2024.04.02 - The Origins of War version 1

2024.03.29 – The Origins of War

We are today very much aware of war. We are daily told of its horrors, confronted with a seemingly endless stream of images and videos that present those horrors in near real time. As I write, wars in Ukraine and Israel appear so intractable that many in the West complain of “war fatigue.” What is worse, the perceived impossibility of ending these wars has led to a kind of geopolitical quietism among average people around the world. That quietism is more frightening than the wars themselves, as it will surely permit more political leaders to start more wars. When citizens cease to concern themselves with the reality of war, war propagates.

To reverse this tragic situation, I propose to examine the origins of war – not of individual wars, but of war itself. Individual wars are but cases of the disease. To diagnose and treat the case, one must understand the disease itself. To carry this metaphor to its logical conclusion, if we wish to prevent or stop war, we must understand what causes it in the first place, just as a doctor seeks to understand the causes of a disease in order to prescribe effective interventions against it.

In the essay that follows, I am going to argue that war originates in the natural equality of all human beings. I suspect that such a notion will be perplexing to many readers, if not downright offensive. Such a claim seems to contradict the common understanding of equality that has persisted in the West since the time of the American and French Revolutions. I believe that contradiction is instructive and will thus linger upon it for a moment before I proceed with my argument.

The United States’ Declaration of Independence begins with the famous line, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and goes on to spell out how that natural equality not only translates into the political rights of citizens, but also how it underwrites the authority of a government instituted to secure those rights.

Inspired by America’s founding fathers, the Revolutionary government of France, in 1789, published their principles for a new republic in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The first article states: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” The French Declaration, like that of the Americans, then details how natural equality is the foundation for a system of legal and political rights: “[The law] must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, shall be equally eligible to all high offices, public positions and employments, according to their ability, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.”

This idea of a natural equality of all citizens as the basis for political freedom, legal rights, and legitimate governance has, in the last two and a half centuries, become so deeply ingrained in Western political philosophy that any other interpretation of equality is immediately suspect to those of us who live in liberal democratic nation-states. However, there is an older and darker interpretation that is both conceptually and chronologically prior to these “revolutionary” articulations of natural equality.

Thomas Hobbes, writing more than a century before the American Revolution, would have agreed with the American and French revolutionaries that the natural state of man conferred upon all people an equality that is universal – but for Hobbes that equality was an inescapable burden of paranoia and violence, not a universalizing source of political fraternity. He articulates this view in the dense and difficult paragraph that opens chapter thirteen of his classic treatise, Leviathan (published in 1651):

“Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind; as that though there bee found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind then another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himselfe any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himselfe.”

And here is my own modernized version of Hobbes’ language:

“Nature has made people quite equal in their mental and physical capacities. Though we may often find one who is stronger or smarter than another, the differences are never so great that anyone can claim to have absolute advantage over all others. This is especially true of physical strength, for the weakest man is usually still strong enough to kill the strongest, whether through a secret plot or alliance with others.”

In what follows, I shall unpack this basic articulation of Hobbes’ theory of natural equality to show how it explains the causes of war.

[2024.04.01]

Hobbes derives his theory of natural equality by examining what he calls the “The Natural Condition of Mankind” (the title of the famous chapter 13 in his great treatise Leviathan). Many later interpreters will refer to this method of examination as the state of nature thought experiment. In its simplest possible formulation, the state of nature is the condition of humanity before the establishment of political organization. It is a time when society exists without established power relations. There is a temptation to treat this thought experiment as a real period in human history, and archaeologists and anthropologists have used this concept in the past to structure their research into the earliest times of human history. However, I do not take Hobbes to be conducting historical research when he speculates on the natural condition of human life. Rather than proposing a specific period of human development, I take Hobbes to be exploring the default setting or standard configuration of human society. A short anecdote will clarify what I mean.

Many years ago, I owned a house on a large lot in a small town. One day, my neighbour approached me and said he would like to build a fence between our two properties. We had always enjoyed very congenial relations and I was happy to discuss his proposal. He and I shared a mutual vested interest in building a fence. We were both dog owners and a fence would enclose our yards so that our dogs could run around freely. I was also aware that a nice fence would increase my property value which would fetch a higher price when I eventually had to sell my house, as I knew I would need to in the near future.

However, as we discussed options for how to build the fence, it became obvious that neither of us was exactly sure where the official line was that separated our two properties. My neighbour being a pleasant and reasonable man, at no point did the discussion devolve into a hostile argument. But we concluded by agreeing that we would need to consult the land titles registry at municipal records office to establish precisely where the boundary existed between our two properties before we began building a fence.

Unfortunately, neither the municipality nor the county had a survey on record that defined precisely where my property ended and my neighbour’s began. We therefore hired a land surveyor to research the official paperwork and measure the dimensions of our respective properties. The surveyor then marked the limits of our lots using stakes and string. Once this was done, we knew precisely where the line was that separated our two properties and we built a fence on that line.

The reason this dispute was resolved so amicably is what I will call the principle of adjudication. My neighbour and I were the beneficiaries of a complex system of adjudicatory power (the county office, the municipal records, the land title registry, the survey system, as well as countless other documents, procedures, and offices). This type of adjudication is, for Hobbes, what distinguishes civil society. It is, as he would call it, an artificial society, in that it is an artifice – it is designed and created by human beings to facilitate living together.

Hobbes contrasts that artificial condition of human society with “the natural condition of mankind.” The natural condition is one that lacks a power to enforce the principle of adjudication. To understand what this means, consider the dispute between my neighbour and me in the absence of government. If the municipality nor the county nor the province did not have enforcement mechanisms in place to resolve our dispute, we could only determine the boundary between our properties through the use of our own force. If he built a fence on my property, I could not do anything about it other than try to stop him by myself. This, for Hobbes, is the defining feature of the state of nature: dispute-resolution is impossible because there is no higher authority one can appeal to.

We can see in this explanation that Hobbes does not mean to say that the state of nature is some phase of human history that ceased to exist long ago. It is not a pre-history that was replaced by the establishment of civilization, civil society, and eventually government by nation states. The natural condition of mankind is the norm of human social life any time people must live together in the absence of adjudicatory power. I believe most of us have experienced situations where we found ourselves in such a condition. Examples might include young students in the absence of a teacher or workers at a startup company that does not yet have a hierarchy of executives, managers, and workers.

INSERT GODFATHER EXAMPLE.

Hobbes contends that the organizing principle for understanding this state of nature is what he calls natural equality. I will return now to the definition he provides and break it down step-by-step. Here again is the first sentence:

“Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind; as that though there bee found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind then another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himselfe any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he.”

To understand Hobbes’ explanation (and to make sense of his archaic language) it helps to diagram what he is saying:

Humanity as a whole should be understood as a society of equals for two reasons. First, the range of differences between any two people according to their major faculties is quite narrow. The physical capacities of individuals are such that no one is so much stronger that they could assert dominion over all others. While it is true that physical differences can be great between individuals, if one person sought to dominate the rest through sheer physical force, the others could band together to defeat him or a single crafty individual could deceive and outsmart him. This brings us to the second reason society must be seen as generally equal. Not only is there a narrow range of differences across a single faculty, but there is also an equality across faculties. If a person in the state of nature finds themselves in a dispute over territory with a much stronger opponent, they can use cleverness or political acumen to defeat their adversary’s physical strength. So, there is an equality across faculties as well an equality within the bounds of a single faculty.

It is important to note, furthermore, that the equality of mental faculties carries with it what may be called subjective as well as objective outcomes. The objective outcomes are obvious. Some people are simply more talented than others at calculation, public speaking, or the retention of learning. And though such talents are not as quantifiable or pronounced as physical differences, we are typically able to identify these mental talents in others and recognize when we are at a disadvantage. However, the subjective outcome of this equality is a privileging of our own wisdom: “For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may ackowledge many others to be more witty or more eloquent or more learned, yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves for they see their own wit at hand and other men's at a distance .”

What he's saying is no one's really that much smarter than everybody else. We all think we're wiser than others because we experience our own thinking very up close and personal. But it's much harder for us to understand the way other people think. And this makes us all equals because we all experience that, we all feel that way. We're equals in that we just assume our own way of judging reality is the correct way and we know that others think that as well about their own judgments. Even though they might seem insane to us, there is an equality that we all have of assuming that our way of interpreting reality is the correct way. Thus, while our wildly divergent worldviews indicate a difference in our thinking, every individual’s privileging of their own worldview indicates a profound equality.

Because we share this equality of faculties while at the same time we privilege our own judgment, human beings also share an equality ambitions:

“From this equality of ability, ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our Ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which neverthelesse they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their End, (which is principally their owne conservation, and sometimes their delectation only,) endeavour to destroy, or subdue one an other.”

Because all people have a reasonable equality of faculties, we also share an equality of desires. Meaning, we want the same things. And each of us assumes we are entitled to pursue those ambitions. This brings us inevitably into competition. 

[2024.04.02]

Hobbes does not spend many words drawing a distinction here between “conservation” and “delectation,” however, this point is worth dwelling on for a moment.

Perhaps “self-preservation” is preferable to “conservation” as the former term better captures what he is driving at in modern English. In the state of nature, all people will need to safeguard their own access to the resources required to stay alive. This circumstance would lead to all sorts of obvious conflicts. For example, if two groups are fighting each other on land that borders my supply of safe drinking water, I am now forced into the conflict because the outcome of their fight could threaten my survival. If either side prevails over the other, I will be compelled to fear that they will restrict my access to a resource necessary for my own survival. This is true regardless of how I feel about the issue the other two parties are warring over. They could be trapped in a vortex of revenge killings that has nothing to do with me, but because their conflict threatens my self-preservation, I must enter the conflict. To use another modern term popular amongst war theorists, such a conflict would be an existential threat to me.

“Delectation” is more difficult to make sense of. The quote above appears to be the only time Hobbes used the word. The etymology and dictionary definitions lead me to suspect he in fact used the wrong word to describe what it is he is trying to describe. In the context of the quote above, he seems to be saying some wars are fought of necessity (wars of self-preservation against existential threats) whereas some are fought by choice (wars fought merely for status, power, recognition, territory, etc.). Once again, a more modern word for this type of motivation  would be “imperialism” (though this word now carries an unshakeable pejorative connotation that Hobbes may have rejected). To illustrate what I mean by “imperialism” consider the example given in the previous paragraph. If I enter a war to protect my access to safe drinking water, my decision would be motivated by self-preservation. However, if I enter into a similar conflict to opportunistically make a land grab at a piece of territory that is potentially made available due to the destabilizing effect of the war between the other two parties (meaning if there is no existential threat to me but I decide to enter the war anyways), my motivation would be imperialistic.

Now that those two terms have been examined, I shall amend my diagram as follows:

The competition that results form this situation is not only unavoidable, it is chronic. It is chronic because there is no adjudicating power that can step in and resolve it. Hobbes gives a great example of why this is so. In the natural condition, if a man were to establish a prosperous estate, to build his own house and farm his own land, to secure his own resources and attain self-sufficiency, he would live in constant fear that potential invaders would band together and attempt to dispossess him of that estate. However, the successful invaders would be in no better a position than the founder of the estate. After they had deprived him of the fruit of his labour, they too would have to live in constant fear, both of each other and of other invading groups. This example highlights the two defining characteristics of the unavoidable competition endemic to the state of nature, namely, uncertainty and insecurity:

Uncertainty derives from the equality of judgment discussed earlier.