolic and ritual threatening. Because of these positive functions, Lorenz calls the “evil” of aggression “the so-called evil” (“Das sogenannte Böse”, the title of the German original, his main book).

Lorenz thinks that the human drive for aggression is fed by a continually flowing energy, which accumulates in the nerve center connected with this instinct. This leads to increase in pressure in a quasi-hydraulic system. For Lorenz, it is not only unhealthy to suppress aggression that wants to be released, it is also very difficult, if not impossible, to control it. When the pressure has risen too much, it can come to an explosion. Then a human being can become gruesome, murderous, even without a stimulus from outside. But as a rule, both humans and animals find some stimuli, they look for stimuli, or they themselves create stimuli. Lorenz gives the example of founding a political party, which generates stimuli, but is not really a cause of aggression.

Desmond Morris (1967/1994: 117) calls sports like wrestling, Judo, and boxing as “highly stylized versions” of “adult unarmed combat”. I could add behaviour of groups of hooligan-fans of a soccer club who go to the stadium not so much to enjoy the match as to get an opportunity to fight against the hooligan-fan groups of the rival club.

Sometimes the release of pressure from spontaneously accumulating aggression takes place at the cost of inanimate objects. Lorenz wrote (somewhere) that he once found himself “attacking” a beer can lying on the street to release his aggression-pressure. This also happens when there is a provocation from some opponent. Violent demonstrators, who are provoked e.g., by a government decision, by employers, or the police, smash window panes of buildings, set fire to buses etc.

Morris (1967/1994: 109) writes:

„What happens is that, because the object (the opponent) stimulating the attack is too frightening to be directly assaulted, the aggressive movements are released, but have to be re-directed towards some other, less intimidating object, such as a harmless bystander […] or even an inanimate object. […] When a wife smashes a vase to the floor, it is, of course really her husband’s head that lies there broken into small pieces. It is interesting that chimpanzees and gorillas frequently perform their own version of this display, when they tear up, smash and throw around branches and vegetation.“

Excursus (b): Erich Fromm’s Theory of Aggression

Fromm – not an ethologist, but a social psychologist, who had a deep understanding of the human psyche (soul) and had studied the relevant literature in many fields – rejected (as shown above) the ethologists' aggression theory and presented his own, which can be summarized as follows:

Aggression is an instinct2, which is nothing bad; it is even necessary. It is necessary for delimitation, self-assertion, and defense of one’s vital interests, in short, for survival, and therefore it exists both in animals and humans. But, contrary to what Lorenz asserts, it is not an uncontrollable urge. It only comes into play as a reaction to threats (challenges) to one’s vital interests. Fromm, therefore, speaks of defensive or reactive aggression, which is benign. Among animals, vital interests are the individual’s own life, care for progeny, access to individuals of the opposite sex, access to sources of food, and survival of the species.

Among humans, however, vital interests can mean much more, which is why they can be more aggressive than animals. They can also react to foreseeable and imaginable future danger. They can create symbols, idols, and values, with which they identify themselves so much that an attack against or just a threat to them becomes an attack against or threat to one’s vital interests. Finally, through education, ideology and brainwashing, all kinds of “vital interests” can be suggested to humans. But all these are not like those of animals, i.e. not innate among humans. They are results of the hitherto existing social structure based on exploitation and violence.

Fromm (1973: 185) writes:

„If human aggression were more or less at the same level as that of other mammals, […] human society would be rather peaceful and nonviolent. But this is not so. Man’s history is a record of extraordinary destructiveness and cruelty, and human aggression, it seems, far surpasses that of man’s animal ancestors.“

According to him “hyper-aggression” is unique to humans. What is unique to man is that he „can be driven by impulses to kill and to torture, and he feels lust in doing so; he is the only animal that can be a killer and destroyer of his own species without any rational gain, either biological or economic” (ibid: 218). Fromm calls this “sadistic-cruel destructiveness”, also “malignant“ aggression.