If any one thing should be clear from the study of history, it is that people around the world routinely get into wars.  At any given time, multiple wars are in progress at different points around the world, and many nations not at war are busy improving their arsenals so that they will not be defeated if war breaks out again.  The tendency to periodically fight wars seems to be a natural cycle of human group behavior.

This is not to imply that people like war.  Most people claim to hate war. Yet they support tough leaders who call for military buildups and project an image of strength to all potential foes. And when their leaders call for war or make ultimatums that can easily lead to war, as if by instinct, most of the people will rally behind them.

Some wars are nearly unavoidable since they follow an enemy attack.  Pearl Harbor and 9-11 drove the United States into wars with Japan and Afghanistan it had not planned.  In Europe, after Hitler launched attacks on Poland and France, other nations had reason enough to believe that they would be next. Few would argue the need for a military response where a nation has been attacked or has every reason to expect an attack. 

But for every attack, there must be an attacker.

It is obvious why nations fight to resist an attack, but why do nations so frequently resort to attacking, killing, and damaging other nations that have not attacked them?

Since the Second World War, the US has gone to war on the average of once every two years.  What’s more, during that period US-sponsored covert CIA activities resulted in more than a dozen additional military conflicts and several government overthrows.  In most of these cases, neither the US nor any of its allies had been attacked, nor did they expect to be attacked by those with whom the US did battle. Why then did the US, often with allied support, spend so much energy conducting battles around the world?

Some would say that the US and its allies won the Cold War due to the combined affect of fighting such battles. To understand this viewpoint, it is necessary to review the events that prompted the Cold War.

Two circumstances led the Western nations to fear the Soviet Union. The first and most stunning event occurred as the Soviet Union drove the Nazi invaders out of Eastern Europe. Instead of liberating the victim nations, Stalin required them to join the Soviet Union. As the “iron curtain” spread across Europe dividing the “free” nations from the Soviet satellite nations, a second concern unnerved the Western nations. Revolutions were breaking out around the world, and in many cases the Soviet Union was either aiding or encouraging those revolutions to further spread its own realm of influence. In the words of Ronald Reagan, the Soviet Union was “an evil empire,” intent on achieving world domination by any means possible, and armed well enough to destroy the world if we directly attacked it.

Several revolutions began with third-world people trying to rid themselves of European colonial rulers.  Most of the colonial rulers were US NATO partners. While the US did not advocate colonialism, it considered any group that accepted Soviet aid as an ally of its foremost enemy, and that was cause enough for a US military or CIA action. The world had become a giant chess game, where the US and its allies fought dozens of battles in far-off places to block any gains by “leftists” who accepted Soviet support.  

Key people in the US government believed that covert military actions were the best means of preventing the spread of communism where communists, socialists, or any group that accepted Soviet aid had either come to power or were seeking to do so. In several cases the US targeted democratically elected leaders who advocated socialist agendas or failed to provide convincing declarations in opposition to communism. In his 2007 book Legacy of Ashes,[1] Tim Weiner furnishes details concerning a long list of governments targeted for overthrow either directly by the CIA or by groups within those countries with CIA support. Since covert actions were planned and executed under a tight cloak of secrecy, neither Congress nor the American people had any input. There was no opportunity to ask questions or otherwise challenge the wisdom of attacking these nations or groups, which in almost every case had no intention of attacking the US.

In the early years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union built an enormous stockpile of atomic bombs and other military equipment.  They claimed they needed a credible deterrent to prevent the US and its allies from daring to attack them, as several prominent US generals and politicians had publicly advocated after Stalin’s conquest of Eastern Europe.  Of course, this Soviet buildup made the US feel even more threatened, so it also stockpiled bombs and other military equipment. Each side feared and distrusted the other side, and as the arsenals grew, so did the volume of fear and distrust.

Occasionally, the two sides would negotiate agreements to place some restraints on the mutual buildup of arsenals. For example, the US and Soviets agreed not to orbit nuclear weapons in space. The Soviets also agreed to remove recently installed missiles from Cuba in exchange for US concessions. But despite the success of these and other negotiations, the general trend throughout most of the Cold War was for both sides to invest huge sums building more and scarier weapons and to communicate mainly by fighting proxy wars and by hurling accusations and insults at one another. 

Peace was rarely mentioned in political campaigns during the Cold War. Why talk peace with an enemy if you believe nothing that its leaders say? US politicians who called for talks with the Soviets were denounced as naïve or “soft on communism,” so proposals for reducing tensions were rarely offered or explored. If either side did offer any type of peace overture during the Cold War period, hawks on the opposing side often credited that concession to their own tough stance.  Claiming that military pressure had forced the offer or concession – they would advocate increasing the level of threat. Since the hawks believed that their enemy respected only strength, they could hardly imagine any goodwill outreach resulting from good intentions. 

For forty years the Cold War went on costing trillions of dollars and causing enormous suffering in conflict sites around the world. On several occasions, every rational person had reason to fear the outbreak of nuclear holocaust.  

After Stalin’s death, without offering to free Easter Europe, Khrushchev publicly denounced his predecessor’s excesses and made clear that Soviet leadership had significantly changed. Given that change, did either side miss opportunities to reduce Cold War tensions and end the conflict sooner? Did good offers die without consideration due to distrust and an unwillingness to talk problems out?  Summit meetings never became warm and trusting idea exchanges. An unending string of world-wide conflicts nourished a continuing atmosphere of mutual distrust.

The following factors made peace initiatives difficult to advance:

1.       Both sides fearing and distrusting the other side’s intentions

2.       Difficulty achieving consensus for advancing initiatives

3.       Cloaking controversial clandestine military actions in secrecy so they could not be debated or opposed – but thereby adding to the enemy’s distrust

4.       Difficulty reconciling the desire to win conflicts with the desire to reduce tensions

5.       Promoting war support as a patriotic duty

6.       Burying information that could reduce public support for the war

7.       Exaggerating the enemy’s wickedness, often using worst-case incidents as evidence to characterize the mindset of all enemy leaders

8.       Defense contractors stoking people’s fears in order to market their products or obtain contracts

9.       Candidates stoking people’s fears in order to hurt their political rivals

10.   Candidates fearing to do or say anything that political rivals could use as evidence that they did not support the troops

11.   People in key positions fearing to be branded as stooges who’s ideas might give aid or comfort to the enemy

12.   Leaders on both sides failing to meet with and talk to each other concerning problems and differences

These fear-born attitudes and behaviors are not unique to the Cold War. They contribute to the outbreak of war and they make existing wars more difficult to end. Consider as well that in most countries, including the US, a single head of state has the power to start a war, and once that war has begun, opposition groups in other branches of government may lack the power to halt it.

In healthy democracies the rule of law provides a peaceful route to power. Many nations have no peaceful route to power. The strongest and most ruthless leaders battle their way to the top.  People like Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin got to the top by killing their opponents. After winning an election, Adolf Hitler used his new position to overwhelm the rule of law and usurp a level of control that writers of the German constitution had never intended. Once a brutal and aggressive leader takes control of a nation, neighboring nations have reason for alarm.   

Though people say they hate war, they often see war as nearly unavoidable. So long as people with Hitler-type thinking continue acquiring power, the forces of good must continue to arm themselves and make ultimatums in order to ensure a successful resistance.  While our leaders may not always make wise decisions in matters of war, we see ourselves as the forces of good and we see those who scare us as the forces of evil. We must have the biggest stick and stand ready to use it because that is the only message the forces of evil will clearly understand. 

However, outside of the Western nations the US and its allies are not always viewed as the forces of good. Iran has referred to the US as the “great Satan,” and many Muslims view western culture as corrupting to their values.

Even within nations that the US considers its friends and allies many people distrust the US. When the Pew Global Attitudes Project interviewed 17,000 people in fifteen nations between March 31 and May 14 of 2006[2], it found that the reputation of the US has suffered due largely to its prosecution of the war on terror. The percentage of people feeling “good will” towards the US was measured at 23% in Spain and 12% in Turkey. In Indonesia, a major recipient of US tsunami aid, only 30% had a favorable opinion of the US. In 10 of the 14 participating countries outside the US, a majority believed that the US war on Iraq had made their world a more dangerous place.  

The US sometimes calls itself the “leader of the free world.” In this leadership role, the US often condemns the behaviors of those it views as rogue states, and it calls for actions against them. With mostly noble intentions, the US tries to curb the abuses of tyrants, identify the axis of evil, stop genocides, and halt the spread of nuclear arms. It sometimes acts on its own, but it usually tries to pull together an alliance, such as NATO, the UN, or a “coalition of the willing.”  

Other nations also dislike tyrants, genocide, and the spread of nuclear arms, but they often resist playing follow the leader.  The US has assumed the role of leader because it is large and has the strongest military. But having nominated itself as world leader, the US often loses when it calls for a vote.

No one nation should assume responsibility for policing the world. If the US goes to war without first obtaining the agreement and support of other nations, instead of people in those nations appreciating the US and the sacrifices its soldiers make, they will more likely distrust the US or even side with its enemies. 

What’s more, policing the world is expensive. Without the full burden of costly wars, a nation can invest more in its own development. Since the US has deficit financed its war in Iraq, its dollar has been slipping due, at least in part, to massive trade and government spending deficits.

Now that the Soviet Union no longer generates fears that lead to world-wide conflicts, the war on terror has taken its place.  Once again the US and its allies are sponsoring wars in far-away places, and once again the US has attacked a nation that had neither attacked the US nor planned to attack it – a war that its sponsors labeled a “pre-emptive war.”  

The earlier Desert Storm war ended with UN weapons inspectors searching Iraq for hidden WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction). Before the inspectors had finished their mission, Saddam Hussein’s government began blocking their access to many locations. Thus frustrated, the inspectors left Iraq without completing their mission and suspicious that Saddam must still be hiding significant caches of weapons.   

After several years of distrusting Saddam, the Bush and Blaire administrations asked the United Nations to sponsor a second war on Iraq to find and destroy the remaining WMDs. Threat of another war prompted Saddam to invite the inspectors back into Iraq and to allow them free access to all locations without requiring advance notice of where they planned to look. 

Once the UN inspectors returned to their jobs, it seemed to most UN members that the war’s objectives had already been won. In the final weeks before the war, UN weapons inspectors were pleading on the evening news, “If you really know for certain that Saddam has WMDs, please share your intelligence with us so we can find those weapons and destroy them.” What’s more, seeing that President Bush did not trust the UN, Saddam was offering a US-led alternative in the search for WMDs[3].  That offer never made the front page, perhaps because it was so quickly dismissed without any hint of serious consideration.  When the Bush and Blaire administrations recruited a non-UN “coalition of the willing” to invade Iraq, many UN members viewed this act as rushing into a needless war. 

After some early successes, the war stopped going according to plan. Many Iraqis took up arms against the “occupiers.” Crime and then sectarian violence began to make Iraq a very dangerous place. By mid 2006, four years into the war, an estimated 151,000 Iraqis had died, and many more were seriously injured. No numbers are available for the last 18 months, but last year is said to be the deadliest, so many more were killed or injured. About 2.3 million Iraqis had sought refuge in other nations, and an equal number of people were displaced within Iraq. This gave those who advised against the war good reason to say, “We told them not to do it, but they went and did it anyway.”

But the news has not all been grim. Current US efforts to quell the factional violence in Iraq seem to be succeeding. Monthly death tolls have fallen by 60% during the fall months of 2007. Yet many Americans and people around the world have long since decided that the US and its allies had no legitimate reason to enter Iraq and should not continue the occupation. Like a giant oil tanker cruising at full speed, this antiwar sentiment, which in the US is particularly strong among Democrats, cannot be turned on a dime. Many Americans now view the current Iraq war as a mistake, and war weariness has dampened their will to see it through.

War weariness sets in when a war does not go as expected; people see the war as a mistake; and they start viewing war advocates as political adversaries. To the US and its allies, war weariness derives mainly from counting the numbers of our soldiers killed and injured and the cost of war expenses. To nations, such as Iraq and Viet Nam, where we have fought our longest wars, the numbers and percentages of people killed and injured and the amount of destruction to their homeland far exceed what the US experienced in all of WWII. Most Americans cannot appreciate the scale of carnage and destruction because they have never experienced anything like it themselves.

A background war in a far-off place does not always seem like issue number one. The allies often view their wars as a favor they do for the nations they invade. People should be thankful to the allied soldiers for risking their lives to liberate them from the tyrant that we so much despise. 

In Viet Nam, for example, General Ho Chi Minh became a national hero by leading the war that drove out the French colonialists. The Europeans divided Viet Nam in hopes of preventing Ho from maintaining control in the southern half of the country, but they scheduled an election so that the Vietnamese people could decide the matter themselves.  After visiting Viet Nam to determine how that election would go, Eisenhower’s brother, Milton, told the President that Ho Chi Minh would win with an overwhelming margin if he were allowed to run. That election was cancelled.[4] During the following two decades of fighting “for them,” we killed about four million civilians and 1.1 million soldiers.^[5] But the allies normally focus on their own losses, which came to less than 1% of the Vietnamese total.

The US offers convincing statistics to prove that its current surge in Iraq has reduced the factional violence there. One good reason to stay in Iraq would be that the Iraqi people want the coalition forces to continue providing that protection. Since President Bush has expressed no plans to leave, it would be nice to know that most Iraqis do prefer the current arrangement. But what do polls of Iraqi citizens actually show? 

At the time of this writing, the most recent poll taken in Iraq was conducted by the UK-based polling agency, Opinion Research Business. In a sample of 922 adult Basra residents taken in December 2007 just before the British pulled their troops from Basra Province, only 2% said that British troops had a “positive effect” on the province since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in March 2003. 86% felt British troops had had a negative effect.[6]

The most recent nation-wide poll was conducted by D3 Systems and KA Research Ltd for the BBC, ABC News, and NHK of Japan. Some 2,112 Iraqis were questioned in more than 450 neighborhoods across all the 18 provinces of Iraq between August 17 and August 24, 2007.[7] The first question was: "The United States has increased the number of its forces in Baghdad and surrounding provinces in the past six months. Please tell me if you think this increase of forces has made it better, worse, or had no effect?" The graphs show between 69 and 70% answering “worse.” Still, the option “leave now” drew only 47%. Of course, the evidence of success has improved since September, so a new survey would probably show different results. However, 57% of all Iraqis and 93% of the Sunnis surveyed in this poll said that attacks against coalition forces were “acceptable.”  

War weariness seems to have little deterrent affect when it comes to entering new wars. Germans felt war weary after WWI; yet just one generation later they elected Adolf Hitler. War weariness also occurred after several years of unsuccessful fighting in Viet Nam; yet shortly after that war ended, new wars took its place.

War weariness should not be confused with war wariness.  War wariness, occurs when national leaders quell the human tendency to rush into war before considering and testing other options. Frequently, nations do avoid war, although that fact receives almost no publicity. When cool-headed leaders feel threatened or provoked, they manage their anger and think through the options. After considering the costs of war, they select other options. Leaders who consider war a failure of diplomacy do not instinctively go to war in situations where others would do so. But since avoided wars never happen, they don’t make the headlines.

People usually rally behind their war-time leaders, and historians usually speak well of those who successfully lead their nations through a war.  Leaders who settle disputes by skillful diplomacy will lose the claim to fame that comes from being a war-time leader.  What a travesty that is!  War becomes the only option when an enemy allows no better choice; but frequently war is one of several options. A leader who can resolve conflicts without resorting to war should receive more kudos than someone who dispenses with or fails at diplomacy. We should view as heroes those who steer away from needless wars.

In the United States, the presidential hopefuls in the Democratic Party and the Republican candidate Ron Paul seem to agree that the current war in Iraq has been a mistake, and each of them calls for scaling back the war to some degree.  Only Dennis Kucinich calls himself a “peace candidate.” Most people see him a fringe candidate who has no chance of winning. 

Mainstream candidates avoid being labeled peace candidates or peace activists. Most voters view peace activists as naïve people who advocate impractical solutions to the never-ending problem of nations going to war. Voter instinct looks for strength. Voters prefer candidates who convey a tough image, such as Arnold Swartzeneggar – the “Terminator.” To create a strong image, candidates such as John Kerry, John Kennedy, and John Mc Cain have highlighted their combat experience. Some candidates are pictured wearing – or do actually wear – a military uniform during campaign appearances. Voters want a powerful leader who will face down all enemies. And if that preference does nothing to halt an endless cycle of wars, winning those wars seems more important than avoiding them.

Candidate Kucinich may never get to lead his party, but he addresses a concern that no other candidate mentions. The issue of peace does not just apply to the war in Iraq. We must better understand the decision process that leads us into wars which most of the world would prefer us to avoid – wars with nations that have not attacked us.[8]

Many peace activists do seem naïve. Around the world they have formed different groups.  They hold meetings, have websites, and promote a variety of proposals and agendas. Yet, except for the Carter Center, it is difficult to identify any successes that peace groups have achieved.

To many Americans, peace activists are not just naïve.  They view the ideas of peace activists as hostile to the nation’s objectives, offensive to the troops, and supportive of the enemy.

One might expect that America’s current frustrations with the Iraq war would moderate that view, but that has not been the case.  Being, as he calls it, “right on the war” has not pushed Kucinich into the mainstream. Similarly, Barack Obama said that he would hold discussions with nations such as Iran during one of the early debates. His Democrat rivals quickly branded him “naïve;” reporters called it a mistake; and Obama has been attacked on this issue ever since.

In the movies a super-hero type dispenses justice with the pull of a trigger. In real life, people who pull guns in domestic conflicts usually wind up in jail. But international conflicts are a different matter. Many world leaders view saber rattling and military ultimatums as the best way to communicate with troublesome foreigners. And if war breaks out, just about anything goes.

The international rules of military justice demand very little. They allow for mass bombings and gunpoint takeovers. Still, some presidents and military commanders find them bothersome. If military leaders can ignore the rules with impunity, they sometimes will. In the fog of war, every citizen of an enemy nation is viewed as the enemy. Untargeted victims of bombing raids are just “collateral damage,” and captured enemy suspects have almost no rights.

Most people believe that their nations must occasionally go to war. They usually view such wars as being forced upon them due to wrongful actions by the other side. The victims must defend themselves in order to survive and preserve what they value. In many cases this thinking allows them to justify attacking other nations that have not attacked them.

Can nations avoid war and survive?

They can if they are not attacked.  Many nations have stayed out of war for decades. Sweden has almost totally avoided war since its last significant war in 1814. The allies sometimes criticize Sweden for not having joined their stand against Hitler, but if people can forgive the Germans for causing the war, they can certainly forgive several countries that avoided taking sides. Perhaps Sweden is an extreme case, since it has avoided all wars, and not just wars that clearly should be avoided. But Sweden is one of several examples which prove that people can quell the instincts that drive them into war. If every nation followed Sweden’s example, all wars would end and the world would be a happier place.

Few Swedes are conscientious objectors. Sweden will fight if attacked, and considering its tiny population, it maintains a strong defense.  Europe rates the Swedish air force as one its best. Sweden keeps only about 50,000 troops on active duty, but it claims it can mobilize ten times that number in a matter of days. That would be about 8% of Sweden’s total population. But while the Swedish people maintain a strong defense, they don’t recruit soldiers by glorifying war. They have learned how to protect themselves without promoting war. That lesson comes from somewhere within the developmental process that forms the Swedish mind set.

It doesn’t take 200 years to develop a war-wary culture. Shortly after losing as an aggressor in the Second World War, Japan became one of the world’s foremost advocates for peace. This clearly demonstrates that an aggressive mind set can be quickly reversed. We should study some of these examples to learn how people manage to foster avoidance of unnecessary wars while remaining strong enough to deter attackers.  I could find no evidence that school curriculums promote war wariness in nations that manage to stay out of wars, but I expect that they do.

Unless we demand a change, it will not happen by chance. The question is how to mainstream a set of initiatives and get them enacted.

Polls show that most US voters currently believe that their country is on the wrong course. This judgment seems to apply to the Bush Administration’s conduct in both the war on terror and the war in Iraq. That, of course, does not mean that the US people have united behind any particular alternative, and it does not mean that they will vote for a “peace candidate.” But I do expect that many Americans have, at least for awhile, become tired of having their nation go it alone in defiance of UN and world opinion.  Now might be an ideal time to study the patterns that have led us into an endless cycle of costly wars. We need a solution that mainstream voters will support – one that people in power cannot easily circumvent. 

Would the world steer a course toward disaster if the US stepped back and allowed others to lead?

Smaller nations do not expect to get their way on many issues. If genocide in Sudan or the threat of nuclear proliferation in Iran offends or worries a small European nation, it can sponsor or back a UN initiative. But if that initiative either does not pass or it fails to solve the problem, they must accept the fact that this is not a perfect world. 

The US needs to start viewing its role in the world more as a team player and less as its captain. It needs to show more respect for the opinions of other responsible nations. And although we may not like everything we learn about the UN, if we attacked it less and worked within it to make it better, it might become more effective.

President Bush seems to believe that the US Constitution grants the President full authority to conduct any military action he considers necessary. This challenge to Congressional authority should not go unanswered.  Congress must challenge his assertions in the Supreme Court.  What’s more, the US should pass new laws to restrict a president from acting on his own authority to start a military action against a nation that has not attacked or prepared to attack the US or any of its allies.

Unfortunately, Congress does not do much with the powers it already has. Congress granted war powers to the President for the current war with Iraq, just as it did when President Johnson requested war powers for the war in Viet Nam.  The US Constitution’s “division of powers” means little when Congress quickly gives up its role in the decision making.

Americans have accepted the teaching of conflict resolution as a means for reducing violence in our schools. They might also accept discussions of non-violent conflict resolution as an option to explore in international conflicts. But new movements rarely begin in the schools. School curriculum usually reflects ideas that have already achieved mainstream acceptance and would not lead to controversy.

Other nations manage to avoid unnecessary wars for decades at a time. If we study their examples and implement similar policies and practices, we can learn to do it too.