The ecology of war

Never before have so many governments throughout the world committed themselves so piously and so persistently to the ideal of world peace - yet never before has this world been ravaged by so many wars and on so vast a scale.

This seeming paradox, our politicians would undoubtedly explain in terms of some technicality, such as a shortage of funds with which to implement their peace-making strategies. None, perhaps, would even conceive the possibility that it was the strategies themselves that were at fault. Yet this is the only conclusion that is reconcilable with our knowledge of the problems involved, both empirical and theoretical.

Let us consider our present attitudes to war and methods of controlling it. First, it is held to be irrational, since it reduces material wealth by killing people and destroying property. People on the other hand are regarded as rational. It must follow that war can only be the result of misunderstandings, which can surely be dispelled if our politicians be allowed to meet for heart-to-heart talks.

Hence the extraordinary faith people seem to attach to summit conferences as a means of averting wars, an illusion fully exploited by several of our recent prime ministers for whom the setting up of such conferences was one of their major goals, on the basis of whose achievement they persuaded the electorate to judge the success of their government.

If negotiation is the answer, then it is clearly important to do so, we are told, "from a position of strength", hence the arms race, or, as it is euphemistically called, 'mutual deterrence'. With the passing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) mutual deterrence has been consecrated as the principal means of controlling wars. The agreement attempts to control the arms race by applying quantitative limitations on arms build-up. However, its effectiveness is seriously compromised by the fact that it makes no mention of qualitative controls.

As Frank Barnaby points out, the nuclear arms race, in any case, was about to become a race for quality rather than quantity. [1] This means that a new premium has now been placed on research and development into ever more lethal weaponry. It is not surprising that the US budget for research and development in this field is likely to increase beyond the present $8 billion a year (1974), about the same as is spent by the USSR - a sum greater than any other country devotes to its entire military budget. It seems quite extraordinary that we should have created a situation in which a world war of unprecedented horror can only be averted by spending such gigantic sums on ever more sinister instruments of death.

Mutual deterrence is the industrial solution par excellence. It involves forever expanding the world's industrial machine as, if nothing else, a means of providing armaments for preventing war. Yet as I shall attempt to show, it is this process of industrialisation which is causing the maladjustments which must both increase the probability as well as the destructiveness of war. Never, in fact, was a policy so evidently self-defeating.

If we want to control warfare we must first understand why it occurs, which must mean examining aggression, i.e. that feature of animal behaviour which, in the case of human animals at least, gives rise to war.

One must first distinguish between two fundamentally different types of aggression; that displayed by a predator towards its prey and that displayed by an animal towards a rival animal of the same species. First of all the goal is different. In the first case it is to seize the prey and eat it. In the second it is to establish a position in the hierarchy, which may enable a male to claim rights over a particular group of females or a particular territory. Its object is not to kill but to subdue a rival so that he accepts a lesser position in the hierarchy.

Since the goal is different, the behaviour that will achieve it must also be different. Thus a predator will approach its prey as stealthily and noiselessly as possible. When accosting a rival, however, an animal will behave in precisely the opposite manner. The lion will roar, the dog will bark, the peacock will swell himself up so as to intimidate his rival with his size and splendour. The effect can only be to frighten away a rival, the last thing a predator wishes to do to its prey. These two types of aggression are kept distinct in the animal world.

Significantly, warfare among human beings was conducted very much along the latter lines until a short time ago. Soldiers would wear the most flamboyant uniforms and go into battle to the blare of trumpets and the beating of drums.

In present-day warfare, however, there is indeed little ritual left. Soldiers are dressed in camouflage so that they can creep up on their enemies unobserved, like predators on their prey. Indeed, the goal of today's warfare is not to frighten but to destroy the enemy, so as to acquire for one's own use its land and other resources.

In this way modern warfare has diverged very radically from that carried out among traditional societies. But then, our society is highly aberrant, which means that to understand warfare, we must begin by examining it as it occurs among non-human animals and among tribal societies-which are the normal units of social organisations.

If we do so, the first fact that can be established is that aggression is a fact of life. As Eibl Eibesfeldt writes,

"fighting between members of the same species is almost universal among vertebrates from fish to man." [2]

This is no hazard. Animals are simply designed that way, which is a fact that is confirmed by physiological studies of the neural and hormonal processes involved. [3] Researchers have even succeeded in inducing fighting behaviour among birds and mammals by stimulating specific areas of the brain with electric currents.

Humans are no exception to the rule, though many of us would like to think we are. Some anthropologists like Derek Freeman consider that, if anything, humans are more aggressive than other animals. According to him,

"the extreme nature of human destructiveness and cruelty is one of the principal characteristics which marks off man behaviourally from other animals." [4]

This point has been cogently expressed by the biologist Adolf Portman:

"When terrible things, cruelties hardly conceivable, occur among men, many speak thoughtlessly of 'brutality', of bestialism or a return to animal levels. As if there were animals which inflict on their own kind what men can do to men. Just at this point, the zoologist has to draw a clear line, these evil horrible things are no animal survival that happened to be carried along in the imperceptible transition from animal to man; this evil belongs entirely on this side of the dividing line, it is purely human." [5]

Whether humans living in their natural habitat are as unpleasant animals as Freeman makes them out to be, is very debatable. Freeman may have been deceived by the fact that most societies we know about are, to a large extent, aberrant.

The Comanches, for instance, were regarded as particularly bloodthirsty warriors, but they were not always so. They came to adopt that way of life only after they had come in contact with the white invaders who, among other things, provided them with horses. To quote Kardiner,

"there were no aggressive war patterns in the older culture and little intertribal fighting. Though there was a little fighting with warlike neighbours there were no special honour aspects to war." [6]

The same can also be said of the Zulus. The career of Chaka, the founder of the Zulu Empire, was considerably affected by contact with the Boers whose activities gave rise to the freak situation he so fully exploited.

As I shall show later, aggression between human societies, living in an environment to which they have been adapted phylogenetically and culturally, takes a far less destructive form.

The fact that aggression must be a feature of social behaviour among non-human and human animals can be deduced from the fact that it fulfils important functions, on whose fulfilment, societies depend for their very survival. Thus Eibl Eibesfeldt regards aggression as serving

"the important function of spacing out individuals or groups in the area they occupy. This thereby secures for each the minimum territory required to support its existence, prevents overcrowding and promotes distribution of the species." [7]

Aggression among primitive societies, in particular among hunter gatherers, leads to fission of the group into rival factions which part company and develop on their own. This prevents society from getting too big. This is particularly important as the bonds holding together a society, as Malinowski was perhaps the first to point out, are derived from those which serve to hold a family together and cannot be extended to hold together too big a social unit. When the maximum size is reached, the unit must break up, alternatively it disintegrates into a mass society incapable of adaptive behaviour. It is in this light that Margaret Mead interprets the fission of social groups among the Maori.

"The disintegrative potentiality in the Maori form of organisation was this factor of size: when the society grew too large it was not possible to maintain their complete identification, and a subgroup would split off and become another autonomous, dosed, co-operative unit, competing without and co-operating within." [8]

In this way, a society remains a cohesive unit characterised more by co-operation than by competition, and bickering and fighting is reduced to a minimum.

Competition and co-operation

Aggression is best regarded as a form of competition, which, as we shall see, takes a slightly different form as we move up from one level of organisation to the next. At each step, it plays a bigger role, and can become more violent, i.e. can resemble more what we call aggression, without thereby bringing about social collapse.

Undifferentiated individuals competing for the same ecological niche cannot co-operate in any way. They can only compete with each other. It is only when, as a result of competition, they have been forced to specialise in such a way that each one learns to exploit a different sub-niche, that co-operation becomes possible and the competing individuals are transformed into a viable social unit. It is only by competition therefore that conditions are established in which co-operation can occur.

Competition does not establish just any type of organisation, but that which best satisfies environmental requirements, i.e. that which is most adaptive. Thus, in a social system that earns its livelihood by hunting, the position of an individual in the hierarchy will depend on hunting ability. In a society in which the main activity is warfare, war-like qualities will be determinant.

It is important to note that the basis of a hierarchical structure will change in accordance with its adaptiveness. Thus any important change in environmental conditions will call for a modification in a system's behaviour pattern which can only be ensured by a reorganisation of its hierarchical structure in such a way that a premium is placed on the new qualities which the society must display in order to adapt to the new conditions.

The influence of an individual will depend on his position in the hierarchy and so will his command over the best territory, the most desirable females, etc. In times of serious shortage this means that he is less likely to succumb than are those lower down in the hierarchy. Seen over a longer time scale, it is the individuals at the top of the hierarchy who are most likely to transmit their characteristics to their progeny.

Competition also serves the purpose of eliminating deviants who, for various reasons, do not fit into the social structure. In a traditional society this is probably a minor function of competition as, on the whole, most cultural patterns provide socially acceptable outlets for predictable deviant forms.

In the human family, the relative roles of the father, the mother, the children, the grandmother, etc. have, to a certain extent, been determined biologically, while cultural tradition, transmitted during socialisation will complete the differentiation process. In such conditions, there is little need for much competition. Aggression has some role to play in sexual behaviour in many animals, probably also among humans in the initial stages of a relationship. Its role may well be to establish the basis of what then becomes a co-operative relationship.

As we move from the family to the community, so does competition tend to increase. Competition is in fact necessary to establish an individual's status when this has not been established by inheritance. Societies vary according to their degree of co-operation and competition. The competitive society will have the advantage of being able to modify at more frequent intervals the basis of its hierarchical structure. This will enable it to adapt to a rapidly changing environment. It does not appear to have any advantage however in a relatively static environment.

Since aggression is a basic feature of human behaviour, the idea of eliminating it altogether, to bring about the universal human family is naive, while efforts to achieve this can only be counterproductive. In traditional societies, however, a number of strategies are exploited to reduce its destructiveness to the very minimum.

One such strategy, as we have seen, is fission. Significantly when population pressure increases, fission is no longer practicable. On the contrary, the distance between social groups is increasingly reduced, and warfare becomes correspondingly more destructive. Thus among the Nuer in the southern Sudan whose territory has shrunk considerably as a result of increased population pressure, tribal disputes according to McDermott lead to considerably more casualties than was once the case. [9]

Ritualisation

One of the most important means of reducing the destructiveness of aggression, as already noted, is to ritualise it. This means providing it with an outlet at the minimum cost in terms of physical damage and loss of life. The very principle of ritualisation is alien to industrial society which places a premium on achieving the maximum results with the minimum human effort. Ritualisation ensures the opposite: the achievement of the minimum results with the maximum human effort. Contrary to what we have all been taught, it is often the latter goal not the former which is most adaptive. [10]

The ritualisation of aggression is a feature of the behaviour of all animals including humans . That it should be so widespread is not surprising. As Lorenz points out,

"A particularly successful solution is often found by the different branches independently of one another. Insects, fishes, birds and bats have 'invented' wings: squids, fishes, ichthyosaurs and whales the torpedo form. It is not surprising that fight-preventing behaviour mechanisms based on ritualised redirection of attack occur in analogous developments in many different animals." [11]

Among non-human animals, as already mentioned, inter-species conflict is simply not designed to lead to death or mutilation. It is more than anything else a ritual and is conducted according to a set of rules designed above all to prevent death or mutilation from occurring. Thus rattlesnakes, capable of killing each other with a single bite, never in fact bite a rival. Their conflict is a strange ritual resembling Indian wrestling.

"The successful snake pins the loser for a moment with the weight of his body and then lets him escape." [12]

The oryx antelope who is equipped with horns capable of putting a lion to flight does not use his horns as daggers in an interspecific fight. As Eibl Eibesfeldt writes,

"a hornless bull observed by Walthe carried out the full ritual of combat as if he still had horns. He struck at his opponent's horns and missed by the precise distance at which his non-existent horns would have made contact. Equally remarkable, his opponent acted as though his horns were in place and responded to his imaginary blows."

Among birds and mammals conflict usually ends when the weaker contestant makes a recognised gesture of submission. Such appeasement gestures often consist in offering a vulnerable part of the body to the victor. Desmond Morris uses the term "remotivating displays" to refer to "actions which arouse in the attacker a non-aggressive tendency which then competes with and inhibits the aggressiveness that is present". [13]

Two common examples of this that occur in many species, are pseudo-infantile displays and pseudo-sexual displays. In these instances the submissive animal performs either juvenile or sexual patterns which arouse parental or sexual responses in the aggressor and in this way stop the attack. This triggers off a peace response on the part of the victor. In this way conflicts rarely end in serious mutilation or death.

Very much the same is true of aggression in human societies. Among hunter-gatherers such as the Bushmen or the Australian Aborigines when still living in conditions approaching those to which humans as a species have been adapted by evolution, warfare appears to be limited to border skirmishes giving rise to very few casualties.

This is illustrated by an incident recounted by Love. [14] In 1837 a party of men led by Sir George Gray, one of the first Englishmen to land in Australia, was assailed by a group of armed Aborigines who threw spears at them and gravely wounded Gray himself: as a result Gray had to fire at them and shot and killed one man. The others immediately dispersed but shortly came back to collect the man they had left behind who was wounded and subsequently died.

It did not seem to have occurred to them that these foreigners might shoot at them again. We now know that it is the normal procedure in Australian aboriginal warfare for hostilities to cease at the death of one man, which provides the explanation for the otherwise inexplicable behaviour of the Aborigines.

Among the Maori, leadership was all-important and hostilities came to an end once the leader of one of the rival groups was put out of action. Vayda writes:

"Even when on the verge of victory an attacking force might withdraw because of the loss of a leader." [15]

Even among the most warlike tribes, the object of war was seldom to kill or to conquer territory which, in any case, they usually regarded as inhabited by hostile spirits. The tendency, on the contrary, was to stick to their own territory which was inhabited by the friendly spirits of their ancestors. This is even true of the specially warlike Jivaro Indians who, as Karston points out,

"inhabit endless virgin forests, where they can make new settlements almost anywhere and have no need of conquering the territory of other tribes." [16]

Rather than kill or conquer territory the aim of such warlike tribes was to achieve certain largely ritualised goals. In the case of the Crow Indians, who were among the most warlike of American tribes, the first of such goals was to cut loose and steal a horse picketed within a hostile camp. The second was to take an enemy's bow or gun in a hand-to-hand encounter. The third was to touch an enemy with a weapon or even the bare hand. The fourth was to lead a victorious war expedition. [17]

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Blackfoot Indians were the most warlike and the most feared of the Indian tribes in the valley of the Saskatchewan and the upper Missouri. Yet, as Ewers points out,

"Blackfoot warfare was aimed at neither the systematic extermination of enemy tribes nor the acquisition of their territory. It was not organised and directed by a central military authority nor was it prosecuted by large, disciplined armies. Rather, Blackfoot warfare was carried on primarily by numerous small parties of volunteers who banded together to capture horses from enemy tribes...While the killing of enemy tribesmen and the taking of scalps were not major objectives of these raids." [15]

Ewers describes in greater detail what were the most prestigious feats of war among the Blackfoot Indians:

"They graded war honours on the basis of the degree of courage displayed in winning them. They recognised that a man might scalp an enemy who had been killed by another and that a man might kill an enemy from a considerable distance with bullet or arrow. Their term for war honour, namach-kani, means literally 'a gun taken'. The capture of an enemy's gun ranked as the highest war honour. The capture of a bow, shield, war bonnet, war shirt, or ceremonial pipe was also a coup of high rank. The taking of a scalp ranked below these deeds, but ahead of the capture of a horse from the enemy. The capture of a horse was too common an accomplishment to receive a higher rating."

Another form of ritualization is the substitution of a match or tournament between two or more champions for a conflict between two armies. The contest between David and Goliath is an obvious example. This strategy was resorted to a great deal during the Middle Ages in Europe. The modern equivalent is, of course, sport, though this was also resorted to among tribal societies. Lacrosse, for instance, was used as a means of ritualising conflict among the Creek Indians.

The transition from war to sport on the small island of Truk in Micronesia is traced by Murdock. This island was occupied successively by the Japanese, the Germans, and the Americans. The Germans abolished traditional warfare and the Americans introduced baseball as a means of replacing it. As Murdock writes,

"The natives don't play baseball, they wage it. An inter-island game is serious business. The players practise almost daily and observe all the sexual and other taboos which used to precede war. For several days before a game, for example, they sleep apart from their wives in the men's clubhouse. The women and children form groups around the playing field, singing songs and executing magical dances designed to discommode the foe. Special baseball songs constitute one of the principal forms of native music." [19]

In our industrial society, football plays an important part too in ritualising latent aggression between various groups. This is so, for instance, in Glasgow where a match between the two principal teams, one of which represents the local Protestants, the other the immigrant Irish Catholics, arouses tremendous enthusiasm on both sides.

The most sophisticated example of the ritualization of aggression in a modern society is the Palio in Siena, a horse race around the Piazza del Campo, the city's main square. This city of about 70,000 people has probably since the Middle Ages been divided into a number of Contrades of which there are now seventeen. These were originally military associations whose function it was to raise troops to serve in the continual wars of the Sienese Republic against its neighbours.

The Contrades, most of which are named after animals, such as 'Oca' the goose, 'Istrice' the porcupine, 'Giraffa' the giraffe, 'Lupa' the wolf, have their own territory within the city, their own Contradal church, their own patron saint, their own museum, clubhouse, uniforms, songs and traditions, so much so that they constitute veritable little cities within the city.

Competition between them is intense especially during the period of the Palio. Its intensity varies between the different Contrades, some of which are traditional allies while others are traditional enemies. Hostilities between such Contrades as 'Lupa' and 'Istrice' are so intense that a member of one Contrade would hesitate to venture into the territory of the other.

The most striking thing about the Palio is the extraordinary enthusiasm it arouses among all the citizens of Siena regardless of their age or social and economic status. The local papers talk about practically nothing else all year round, while, during the week of the Palio, multi-coloured special issues are on display everywhere. On the actual day of the event the entire population of the city gathers in the Piazza del Campo. The rest of the city is deserted.

The rejoicings afterwards are quite extraordinary. The whole city resounds with the shouts and songs of the victors who parade through the streets in their medieval costumes until the early hours. That night the whole city is invited to drink in the winning Contrades' clubhouse and everybody is encouraged to visit its museum in which are triumphantly displayed all the trophies of the past.

The institution of the Palio makes of Siena the closest approximation in the modern world to a socially ideal city. All aggression is systematically directed into ritualised channels which are not only harmless but which serve to create an extraordinary feeling of cohesion, and of common Sienese citizenship which overrides all class or age differences.

As might he expected, crime and delinquency, drug addiction, alcoholism and all the other manifestations of social disintegration are largely absent in Siena even today when they are reaching epidemic proportions in most of our conurbations.

Learning to live with it

Societies, among whom warfare plays an important role, will, to a large extent, adapt to suffering the casualties which warfare, however ritualised, must give rise to.

One can only understand how this can occur if one understands just how closely integrated are the cultural traits making up a society's behaviour pattern. Among head-hunters, for instance, head-hunting is so "intricately interwoven with the whole social system", as Lorenz puts it, that its abolition could lead to the disintegration of the whole culture, "even seriously jeopardising the survival of the people". [20] Cultural traits therefore cannot be judged by themselves but only as part of a cultural pattern.

Consider the Eskimos: during the hunting season, the basic social unit is the family, interpersonal aggression is fairly high and there is occasional loss of life. If one adds to this the hazards of the Eskimo hunter's life in the inhospitable Arctic wastes that he inhabits, then it is not surprising that his society should have to resort to some strategy, among other things, for evening out the number of females to males. This has been achieved by female infanticide. We may not like it but who are we to judge it? It may provide the least disagreeable compromise for ensuring the stability of an Eskimo society.

Among the Jivaros, polygamy plays an analogous role. Without it there simply would not be enough males to go round.

Among the warlike Nilo-Hamites, such as the Masai and the Samburu, warfare is carried out exclusively by the young men in specific age grades who together are referred to as the moran. They live outside the village in promiscuity with the unmarried girls of the same age.

However, they are not allowed to marry and have children. Only the elders, who are no longer of fighting age can do so. This strategy limits the social disruption caused by casualties incurred during raiding expeditions on the neighbouring tribes. When one considers it, it is barbaric to send to war, as we do, men who have wives and children to look after.

Reducing aggression

We have seen that there are three strategies that can be exploited for reducing the destructiveness of aggression: fission, ritualization and learning to live with aggression. It is important to realise however that these extraordinarily effective mechanisms are not effective in unnatural environmental conditions, by which is meant those which have diverted too radically from the environment to which a species has been adapted by its evolution. Thus as Harrison Matthews writes,

"When population numbers have overtaken the resources of the environment so that serious overcrowding is brought about, this produces a situation similar to that of animals in captivity where the environment is artificially restricted so that aggression is increased and any chance of escape from the aggressor is denied. In both situations the animals are living in a biologically unsound environment which inevitably distorts the normal patterns of social behaviour." [21]

When the environment changes too radically from that to which a species has been adapted phylogenetically or to which a society has been adapted culturally, then adaptive behaviour, which must include that which reduces that destructiveness of aggression, can no longer be mediated.

In the case of a human society, the same thing happens, if the informational pattern, which is organised in its culture, is interfered with by alien influences such as those exerted by western colonialist powers; centralized governments imitating the industrialised nations or by large commercial enterprises.

The reason for this is obvious. Consider two people sitting down to a game of chess. The principal sine qua non for a successful game is that both contestants should know the rules and accept them. So it is with the strategies for reducing the destructiveness of aggression. Since they affect people's lives much more deeply than a game of chess is likely to, people must he taught the rules from their earliest youth and inculcated with the belief that they are fair, just and necessary. This is what happens as children are educated or socialised within a traditional society.

The rules they learn provide them with an integrated pattern of instructions which all give rise to a correspondingly integrated behaviour pattern among which should figure the various strategies for reducing to a minimum the destructiveness of aggressive behaviour.

Experiments with monkeys as well as experience with humans reveal that individuals deprived of a satisfactory upbringing, who have not been subjected to the normal socialisation process will find it difficult, if not impossible, to accept a position in a social hierarchy.

As a result, the normal cultural mechanisms ensuring the ritualization of aggression are not operative. All individuals are on their own, neighbours are their enemies and they fight and bicker for every petty advantage they can thereby obtain. They may also display gratuitous violence, probably as a pathological response to the social deprivation from which they must inevitably suffer.

Unfortunately, a society's cultural pattern can only remain intact under specific conditions. For instance, it must not be subjected to environmental conditions that are changing too rapidly or too radically, otherwise the control mechanisms ensuring adaptation simply cannot cope. A society must not expand beyond a certain size, as there is a limit to the extendibility of the bonds which hold it together. Also, its culture must not be modified by extraneous influences such as those exerted by missionaries, colonialist educational authorities, etc.

Unfortunately as a society 'progresses' through the various stages that take it from a hunter-gatherer group to a modern industrial state, so are these conditions ever less well satisfied, while it develops new features which tend to increase rather than decrease the destructiveness of aggression, sometimes in a dramatic way.

This is well illustrated in a study, by Otterbein, of warfare among the Zulus during different phases of their history in the 19th century.

Zulu warfare

As is generally known the Bantu tribes moved southwards into what is now South Africa between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Among these tribes were the Nguni, who were shifting cultivators and cattle raisers. The unit of social organisation was kept small by rivalry between the sons of a tribal leader which often led to fissions and also by the very nature of the economic system which required a nomadic way of life and which could not support large groups of people living together.

Conflicts between tribes were settled by combat, which above all, took the form of a duelling battle. The main weapon used was the javelin, while each warrior protected himself with a shield. The object of war was to obtain prisoners and cattle, the former to be ransomed, the latter to be permanently retained. Pursuit of a fleeing enemy would stop as soon as the pursued dropped their spears. "This was a sign of surrender and no more blood would be shed." [22] Since wounds were seldom fatal, the number of casualties was low.

All this began to change by the beginning of the nineteenth century when populations started to expand. There was no longer enough empty land to permit the continual fission of tribes and also to maintain shifting agriculture. As Gluckman writes,

"It became more difficult for tribes to divide and dissident sections to escape to independence; as the Nguni cultural stress on seniority of descent and the relatively great inheritance of the main heir caused strong tensions in the tribes, chiefs began to press their dominion not only on their subordinate tribal sections, but also on their neighbours. The development of this trend was possibly facilitated by the unequal strength of the tribes." [23]

As a result powerful tribes started subduing smaller ones, creating larger social units.

The most successful tribe was the Mtewa whose chief Dingiswayo was a particularly talented general who was able to achieve military success by organising the age grades of warriors into regiments of soldiers and hence increasing organisation and efficiency. Between 1806 and 1809 he established himself as chief of over thirty tribes. One such subject tribe was the Zulu and it was Dingiswayo who was instrumental in arranging for Shaka, the illegitimate son of a Zulu chief, to become their chief.

Shaka had been in touch with the Boers who very much influenced his way of thinking. He totally changed Zulu military tactics, introducing the short stabbing spear which Dingiswayo disapproved of, because of the greater number of casualties occurring between armies equipped with it. He discarded the sandals that had hitherto been worn by Zulu warriors, in order to gain greater mobility. He also arranged his soldiers in a 'close order' shield-to-shield formation with two 'horns' designed to encircle the enemy or to feint at his flanks, the main body of troops at the centre and the reserve in the rear, ready to exploit the opportunities of battle.

From 1819 to 1822, Shaka fought a series of wars which led to the creation of an empire comprising no fewer than 300 different tribes occupying 80,000 square miles of territory, almost the size of the British Isles. During the last four years of his life the empire ceased to expand and military activities were limited to long range campaigns in search of plunder, mainly cattle.

In examining the evolution of Zulu warfare it is essential to look first at what was the goal of warfare at each particular stage of development. It is only when we know the goal that we can understand the military equipment and tactics used and the actual nature of the conflict.

• During the first stage, conflicts are best regarded as duelling battles fought mainly to obtain bounty. Spears were used only as projectiles. Casualties were slight especially as fleeing enemies were spared.
• During the second stage, conflicts were "battles of subjugation" - the object being to subdue neighbouring tribes. The army became more efficient but casualties were still slight.
• During the third stage, conflict evolved into battles of conquest whose goal was the creation of an empire. Tactics and weaponry changed, and casualties became very high.
• During the fourth stage, the goal "was to keep the army busy rather than conquering new peoples" and casualty rates became low again.

What is particularly important is that "these four types of war correspond to a different level of socio-political development". In terms of Service's taxonomy, "duelling battles" occurred, on the tribal level "battles of subjugation" led to the development of chiefdoms, "battles of conquest" brought about the emergence of the state, and with the eventual development of empires, long range "campaigns" became the dominant form of war. [24]

Artificial states

In our efforts to bring the other countries of the world into the orbit of our industrial society, that we may more easily persuade them to part with their resources and buy our finished products, we have everywhere forced ethnic groups to join together into totally artificial political units on the western model.

Co-operation on the part of such groups whose principal relationship is often one of mutual hostility, being difficult to achieve, the tendency has been to put them under the domination of one such group-the most 'advanced', hence the one most easily inculcated with the industrial ethic.

These purely artificial nation-states tend consequently to be empires in disguise: Pakistan being the Punjabi Empire; Nigeria that of the Hausas; Kenya that of the Kikuyu, etc. In the meantime the age-old rivalry between tribal groups is simply directed into different channels (more modern ones), and it expresses itself clandestinely, more bitterly and more destructively.

At the same time whichever ethnic group by whatever means, and however temporarily, is able to control the shaky apparatus of government is consecrated in its legitimacy by international law. Its regime is automatically bolstered by the support of multinational companies, by the governments of industrialised countries and by United Nations agencies, all anxious to protect their investments and expand the sphere of their economic and political influence.

Such an unstable situation can only lead to constant civil wars which, in fact, is what is happening throughout the Third World. But we have done worse than this. We have actively promoted the large-scale movement of populations from one country, even one continent, to another, usually to satisfy the labour requirements of plantations and other industrial enterprises.

Wherever this has happened, whether it be in East Africa, Guyana, Malaya or Singapore, it has led to increasing tension between the original ethnic groups and the new ones. The reason is that they have had no previous experience of each other and have not been able to develop different symbiotic cultural patterns - a sine qua non for peaceful coexistence within the same territory.

At the same time, the monolithic nation-state of which they are part, does not offer them the possibility of territorial separation. In these conditions such countries must constantly be on the verge of civil war unless the original inhabitants are exterminated or reduced to the status of a subject people.

Our influence has also led everywhere to terrible population pressures, causing people to migrate to less populous lands where tensions are inevitably created with the local inhabitants. In this way the Nepali have been migrating in large numbers to Sikkim, where they now outnumber the local population and have recently upset the regime itself subordinating the local people to their rule.

Alternatively, white settlers have set themselves up as a dominant cast of administrators and land-owners as happened in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where they gradually eroded local cultural patterns, the morale and the self-esteem of their subject peoples the Mashona and the Matabele.

In other areas, such as India, Rwanda and Burundi, we have upset existing culturally determined arrangements between distinct ethnic groups that previously permitted them to coexist symbiotically in the same territory. These groups are now competing for the same ecological niche. Warfare has broken out between them and it is but a question of time before one group or the other has been effectively eliminated.

Mutual dependence of societies

One of the obvious causes of war must be a resource shortage of some sort, making it desirable for one country to acquire a resource in the possession of another. Among hunter-gatherers this is very unlikely to occur. As already mentioned, they tend to have all the land they need, use very few resources and those which they use are easily provided by the environment in which they live, especially as they live off the interest and not the capital of available resources.

This is also largely the case with traditional agricultural societies. These will probably indulge in trade with neighbouring peoples, but this is likely to involve their surpluses only, their dependence on foreign goods being minimal.

We have seen how Britain has reacted to a resource shortage. Fish is getting scarce, the Icelanders are making it scarcer, at least to the British, so out goes the Royal Navy. Precisely the same thing is happening in the Mediterranean. The Moroccans are threatening Spanish fish catches and the latter are threatening violence to ensure their supplies (1975).

Water, like fish, is also becoming a valuable resource. In Britain there is already talk of rationing it and it is impossible to satisfy the US's ever increasing needs for water without importing it from Canada. Are the Canadians willing to see their lakes plundered for the benefit of American industry? There is already considerable opposition and it is likely to grow. If it becomes too powerful what will the Americans do? Allow the economy to collapse or invade Canada?

A few Arab leaders now have it in their power to cut off the West's oil supplies - which provide an ever increasing proportion of our energy requirements. What would the US do if this were really to occur? Senator William Fulbright, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, actually stated in the Senate during the oil crisis in 1973 that American policy-makers "may come to the conclusion that military action is required" to protect American oil interests.

Needless to say, there was an outcry. Highly cherished illusions were shattered. America, like Britain, likes to think of itself as a benign and peace-loving country whose sole preoccupation is the happiness and welfare of the people of the earth. Now we are told that she should actually go to war, and for what reason? Not to defend some great ideal like 'the American way of life' against those wicked Communists, but simply in the interests of commerce.

Maurice Strong, when he was Executive Director of United Nations Environment Programme, pointed out the new possibility for armed conflict, created by modem technology. Since rainmaking is now a possibility, he foresees "rain stealing" where one country sets out purposefully to steal another's rainfall thereby causing drought.

There have already been disputes between countries over claims of pollution damage to waterways and the atmosphere. Such disputes are likely to increase with the further development of large-scale technology. Countries could even attempt to melt the Polar ice cap in search of minerals, thereby creating artificial earthquakes and tidal waves.

The US has already been accused of using weather modification in South East Asia to increase and control rain for military purposes.

In the Declaration of Principles adopted at the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in June 1972, a declaration, to which all governments represented were a party, pledged governments to ensure that their activities did not cause damage to the environment of others. What action can the UN apply against the infringements of this declaration? The answer is practically none, other than awakening world public opinion against any possible culprits.

The destructiveness of war is also increased by rapid industrialisation. Wars were previously waged with primitive weaponry, causing but minor damage whereas now the most lethal modern weaponry is employed, which world powers, eager to extend their sphere of influence and to increase their exports of armaments, are only too pleased to provide.

This often leads to quite ludicrous situations. Thus in the war between the Ibos and the Hausa; the former were armed by the Chinese, the French and the Czechs, whereas the Hausa obtained their armament from the Soviet Union, Egypt and the UK.

Vulnerability

As industrialisation proceeds, as society becomes increasingly dependent on technical devices for its physical sustenance, so must it become correspondingly more vulnerable. Consider the vulnerability of a large modern conurbation: it depends for its fresh water supplies on complex sewage and purification plants: for its food on increasingly distant agricultural enterprises, elaborate processing plants, and a network of roads and railway lines.

It requires a vast bureaucracy to provide the welfare services that prevent its inhabitants from succumbing to all sorts of material and psychological deprivations, a massive national health service with hospitals, surgeries, pharmaceutical laboratories and distributors to prevent them from succumbing to disease, an increasingly large police force, a fleet of armoured cars, vast numbers of safes, burglar alarms and other devices to protect them from the depredations of an ever expanding criminal class, and an increasing number of factories, office buildings and department stores, to provide them with employment and the basic necessities of life.

The whole of this precarious edifice could collapse like a house of cards in the face of strikes, sabotage, or simply as a result of a shortage of some key resource such as energy. [25]

With the accumulation of nuclear weapons, by an ever-larger number of different governments, the possibility of their accidental use, if nothing else, must increase correspondingly.

Unfortunately if there is a finite possibility that something will happen, then it must be but a matter of time before it actually does. Accidents are tolerable when they are on a small scale, not so however when they occur on a scale that can lead to the annihilation of whole populations.

Apart from the danger of accidents there is also the danger that nuclear devices might be stolen by terrorist groups. With the development of breeder reactors, the amount of available plutonium will increase considerably. The possibility that some of this lethal substance might be acquired by irresponsible groups is a very real one, and once it is available, the production of nuclear devices by such groups becomes relatively feasible.

Armed conflict is also likely to be favoured by the rise to power of dictators who are in a position to flout public opinion and act on personal impulse. It is important to note that dictators do not exist in traditional societies. [26] Such societies are governed by public opinion, which in turn reflects traditional values. The Council of Elders, which is the closest thing they have to an institutionalised government, does little more than interpret traditional usage. Kings and Queens, even divine ones, are subjected to all sorts of social constraints which eliminate the possibility of arbitrary action outside the most limited sphere of their personal relationships.

Vicious circle

Unfortunately, once a country takes on aggressive stance it becomes very difficult for it to extricate itself. Apart from not being able to take the risk that a rival power could obtain an advantage over it, the country is faced with another equally daunting problem. If the arms race came to an end, there would be very serious unemployment.

Already arms production is used as a means of bolstering employment. Thus, as Mary Kaldor points out

"... one of the reasons given for the fact that the military version of the VGO costs £1.4 million per unit more than the civil version, was the extra cost of £366,000 per aircraft involved in a policy decision to subcontract work in Northern Ireland. In Italy, most defence contracts specify that 30 percent of the work must be done in the South." [27]

As long ago as 1974, Westlake noted that:

"Nuclear disarmament would, of course, release thousands of scientists and engineers, and tons of materials. It has been estimated that 50 million people - more than the whole working population of Britain and West Germany - are engaged directly or indirectly for military purposes throughout the world. By 1970 the armed forces absorbed 23 to 24 million people." [28]

Since this article was written, the role of armaments in bolstering up the economy and providing business to powerful industrial interests has become even more apparent. This is particularly clear in the case of the Strategic Defence Initiative or Star Wars programme in the US.

The former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger considers that the present plan will cost as much as a trillion dollars. This would make it in the words of William Hartung, "the leading area of growth for the nation's major military contractors in the 1990s". [29] The latter, he explains, badly need a programme of this sort

"to fill a financial vacuum that will be left when contracts for production of the B-1 bomber, MX missile, and the Cruise and Pershing missiles run out over the next five years"

It is seen strategically as an alternative to the much touted nuclear freeze which was unacceptable to the business community since, if implemented, it would have reduced economic activity whereas the SDI has the opposite effect. As Hartung notes,

"If the arms industry had been asked to devise the most profitable alternative to arms control, they couldn't have come up with a better proposal than the Star Wars plan."

In the meantime, as tensions mount, the industrialise countries will become more desperate to maintain exports so a to pay for the increasing social and ecological side-effects of industrial activity.

At the same time they will be increasingly preoccupied with maintaining unemployment at an acceptable level. One can thus expect the armaments business to continue expanding and the nations of the world to be further caught up in the vicious circle of the armaments race, which must continue until such time as global catastrophe, towards which it is inexorably leading reduces once and for all our capacity to produce instruments of mass death on the present scale.

Summary and conclusion

Aggression is a normal and necessary feature of the behaviour of social animals including humans. Its function is primarily to establish the status of each individual within a social group. In this way fighting and bickering are avoided and co-operation becomes possible. In this way too the group becomes a society rather than a random collection of individuals. The qualities which will determine someone's position within a social hierarchy will vary according to the ecological niche that society fills (whether it earns its livelihood by fishing for instance or by agriculture).

Aggression between societies serves the purpose of spacing them out, and thereby preventing them from becoming too big and maintaining their integrity and internal cohesion.

The destructiveness of aggression can be reduced to a minimum in a number of ways: firstly, by fission, secondly by ritualisation, thirdly by learning to live with it. The mechanisms involved are culturally determined. They are only operative when a society is living in an environment that closely approximates that in which it has evolved.

As one departs from this situation, as large-scale agricultural societies develop and worse still as industry takes over, so do such controls become increasingly inoperative. New conditions appear which have the opposite effect, increasing the destructiveness of aggression. These conditions are created principally by the increased dependence of societies on each other, the increased capital-intensity of weaponry, the development of authoritarian government and the general disintegration of societies under the stresses of industrialisation.

Self-righteous exhortations in favour of peace or pious declarations of the universal brotherhood of man can serve no purpose save to mask the real issues.

The problem can, in fact, only be solved by methodically and systematically de-industrialising and decentralising society, thereby recreating those conditions in which new cultural patterns can re-emerge, once more to regulate aggression both between individuals and between the societies into which they are organised.

References