What White does not consider, however, is the swiftness with which "group-think" can switch from a black-and-white to a more nuanced perspective when leadership shows the way. For instance, U.S. opinion toward the Soviet Union swung from negative to positive to negative, and then to nuanced, in the relatively short span of 35 years. Similarly, our collective opinion of China moved, during a short six-month period centered on the Kissinger-Nixon visit, from a troubled vision of "yellow hordes" to a widely held and approved perception of a progressive, industrious, insect-free, crime-free, well-fed and generally benign China.
Today, the question is this: What lessons can we take from Dr. White's catalog of factors that distort our understanding of our adversaries' true motivations and serve to justify support for making war against them?
Here, coming from a total layman in the field of international relations, are just a few ideas:
- Give diplomacy a chance. Before taking or even threatening military action, let's ask ourselves what motivates the enemy or adversary, and then seek arrangements through diplomacy that can avoid war. In the case of our war in Iraq, we now know that it is far more probable that Saddam kicked out U.N. inspectors not because they might find WMDs, but because they would find that he had none, thereby exposing his military weakness.
- Take the time needed to let peace happen. Had we given the U.N. inspectors
enough time, we and the world would have learned that there were no WMDs in
Iraq. That finding would have removed the reason
for a rush to war, and would also have made clear that Iraq was not an imminent
threat.
- Enemy bluster may result from fear, rather than from aggressive intent. It is true that the North
Koreans, as a now topical example, have engaged both in the development of nuclear
weapons and in belligerent behavior. We see their actions as aggressive. But
they, on the other hand, almost certainly fear the prospect of U.S. military
action against them that is aimed at "regime change." From that perspective,
they see their weapons development as a deterrent, not as aggression. Through
one-on-one diplomatic interaction, we might offer non-aggression guarantees to
North Korea and countries of a similar mindset in exchange for the cessation of
their military development programs.
- Trade trumps confrontation. In the 1990s, South and North Korea established a
Special Economic Zone inside North Korea, to which South Korea furnished
technology, investments and management and North Korea provided laborers. The
goal, which was widely supported by the people of South Korea, was to grow the
enterprise to 2,000 companies, employing 700,000 North Korean workers by 2012
as a first step toward de facto unification of the Korean peninsula.
Regrettably, this effort has been opposed by the U.S., whose policy is to
isolate North Korea rather than to co-opt it.
- Misperception plays a key role in the causes of war. In international conflicts, such
as today's clash with Putin over NATO expansion, what is to one side an alliance
in support of freedom may well represent military encircle ment to the other. Similarly,
what is to one side an act of liberation may represent aggression to the other,
and what is to one side a firm stamping out of internal disputes may seem to
the other a suppression of human rights. So it goes in all confrontations. Every military believes it is nobly defending
its nation's rights; none considers itself an aggressor. Hitler himself began
by defending the "rights" of the German people to seek to re store
territories he perceived as rightfully belonging to the Third Reich.
- Establishment of a cabinet-level Department of Peace should be
seriously considered. Years ago, then-Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Dem., Ohio) vigorously,
but unsuccessfully, pressed the case for such a new department. If established,
it could provide an important balance to those in the Administration, State Department,
and Department of Defense who argue the case for a militant
foreign policy and press for never-ending war.
Nuclear Weapons and the Means to Provide a Decent Life for All Have Made War both Irrational and Indefensible
Unfortunately, the existing mindset of Americans and their leaders seems incompatible with due attention to, or adoption of, such ideas. Most people still have a way of convincing themselves that, by fighting wars in behalf of their nation, they are serving the cause of peace and defending their own safety, freedom, and way of life. Moreover, although nations are in many ways becoming increasingly interdependent, it is not yet clear they would be willing to accept the small, but requisite, sacrifice of sovereignty that would be necessary to resolve intractable conflicts with other nations without going to war.
As I see it, two developments are needed to end war as a national institution. The first is a recognition by all national governments that, in today's nuclear world, war itself is far more dangerous to the state and its society than the failure to defeat any putative adversary. The second is a concomitant willingness by those governments to suspend their national sovereignty to the extent needed to accept binding arbitration by a sanctioned international body of any intractable inter- or intra-national conflicts in which they might become involved. Such a sacrifice would not be easy, since the right of unqualified sovereignty has been the defining attribute of nation-states throughout history. On the other hand, a rational curb on sovereignty is not out of the question, since a devotion to peace is a central value in the belief systems of all developed cultures.
The human race now has the knowledge, the global wealth, and the technological means to make a decent life available to all people. But it also possesses the knowledge and the means to blot most of us out in an instant inferno, leaving those who remain to the deadly rot of radioactive fallout.
There seems to me only one way to ensure that the second result is not achieved before the first. The nations of the world have to make a choice between a jealous refusal to yield any portion of their sovereignty or an acceptance of the principle of international arbitration of otherwise intractable conflicts. That choice, it seems to me, will determine whether we are headed ultimately toward the good life or Armageddon.
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