Hello. Now that we've talked about what we mean by war, and I've given you an idea of how we're going to approach studying it, let's take on, perhaps, the biggest question of all, the causes of war. Why do we have war? I'm going to argue, and I have argued, that war is a normal, social phenomenon. Nevertheless, we still have to understand why it occurs. Now, we're not going to try to explain any particular war and look at the historical context of any particular event, rather, what we're going to try to do is tease out, how can we explain what we, why war occurs. How can we explain war, given the central paradoxes of war? That is, and I am going to use Rousseau and Hobbes, in a way, as a way of illustrating that. Now, it's paradoxical. War is paradoxical in that it involves a huge amount of cooperation. For war to win, for war to exist, you have to have teamwork. Teamwork is central, in fact, teamwork is very much part of the rhetoric of war. Teamwork is very much part of the kind of training that is needed for war. When you become a soldier, you become part of a team. The old line that there's no I in team is very very relevant for this kind of organization. So war, on the one hand, requires all these kinds of cooperation. War requires that we come together. War requires that we become a single unit. War requires that we accept each other's common humanity. At the same time, at the very same time, that we're in conflict with other humans. So, let's think about what Rousseau and Hobbes have to say about this. For Hobbes, aggression is a natural state of humans. It's inevitable, and only through the imposition of authority, only through the imposition of leviathan, can we control violence. Now, he doesn't believe that violence is going to be totally endemic. He doesn't believe that violence is constant, but he makes the point that violence is always possible. So, in order for a social, a system to function, it has to have some kind of imposition, so everyone feels guaranteed. Everyone feels safe, okay? Now, for him, war is going to be something that is avoided by society. Society exists to control war and to control these kinds of violent instincts that overwhelm us. Rousseau takes a very different perspective. He says that peace is a natural state of humans. It's the imposition of authority, it's the imposition of hierarchy, it is precisely the imposition of society that creates war. So, we have two very different views. One sees human beings as naturally violent, requiring, in a sense, some kind of control from above, some way of creating community. Rousseau, on the other hand, says, no, if we were left to our own devices, we would be peaceful. We wouldn't have this kind of the conflict, but it is precisely the imposition of this kind of authority and hierarchy that produces war. I want to argue that, in a sense, both are right. Hobbes, he's correct in that the imposition of the monopoly over the means of violence is the first step towards peace. That is, that only by establishing a monopoly over violence, only by creating some kind of order, can you have peace. That is, you we've seen time and time and time again that the minute you lose that sense of control, the minute you lose that monopoly over the means of violence, you get chaos, alright? But, he ignores that what happens if you have more than one leviathan? What happens if you have neighboring, competing leviathans? And, it is precisely those competing leviathans that might make war possible. This brings us back to Rousseau. He's correct in that war would be impossible without centralized authority. It's not that the centralized authority perverts human nature, but rather, that it makes organized violence possible. It's that only because we are organized, only because we have this kind of hierarchy, can we create the kind of organization that is needed for war. So what is, I want you to think about this. On the one hand, we have this idea that a central authority keeps our human instincts at bay. On the other hand, we have an idea that it is precisely that central authority that leads to conflict. And, this is these para, one of these paradoxes that we're going to be coming back to over and over again. To what extent, in a sense, is our civilization the product of war? To what extent does civilization produce war? Or, to what extent we would be better off, in a sense, more peaceful, in a more anarchic state. Now, in order to answer these questions, we have to ask several others. The first one is, is war universal? That is, does war occur everywhere? Because, if we find that war only occurs under certain circumstances in some societies, then we can delian, delineate those kinds of causes. We can say what distinguishes this kind of society from that kind of society. So, if war is not universal, that's going to take us a long way. Unfortunately, war seems to be universal. There is no region of the world or level of civilization that is immune to war. That is, that we have evidence, over and over again, as soon as human beings begin to coalesce, as soon as we have these kinds of collectives, we seem to have some indication of war. There's evidence of war going back to the Mesolithic period, about 12 to 10 thousand BC, and this is evidenced, for example, by the very famous paintings in the [UNKNOWN] that depict warfare. That is, this is the first time that we see cave paintings that are not just individuals fighting, but rather, they are individuals as groups fighting other individuals as groups. It is no longer the single hunter against an animal. It is human beings against each other. It is interesting that war seems to coincide with the more sedentary living arrangements. That is, the very first characteristics that we would call civilization, of having a x number of human beings be able to coalesce, be able to coexist, be able to coordinate their efforts. It is precisely as we see this kind of sedentary civilization that we see war. So, that would suggest that there is a positive correlation between social complexity and war making. That is, that as, war requires a certain amount of organization and social complexity. Moreover, war might contribute to the creation of that social complexity. That the relationship between war and civilization, rather than being antagonistic, is actually complementary. Now, obviously, we need to distinguish between modern war and primitive war. Now, what's interesting about this is that the killing ratio for quote unquote primitive war that is, depending on the line you want to use, whether it's before gunpowder or before these large armies, et cetera, the killing ratio seems to be about the same, according to Lawrence Keeley. That is, that, against Rousseau, when we look at these groups, when we look at these first, initial groups, we don't find peace. We actually find a great deal of evidence of traumatic violence. Now, obviously, there's going to be differences between the kind violence this person endured, and you see the arrow right there, and the kind of violence associated with missiles. They are different in the forms of warfare, and types of warfare, and tactics, and technology. Modern weapons now make complete destruction of life possible. So, we have moved away from the kind of primitive violence, if you will. We have made it much more modern, much more destructive, but we can argue that there is this constant. That, the minute that human beings come together, the minute human beings create these complex organizations, they end up fighting another group of human beings that has been similarly constructed in a complex civilization. [BLANK_AUDIO]
