2024.04.06 - 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 worldview, 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 relative 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:

[2024.04.03]

Uncertainty derives from the equality of judgment discussed earlier. Because every person privileges their own worldview, but, at the same time, they know that all other people indulge in the same hubristic thinking, everyone in the state of nature knows that their self-interpretation is constantly under threat from others. To illustrate why this is so, consider once again the case of the man who has built his own estate. It may be an obvious truism to him that he has a legitimate claim to his estate, that his property must be respected by others. After all, he settled the land, worked the fields, planted the crops, built a house, and enclosed the property with a wall. However, at the same time, he knows that others may not (and likely will not) acknowledge this legitimacy. They may think he acquired the land unfairly or that he is hoarding resources. The estate holder can thus never be certain that others will not seek to deprive him of his estate.

There is a further form of uncertainty that will plague the estate holder in the state of nature, namely, the inability to rely on allies. The estate holder may reach an agreement with all the property holders who surround his territory. They may all agree to respect the boundaries of one another’s estates. They may even agree to come to each other’s aid should one of their estates be attacked. However, because the alliance lacks an adjudicator who can enforce the terms of the alliance, each individual estate holder can never be certain that the agreement will be upheld. In the absence of an enforcer, each alliance member must live in the fear that the broader alliance will turn against him. They must also fear that the other alliance members will refuse to come to his aid should he suffer invasion by a force outside the alliance.

There is yet a third form of uncertainty that plagues the state of nature: potential aggression. In the two previous cases, privileging of own’s worldview and alliance management, the subject of uncertainty is the genuine security concerns of those forced to live together in the state of nature. However, that is only one category of potential conflict, for there are also those who seek to pursue conquest beyond the necessities of their own security. To go back to our example, when the estate holder encounters potential invaders who seek to gain access to resources such as water or territory merely for their own survival, such invaders have tangible motivations, and they can thus potentially be reasoned with through forms of dispute resolution other than war. However, there will also be invaders who seek to dispossess the estate holder of his territory for no other reason than to increase their own power and territory. The estate holder is thus uncertain not only about the possibility of invasion, but also the motivation of any potential invader. For an invader who only seeks access to drinking water can be placated by means other than fighting, whereas an invader who seeks to conquer only to increase his own territory cannot. And this increases the security needs of all, because in addition to allowing for the security guarantees of potential rivals, each must also prepare to defend himself against those who seek to dominate him for reasons beyond their own security requirements.

[2024.04.04]

This third form of uncertainty, namely, an inability to understand the motive of a potential invader is especially damning. Because the estate holder can never truly know if an invader is motivated by security needs or by conquest, potential invaders can exploit this ambiguity. If the estate holder believes that the invader is motivated by legitimate security needs, say access to drinking water, the estate holder may put himself in a disadvantageous position by negotiating with the invader or even allowing the invader to annex a portion of his territory. By exploiting uncertainty in this way, the invader can continue his conquest against the estate holder without the estate holder ever realizing he’s being conquered. In this circumstance, the estate holder will never be able to respond adequately to this invasion and will eventually be subdued by the invader.

Because the estate holder must live under conditions of chronic uncertainty regarding both his enemies and his allies, he suffers a concomitant insecurity. The insecurities that derive from the three forms of uncertainty can be described as follows:

The presence of these uncertainties and the corresponding lack of security that each person feels in the state of nature leads to what Hobbes calls “diffidence.”

Once again, “diffidence” is a word that may not say exactly what Hobbes wants it to say in this instance. It carries with it an understanding of a “lack of confidence in one’s own abilities.” And that is certainly a fitting description for the driving force of the psychological uncertainty that plagues those living in the state of nature. However, it does not capture the corresponding insecurities that go along with that uncertainty. I think a better description in contemporary English for what Hobbes is trying to articulate is “structural distrust”:

“Structural distrust” captures three important insights. First, every person in the state of nature must live in the knowledge that they can never completely be secure. Second, they know that every other person in the state of nature is a potential threat, even if they are an ally. Third, and most crucially, the only way out of this situation is through what Hobbes calls “Anticipation.” Another quote is helpful:

“And from this diffidence of one another, there is no way for any man to secure himselfe, so reasonable, as Anticipation; that is, by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all men he can, so long, till he see no other power great enough to endanger him: And this is no more than his own conservation requireth, and is generally allowed. Also because there be some, that taking pleasure in contemplating their own power in the acts of conquest, which they pursue farther than their security requires; if others, that otherwise would be glad to be at ease within modest bounds, should not by invasion increase their power, they would not be able, long time, by standing only on their defence, to subsist. And by consequence, such augmentation of dominion over men, being necessary to a mans conservation, it ought to be allowed him.”

This is a dense paragraph that deserves careful consideration. The key clause that unlocks the passage is “to master the persons of all men he can.” Hobbes’ insight is that in the state of nature the only way one can guarantee there own security is to dominate all other people, to subjugate them to one’s will, either through force or manipulation. It is not enough to resolve disputes through persuasion or mutual agreement because unless the estate holder is keeping potential invaders at bay through force, he can never be certain that potential invaders will not get it in their heads to ignore treaties or sacrifice alliance held with the estate holder. To use some modern military terminology, in the state of nature every person must use pre-emptive strikes to secure themselves against all others.

What’s more, Hobbes acknowledges, “And this is no more than his own conservation requireth, and is generally allowed,” meaning that, in the state of nature, attacking another before they attack you is not only permissible, but also required if one is to survive. Here we come to an important – and highly controversial – aspect of Hobbes’ framework: human beings in their natural condition have a natural right to defend themselves in this offensive way. Pre-emptive strikes are not only permitted, but necessary. This is the case because the individual cannot surrender responsibility for their own protection to an adjudicatory power capable of enforcing a cooperative framework on those forced to live together in the state of nature.

Worst of all, because every person in the natural state knows intuitively that all others have this natural right, each knows it is only a matte of time before someone else attempts a pre-emptive strike against them. It is for that reason that Hobbes declares that the natural condition of mankind to be a war of all against all: “Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man.”

[2024.04.05]

However, there is slightly more to this story. I skipped over a step that Hobbes places before the war of all against all. It is a motivation for war that Hobbes calls “glory.” However, as with “competition” and “diffidence,” his understanding of “glory” is not precisely aligned with how we currently use the word. I will insert it into the diagram to orient the reader, but then expand and adapt Hobbes use of the term:

I skipped over this step in Hobbes’ argument because I think it is easier to make sense of glory if one already understands how the necessity of pre-emptive strikes leads to the war of all against all. However, it is important to articulate how the psychological reality of that necessity impacts the individual in the state of nature. Hobbes provides such an articulation in the following paragraph:

“Againe, men have no pleasure, (but on the contrary a great deale of griefe) in keeping company, where there is no power able to over-awe them all. For every man looketh that his companion should value him, at the same rate he sets upon himselfe: And upon all signes of contempt, or undervaluing, naturally endeavours, as far as he dares (which amongst them that have no common power, to keep them in quiet, is far enough to make them destroy each other,) to extort a greater value from his contemners, by dommage; and from others, by the example.”

And once again here is my best attempt to translate his thoughts into contemporary English:

“Every man wants others to respect him as much as he respects himself. And any sign that he is disrespected or undervalued naturally leads him to endeavour, as far as he dares, to raise his value in the eyes of others. For those who have only slightly disrespected him, he may do this by demonstrating his value. But for those who disrespect him greatly, he will do this through violence. And when there is no common power to keep them in check, the adversaries may even go so far as to destroy each other. That is why, when there is no power to over-awe them all, men derive no pleasure (and in fact they suffer much grief) from being in the company of others.”

From this explanation, we can see that perceived slights, insults, subtle forms of disrespect, and matters saving face are not minor matters in the state of nature. Such acts may be seen as trifling or inconsequential in an established political society where small acts of hostility cannot lead to larger acts of aggression because of the rule of law imposed by a higher authority. However, in the absence of such an authority, these micro-aggressions (to use a term popular in our own time) must be viewed as indicators of hostile intention. To put it another way, in the natural condition, micro-aggression must be treated as a prelude to macro-aggression, otherwise one risks ignoring the warnings of a pre-emptive strike. In the state of nature, small acts (even speech acts) that arouse enmity must inevitably generate existential fear among those who are the victims of that enmity. 

[2024.04.06]

A word to describe this that seems to me more accurate – but no less exalted – is “honour.” We have an echo of that understanding when we say someone has offended another’s honour. This seems a better term than “glory,” since glory carries connotations of esteem bestowed by virtue of common consent. However, “honour” – as the term is currently used – implies an esteem for oneself, a high opinion of one’s own merits. To “defend one’s honour” is to stand up for the value one places on one’s own worth. “Glory” is also afflicted with inescapable religious baggage (“God’s glory,” etc.) that seems irrelevant to the psychological reality Hobbes is describing. I will thus amend my diagram to call it “honour”:

The introduction of honour to this model of war is critical because it means that war is not merely defined by the use of violence. To paraphrase Hobbes somewhat, “War consists not only in battle, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time when the will to contend through battle can be suspected.” Because perceived slights and other forms of non-violent aggression in the state of nature cannot be prevented from escalating into violent conflict, matters of honour introduce a time-scale into the notion of war. To understand how this is different from a politically-established society, juxtapose the two estate holder examples presented earlier.

In the first example, where my neighbour and I resolved a territory dispute through the adjudication of our municipal level of government, snide comments or aggressive claims by either of us could not have been considered indicators of an impending war. I could have erected a billboard on my property for our whole community to see in which I accused him of attempting to annex my yard. Neither my neighbour nor the community would have taken me seriously. None would have seen such a petty act as a warning that violence was about to ensue. They likely would have gone to the authorities to lodge complaints against me, if the matter could not have been resolved through peaceful conversation.

However, this would not be the case for the notional estate holder in the state of nature. If that estate holder were to hear rumours that potential invaders had been publically criticizing him for monopolizing access to drinking water or pastureland, the estate holder would be required to treat such criticisms as potential threats, threats that could only be neutralized through his own use of force. In the absence of an adjudicating power, every minor snub, every affront, every act of contempt must be treated by the recipient as a warning of ill-intent by the perpetrator. As such affronts proliferate, the likelihood of battle increases. Eventually, war becomes inevitable as both sides approach the threshold where their honour demands violent retribution.